'Fastest ever' broadband passes speed test

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-25840502

by sp8 • 13 years ago

34 39 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

whizzkid3• 13 years ago

I don't remember the last time I complained about the internet connection being slow actually..

It looks like hardware department is not doing its homework instead. Hard drives, and cpus are the limitations most of the time for me.

Dakos2• 13 years ago

As someone living in rural England who rarely exceeds 300Kbs I respectfully disagree.

Fuxy• 13 years ago

I believe you're one of the few people who have that issue.

For most of us the internet speed is the biggest problem. My home internet speed has some very big issued on peak hours.

It's not unusual for the connection to be unusable for an hour.

Luckily peak time is usually when everybody is home from work and i don't really need to use it at that time.

whizzkid3• 13 years ago

I see your point, me living in Sweden may explain why i never had internet speed problem. Here, almost everyone gets 10mbit if not 100mbit. (And it actually is 10mbit)

But still, with bad infrastructure, you will not gain any more speed with 1tb internet connection either. Im guessing your provider tells you that they are providing 10mbit connection to you, which is a lie according to what you explained, right?

DanBC2• 13 years ago

I would love a guaranteed speed and contention, even if that is much slower than theoretical max speed.

kjjw• 13 years ago

As someone living in urban England, receiving a constant 60mbit/s, I completely agree!

Already__Taken• 13 years ago

Yeah I really don't see how you've formed that opinion, My connection isn't even at least 10Mb reliably. Within a couple of years I could put 10Gb ethernet in my house for not insane money. My internet connect would then be 0.0001 the speed of that.

Why would anyone want that? Well would could all move to ipv6, use modern web browsers with webrtc and p2p stream iplayer like a torrent stream. That must substantially reduce the BBC IT costs therefore its licencing requirements.

jamesjguthrie• 13 years ago

As someone living nearly 30 miles from the nearest city (Glasgow) with a constant 120Mb connection I completely agree!

linker3000• 13 years ago

As someeq451"£$iop [NO CARRIER]

awjr• 13 years ago

As a BT Infinity (Fibre) customer I've realised the limiting factor for me is the fact I'm connecting over WiFi. Speed tests top out at around 50Mb and not 76Mb on my laptop.

All my consoles/players are hooked up via cable.

I do wonder how many complaints they get from people complaining they only get 50Mb and not the advertised 76Mb.

walshemj• 13 years ago

um this is a core telco network fibre link and has about much relevance to "broadband" as a picture of cute kittens.

Subs eh thy hook up their hipster mac book air to a airport hub and suddenly they are a CCIE level guru.

Dakos2• 13 years ago

Agreed it's more of a technical exercise than anything else. The achieved speed is irrelevant. The techniques may see some use in the future.

skyshine• 13 years ago

"The test was conducted on a 410km (255-mile) link"

I know I'm from the North, but last I checked Ipswich was practically next door to London. Did they route it via Manchester or something.

InTheSwiss• 13 years ago

This confused me too. Ipswich to Victoria is about 85 miles by road. Anyone got any more details on the connection route?

jackgavigan• 13 years ago

It'll be a loopback on their Adastral Park -> Colchester –> Basildon –> BT Tower link.

See http://indico.uknof.org.uk/getFile.py/access?contribId=2&res...

nextw33k• 13 years ago

Interesting that they are working on a hardware solution to a software problem.

Multicast support would cure the majority of the streaming and torrent issues if the ISP's enabled it.

goodcanadian• 13 years ago

"Cure" might be too strong of a word, but it would certainly help immensely.

chronomex• 13 years ago

If I'm not mistaken, the BBC streams to the UK in HD with multicast only, creating pressure from the customers towards the ISPs supporting it properly.

sdfjkl4• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each. BT has re-established its monopoly with being the only provider of FTTC, a major step back from the LLU days of ADSL. But none of this matters, because even if you have fast internet, the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship to make it useless (just this week folks couldn't download an update to the popular game League of Legends because it contained a file named VarusExpirationTimer.luaobj).

orf• 13 years ago

Not quite: http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/386665/league-of-legend...

sdfjkl4• 13 years ago

Not yet.

rayiner• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, in rural England, people desperate for internet access are bundling four DSL lines at 1.4 MBit/s downstream each.

Then they should move out of rural England. BT, etc, aren't stupid. If people in rural England could pay enough to offset the cost of running cable or fiber out to rural England, then BT would build that infrastructure. But that's clearly not the case.

sdfjkl4• 13 years ago

Alas, rural is pretty much anywhere outside a few city centers, and even in London there are parts where you can get stuck with an unstable 4 MBit/s DSL link (from personal experience).

DanBC2• 13 years ago

Rural has a very different meaning in the UK than in the US. Anywhere in the UK that is actually rural would be described as isolated.

We're not talking about small villages nestled in the Welsh hillsides hundres of miles from the nearest city. We're talking about towns of tens of thousands of people, close to major cities, close to major rail and road networks.

It'd be really nice if the UK had strategic plans to increase the amount of fibre in the ground. People building new housing estates or roads or etc should be strongly encouraged to install fibre optic cabling, and more than is needed.

GunlogAlm• 13 years ago

the government is working hard on expanding the existing censorship

That was the result of an ISP's own blocking system.

And there is no government censorship, please stop saying that - customers are given the option to opt-out of content filters -- it's not mandatory. This has always been the case, the only difference now is that ISPs must ask subscribers.

sdfjkl4• 13 years ago

If it is opt-out, it is censorship. This was established through heavy lobbying and threat of legislation. And then there's the one where all major ISPs block an unpublished list of websites that are deemed "illegal". That one was established by court order, and the only way you can opt out of it is by switching to a small ISP.

Here's the blog of one such small ISP, which is well worth reading: http://revk.www.me.uk/search/label/CENSORSHIP

TrainedMonkey• 13 years ago

Meanwhile, 10-15 years ago 1.4 Mbit/s was pretty fast. Infrastructure is very expensive, so economically speaking urban areas will always be a generation or two ahead of rural.

ukandy• 13 years ago

I'm ten miles from Adastral Park (one of the end points), and receive a 1.5Mb service. Whilst this is a nice achievement, the country as whole needs a consistent service.

rafski• 13 years ago

London will always have the best connection — it's a major HFT hub.

gaius• 13 years ago

HFT doesn't happen over the Internet. It happens between boxes within the same datacentre.

dijit3• 13 years ago

Really, I can see the BT tower from where I live, I'm lucky to get < 200k/s.

my mother lives 100 miles to the north (coventry) and gets 5MB/s for free, and it actually -IS- 5MB/s

(free because of tv/phone package, and it's with Virgin)

neilmcrae• 13 years ago

Yes correct it's a loop fr Ipswich to BT tower and back.

qubyte• 13 years ago

I live within walking distance of the BT Tower, and the maximum I can get is < 1Mbps...

aidenn02• 13 years ago

said speeds of 1.4 terabits per second were achieved during their joint test - enough to send 44 uncompressed HD films a second.

Someone did their math wrong.

One second of 4:2:2 720p@24fps video is about 353.89Mb

A feature film is about 110 minutes, which works out to 2.3 Tbit; this can't even send one HD video per second.

'Fastest ever' broadband passes speed test

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