New connection

[houltmac]

Having been on ADSL at my weekday home for the last 18 months or more I have had a decent 4-7Mb connection. it's been getting worse recently however, really poor. As such I have moved over to cable (Virgin Media which used to be Telewest). I got the self install today.

A huge box which had a Netgear router and a cable modem and a bunch of cables and stuff that I didn't need (used to get cable TV before Sky+, so they left the coax here). I plugged in the modem, ethernet to the new Airport Express (802.11n) and called the cable company to get it "turned on". 1:45 minutes later I had a connection. Awesome! How much easier could it be?

It's a theoretical 20Mb connection which is testing at 18-19Mb right now. This is like a revelation. I have no load times, even for HD. I love it. I used to have this kind of speed but made do with the free ADSL service - now I wonder why.

Anyone else had such an effortless experience that brought them such a speed boost?

[baseballboy828]

What is your upload speed? I am getting roughly 12mbps down and 1.5mbps up from Comcast here in the US.

[Yuiichi]

I had the same experience with ADSL to Cable too, Matt. I was on DSL for a little over a year, I believe, all the while plagued with outages and what have you. It was not a good experience. Then I got cable. After an initial MAC address problem with the modem (they didn't record it properly from the factory, so I wasn't "turned on" for an hour or so), it's been running solid ever since. No outages, and fairly fast speeds. Through wireless, I'm getting 9.8 mbps down and 1.0 mbps up, although my "theoretical" speed should be more like 15 and 2.

[divigation]

Like bbb I am curious about your upload speed as well. I am also on Comcast in the States and average around 1.5 up to go with my 15 down.

[houltmac]

Since most of the content I store online is made online I didn't think to mention the upload speeds. 740k up seems to be about average. All this is done pinging national servers over an 802.11g connection to my new Express. Of course, I will turn on "n only" when my MBP arrives (hopefully tomorrow) for added security and better coverage. While it shouldn't make a difference to these connection speeds I have to wonder a little, since it made such a difference with coverage at my other place I got slightly better speeds all round.

As Yuiichi said, DSL is plagued with outages and speeds are so limited/based on exchanges. Cable is always better, but if you have read about the Virgin take over of Telewest here last year you will know why I moved away (plus, the Sky DSL was free since we got all the services from one provider). Now I regretting letting politics get in the way of technology though.

[philbowell]

Nice Matt, very nice! That's one thing I wish I could pick up from my old student diggs in Chelt and bring to Slough!!! We had a Virgin (or Telewest as it was then) connection, the fastest one was included in my rent. It was great, and similar speeds I think, can't really remember.

[studioprisoner]

DONT get me started on this countries broadband network.....

[notabadname]

Had ADSL myself. Best they could offer gave me about 2.7 down and .75 up. Switched to the local cable "Insight" here in Cincinnati, and now get 15 down and 1.5 up. What a difference. I buy a lot of full season shows off of iTunes. 25 Episodes of "Lost" used to take up to 10 hours, overnight. Now it is done within a couple of hours. And software updates and downloads are so painless now. I wanted the faster uploads more for Gaming and hosting on XBox Live. Now those 16 player RB6 games run smoothly. No one ever leaves my room for Lag.