Smart Broadband

oflynnd

I am a new Smart Broadband subscriber. Can somebody explain how their system differs from other providers...3mbs with no contention rate. I'm told that they use a different server in the phone exchange. If I use a 3rd party speed tester I get a much slower reading as compared to the Smart test.
Can anybody enlighten me ?
Thanks

dub45

Are you having speed problems or just being a bit paranoid? If you use a third party speed tester it could be anywhere and therefore you will be affected by all the 'stuff' between you and the third party. If you are not having problems relax and enjoy!

oflynnd

Thanks but it does not feel like 3 mbs.
Any ideas on the tech questions ?
Thanks

eoinok

They have their own Dsalms in the exchanges.
Nearly every other dsl provider is effectively reselling eircom's dsl and is using their kit.

That is the quick 2 line answer on how they are different.

Foxwood

oflynnd wrote:

If I use a 3rd party speed tester I get a much slower reading as compared to the Smart test.
Can anybody enlighten me ?

If you test your speed off a server based in the US, you're obviously not going to get a reliable reading.

Stuff further away is going to be slower. But if you want to get a "real world" idea of your speed, open 2 or 3 browser windows, and downoad multiple copies of Open Office from a few different servers. The combined download rate for 3 different downloads should be pretty close to the 300-350KB/s that you'd expect to get from a 3Mb/s connection (Mbits vs KBytes).

MOH

I usually get pretty much the 3 mbs with the modem Smart gave me.

I usually get a fair bit less with the Netgear DG834GT I bought, wireless or not. Think the firmware on it needs to be upgraded, haven't got around to it yet.

But make sure your firmware's up to date, it can make a difference.

pizzahead77

From what I can remember reading on Smart's own forums is that they only recommend using their own speed tester as it reflects the speeds within their network and which they have control over.

Therefore if you are using a 3rd party tool it will also reflect any speed issues outside of Smart's network as well.

mambo

oflynnd wrote:

I am a new Smart Broadband subscriber. Can somebody explain how their system differs from other providers...3mbs with no contention rate. I'm told that they use a different server in the phone exchange. If I use a 3rd party speed tester I get a much slower reading as compared to the Smart test.

At least you HAVE Smart Broadband. I cancelled my UTV broadband (on an Eircom line) right at the beginning of April (no delay on UTV's part with the Broadband cancellation, thankfully), and... two and a half months later, still waiting for Eircom/Smart to sort things out.

Smart certainly seem to offer a good deal, but anyone thinking of switching should beware of the potential downtime!

dam099

pizzahead77 wrote:

From what I can remember reading on Smart's own forums is that they only recommend using their own speed tester as it reflects the speeds within their network and which they have control over.

Therefore if you are using a 3rd party tool it will also reflect any speed issues outside of Smart's network as well.

I can kind of see their point there but wouldn't just measuring the speed within Smarts network not take account of whether they have adequate connections and bandwidth to the Internet which is something which is within their control?

While the path to a particular 3rd party tool might have issues beyond an ISPs control if you try a number of different 3rd party tools and they are all slow would that not indicate that your ISP have a capacity problem?

No one signs up to an ISP to access just their network, they are mostly just a means to connect to the Internet at large.

Foxwood

dam099 wrote:

I can kind of see their point there but wouldn't just measuring the speed within Smarts network not take account of whether they have adequate connections and bandwidth to the Internet which is something which is within their control?

While the path to a particular 3rd party tool might have issues beyond an ISPs control if you try a number of different 3rd party tools and they are all slow would that not indicate that your ISP have a capacity problem?

It would, but that's not the case with Smart. Whatever the original Posters problem was, it wasn't cause by a lack of capacity either on the Smart network, or on Smarts interconnect wth other parts of the internet.

digitaldr

I used to be a regular visitor here but haven't stopped by much since I finally got Smart - no real reason oo anymore! I have to say I'm very pleased with it and great not to have to have anything to do with Eircom anymore. As far as I recall as well as their speedtester there's a large file you can download from their server to check your speed.

Narcom

oflynnd wrote:

Thanks but it does not feel like 3 mbs.
Any ideas on the tech questions ?
Thanks

Smart have a support forum and a speed tester which you can use to check speed within their network. The link is http://support.smarttelecom.ie/bbspeedtool.htm

I find the speeds are usually at 2.9 - 3Mb and are usually excellent.

If you want to see performance, try downloading a large linux iso or alternative file from ftp.heanet.ie or similar.

Also, if the speed result is low, the link above has a support message board and the admins usually get back fairly promptly to any queries or problems etc. They can then take you through the various checks/stats on your aolynk to check out noise, connection speeds etc.