captdave said:
... I forget what speed they claim to be offering (I think my cable states 3 meg and the DSL 2), and it doesn't matter because the stated rate has NOTHING to do with the actual rate. I have never seen download speeds in excess of 1 meg, usually significantly less.
This is a world wide problem.
You have ordered (unknowingly, the ISPs never tell private customers about this) e.g. 3 Mb/s shared =
when available - and that is what you get, you share the capacity with whoever is online on the same fibres + cables.
If you really want those 3 Mb/s, you order 3 Mb/s
QOS - and bleed for it, unless you actually
need 3 Mb/s 7x24, in which case the price is just right. For QOS small customers pay 5-6-7 times the price for shared access.
QOS = 'Quality Of Service', which means that 3 Mb/s is reserved for you 7x24, whether you use it or not. The more advanced providers may time limit this for very large customers, thus cutting the price somewhat. This is sometimes done, but we hate it, because it makes it difficult to balance work loads on the fibre rings.
There is another (common) problem: Intercontinental connections.
Speedtest.net gave me (2 tests)
0.76 and 0.52 Mb/s down and 0.27 and 0.28 Mb/s up to Perth, Australia
and 12 seconds later (using a Swedish test program)
1.90 and 1.91 Mb/s down and 0.48 and 0.41 Mb/s up to Malmö, Sweden - on a 2.0 Mb/s shared fibre, where the split ought to be 8/1 and not 4/1.
