Comments | susannahf: broadband advice

susannahf

broadband advice

Dec 17, 2007 15:41

My parents have been told that they will probably only get 256k speed if they get broadband (based on distance from exchange). They currently have dial-up. Any ideas on how much difference that extra 200k makes to the online experience? They mostly use the internet for email and general browsing of websites, although they will want to do things ( Read more... )

hivemind, broadband, adsl

Comments 8

Speed isn't the big win silicon_owl December 17 2007, 16:09:47 UTC

Regardless of what BT will tell you the big advantage of broadband, in my experience, isn't speed, although that's a nice extra. The big win is a permanent connection and being able to use the phone at the same time. In which case a 256k (downlink) connection will be fine. They will probably need to pause a YouTube video and let it download before watching it but hey, I need to do that with my 2Mb link.

Re: Speed isn't the big win susannahf December 17 2007, 17:22:50 UTC

I've tried to tell them that - fundamentally it comes down to what they're prepared to pay for. They do find 56k slow for loading graphics heavy sites (and so do I) - does the speed difference change this significantly?

Re: Speed isn't the big win silicon_owl December 18 2007, 16:11:02 UTC

It should make a difference but I tend to utilise the "bored now" metric to find out if I want to view a web site. If it takes so long to download that I get bored waiting then I probably don't need to see it that badly.

I tried out streaming iPlayer last night and found it excellent for viewing the first few minutes of something before bombing out with a "Something bad happened" error.

elvum December 17 2007, 18:49:10 UTC

Streaming iPlayer is encoded at 512Mb/s, so it wouldn't be ideal...

ext_5743 December 18 2007, 11:52:56 UTC

Rothera's net connection was 384kbit/s, with the added bonus of 1s satellite lag. It was fine most of the time (even for Skype videoconferencing if no-one else was using the network) although for YouTube videos you generally had to wait to download. Streaming audio is fine, too.

susannahf December 18 2007, 11:55:32 UTC

hang on. 512Mb/s? Why's the quality so low then?

elvum December 18 2007, 12:19:28 UTC

What's a few orders of magnitude between friends?

parents broadband anonymous January 3 2008, 22:54:23 UTC

thank you for getting broadband up and running, Susz. I'm just doing this to prove it works! On site and remote assistance much appreciated.
Dad