DSL Speed

Bartee Lamar

Member
Messages
499
Location
Alpharetta GA ( Metro Atlanta)
I had an interesting experience today.

Our DSL was acting up very badly this morning. Wife was going sorta nuts because nothing would load.

I still had the support phone number for AT&T DSL from a mass outage last week.

So I called. I got one of those people who can only read a script.

But he did finally decide we needed a tech to come out.

The phone guy had me check my speed using www.speakeasy.net/speedtest

It measured 3184. So I thought I should upgrade to the 6 mb speed. Finally got connected online to my account and I was already paying for 6mb speeds.

So I was only getting half.

The At&T guy came out. I was getting 7mb on the box outside my house and 3mb in my home office. Bad wiring.

I had some old lines that were not being used. He used one of those pair with the filter on the box on the side of the house.

Now I have twice the speed at my desk !!!!

Yea.....

Are you getting what you pay for ?

Here is where you can check...

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest
 
well I got 4636 using my lap top with a wirless connection to the router. I'll run a test later with a direct connection.
I'm curious to see if it improves. I have my desk only a few feet from the wireless so it would be easy to run a direct connection if it was worth it.
 
I got 5754 on my wireless connection with 2 other computers also on the same wireless running at the same time. I guess thats alright since I also have the 6mb speed from at&t u-verse.
 
I'm curious to see if it improves. I have my desk only a few feet from the wireless so it would be easy to run a direct connection if it was worth it.

Yes, you will see a difference, but typically you'll only notice the difference when downloading large files or watching streaming media (such as NetFlix).
 
2119/667 for me... and I was feeling inadequate compared to everyone here. :rolleyes:

So I checked my account online and confirmed that I was indeed signed up for a plan with 2 Mbps down and 800 Kbps up.

And really, we're pretty satisfied with this. Haven't really noticed any big speed or capacity issues. Now to be sure, I don't download movies at home!

...art
 
I pay $14.99 for AT&T DSL. I am supposed to get 700Kbps downstream but I only get 320Kbps. I haven't complained beacuse for normal browsing it is not bad. When I need to download files I use my work's Internet connection.
 
The Speakesy test was close enough to my NDT server at work to be called the same. That's good enough for me plus, my speeds test as expected. AT&T U-verse just shy of 1 meg out and just shy of 6 meg in; $35 per month. To be honest, my user experience is not that much different that when I ran 768k out, 2 meg in for $25 per month.
 
I'm on a Verizon plan with 3 Mbps up and 768 Kbps down, and the Speakeasy test shows 2888 and 722 respectively, so it looks like I'm getting what I'm paying for.
 
I have PBT, and recently upgraded to the 5meg download speed - and speed test confirms. I have not noticed much (any?) of a difference from the 1.5 meg that I had before.

I wonder if that is because the sites I visit can't push 5 meg? Or, maybe the pretty much instant page load at 1.5 is not really much slower than more instant page at 5?

I am seriously thinking of switching back to 1.5 and save the extra cost...
 
I think the reason we often don't see a difference in speed is that a lot of the delay in getting a page is not the transmission time but other things.

When you enter a URL, that name has to be resolved into an IP address by your computer accessing a name server. That name server can be busy so the request take some time. Once your PC has the IP address, it makes a request to the real server for the page. That server has to put the page together and send it to you. If the server is busy, it'll take some time to prepare the page.

If your transmission speed is fast enough that it's a small part of the total chain, you don't see much improvement by increasing the speed. We did see a big improvement when going from dial up to DSL or cable, but today, the major delay in serving a page is not in the transmission time.

Where you might see a big difference is in downloads. Once all the prep work has been done (the prep work described above), the download can stream at essentially the full speed of you line. But we don't do those kind of downloads that often.

Mike
 
We have Verizon FIOS for 15Mbps/5Mbps down/up rated service.

The test came back at 25.58Mbps/5.57Mbps, so I am not complaining.

I will say the FIOS has been a definite improvement over the DSL service we used to have.

Cheers,
 
Mike is right. Digital Subscribe Line (DSL) speeds are not always the "bottleck" - especially if you're doing pretty typical web surfing. It's often other factors that contribute to longer page load times, like the speed of the server or the speed of your computer.

As an aside, I use Mozilla's "Firefox" as my web browser... I find it to be far faster and more customizable than IE or Safari. It's also free :)

Check it out here; www.mozilla.com/firefox/
 
we used to have dsl here, right up until the time i needed to occasionally do some work from home. as a test, while we were converting some files, i thought i would try it from home. at work the first of the 2 parts in this conversion would take about 10 seconds, and the second part would take about 10 minutes. from home, the first part took the better part of an hour, i shut down because i didn't want to see how long the second part would take. i switched to cable right after we had a bomb scare in the parking ramp at work, and our supreme boss wanted to know if i would prefer to work from home, rather than the office. i told her that i would take my chances in the office. with dsl, i could get in to our system and look around, but when it came to actual work, it just didn't have the oomph needed to get things done.
 
I'm on a 'WISP' or wireless system out here in the middle of the desert. Too far out for nifty things like DSL, Cable, or FIOS, although I wish I had the options.

My signal goes from mountain top to mountain top several 'hops' till I get on the interwebs. My ISP Guy is a nice and friendly guy and the service is great. If there's an issue, I can call him direct, or he will call my. My speeds vary from 3-6mbps down, and around 1-2mbps down. I'm now part of his 'network' since I'm actually serving other customers from the station on the hill behind the hous. Since I'm feeding enough other users, my connection is 'free'. Works for me!

Used to have Hughesnet, which worked, but much of the stuff I do for a living requires much less latency than you get with shooting the signal 22,000 miles into outer space and back...
 
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