Internet access

[Scootie]

Recently I had to move to a location were the only option for internet access is good ole dial up. I was just wondering how many people still use dial up to connect to the internet.

[Psion]

I begged for people in the household to move up to DSL.

I'm glad I have DSL now. I don't see cable as completey necessary unless I'm downloading ISOs.

 

I would never use dialup ever again. I would rather take a city bus to a location that offers me to hookup the computer to a network.

 

Kinkos or a College or something.

[insane_alien]

heh heh some unis have 3GB/s in the libraries:P

[H2SO4]

huh?

[Speaker]

I have a cable connection, not directly on this computer, its a wireless network.

[Bio-Hazard]

huh?

 

3 gigabytes a second downloads.

Basically you can download a ripped DVD movie in a second or so.

That's power.

[Guest Ambigere]

Wow, I would love to have that connection speed. Mine is just a 512kbs

[5614]

A 3GB connection doesn't mean you can download at 3GB/s!!!

 

What connection do you have? What download speed?

 

For me:

Old: 512kb, download average 50kb/s

New: 1Mb, download average 80 - 130kb/s

(I haven't had my 1Mb connection long enough to decide a good average speed, so I gave a range which I get)

[Guest Ambigere]

Ha ha.. I guess thinking about it, that is rather unbelievable - downloading a 3Gb file in a second. *wink* But it would be better than my current 512kbs, although I'm pretty contented with the speed.

I used to use dial up and it was usually at less than 100kb. Painfully slow. *cringe*

[5614]

I can hardly tell the difference between 512kb and 1mb (we got a free upgrade, as did most people in the UK, won't go into it now, the UK is not going ahead of the world we are catching up!) anyway, the only time you notice between 512 and 1mb is when you are downloading from a site which can offer you sufficient speeds.

 

So for example I might have a 3Mb connection, but if I am downloading from you and you are offering me (because you have a rubbish connection) a slow speed I can only download at a small speed. To get a fast download you have to be able to give me at high speeds and I need to be able to accept them.

 

And come to think of it, that 3GB/s thingy, that's crap! Maybe he means 3Mb/s. The difference being firstly its mega not giga and the other thing is internet speed is measure in bits not bytes, so you'd say Mb (megabits) and not MB (megabytes)

[Guest Ambigere]

Maybe the MB was just a typo too.

 

Not for downloading maybe, but there would still be a slight improvement, hmm? Also sites that's heavy with graphics and what nots, especially Flash sites. Bleh!

 

The fastest I know offered is 10Mbps.

[5614]

I dunno if the MB or Mb was a typo, many people do not know that internet stuff is measured in bits and not bytes, indeed they just see mb (totaly irrelevant of what case it is in) and assume megabytes).

 

Possibly for sights with high graphical content, but then when I run a google image search I can't see the difference. I mean don't get me wrong, there must be a difference, it's just a human won't really notice it much when generally browsing the net. Maybe a flash animation downloads quicker, I've never done a comparison.

 

10Mbps or 10Mb/s sounds like a reasonable fastest, it's possible there's faster somewhere else, but if you told me 10Mb/s was the fastest out I'd believe ya!

[Guest Ambigere]

Actually that 3Gbps could also be just the connection status because although mine is a 512kbps connection, it says 100Mbps when I hover my mouse over the icon on the display bar.

 

I think Google might have compressed the images for the search results. Just a guess.

[Bio-Hazard]

I'm not stupid. I was just replying to what GB means. GigaByte. I understand the system of:

 

8 bits = Byte

4 bits = nibble

 

And if there was a uni that offered 3 GB, that would crazy! However, I like to believe anything is possible.

 

Anyways, my College offers about 3MB/s per computer connection.

Sometimes they'll split the bandwidth or take away or add to. Some crazy weird system my college has.

 

Could be the leech the staff told me earlier this year.

[Guest Ambigere]

Yes, very inconsistent that.

[5614]

Ambigere the 100Mbps is your local network, not your internet connection, although your internet will be getting to you through that connection, it's hard to explain!

 

Your internet comes into your house at 512kb/s and then it is fed into a network running at 100mb/s so you're still going to get 512 of internet, however your network (so between you and other computes in your house) (and this is standard) will run at 100mb/s

 

Sometimes they'll split the bandwidth or take away or add to. Some crazy weird system my college has.

There's 2 possible explanations (that I can think of!)

 

1) You have a very unreliable ISP (this is very unlikely).

 

2) You are sharing your connection with many other people in your college, so depending on quite how many people are using it will determine the amount of bandwidth you are given.

 

Or (this is what happens with my school) the whole area covering many schools is given one ISP with some mega stupid internet connection (it's a goverment ISP for schools, I cant remember the exact speed, across many schools) and so depending on the number of schools/users using the connection will vary alot. So in lunch time when every school is using the net it's slow. Whereas during lessons it's a lot faster.

[Guest Ambigere]

Ah, I see.. so ok, from what you explained, if I am logged on to the Internet, it means that it boosts my network connection as well? (just one PC here, so I'm not very sure about this part)

[5614]

I don't really know what you mean.

 

There's the internet which comes into your house. This plugs into something (depending on your setup it can be a few different things) so lets just call is X. Then X connects to your computer. So the internet goes through X to your computer.

 

The connection between X and your computer is capable of passing data at 100Mb/s. This means is X supplies data at that speed (which it can) then it can transfer it to your computer at that speed.

 

What you have with internet is X being supplied at 512Kb/s and then (because 100Mb/s is a maximum limit) X will pass the internet to your computer at 512Kb/s

 

In your case your local network would, well, technically it's not even a network, it's the connection between X and your computer. Technically to be a network you need X leading into 2 computers. So X splits your internet connection as well as acts as a link between you and the other computer.

[Guest Ambigere]

Ah ha! Looks like I misunderstood what you meant previously. *sheepish* Thanks for the explanation. *thumbs*

[1veedo]

Plus, that 3"MG" is actually megabits. Why they do this? I dont know, but you always have to calculate 8 in whenever doing something. For BZFlag, that's 8 * 5 * users instead of just 5 * users...P2P requires some knowlege of your upload, which you normally have to devide by 8 to give in kilabytes...A big pain.

 

I actually get 3 down but it's never consistent because it's cable. Cable is actually faster, in most cases. But DSL is far better to run a server from. I forget specific reasons. My cable company doesnt even allow servers. Telephone lines dont have the capasity to go very fast, and the more DSL users, the more true that becomes. But with Cable, your capasity varies by second. You're on a street sharing bandwidth w/ everybody else where DSL dials directly to the ISP. This is why Cable theft is possible...Also, data travles faster w/ DSL (ie, ping time) compared to Cable because it has to be shifted through and cramped with everybody else. Cable gets bogged down, esp if it doesnt have enough epstream bandwidth. Which is why Cable doesnt like servers.

 

DSL = Dedicated

Cable = Bogged Down

[5614]

I did mention the bytes/bit thingy in post #10 at the bottom, and is referred to in #11 & #12... as to why it is done that way I don't know. Obviously it makes a bigger number if you use Mb and not MB, maybe that is why.

 

Or because data has to be sent in bits (binary digits) so what's the point in them mucking around converting what is originally bits into bytes? It's easier for them to just leave it as it is (in bits). Obviously when we come to files there are just too many bits to leave as it is and so bytes become easier to handle, although even now we're coming onto TB (terrabytes and stuff!)

[1veedo]

Computers were around before the Internet and they used bytes. It would just seem natural for ISPs to talk about sending bytes instead of bits, unless they are trying to make it seem more.

[Crash]

Dont know what my connection speed is, its through my uni. my top download speeds are well over 150 k/s. i know that its running through a fat fibre cable but i dont know what theyve regualted us to.

[JPQuiceno]

Network connection speed is always measured in bits, not bytes.

[Dave]

Go go Bulldog 8mbps ADSL