FleaBytes - Trouble with Broadband? Flea OLE!

Is your broadband running slow?

_{FleaBytes is brought to you in association with Collheath Computer Services. If you have problems with your computer, local network or broadband, remember that Collheath provide you with a 10% voucher for their services - see the Voucher section or clip their advertisement in the prnted version of watford flea magazine}

Broadband Speed

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LATE UPDATE:

The TWO MONTHS FREE OFFER is again available from Flea's Top Choice Broadband provider O2.

The Consumers' Association (Which?) and U-Switch amongst many others agree with our "best buy" choice!! Read more about the awards won by O2>>

You'll get your first 2 months FREE, a free ADSL2+ wireless router and no download limits - just sign up before the end of January 2010. Bag this offer or find out more about this 8Mbps service. With the offer, this works out at less than £6.50 a month for O2 mobile customers. Useful free extras include Free McAfee Anti-Virus and a useful allowance of FREE Webtexts so you can send sms messages from your pc - really handy of you're not too fast at 'thumbing' on your mobi!!!

If you're looking for higher speeds, here's a link to the 20Mbps service which is still only £10 a month for O2 mobile customers (or around £8.50 including the 2 months free offer). It includes all the goodies of the basic package but with more free webtexts.

If you'd like the latest 802.11N wireless router so you can network at home or in the home office over a wider coverage areas and enjoy local networking speeds up around 160Mbps, then look at the "pro-broadband" offer. With this you also get higher upload speed (up to 2.5Mbps), a dedicated customer service line, up to 10 email addresses and 500 free webtexts. Normally £17.50/month, the two extra free months give you the equivalent of £15/month for this preferential service. The enhanced upload speed makes this a good choice for gamers and those using broadband Voice services (VOIP)!

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NOW - back to the article......

If you've got trouble with broadband speed, youre not alone! But do you really have a problem?

The first thing to be clear about is what type of Broadband delivery you have. Although its possible to have your broadband service delivered wirelessly by terrestrial radio or via satellite, the vast majority of users in our area will have it delivered via their telephone line or by Virgins coaxial cable (which is termed cabled broadband). Incidentally, if you have Sky broadband, dont be confused - thats delivered via your phone line, not via satellite!).

ISPs quote the highest speed their equipment can provide in theory but, unless you have cable broadband, then the highest speed you can get in practice depends mainly on the length of wire between you and your wideband transmission access point or or DSLAM*. (Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexor).

*See below for more about the location of your DSLAM and how that affects your broadband speed

So if you think your link is slow, first base is to check its speed. Youll find many broadband speed checkers on the internet. Unless you have cable broadband, then for an accurate check of your own line speed, we suggest www.speedtester.bt.com . But whatever broadband service you use, if you try out www.speedtest.net.youll have more fun and can see how overall transmission speed and delay varies as you contact different servers all around the world.

• When checking your broadband connection speed: Make sure no-one else is using your internet connection at the time. If you are sharing your broadband connection (for example via a router), - ideally have all other computers switched off - or disconnected from the broadband line or from your home network.
• Make sure you have no other programmes running when you do the test - that includes programmes like virus checkers and file torrents that may run in the background and have your permission to access the internet without seeking authorisation on each occasion!
• Remember that your broadband service is Asymmetric - in other words the speed at which information can arrive at your computer (your Download or Downlink speed) will not be the same as the speed at which you can send information out (Your Upload or Uplink speed). You should not normally expect the Uplink speed to be more that about 1/10^th of the download speed.

So, although you may well have signed up for broadband at up to 8Megabits per second you may well find that your real downlink speed could well be little more than 3Mbps and your uplink speed could well be as low as 200 - 300kbps if your DSLAM is not located in a cabinet close to you. (See more about DSLAMs below)

Another source of confusion about broadband speed arises from widespread misunderstanding of the expressions bits and Bytes. You really need to understand the difference between a bit and a Byte if you want to make sense of file transfer times over the internet.

So lets understand what these terms mean...A bit is a Binary Digit - a 1 or a 0 - the only values your computer can really understand because it translates them like a switch as ON or OFF.

In the simplest terms, a Byte is just a string of eight bits used to represent a specific character that you generate when you hit a particular key (or key combination) on your keyboard. By convention, Bytes are designated with a capital B while a lower case b designates a bit.

Because Files store characters, the size of files and the storage media used to store them is usually specified in Bytes. e.g. kilobytes kB, MegaBytes MB, GigaBytes GB or even TeraBytes (TB), each of these being 1000 times bigger than the previous!

But Transmission Systems used to transmit data from one place to another have no interest in the data itself, they are designed only to ensure that each bit that arrives at one end of the system is faithfully reproduced at the far end. So the speed of transmission systems is measured in bits per second, normally shortened to bps or bit/s. (e.g. kbps, Mbps, Gbit/s)

Hence, transmission speed is normally quoted in bits per second, but file sizes are in Bytes. (1 Byte = 8 bits). So dont expect an 8MB file to download over an 8Mbit/s line in one second - about 10 seconds would be more likely !

What other things may cause a slow connection

One other major factor affecting transm

This article was created on Sunday, 27th December 2009. It was last tinkered with on Saturday, 16th July 2011.

This is the 40th issue of Flea Magazine in Watford. The on-line version of the articles below includes additional content that we couldn't fit into the printed version. Articles with On-Line Extra content are marked as Flea OLE!

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