How fast is your Internet connection?

[Prof.Wizard]

I have a new connection by a new Telco/ISP operator. It's one of the fastest in Italy, for what you pay, and it gives good speed in respect to other connections both in this country and EU in general.

2048Kbps download and 512Kbps upload. Only pain in the ass is they use a router which gives private IPs: added security but no direct connections to the PC (to run ie. an FTP server). But, luckily, they have a strange workaround.

 

[Mercutio]

Of course, you forgot the "Mercutio" option (although I might not be the only one in sub-28.8-land).

I've spent a substantial portion of my weekend dealing with a wireless ISP that's come into my area. Their techs and installers are morons, but $100/month for 1Mb/s seems pretty reasonable to me.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Of course, you forgot the "Mercutio" option (although I might not be the only one in sub-28.8-land).

You're joking right?!

Well forgive me then, I would have never guessed we have <56Kers in this forum. But what on earth are you doing on a connection like this?

I've spent a substantial portion of my weekend dealing with a wireless ISP that's come into my area. Their techs and installers are morons, but $100/month for 1Mb/s seems pretty reasonable to me.

Are there not any Cable/DSL services (wired) in your area?

 

[LunarMist]

Well forgive me then, I would have never guessed we have <56Kers in this forum.

I am also on dialup, but at around 45K. In case you don't know, cable and cable internet are rather expensive in certain areas of the US. The monthly rates keep increasing and the service continues to decline. For many it is not worth the extra speed. Some people would rather have 15K Cheetahs, faster processors, more RAM etc. than faster connections.

 

[honold]

what is the strange workaround?

i've wondered why isps didn't do this already.

anyway i pay $70/month for 1.5 down and 384 up with a static ip (pppoe-assigned...?!) from covad.net. very satisfied.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Some people would rather have 15K Cheetahs, faster processors, more RAM etc. than faster connections.

With all the respect, but isn't this counterproductive?!
Especially if we're talking about Mercutio who has some 3100+ posts in this forum... only!

 

[jtr1962]

Another 56Ker here. When cable starts to charge reasonable prices($20 or less per month) I'll think about it. The going rate of $50 and up is ridiculous. Some people just plain can't afford that. As I've already mentioned, Time Warner should give a special discount on Road Runner to whoever already has their cable TV service. Since the cable's already here, and I'm more than happy to buy and install my own cable modem, how much would it really cost them to provide high speed internet for me? Likely pennies per month, so why not charge some nominal fee like $10 or so and get a whole bunch of new Road Runner subscribers(and make a bunch of money besides)? No wonder AOL/Time Warner is doing poorly. They don't know a gold mine when it's staring them in the face. I believe the economic term for what they have now is underutilized infrastructure, and their problem is similar to mass transit operating at 30% capacity during the midday hours. There is a need to reduce the price(fare) during those offpeak times to attract new customers. I'll gladly live with the restriction of a slower connection during peak times if it means paying only $10 per month for cable. That would be a fair allocation of resources where the regular paying customers get first dibs at the bandwidth, and then the bargain ones have what's left. Since I'm almost always only on the Internet during off hours, I would probably have a full-speed connection most of the time.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

what is the strange workaround?

My Telco/ISP is a new player in the telecommunications field and as such it says that they don't have enough public IPs for every client that connects, due to the past stupid policy to give away IPs without concern.
Instead they're using some kind of NAT/proxy/router (don't know exactly what) that assigns private IPs on the customers. OK, here's the trick, if you try to connect to me with the IP I present you can't, cause it's virtual (dunno, maybe even firewalled). Everytime I need to run an FTP server or something I have to get to the ISP's homepage which has a very neat interface to ask for the assignment of a public IP for a certain duration (hours or some days). Charging a fee, of course which go on my telephone account.
That's why I'm waiting like crazy the full implementation of IPv6!

i've wondered why isps didn't do this already.

Me too.

anyway i pay $70/month for 1.5 down and 384 up with a static ip (pppoe-assigned...?!) from covad.net. very satisfied.

The static IP for privates is a tricky situation. If you're not experienced enough or you get a hacker upset it might create you problems. I would love to have one though, I admit it. :roll:
Of course, there are various workarounds for those who have dynamic IPs: www.no-ip.com, www.tzo.com, http://freedns.afraid.org All give progies to update your current IP to redirection services. Very neat. So you have the best of both worlds, security and static-like IP.

I pay €67/month but that includes the telephone monthly fee as well, with very attractive prices to call local, cellular, and international numbers. As I said, it's a private combined Telco/ISP, my company, and the biggest player in fiber optics implementations in Italy.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Another 56Ker here. When cable starts to charge reasonable prices($20 or less per month) I'll think about it. The going rate of $50 and up is ridiculous. Some people just plain can't afford that.

OK, I get it... but for Christ's sake: at least an ISDN! How costlier would that be?

 

[Howell]

Another 56Ker here. When cable starts to charge reasonable prices($20 or less per month) I'll think about it. The going rate of $50 and up is ridiculous. Some people just plain can't afford that.

OK, I get it... but for Christ's sake: at least an ISDN! How costlier would that be?

ISDN rates in the US are generally 1/3 more costly than DSL/Cable. I don't know why.

 

[Jake the Dog]

I'm on cable, with a theoretical limit of 10Mbps ... yeah right. :roll: in reality I average about 256Kb both ways. I 've seen d/loads sustain 1Mbps but this would more than likely be direct from my ISP's proxy cache. for AU$64 I get a 3GB limit after which conenction speed is throttled to 28Kb. I've never hit 3GB in a month.

 

[Fushigi]

$42.95, IIRC, for internet when added to digital cable TV. $56.95 otherwise. That's for 1.5Mbps down/256Kbps up.

Of course the speed varies, but I've clocked d/ls at sustaining over 250KBps, which isn't bad.

I have to disagree with jtr on the cost issue. Normal dialup accounts run $13-$23 a month for 56K service. For 2-3x that much cost I get almost 30x the speed. That is a relative bargain. Yes, it is at the upper end of what I would pay for service, but for the bandwidth it is a reasonable price.

Check out besiness class service prices if you really want sticker-shock.

- Fushigi

 

[Mercutio]

Actually, I use multilink PPP with a pair of USR Courier modems, connected through a Digiboard 8-port high-speed serial router (each RS232 port capable of 1Mbit-ish speeds), to custom cat5e or cat6 (don't remember which I used) and fixtures all the way to my apartment's switchbox. I connect at between 9.6 and 19.2 per line, most normally 14.4, which would of course make a 28.8 aggregate.
And no, I have no option for any high-speed access at the moment. None.

Supposedly, wireless will reach my area in a 3 - 4 month timespan. The antenna for that service is small, nondirectional and does not have to be attached, so at that point I may have a broadband solution, finally.

 

[zx]

3,5 Mbps dl
180 kbps ul.

I don't like the upload speed. However, pings are excellent. Performance is improving.

34,99 Canadian Dollars. Modem not included.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

Ooh... who's the Dude with the more-than-4096 connection?!
And I've noticed that only one so far has ISDN or entry-level Cable/DSL connection.

 

[P5-133XL]

1.5Mbps/256Kbps Comcast cable. Definately worth the $50+ per month as long as one can deal with intermittant interruptions in service.

 

[SteveC]

I'm very spoiled.

 

[Mickey]

I'm very spoiled.

Holy smokes!

I got DSL for two reasons: wouldn't tie up my phone line when I'm online and allowed me to merge my parents' dialup account (they rarely use more than a couple hours a month, so they can use the "backup" dialup that comes with my DSL account).

It took me over three months to get it working right, though. *grumbles* My ISP didn't believe me when I insisted I was getting 3K download speeds, saying I must have configured something incorrectly. After numerous calls over several weeks, they finally figured out they forgot a configuration on their end. My downloads went from 3K to 784 K. Not bad for being at the outer edge of the CO's range.

 

[Clocker]

I get 1.5Mbps/300kbps from Wideopenwest.

I pay $79.00/month for my internet with digital cable TV (two cable boxes) and 5 channels of HBO. I locked in my rate at $79. THe package today would be $85 if you were to get the same package.

Wow offers a number of internet only packages in my area. They are:
Value Internet (112kbps) $34.99
Basic Internet (500kbps) $39.99
Advanced Internet (1.5Mbps) $44.99


WOW! Internet & Digital Cable Bundles
Turn your house into a digital playground! Choose one of the bundles below and you’ll get WOW! Internet plus WOW! Digital Cable—all for one low monthly price. WOW! Internet brings you download speeds up to 25 times faster than dial-up, and WOW! Digital Cable delivers over 200 channels—there’s something for everyone!
Speed Levels Price +1 Movie Channel +2 Movie Channels +4 Movie Channels

Value Internet (112kbps) $64.99
$74.99
$84.99
$99.99
Basic Internet (500kbps) $69.99 $79.99 $89.99 $104.99
Advanced Internet (1.5Mbps) $74.99 $84.99 $94.99 $109.99

Digital Cable & Internet Bundles include 1 digital converter, 1 analog converter, 2 remotes and 1 cable modem. Internet service includes 5 free email addresses, 3 IP addresses, and 10 MB web space.


WOW Internet & Basic Cable Bundles
Save big with WOW's bundles! Choose one of the bundles below and you’ll get WOW! Internet plus WOW! Cable—all for one low monthly price. WOW! Internet brings you download speeds up to 25 times faster than dial-up and WOW! Cable delivers over 70 of the most popular cable and broadcast networks.
Speed Levels Price +1 Movie Channel +2 Movie Channels +4 Movie Channels

Value Internet (112kbps) $49.99
$59.99
$69.99
$84.99
Basic Internet (500kbps) $54.99 $64.99 $74.99 $89.99
Advanced Internet (1.5Mbps) $59.99 $69.99 $79.99 $94.99

Analog Cable & Internet Bundles include 1 analog converter, 1 remote control and 1 cable modem. Internet service includes 5 free e-mail addresses, 3 IP addresses, and 10 MB web space.


I've been VERY ahppy with WOW;

 

[Fushigi]

$42.95, IIRC, for internet when added to digital cable TV. $56.95 otherwise. That's for 1.5Mbps down/256Kbps up.

www.dslreports.com/1053977194]OK, since we're quoting dslreports...[/url]

 

[Prof.Wizard]

I'm very spoiled.

WTF! :eekers:
Were do you connect to? What do you pay-per-month?!

 

[SteveC]

I'm very spoiled.

WTF! :eekers:
Were do you connect to? What do you pay-per-month?!

I have a cable connection through Cablevision, which is generally regarded as the best cable ISP in the country WRT speed, although customer service is somewhat lacking, and SuperCaff is complaining about here. I'm currently locked in to a 2-year contract which runs out in October, in which I'm only paying $30 a month(!), but it'll go up to $40 when it runs out. For new subscribers, it's currently $45 if you also get cable TV, or $50 without it. The only catches are you can't run servers, they don't give you any webspace, and if you upload a lot, like from P2P apps, they'll cap your uploads to 150kbit/s. But, there are absolutely no caps on downloads, and I've heard about people downloading very large amounts, like 100 gigs, in a month without being cut off. Their cable TV service is only mediocre at best (they didn't offer digital cable until 3 and a half years after our neighboring towns had it through Comcast), but I care about internet access more, anyway. In the year and a half I've had it, it's probably only been down for less than a day, total, so I've been very happy.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

The only catches are you can't run servers, they don't give you any webspace, and if you upload a lot, like from P2P apps, they'll cap your uploads to 150kbit/s.

Same problem here regarding the running of FTP/Web servers on the PC.
But what's the justification to cap your upload? Is it on the contract as well? "If you upload a lot we shall cap you..."

 

[Clocker]

Most AUP's prohibit the running of servers which, if you're a P2Per who uploads a lot, you are doing.

Most ISPs don't care if you run a server as long as you don't use up a lot of bandwidth.

C

 

[mubs]

My service is 1500 max 384 guaranteed download, 128k upload. I typically get ~ 900kbps download This is with the local telco who provides both my DSL line and the internet access. I pay $40/month for the whole package for a 1-year commitment, got free DSL modem and filters.

With the same telco and service at my old location (25 miles closer to Buck than I am now), I used to get about 1300kbps download pretty consistently.

 

[Tea]

Well now there are two. To only-one-step-better-than-56k, I mean. Actually my link is supposed to be, and technically speaking is, a good deal faster than that, but it would be misleading to fescribe it as more than about 2 to 3 times faster than good modem link. My downstream speed is only as fast as the upstream lets it be. As always. Cost is about $AU 60 per month for 1GB here, plus another $AU 80 or so for the office link, which is the same but has a static IP.

 

[jtr1962]

I have to disagree with jtr on the cost issue. Normal dialup accounts run $13-$23 a month for 56K service. For 2-3x that much cost I get almost 30x the speed. That is a relative bargain. Yes, it is at the upper end of what I would pay for service, but for the bandwidth it is a reasonable price.

Actually, I'm paying $9.99 a month for Bluelight. I'd gladly pay up to double that for cable, but not more. I realize I might be getting 30x to 50x the bandwidth, but 90% of what I do on the Internet isn't that limited by 56K. The main thing is downloads, which average about 20 MB per day. This usually takes about an hour, and in the meantime I do other things like post on SF or watch TV, so the actual amount of saved time cable would buy me is relatively small. In fact, it is probably zero since I might start downloading larger things like Linux distros once I had the bandwidth. My main beef with what cable charges is that there is no way it costs them more than a few dollars a month per customer, especially if the cable is already running outside. I realize these are businesses, but $40 to $60 per month seems like they're milking it for all it's worth. Besides that, the fact that cable is becoming ubiquitous means no more higher speed standards for regular dialup users. There are quite a few phone lines, especially digital ones, that can go well above 56K right now if a new standard existed, but there's no longer any incentive to do so when the same company can make more money just by getting into the ISDN or cable Internet business. There should at least be something like 100K or 200K dialup speeds. That would keep me more than happy.

 

[Prof.Wizard]

There are quite a few phone lines, especially digital ones, that can go well above 56K right now if a new standard existed, but there's no longer any incentive to do so when the same company can make more money just by getting into the ISDN or cable Internet business. There should at least be something like 100K or 200K dialup speeds. That would keep me more than happy.

Didn't know about that, but it would be very interesting since still many can't afford (or are not yet reached) by broadband services.
Is there at least a standards commitee working on more-than-56K modems? URL?

 

[jtr1962]

Didn't know about that, but it would be very interesting since still many can't afford (or are not yet reached) by broadband services.
Is there at least a standards commitee working on more-than-56K modems? URL?

To the best of my knowledge no new standards are in the works. It is certainly possible, though, to go much faster as the current standard is based on an analog signal under the worst possible conditions. Once a digital signal exists, noise and line quality are almost a non-issues at the speeds we're interested in. 56K electronically is a snail's pace. Your uprocessor runs tens of thousands of times that speed. It shouldn't be two difficult to recognize ones and zeros at a few hundred thousand bits per second on a copper wire. The wire can certainly handle that speed, even if it's in fairly bad shape. The speed is almost a joke for any current IC, even the really slow ones of the 4000-series logic family. Even for large, fairly slow silicon devices a few hundred kilohertz is no sweat. I've made circuits that put 40 watts into a fluorescent tube at 250 KHz(at about 200 V p-p no less!) using fairly slow power transistors. Certainly the smaller, much faster(by orders of magnitude) transistors in any IC can figure the difference between a 1 and 0 at several hundred kb/sec even if the line is fairly noisy. If we put a little more R&D into this problem, maybe we would find that the majority of households can get by just fine with plain old copper wire. Sure, cable is nice, and fiber optics are even nicer, but it'll be years before those things penetrate into every nook and cranny whereas almost anyone now has a phone.

 

[Tea]

Interesting discussion, gentlemen. JTR, I think the key issue isn't getting a fast enough signal down the copper wire outside your house, it's more to do with the massive task of switching the things at the telephone exchange, and having enough medium to long distance trunk cabling.

Where is James when you wnt him?

 

[Howell]

It has been my understanding that the reason you can't sometimes get even 56k is because of the conversion to digital at the out-station. Supposedly, if the run was analog all the way to the CO it wouldn't be a problem. Presumably it has to do with the speed of the switches at the out-station.

 

[Jake the Dog]

I used to work for a Telco... we were always told that 56Kb was the highest analog we could support on unbalanced copper pair over 1Km+ distances before induction and other enviromental effects caused too much signal degradation. the Telco support stance was a pathetic 4.8Kb.

 

[Buck]

I'm at the "dude" level with Cox Cable.

 

[Piyono]

I'm using this service:
http://www1.sympatico.ca/help/local/bell/high_speed_ultra_features.html

3Mbps down and 640K up for CAN$70/month (about US$50).
It's amazing how much less we Torontonians pay for high speed internet than some of you sub-49th folks do.

Suckahz.



Piyono

 

[The JoJo]

I'm surfing with a 1MB/384KB ADSL line. Paying 51 euros/month for it, after I bought my own ADSL router. The rent for the router from the ISP was 8 euros/month.
Too bad the ones they offered were no goood. I've used 2-4 in the past few years. They've been broken, lost the OS from the flash memory etc, etc...

Bought myself a Zyxel 643. Works ok.

 

[GMac]

I'm on a decent ADSL service at home (512Kb down/256Kb up in theory, 480Kb/228Kb up in practice) for a very reasonable £18.99 p/m (12 month contract) from a company called PlusNet. Acquired all my own equipment - the DLink DSL-504 router was a leaving gift from my last job :mrgrn: and the NIC is onboard my Epox 8RDA+ mobo. The package is quite basic (25MB webspace, no P2P support or alt.binary newsgroups and a dynamic IP), but the contention ratio's pretty good and I've not had any connection problems since I converted at the back end of last year, so I've no complaints whatsoever about the service

GM

 

[blakerwry]

i currently have 2MBit down 384K up for $45/month with my cableTV service(which is in the $20-30 range) (Time warner/roadrunner)

I'll be moving out soon and may not be able to afford cable internet.. personally, I'd like to see a severely bandwidth capped version of cable/DSL for cheap... like say 128Kbit up/down.

The benefits over dialup for the end user would be faster pings (more responsive surfing), not having to invest in a decent analog modem, not having to do the "dialup dance", not having to tie up the phone line, and having 24/7 reliable connection.

The benefit to the telco/ISP would be they could get more customers.

For about $20/month this just seems like a good solution for everyone. I wish there were ISP that offered this kind of service.


JTR, it's not that it costs the ISP's much to put the cable service in your home.. But they have to pay the bills for all the servers and equipment they purchased to get the service started on the 1st place. They also have ongoing maintanence costs, equipment costs, and man power costs related to being an ISP.

 

[CougTek]

www.dslreports.com/1054270375]Just for Merc[/url].

~50$CDN / month with the cable modem. That's about 37U$. Not quite as good as SteveC, but not too shaby either.