NTL's 1 meg service - Opinions

milltown

After speaking to NTL about moving up from the 600kbps to the 1 meg service, tried to wangle a free trial but no go, I was told it's no problem to try it for a month and switch back if I wanted as it's only a s/w change done from NTL HQ. So I went for it a few days ago but saw absolutely no difference in the service.
Rang them up today to ask what's up, was told that I'm on 1Mbps since Tuesday. When I said I hadn't noticed, she put me through to support who told me I was still crawling along at 600k. He sent the upgrade to my modem, asked me to reboot and I was done.

It's only on a couple of hours but apart from speed test websites I am a bit dissapointed at the lack of obvious improvement. Media player still takes 'kin ages to buffer. Bit Torrent d/ls still have not exceeded the 600k limit, I thought the extra upload (256 vs. 128) would have made a difference there but not so far. In actual fact, setting my BT upload to more than two thirds of the available bandwidth causes the d/l speed to dive below the u/l.

So I would welcome opinions from people, especially those with NTL 1meg but also ppl who have moved from a 512ish service to 1meg. Above 512/600 is the real limit what's at the other end of the pipe? Is it just my lousy choice of torrents? Is there more fun to be had out of this bandwidth than has occurred to me? Ftps? Pings to UK are still ~25ms so no new world of ubergaming has opened up.

Gonzo

weather ur broadband is 512, 600, 1mb or 4mb the pings wud remain the same really infact 128k is all you need for a stable low ping as long as the network is good. As for downloads the higher your connection the harder it is to make full use of it unless you have a good ftp at hand or good website. I only have broadband 2 months and beforehand when on isdn I used to get 7k/sec on every p2p prog etc and I at teh time foolishly thought that getting broadband would get me 54k/sec on everything:) not the case at all. For me personally 512k is all i really need for the time being.

melachi

When I was on a 10mb conn I only got around 250-350k/s on torrents. World wasn't big enough for me :<

Kevok

When IBB forgot to cap my connection i was getting 500k - 700k on torrents. Had it for a week and a half and said nothing for fear of being found. They figured out by themselves though. :P

milltown

Just to clarify, yis are talking about kilobits per second rather than kilobytes, yes?

So far I'm inclined to agree with Gonzo, there's not much 600k can't do that 1meg can. It may only be an extra €10 a month but over the year I'd get more enjoyment out of a €120 gfx card upgrade methinks.

Thanks for the input.

I love college.

Up to 3MB per second on some downloads.

Yes that is a capital B as in bytes

But from my experience of unlimited bandwidth ur lucky to get above 20KB/sec on most p2p downloads.

carrotcake

i only ever noticed a difference between 600k and 1meg when downloading and uploading large files. browsing was the same. btw, you can check the speed of your ntl modem by going to http://192.168.100.1/ (user root, pass root) and clicking operation configuration

Kevok

Originally posted by milltown
Just to clarify, yis are talking about kilobits per second rather than kilobytes, yes?

So far I'm inclined to agree with Gonzo, there's not much 600k can't do that 1meg can. It may only be an extra €10 a month but over the year I'd get more enjoyment out of a €120 gfx card upgrade methinks.

Thanks for the input.

They were yes I think, i was talking kilobytes, as in a meg in just over a second type thing.

Praetorian

I frequently get 150k/b - 200k/b per second on bittorrent downloads. Set your upload to about 1/3 of your download, and get Shadows experimental bittorrent. His BitTornado is still far too buggy.

uteotw

Why bother with 1mbit if you're capped at 1GB download a day ?
With 512kb you could download around 4GB a day.

Anyway, depending the sites you download from you won't necessaraly reach 1mbit download speed.... if it's the case then you should do multiple downloads at a time.... P2P, http, ftp, nntp.... whatever....

When IBB installed their hardware I wasn't limited on http speed.... I was running at 10mbit , nntp was around 2 to 4 mbit.

milltown

Confusing this is.
Praetorian, I presume you are either not on 1mbps or you are talking kilobits per second, not bytes. If you are on 1mbps and only getting 150 - 200 kbps (i.e. up to 25 kiloBytes per second) I would start looking around for better trackers, or turn off Kazaa in the system tray.

Since going 1 meg the most I have seen on a torrent is 75KB/s but the average seems to be 45 - 55, all theoretically achievable with 600kbps. This with the upload set to ~15KB/s, any more seems to drag down the d/l speed. Best I saw on 600k was 55 iirc but average was around 30.

To summarise: Doubling (nearly) the bandwidth does no such thing to real life d/l speeds but it would appear to boost them. The added speed comes at relatively little extra cost but is it worth it? Possibly. When I start to d/l a new movie or game I want it NOW. So maybe an extra tenner a month is worth it to be able to play/watch it tomorrow night instead of the night after.

I still don't know.

kevmac

Upgraded to Imb from 600K but I am suspicious that I am not getting the full speed.

Tested on http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp and got this:

Downstream
796 Kbps (99.5 KB/sec) Actual
859 Kbps (inc. overheads)

Upstream
238 Kbps (29.8 KB/sec) Actual
257 Kbps (inc. overheads)

Tested on my Mac OS 10.3.3.

Should I ring up and get that modem upgrade? Or is this a real world figure that I should expect.

Some folk in this post http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=124328&perpage=40&pagenumber=2 are getting better figures than me after their upgrade:

Direction

---

Actual Speed

---

True Speed (estimated)
Downstream

---

957 Kbps (119.6 KB/sec)

---

1033 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream

---

243 Kbps (30.4 KB/sec)

---

262 Kbps (inc. overheads)


Another one:

Upstream 961 Kbps (120.1 KB/sec) 1037 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream 241 Kbps (30.1 KB/sec) 260 Kbps (inc. overheads)

And another one:

Direction

---

Actual Speed

---

True Speed (estimated)
Downstream

---

962 Kbps (120.3 KB/sec)

---

1038 Kbps (inc. overheads)
Upstream

---

242 Kbps (30.3 KB/sec)

---

261 Kbps (inc. overheads)

milltown

I presume you have done a few tests at different times of the day. Also may be worth trying different test sites. Do a google for mcAfee speedometer and try that one too.

CiaranC

Why bother with 1mbit if you're capped at 1GB download a day ?

NTL is not capped at 1GB a day. That applies to UK only.

uteotw

it's mentioned on the Irish page

http://www.ntl.com/locales/ie/en/athome/internet_cable.html

I don't think they cut you off if you reach 1GB but if you regularly break this limit I guess you'll hear from them... like it's they case for many UK users.