Broadband - actual realised speed

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legend99

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Lads,

What actual speed can you expect from eircom home plus...2Mbps down/256k up is the max obviously....would you be guaranteed 1Mb down 200 up???
 
I'm on UTV 2Mbps down/256Kbps up and get c. 1.6Mbps/166Kbps in practice. You never get the full nominal rate due to various factors.
 
and what speed would I need to ensure that webcam/video streaming will work ok? Trying to decide whether to sign up to Eircom 2Mbs which is 48:1 contention or 3Mbs which is 24:1 but 20 euro a month more expensive...
 
I'm on Utvs ClicksilverPlus (3Mb). Check shows 2.54Mbps down and 315kbps up (Quality of Service 94% but it's often a bit better than this). Never get the full 3Mb for reasons ClubMan has previously explained.

Eircom charges €48.40 for 3Mb compared to Utv's €34.49 (50 cents more if Talk excluded). Both have contention of 24:1.
 
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legend99 said:
and what speed would I need to ensure that webcam/video streaming will work ok? Trying to decide whether to sign up to Eircom 2Mbs which is 48:1 contention or 3Mbs which is 24:1 but 20 euro a month more expensive...
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Both should be fine - check the upstream speed too if you are also going to be sending video.
 
I assume that we can expect the basic speeds on offer to be increased within the next 12 months?
 
Achieving 85% of the download speed is a good connection. Speedtest.net is very useful in measuring your speed and recording it so that you can monitor it over time.
 
sorry i meant that i assume eircom will up the exchanges to say be offering 2, 4, 6 megs packages at some stage soon enough
 
yes speedtest.net and speedtest.ie are good enough, but legend99 it's really depending on what server you're downloading from i.e. if you're downloading a file from a slow server you'll only get a slow D/L speed. And you will never get an exact 2mbit/s down stream anyway the isp rounds-up the speed. the highest you'd ever get, is around 1.8mbit/s and upload speed is also rounded-up. But eircom wouldnt be trying to scam you if that's what you're asking in the first post:)

And 200kb/s upload is almost the max speed possible out of a 256k upload. the highest i ever get is about 218K
 
Sn@kebite said:
And you will never get an exact 2mbit/s down stream anyway the isp rounds-up the speed. the highest you'd ever get, is around 1.8mbit/s and upload speed is also rounded-up. But eircom wouldnt be trying to scam you if that's what you're asking in the first post:)
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That is not quite correct. It's not a case of the ISP "rounding up/down" the speeds but rather the stated speeds being the theoretical maximum limit which will never be reached even on a perfect line due to protocol overhead including packet retries, timeouts etc. And it's certainly not a "scam".
 
ClubMan said:
That is not quite correct. It's not a case of the ISP "rounding up/down" the speeds but rather the stated speeds being the theoretical maximum limit which will never be reached even on a perfect line due to protocol overhead including packet retries, timeouts etc. And it's certainly not a "scam".
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oh yeah that 2 but i wasnt going too far into detail. What i basically trying to say is that, when you buy a new HDD for 320GB for example. that's 320,000,000,000 bytes. (i think Giga is billion. open to correction) and if you calculate that only adds up to about 299GB so it's roughly done. and meta data etc... Just to save confusion.
So when you buy a 2048K (2mbit) connection that's 2048,000 bits. And my guess is it's probably rounded up or down to a more even number. And of cource there's the overheads & ping/pong to server etc.. that i thought would go without saying.
 
1Meg is meaningless.

Here's some homework reading for both of you :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte

Note that most people (even those who should know better) are not that precise when it comes to distinguishing between SI (multiples of 1000) and "binary" (multiples of 1024) prefixes for units of information (e.g. they say 1kB when they actually mean 1KiB) and some are simply wrong (e.g. they say 1Meg which is largely meanigless but above probably means 1Mbps - but is that multiples of 1024 or 1000... :)).
 
ClubMan said:
1Meg is meaningless.

Here's some homework reading for both of you :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte

Note that most people (even those who should know better) are not that precise when it comes to distinguishing between SI (multiples of 1000) and "binary" (multiples of 1024) prefixes for units of information (e.g. they say 1kB when they actually mean 1KiB) and some are simply wrong (e.g. they say 1Meg which is largely meanigless but above probably means 1Mbps - but is that multiples of 1024 or 1000... :)).
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Clubman, 1Meg is only meaningless if you are a robot.
In every day language ppl call one meg a megabyte. never a begabit.
Like when ppl say i bought a new 320 GiG HDD, the mean gigaBYTE never GigaBIT.

And as far as you're homework lesson is concerned, i already know what i need to know about computers.
Perhaps a note to you is to not be so serious in life. We dont think like machines.
 
ClubMan said:
I'm on UTV 2Mbps down/256Kbps up and get c. 1.6Mbps/166Kbps in practice. You never get the full nominal rate due to various factors.
Click to expand...

finally up and running with the 2mpbs package from eircom. My speed tests are ranging from 1.02 to 1.6 upload and 40 kbps to 200 kbps upload. Those lower end figures strike me as being fairly low...but the line attenuation figure is as high as 50db
 
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