Speed Daemon

Posted by stephen on Friday, 02nd December, 2005 @ 14:04

With intentional UNIX misspelling :)

NTL have this morning upgraded my 3Mbit 30Gb/month service to 10Mbit 75Gb/Month. And they're charging me ?3 less per month for the privilege.

And the best thing is, it truly runs at the speed advertised. I didn't even know until I downloaded a small 2Mbyte program, and it disappeared from my Safari download list before I even got to see it!

This is one of the massive advantages cable has over ADSL. The coax coming into my house offers a very high quality signal path that has to be enough to provide many 34Mbit video transponders for cable TV. Whereas many ADSL providers now advertise 8Mb or even higher services, the actual connection speed is extremely dependent on the quality of the phone line and the distance from the exchange, with most users apparently unable to receive much more than 4Mbit.

I now also have 512Kbit upload as opposed to 300Kbit previously, which is the speed of my original broadband downstream connection! Though personally I think this is woefully inadequate and really stifles the potential of the Internet as a medium with intelligence at the edges.

Anyway, I'm very happy, NTL have always provided me with a great service and it just got better. I'd recommend them to anyone.