A question about NTL Broadband...

py2006

Guys, forgive my ignorance.....I am with NTL. They say my download rate is 1.5mb yet depending who I am downloading from I get a rate of either 180k/s or 80-90k/s. Where does the 1.5mb come from? me confused

Also, is it true they are going to double they're speeds shortly?

And do you think they will raise the cap?

daramullally

Its all to do with bits and bytes. The 1.5Mb is megabits per second, which I think works out as about 150k/s or so. I have noticed that NTL speeds sometimes goes over what the advertise. Regarding getting speeds of 80-90k/s that depends on what bandwidth is available from the server that you are downloading from. See http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/cmtips/speed.html for a speed test.

I have heard that the new speeds will be 1Mb/2Mb/3MB. No one know about upload speeds or caps. We will have to wait and see.

py2006

Ah right, I see. Thanks for that.

I heard that they were upping their speeds in England. Are you assuming that they will do it here too?

daramullally

There have been a couple of threads recently about this. See : http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=244629 and http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=246624. It looks like it will happen in the next few weeks, probably when the new owner take over.

Fingers crossed

py2006

Yea hopefully they will up the speed. I find it inconsistent. I also have probs with certain pages not opening at all sometimes.

Jaques

Hi,

Just to put the speed issue straight here.
I have the Broadband Max myself.

1.5 mega bits pr. second will give you a theoretical maximum of 0.1875 mega bytes pr. second dowload speed. There is 8 bits on one byte, so simply divide 1500 with 8.
0.1875 Mega Bytes pr. second is the equivlant of 187.5 Kilo Bytes pr. second.

So the speed you are getting there with 180 kB seems fine as you very rarely have the opportunity to max out your line.

Please take into consideration where you are downloading from, if the site you are downloading from are not able to provide 187.5 KB/s you wont download at that speed, which is most likely why you have encountered lower speeds from time to time.

I have experienced my own connection getting close to 187.5 kBps, but it is a rarity.
I usually do get about 170kBps when downing from Usenet.

Hope that cleared up the speed question.

-EDIT-
I just read the link that was posted previously, with NTL's own calculation, where the 1.5 mbps connection would come to 176.11 kBps.

So take that into account, but if the theoretical maximum is 176.11, I wonder how I got more than that.


//Jaques

causal

Jaques wrote:

...There is 8 bits on one byte,

[pedant]There are 8 bits in an octet. A byte can be 8 bits but it can be 16 bits etc.[/pedant]


causal

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

not entirley sure but I think yu are talking about a word not a byte

paddy

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

not entirley sure but I think yu are talking about a word not a byte

Yes FWW, 4bits=Nibble, 8bits=byte, 16bits=digital word

causal

Here's an article which says:

Byte versus Octet

There has been some disagreement, and even controversy, surrounding the use of the words byte and octet. The former term has traditionally been the most popular in common parlance for a set of eight bits, especially in North America. However, it is technically not the correct term.

A byte is, formally, the smallest unit of data that can be read from or written to at one time in a computer system. In almost all cases today, that is indeed eight bits, but there are have been some systems where a byte was not eight bits. Some older 36-bit computers used 9-bit bytes, and there were also systems that had byte sizes of 6 or 7 bits, or even variable-sized bytes. For this reason, many people, especially techie professionals, prefer the term octet, which clearly and unambiguously implies “eight”. This term is much more common outside North America.

This matter of octets and bytes is another of the little “tempests in tea pots” that computer people seem to love so much. The bottom line in modern computer systems, however, is that an octet is a byte and a byte in an octet, and the terms can be used interchangeably without too much danger. You will more often see octets used in technical standards.

And then from here:

No. of Bits - Common Representation Terms
01 - Bit / Digit / Flag
04 - Nybble / Nibble
08 - Byte / Octet / Character
16 - Double Byte / Word
32 - Double Word / Long Word
64 - Very Long Word

causal

FuzzyWuzzyWazza

I was of the understanding that you could have an 8bit word or a 16bit word ect..

causal

FuzzyWuzzyWazza wrote:

I was of the understanding that you could have an 8bit word or a 16bit word ect..

bull**** = 8 bit word
misunderstanding = 16 bit word

LOL

causal