How fast is your Internet connection?

[Jeff]

While thinking about max image sizes and the site design in general, I'm curious how all of you are connected to the Internet and how many of you have broadband vs. modems.

[Nomad]

I am getting DSL soon, but for now 56k

[ErikG]

ADSL with 2.5 Mbit/s download and 0.75 Mbit/s upload.
These are the numbers, but real life speeds seem to be at around 80% of the above.

[ErikG]

ADSL with 2.5 Mbit/s download and 0.75 Mbit/s upload.

[duluthboats]

I have a 56K modem. The best I can squeeze through these phone lines is 26.4, I average 19.6. It took me a whole morning to down load Rhino with 3 interruptions.
Gary

[Portager]

I limp along with a cable modem, ADSL and 2-56 kbps POTS modems (shot gun) as a back-up. I have wired the house with CAT 5 cable and all 5 computers are on a 100 MBPS Ethernet. I am thinking of installing a 802.11a+b hub to allow the 3 laptops and 2 PDAs to roam wireless.

Cheers;
Mike Schooley

[Polarity]

ADSL with hub for visiting laptops...

Cheers

Paul

[8knots]

I have 56k for now but usually get 44 out it. I am looking at starband now since I live in the sticks I have to go for the satellite or nothing better than phone line. Plus I can have Victory at Sea reruns all the time!!!!!! Nothing like battlewagons plowing the North Atlantic. 8Kts

[Jeff]

I am looking at starband now since I live in the sticks I have to go for the satellite or nothing better than phone line.

Starband is a love hate relationship. Right now they're filing for chapter 11, so their future is a little uncertain but I think they'll probably emerge. The technology they use is fairly workable, but the problem is with economics and cluster loading in order to get the financial gains they're after at the $60-$70/month price level. When you first get placed on a new cluster, everything is fast and runs along very smoothly. Then a few months into it when your cluster is fully loaded, problems start to occur - you notice that it is slow to the point of no connection sometimes during the prime time use period in the day for an hour or so about once a week. Then sometimes their acceleration software goes down for 5-10 minutes every week or so as well, once the cluster (and presumably the RPA servers servicing you) are fully loaded. Gilat who makes the equipment also got in some legal trouble for overselling the number of subscribers the system could support, so it's not entirely clear where the blame should be placed. After a little over a year and watching 3 friends’ systems, it’s also not clear if they will ever be able to tweak their system so that they can be profitable and still maintain performance, or if the technology they use will always be overloaded at the pricepoint they’re selling at. What had me even more concerned was that when Dish/Echostar was running the show before they decided to pull out for the DirecTV/DirecPC merger was that Dish announced they were going to offer the service for $30-$40 a month. So they already can’t deliver what was promised for $70 a month but now they were going to cut it to $40/month?? That worried me since they did not talk about any new technology which would enable them to do this with quality, so if they did pack people in to this extent without something new on the technology side, the system could be worth about nill compared to a good 56k connection much of the time. But so far, further overloading has not occurred. One argument which I never quite understood is that they said the system was designed to handle many times more customers than they currently have and that is why the economics are not working for them and the system is currently overloaded – that somehow with 20,000 subscribers the clusters are overloaded but if they had been able to sell 60,000 or more by now the distribution would be better. Hopefully a restructuring will allow them to run the operation more efficiently and focus on providing better service.

As long as you don't upload much and don't care about the ‘value’ but only getting something slightly better since it is your only option, you should find it ok with moments of frustration when it is foggy or very rainy or when the cluster is momentarily overloaded or their servers go down for a few minutes here and there. But for the majority of the time it is worth having. It's not even close to having DSL or Cable or Wireless or maybe even ISDN, but it is better than dialup alone. If you have to get the larger dish and/or special LNB in Alaska, that might actually result in a better system as far as less weather outages. Download speed for large files and browsing is a definite improvement over dialup (Starband usually delivers 600-750k real world download right now), but due to cluster loading and Starband’s resulting real world 30-50k upload speed (vs. the 150 they initially promised when many people signed up last year or the speed you get when you are placed on a fresh unloaded cluster) combined with the 750 ms latency, upload, email, newsgroups, ftp, vpn, telnet/ssh, etc. are noticably faster on dialup. Of course you can always fall back to dialup and run them both.

P.S. If it is an option for you or you happen to plant a tree in the right place to force it, my friends who are on GE-4 rather than the T7 satellite have more responsive systems.

I have a 56K modem, but only get 28800 bps out of it due to the copper double twisted shielded pairs that is my phone line here on the Farm.

The thing that bugs me - is the darn phone co came and dug a ruddy great trench thru my farm to bury an optic fibre cable....and then they never hooked me up to it!

It was part of a scheme to spend a fortune on improving services in the bush so the parliament would approve the sale of the remaining 51% of the govt owned phone company so they could retire the nations debts.

They spent the money - buried the cable - and us in the bush are no better off! Go figure!

I'm thinkin - once the remaining 51% is sold to private enterprise - i might just take the post hole digger and chainsaw down the paddock to this multi million optic cable location - big down to it where it enters my property and where it leaves, Put the 6 ft long chainsaw bar on and nip the whole cable thru in both places, hook one end to the tractor and drag it outta the ground, and throw it over the fence outta my property.

Then - I'll deny the PRIVATE phone company access to my land to reinstall or fix it, UNLESS they give me:-

1 Free Phone services for life

2. Profit share royalties on the cable traffic they generate on a cable traversing thru my land!

I'm not the only one in the bush whos had a gutfull - theres a lot of farmers thinking like me - civil disobedience!

Wait till their million or so cutomers are all howlin "we been cut off".....and they can't get legal access to repair their connections - then we'll se who does what deals!

Nyuk yuk Nyuk....

vote trouty 1 for benevolent dictater!

[Laz]

Hi Jeff;

Even though I have a cable modem (and a T1 at work), I keep in mind that others do not. I have a family website (www.cyberlaz.com) which I post various pictures of the kids for the grandparents, etc.

Remember that the more stuff you add, the longer it takes to load, so keep the Flash and large images off your home page.

I use a Thumbnail program (EasyPeg) to make thumbnail collages, and I set their size to 100 pixels, which is big enough to get an idea of what the image is. That's about the size of the thumbs at the bottom of the Forum home page here.

When I post bigger pictures, I usually make sure that they are not bigger than 600 pixels wide. I know you could argue for 800 wide (or more) as OK, but many people have toolbars on the side of their screen. If someone wants the 1280x1024 raw image, I'll email it to them.

I've seen a feature where an image will resize to fill the size of the window, but I haven't learned the code for that yet. Resizing functions require that the entire large image be downloaded first.

I hope this is useful...

-Laz

[Willallison]

ADSL @ work, 56K modem in my laptop @ home.

Trouty - I look forward to seeing your name in the news..!

[Timm]

56K modem, can't convince my accountant (read wife), that a cable modem is worth another $25 a month. Moving to the woods in Florida next week and hoping we aren't too far from the phone company to even get 56K. Satelite is the only high-speed option there, and it isn't worth $70 a month or more. Keep the site as simple as possible, there are probably more people on 56K than high speed.

Trouty, your civil disobedience would carry a lot more weight if you Aussies hadn't let the gummint take all your guns away! Although something tells me there are a lot of guns the gummint people don't know about hiding under peoples beds.

[Timm]

My fears have been realized - I haven't seen a connection over 37K since moving here. I may have to move a little closer to town, maybe someplace with cable modems. Can I write it off as a business expense since I email drawings to clients? HMMM....?

[ErikG]

Hi Timm as long as you are actually running your own buisness there is NO question about it. You can charge the full cost of the cable/ADSL modem/installation and monthly cost to your company.

Because you HAVE TO :-) send big drawings pictures and other stuff via internet to your client if IRS(?) asks about it.



Erik