Is 512kbps enough?

richard · 18th July 2004

Even though pricing has come down significantly for 1 and 2mbps services I still do not feel that there is much justification for more than 512kbps in the "home user" environment.

The only reason I see is obviously if more than 1 person is using the connection but even that I would say is not a great excuse

pelinor · 19th July 2004

If you're literally just browsing and emailing (something we all managed to do somehow with dial-up) then I'd say 512K is more than enough - even for a medium-sized network.

Couldn't handle anything that slow myself though

vmhost · 7th September 2005

Even a home user can be divided into further categories - from newbie to heavy downloader. I like to try out different linux distros so I'm constantly downloading 700MB ISO which at the moment on my 1MB takes 1.5hrs so yeah, anything to reduce that time would be great

SynergyWorks · 7th September 2005

To be honest, i'd get frustrated with anything less than 2Mbps now. I'm a speed demon. I want my download, and I want it now!

Good job Telewest are upgrading me from 4Mbps to 10Mbps soon :-) Might help my network put up with the barage of X-Boxes, PS2's and online games that flow through the machines in our 9 PC home network :S

vmhost · 7th September 2005

I can't believe England has been so far behind in this league. Places like Japan and Far East have had 20Meg+ speed for couple of years now and at a a cost far less then ours!

Are we really the leader in IT?

SynergyWorks · 7th September 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by vmhost

Are we really the leader in IT?

In my personal opinion, no we are not. However we are rapidly catching up with telewest launch of 10Mbps, and Be-Unlimited launching 24Mbps (based on ADSL2 i believe).

BurtyB · 7th September 2005

The only problem with the Telewest one is the lack of a reasonable uplink.

vmhost · 7th September 2005

Telewest has an uplink of 384k. How much more do you get with other ISPs or a residential connection?

SynergyWorks · 7th September 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by vmhost

Telewest has an uplink of 384k. How much more do you get with other ISPs or a residential connection?

In fairness, when you look at it proportionally, when we had 512Kbps - we had 256Kbps upstream. Thats 1/2 the downstream back up.

Now we're going to have 10Mbps downstream, but still we've only progressed to 384Kbps upload.

vmhost · 7th September 2005

That's quite true. But if you were in their shoes would you want to give 5MB+ uploads to all your customers?

SynergyWorks · 7th September 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by vmhost

That's quite true. But if you were in their shoes would you want to give 5MB+ uploads to all your customers?

No, but 1Mbps or at least 512Kbps would be nice.

SynergyWorks · 7th September 2005

If only RDP was a little bit better over a fast broadband connection i'd be tempted to stick my desktop in the bottom of our rackspace and use that all day!

vmhost · 7th September 2005

Maybe it will get better with the 10/24Meg soon?

BurtyB · 7th September 2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by SynergyWorks

No, but 1Mbps or at least 512Kbps would be nice.

That would make me happy, but as I understand it their current equipment is only capable of supplying 2-5Mbit per segment.

ChrisB.

excalabyte · 7th September 2005

I was going to choose Bulldog's 8mb Package which was 400k Upload

However , after i found out F2S's 8mb Package had 786k Upstream that was the final decider!

Their going to be launching ADSL 2 soon and i am keen to see the upstream they offer with their 24mb Service