| 100Mbps Virgin Cable, So far !! Ok, had it for a few weeks now (was on the 50Mbps before).
Lucky to be in the first four towns in the U.K. to get it and I went on a couple of weeks after it came out. The first problem that I've really got a gripe with is the SuperHub, this is a combined cable modem and router, if I were on ADSL I could at least buy my own modem/router but as this one belongs to virgin and they configure it I'm stuck with. Download speeds usually come out at about 97Mbps (102Mbps best) & upload the best I've had is 9.2Mbps, these results were got through either speed test dot net and speed test dot BBMAX do co dot uk.
I'm on my second superhub as the first one packed up after about 5 days. The current hub works ok 99% of the time but if you do need to reboot it which does happen from time to time it'll often take 3 or 4 reeboots before it'll pick up a public IP from the ISP, apparently there is a firmware upgrade on the cards!
The modem downstream is configured as 4 x 50Mbps channels giving 200Mbps but appears to be capped at 100 and the upload is configured as 1 x 20Mbps channel and capped at 10. The best download speed I've got over the net from the stateside is about 50Mbps as shown in the dslreports archive.
Let's see how it rolls! |
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 wonko3fcVerbum sat sapienti
join:2001-06-02
UK | N1ce dude.... |
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 PjrDon't Panic
join:2005-12-11
UK | reply to colctl11
I'm not jealous, not jealous at all. If I keep telling myself that I'm not jealous I might just believe it.
But I'll bet you still can't watch anything on iplayer on a Sunday evening.
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It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. |
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| I don't use Iplayer but the kids do on the telly downstairs and they use their Wii to get it and that connects wireless to our network, they've not moaned so far but I'll ask them but from what I've seen (32" LCD) the picture is as good a regular digital cable TV.
Are you on Virgin cable?
i-Player on the wii |
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| reply to Pjr
I don't use Iplayer but the kids do on the telly downstairs and they use their Wii to get it and that connects wireless to our network, they've not moaned so far but I'll ask them but from what I've seen (32" LCD) the picture is as good a regular digital cable TV.
Are you on Virgin cable?
I-player on the Wii (trying to add pics) |
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PjrDon't Panic
join:2005-12-11
UK
3 edits | I was just trying to make myself feel better.
Perhaps you haven't noticed that iplayer slows to a crawl on Sundays. I read somewhere in the BBC iplayer help that Sunday evenings are the busiest time and that slow speeds are to be expected. I tried to watch the repeat of Dr Who last night but it was down to something abysmal like 50 KBps. Ran a couple of speed tests and the results were fine.
If anybody had told me how we would be watching TV in the future when I had a ZX81 I wouldn't have believed them. I feel old.
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It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. |
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| I asked the kids about the i-player and they looked at me as if I was stupid. I'd forgot they use it on the cable box, "catch up on demand" they don't actually use it over the internet. Part of the package we've got from virgin is an additional cable box for free which is in the spare room, it's got all the same channels on as the main box V+. I had a ZX80 then ZX81, BBC and like you say at that time it was impossible to imagine what you'd be able to get computers to do. I've got a slingbox hooked up to the spare cable box and my mate in florida watches all our channels, he can even remote control it. |
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PjrDon't Panic
join:2005-12-11
UK | Ah! That explains it all.
I'd be very surprised if cable ever arrived here. A community of ~200 people a few miles from anywhere else isn't a profitable target for the providers. TBH we are lucky to have a local exchange so we can get a decent speed with broadband.
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It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall. |
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| This is a screenshot of how my mate in florida gets my cable TV I got him to email me this, he's receiving the picture at a rate of about 2Mbps.
I'm so glad we're in a cable area, we've had it since Colchester first got cable back in the late 1990's, 98 I think. Got a cable modem in 2000 and that was on a 64K service which was great compared to 56k dialup and the dialup never got past 44K and the cable was always 64K, at the time I couldn't afford the 600K service, seems like 100 years ago when I had those speeds. At that time there wasn't any ADSL here. I then went onto 128K then 600K, 1M, 4M, 10M, 20M, got 50Meg about a year ago and it wasn't till mid december when we got the 100Meg. If we were on ADSL here we'd get about 4Meg max due to the distance from the exchange. My brother lives about 1/2 mile out of the reach of cable and he gets a blistering 1.2Meg on his BT ADSL. Again, I think I'd die if I didn't have cable. Seriously, there's absolutly no reason why anybody needs 100Meg, in fact, it's really unfair that some people like my brother lives only a few miles from me and he gets an almost unusable connection. Honestly, the main reason why I've got the 100meg is for the upload speed 10meg, but it is great to download massive files in a few seconds. There are rumblings about Virgin bringing out the 200Meg service in the autum here, the equipment can do up to 400Meg. BTW; I'm planning on trying the i-player this coming Sunday to see what results I get. |
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