NTL - acceptable bandwidth???

homerjay540

am just after getting ntl broadband (1MB/s) installed at home.

checked connection speed using this link

anytime i check it tells me i have connection speed of about 300kb/s
this seems a bit low to me. i had eircom trial and constantly got 1MB/s.

anybody else notice this with ntl?

i will leave it a couple days b4 i contact ntl.

seamus

Try it a few times, or try downloading some ISOs from ftp://ftp.heanet.ie

I find that none of those bandwidth measuring sites ever give me a correct/stable speed, yet I get the full 2Mb out of my NTL.

ArthurG

That Macafee speedometer is naff - can't handle 3Mb ntl connection at all. I don't really like that irishisp site either, find the results highly variable. I find trailers on apple.com give a really good indication of speed. I consistently download from there at 375kBps, always a relief when some other site is telling me i seem to have a 1.5Mb connection.....

zuma

Stop testing your connections on US speedtests!!!
Due to high ping times...your never going to get an accurate result from them.

Use http://www.irishisptest.com/myspeed for speedtests.

homerjay540

good point zuma.

i tested using that link and was told i have download speed of almost 1Mb/s and upload of 100kb/s which is what i would expect

homerjay540

also, i have checked up the website of the manufacturer of the modem and it says that modem can support 2 computers at the one time, contrary to what ntl sales dept told me.
which is another plus

Boomer23

no it cant, the modem can only assign 1 IP address, so if you wanna connect it to another computer you need a router

homerjay540

thats strange. is this not the modem?
it says " Flexible - Allow your customers to use both the Ethernet and USB ports simultaneously for multiple connections or take advantage of the modem's support of up to 32 MAC addresses. "

is the ntl modem different?

JNive

what he meant is that ntl assign you only 1 ip, therefore, unless NAT is involved ( ie an 'internal' network via a router ) then only 1 computer can receive an IP address at any one time.

Blaster99

Pings have virtually nothing to do with download performance. If you're getting poor performance from the US with NTL and not with Eircom, it means that NTL has poor transit connections to that destination. I've noticed the same with IBB and Eircom. Eircom gives very consistent results from wherever I try to download something, whereas with IBB it varies quite a bit.

The_B_Man

homerjay540 wrote:

thats strange. is this not the modem?
it says " Flexible - Allow your customers to use both the Ethernet and USB ports simultaneously for multiple connections or take advantage of the modem's support of up to 32 MAC addresses. "

is the ntl modem different?

is that ur modem in the pic? mine is grey and looks slightly different i think.
actually, i do hav 2 PCs online simultaneously but thats coz i connected one PC to the modem via USB and then networked the 2 PCs together via crossover cable and set up internet connection sharing. works a charm.

homerjay540

yeah mine looks exactly the same. is actually a kindov transparent blue tho (looks like black plastic in pic) and i found that webpage by googling the model number - E08C007.

that is a good idea to share same connection. do both computers need to be turned tho? (to use the comp that the modem is not connected to)

zuma

Blaster99 wrote:

Pings have virtually nothing to do with download performance. If you're getting poor performance from the US with NTL and not with Eircom, it means that NTL has poor transit connections to that destination. I've noticed the same with IBB and Eircom. Eircom gives very consistent results from wherever I try to download something, whereas with IBB it varies quite a bit.

When doing a constant download you could have pings of 20seconds...but once it begins downloading...it downloads!!
On speedtests distance is an important factor...the further away something is the higher the ping time as the speed of light is constant!!

Therefore when speedtests are taking place ping times play an important part in certain speedtests!!