In reply to a post by zyborg47:

how fast do most people really need?
i got 4megabits, sure I would not mind a bit more speed, but I have no need for 20,30, 40 or more megabits to be honest.,

I think some people just think they need the extra speed.
FTTP no doubt will come to more people, but I think it will take time.

We went from 3mb to 26mb on FTTC and we do use it. We have 3 kids and at times between ipods, ipads, computers, iplayer blah, blah I have found up to 20 devices on the network. On 3mb if one person downloads anything it kills the network, with 26mb rarely does anyone get an issue. Speed matters.

In reply to a post by doleawg:

We went from 3mb to 26mb on FTTC and we do use it. We have 3 kids and at times between ipods, ipads, computers, iplayer blah, blah I have found up to 20 devices on the network. On 3mb if one person downloads anything it kills the network, with 26mb rarely does anyone get an issue. Speed matters.

20 devices at once? even with 5 people in the family I can't there being 20 devices using data all at once, they may be connected, but that is a different thing.


I can understand needing more speed if you have a family, but i still think some people think they need the extra speed or just like to boast that they got the extra speed.

6-8 megabits would be idea for me, enough to use netflix ar a better quality, but i will not have that choice, I either have to stay as I am or sign up eventually when fibre is here for a higher priced service with more speed than I really need.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

20 devices at once? even with 5 people in the family I can't there being 20 devices using data all at once, they may be connected, but that is a different thing.

I suppose it depends on the family but I can see that anyone over the age of 12 might have their own smartphone and laptop. For a family of four that's eight devices. Then there's the TV for the parents and one each for the kids. That's another three devices.

Hmmm.

Yeah 20 sounds unlikely unless it's a large family. But I can see all devices hitting the net at once. I often surf while watching TV so that's potentially two machines hitting the net at once (not for me because I watch Sky but in some households IPTV reigns). Smartphones might happen to be doing something at the same time although usually that's going to be temporary and low bandwidth.

I think I'd assume 10Mb/s per person over the age of 12 (or whatever age is assumed old enough to be more or less let loose these days). To me that's plenty for everyone and you could probably get away with half that most of the time.

Edited by Andrue (Tue 01-May-12 10:22:54)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

I suppose it depends on the family but I can see that anyone over the age of 12 might have their own smartphone and laptop. For a family of four that's eight devices.

I assume you don't have kids? Iphones, ipods, ipdads, 3DS's, Wii's, BB's, iPlayer, external media hard drives, Internet TV's, Skype, Facetime, laptops to name a few (if not all!) of the devices each kid will have.......

Its easy to have 20 devices connected and in the evening a lot are working. We have had families staying over taking devices to over 30.

Anyway thats not the point. My point was, prior to FTTC the max I could get was 3mb and it was terribly unstable. At 3mb you could not run multiple devices and allow video streaming, gaming, iplayer at the same time. We now get 26mb FTTC and it is brilliant and very importantly it is incredibly stable (touching wood).

I hear rumour the supplier of one of the FTTC lines to the house (ADSL24) will be offering 80mb FTTC soon. Bearing in mind we don;t get 40MB at the moment I will take a guess we might get 60mb. If the jump to this was free I might do it but do I need to pay for more bandwidth? Now thats the real question and I doubt I would.

The rise of the cloud storage services, will mean more people get lazy about LAN file copying, and copy material onto one of these services, to download it on another machine on the same connection a few seconds later.

What is the IP Profile shown by the BT speed tester? If you are only getting 26Mbps speed test results it is highly improbable 80/20 would give you any more than you get now.

It's like a 3Mbps ADSL Max doesn't give more on ADSL2+.

I personally need 10Mbps min

but 20-30 is great for downloading things quick

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

What is the IP Profile shown by the BT speed tester? If you are only getting 26Mbps speed test results it is highly improbable 80/20 would give you any more than you get now.

It's like a 3Mbps ADSL Max doesn't give more on ADSL2+.

Ah, just noticed a thread elsewhere here talking about 80mb trials which was the 1st I had heard of such a thing and that sparked my interest. Response to the effectiveness of the trial and increase in speeds is varied.

Yep OK the "just because I can" argument is stupid, but, I have to agree becoming harder to resist.

But my rational side says that as my modem reports I didn't get the compensating upstream tones in the higher frequencies on the move to the 17a profile (and the modem reports capping at the DSLAM of the upstream at 7.2Mbps - below my 10Mbps profile), and the reported attainable downstream rate is just above 40Mbps, it will be a physical impossibility to get any advantage from the (free) 80/20 upgrade although my profile is the full 38.71 (throughput 38Mbps) on the capped service. The "upgrade" just removes the cap and makes no other config changes. Right?

I wonder too if the drop off of tones reported by the modem at around 1200kHz from 12 to 1 (before recovering up again) is also evidence of a necessary power reduction at the cab which also hobbles my connection?

I'm assuming I'd have to wait for vectoring to sort things out and at, presumably, an increased cost as BT have got to start earning an ROI at some point, somehow.

Edited by deleted (Tue 01-May-12 14:00:12)