Just made a download at 40kbps with dial up!!!

[Elektro]

KennyR wrote:
But doesn't cable take a performance hit if lots of people in your neighbourhood are downloading at once?

Not really if the network is designed as it should be nothing slows down. And ADSL has the same problem too. You have your own connection to the DSLAM central but if the network from there to the ISP is full the speed will drop down too.

[ikir]

Counter-Strike server? Have you tried NAtural-Selection. I think it is the best games ever.

www.natural-selection.org

[hnl_dk]

whabang wrote:

What do you guys pay for those frigging connections anyway?
I pay 365 SEK ( 43$, 40€, 27£ ) a month for my 2.4 mbit adsl connection. No connection fee.
With a modem I generally got stuck with the same prices, but then I only checked my e-mail with it, allmost no surfing at all.

I pay 362 DKK for 256/128 here in Denmark!

[KennyR]

Not really if the network is designed as it should be nothing slows down. And ADSL has the same problem too. You have your own connection to the DSLAM central but if the network from there to the ISP is full the speed will drop down too.

I did some research, and it doesn't need to be the central server that's busy. One channel is provided to one block of houses normally, and heavy use by some of those houses can slow down cable hugely for everyone else on the block. ADSL doesn't suffer this.

Probably in the US this is solved by adding more channels, but in other places whether communications are more monopolised it isn't...

Heres the source of my info

[amigamad]

i have 128k ntl broadband cable modem they supply the modem and connection was free it cost less than my bt off peak dialup
128k ntl broadband £14.99

56k dial up off peak £15.99

Only thing is ntl are trying to limit you to one gig a day download only thing is i payed for unlimited and this is breach of my contract with them so they wont get paid if they try breaking my contract with them .

dont pay ntl site
and more info here news item :-?

ant ntl protest

[Elektro]

I see no proof of this supposed 'cable problems'. Since i changed my ISP from the monopolistic 'Telekom' (which btw. now aggresivily markets ADSL) to the cable company my cable flies again. No problems at all. The reason why ADSL is getting so popular is just because phone companies already own the phone network which has 10 times better distribution than the cable network. Monopoly all over the place.

[kd7ota]

That is believable.

My friend on night achieved 40kbp/s and downloaded 200mb with no time. I dont know what happens for data to do that. He even showed me the file that was 200mb, and sure enough, he had it.  Maybe ISPs are greedy!  :-D

[SilvrDrgn]

@ KennyR,

But doesn't cable take a performance hit if lots of people in your neighbourhood are downloading at once?

Yes, it can happen, but it usually doesn't.  The cable providers are very good at keeping track of how many people are on the system.  When they reach the threshhold of their specifications, they add another channel.  It certainly holds true for me.  I live in a pretty populated neighborhood, but I've never had a problem with my cable modem being slow.

ADSL doesn't suffer this.

You should add onto the end of that "on its own channel" because, yes, ADSL can be affected by a similar type of slowdown.  If the network equipment that your DSL modem connects to at the CO is saturated, the slowdown will happen.  I did have this problem at my old apartment.  The CO only had one connectivity point for my neighborhood at the time with over 100 connections on it.  They had a publicly available network activity monitor which showed the box was always 95% busy during peak times.  That, of course, ended up with everyone on it going slow.

Also, regardless of the above, your data transmission speed will only go as fast as the weakest/slowest link in the chain.  If your on a 10 Mbit cable modem and you download from a server that's running on a 2400 bps modem (not likely, but possible), then you'll still only get 2400 bps speed.

[odin]

I am connected with an @Home cable connection. Advertised as 1 to 2 MBit. I easily achieve 100KByte/sec downloads, so it's not far from the truth. Upstream is limited to ~15Kbyte/sec :-/,

We pay 45EUR/month for it (but we share the connect with 3 persons). No download/upload limits ('fair use policy', but I've downloaded in excess of 6 gig sometimes (excluding my roommates, so total even higher) and we haven't had any guys knocking on our door yet :-))).

Overall I'm quite satisfied with @Home.

[gnarly]

whabang wrote:
I pay 365 SEK ( 43$, 40?, 27£ ) a month for my 2.4 mbit adsl connection.

You ******* ***** ********!!!! ;-)

I pay £25 per month for 512k cable. Bah...

[Aragorn]

I pay 275 SEK a month for 10Mbit got a fiber connection to the house. :-P

[Tomas]

I pay 795nkr "106Euro" a month for my poor 1120/384 kbit cable  :-x

[Tomas]

i say it again.... you swedes are really spoiled.

[Tomas]

And next year once I got a job I will get my 7.6Mbps ADSL line...... Counterstrike server on me!

Still.... Adsl has a max upload limit of around 760kbit or somewhere around there.

And latency shoot into the sky when you upload with it.

[YttriumOx]

KennyR wrote on 2003/2/12 21:22:01
But doesn't cable take a performance hit if lots of people in your neighbourhood are downloading at once?

Yes, and I've also experienced it so I can say without doubt that it happens.  BUT it's really no big deal.  Some days, on sites I usually get around 1000KBps downloads I only get a consistant 800KBps downloads.  Other sites where I usually get 500KBps generally never slow down.
Compared to the likes of 100KBps on a 1Mbit link or 26KBps on your average ADSL, it's blindingly fast either way.

Regards,
Ben de Waal.


Quick note to ease discussion (not aimed at you Kenny):
K = Kilo (1024 or 1000)
M = Mega (1048576 or 1000000)
G = Giga (1073741824 or 1000000000)
B = Byte (usually 8 or 9 bits - generally 9 when talking about network speed)
b = bit (a binary digit, a 1 or 0)
bit = bit (a binary digit, a 1 or 0)

bps = bits per second (a common way to measure transfer speeds)
Bps = Bytes per second (a common way to measure transfer speeds)
cps = Characters per second (synonymous with Bps)

eg 10Mbps = (very approx) 1MBps

"Face it, dialup uses a century old technology. "

This may be true for the phone network itself , but the way dailup works has changed alot over the years , originally it did work by sending bit by bit without compression. But now the data is compressed and patterned ( its called PSK IIRC , Phase shift something .. its been along time since learnt about it ) where the carrier wave is not manipulated to represent a high or low bit but instead manipulated to represent groups of bits increasing the bandwidth many times over.