Broadband speed

[oompah]

At the moment i am with tiscali the speed on my package is up to 8mb i have done various speed test and average a download speed of 5mb.I live abot 400 yards from the exchange should i ring Tiscali and ask if they can improve my speed,look else where,or is this a good speed to be achieving?Your thoughts please.

 

[HectorTheSpecta]

A Broadband provider provides broadband to you in 'nodes'.

So whilst you can expect to get 8Mb, the station (where the nodes branch off) may have a max capacity of lets say 50 Mb? If the station can only satisfy 10 nodes and they are trying to grab 10Mb each, it'll average out to 5Mb each.

If on another occasion (off peak at 10 PM at night), there's only three nodes trying to grab 10Mb each, it will be satisfied.

Hope that makes sense?

 

[oompah]

Pretty much so,the town where i live has enlarged over the last few years
and the exchange hasn't so there is less piece of a pie to go around?

 

[gas4you]

Would not the contention ration of your provider have some bearing on the speed as well?

I am on a business package (20:1) and have noticed this is much faster than when I was on a standard package (50:1)

Or is this nothing to do with it and I am confused as the landlord says

 

[Jonsey123]

Hi oompah, Tiscali will be unable to improve your speed. You will get the same speed for any ADSL Max product (up to 8, 16mb etc). The max your line can handle is currently the speed that your router is connected to the ISP (you can check by logging on to your router).

The distance from the exchange is almost impossible for the end user to calculate, as although you may live next door to the exchange, the connection may find its way around the village and come back into you last.

My advice to get the max possible speed it to do the following:

1. Remove any other cables in your BT socket other than terminals 2 and 5. More are connected, but providing you have filters on all connected devices in your home, you on;y need 2 and 5.
2. Ensure you have a filter installed on all telephones, routers, fax machines, sky etc
3. Run TCPOptimizer from speedguide.net to ensure that your PC is not preventing you from reaching the max download speed.
4. If possible, connect your router to the master socket (the first socket in your house where BT comes in, all other extensions are cabled from this).

If you do that, you may find that you improve your speed. Mine went from 3.5MB to just under 6MB (i live quite far away from the exchange). And that is on an extension.

Finally, the speed of your connection is best derived from your router. Dont use download speed testers as the speed you get will fluctuate slightly depending on the time of day (as gas4you says), which site you visit etc. But your router will connect to your ISP at the highest speed possible.