What speed do you receive the net at?

[White Fox]

Folks you can help us out. It is always great to know how many members we have on dial up, DSL, etc. So, please answer our poll here. It is very important that we have this info as accurately as possible for future development of the site.

 

Thanks all.

 

White Fox

Admin

 

P.S. Feel free to vote twice here if you have for instance a server at home that is dialup and one at work that is high speed. But only include the one at work IF you use it to view the Den.

 

Thanks all

 

W

Edited November 27, 2007 by Guest

[Worker 11811]

I live only 500 meters, by wire, from the central phone switching office for my area. I'm only paying for 1 Mb service but I usually get faster than that.

 

Only a little while a go, I only had dial-up. It's nice to have a fast connection to the internet.

[AKcoyote]

In my case, it is a 1 Mb / 320 Kb DSL link.

[Guest]

I pay for 1Mb @ 125k but I actually have over 50Mb capabilities and I'm sure it's much faster. Speed is never an issue.Probably over 512k in reality.

 

I sometimes get several Gigs in images quite fast.

 

It's fiber optic to the pole at my house as part of my Cable service.

 

 

 

OFF

[auzmink]

For the techno's amongst us, is a freeware program available that will monitor download / upload speeds without clogging the system. I know we have slowdowns and would love to document the average speed for future reference. I'm supposedly 8Mb, I don't think so!

Thanks

 

Auzmink

[wallee]

High speed cable. 10mbs connection.

 

[Worker 11811]

I'm getting 1985/117 Mb right now from speedtest.net:

 

 

My modem reports 3048/143 Mb but that's only the theoretical maximum speed. The phone company throttles the connection at the source. Plus, if the network is busy, speeds can vary downward.

 

Furthermore, I could have the fattest pipe in the world but my download speeds will only be as fast as the OTHER GUY'S connection to the internet. I can't get data any faster than the server can give it out.

 

A 1 Mb connection maxes out at 128 KB/s (kilobytes per second) but I have seen sustained speeds of over 200.

[White Fox]

Just saw this in a local paper this morning. Thought it might fit here. Sorry if there is some distortion of text from sidebars due to copy and paste. I hope that I have deleted it all but I may have missed some.

 

Internet 'brownouts' feared by 2010 as user traffic soars

 

Industry-funded study warns popular Internet activities could be affected by failure to upgrade infrastructure.

 

Rising demand for bandwidth-hogging Internet activities such as swapping music files and watching YouTube videos threatens to outstrip the Web's infrastructure within three years, creating the spectre of service "brownouts" and potentially thwarting the development of the next Google-sized application, an industry-funded study warns.

 

Despite all the talk about the Internet's infinite possibilities, a study by U.S. firm Nemertes Research found that projected increases in Internet traffic are poised to eclipse the capacity of the Web's broadband access infrastructure

[Worker 11811]

First, it was only a few years ago when there was an overabundance of network bandwidth. Telephone and communication companies spent a boatload of money to upgrade to fiber optic. At that time, they thought they'd be able to support all the network traffic the country could demand for the next 20 years. That caused a sense of complacency among the builders/owners of network infrastructure. But demand grew faster than they anticipated. Now, if somebody doesn't get off their ass, we're all going to be screwed!

 

Second, because of all this excess bandwidth, users have been free to hog up as much of the network they want. I see it all the time.

 

Where I work, we have a fast T-1 connection. Everybody at work always tries to e-mail huge files and share video, pictures and music at crazy-high data rates. Then, when other people can't read what they send, they get confused. I constantly have to scream and yell at them to keep their bandwidth usage DOWN!

 

I have always been a proponent of using efficient means to send music, pictures and movies over the internet. But sites like YouTube use that stupid Flash video format that hogs up bandwidth. They should just switch to a more efficient format like MP4 or H.264 (which is a variant of MP4) and be done with it!

 

If people wouldn't be so stupid about bandwidth, we wouldn't have half the trouble we have now!

[AKcoyote]

From what I have heard, there is still a lot of "dark" fiber optic cable in the US. Most of it was installed for companies that are NOT part of the group who own most of the main US internet backbone.

 

Auzmink,

There are several free websites such as speedtest.net that will test the speed of your internet connection. A Google search should locate several.

[Guest]

The big Cable boys WANT a crisis to take over the Internet through congressional action.

 

They are withholding services and making it difficult to develop Municipal Cable networks like the one I belong to.

 

 

OFF

[FrBrGr]

14130/1485

[Worker 11811]

So, what is this, now? A contest to see who has the biggest... Ummm... internet connection?

 

[foxkid]

Personally from a web developer's perspective, a well designed site should really degrade nicely on a slow connection unless there is a real need to have heavily multimedia orientated content.

 

I would go by the 8 second rule. Based on that, I would say a page on DSL should be moreless totally loaded by then, and if on a dial up connection, the HTML and main CSS style sheets should have loaded by then (obviously photos, etc can take longer... though big photos should have width/height set to avoiud the page 'shuffling' as images load and push content down/round.

[Worker 11811]

I've got to agree with you on that!

 

1) A web page should be substantially loaded in less than ten seconds.

 

2) A web page should never take longer than a minute to load unless there is compelling content.

 

3) The user should always be given the choice whether or not to view a page that has high bandwidth content.

 

4) The user should be able to easily abandon the download if he decides it's taking longer than he expected.

[White Fox]

Don't go jumping to conclusions folks.

 

The reasons we need this info....

 

For instance, we need to know where to set the limits on video size for most people. We need to know what speeds to consider when we consider any possible expansion ideas that should come up. We can keep this in mind when considering any changes to rules on things like "Images" for example. etc.

 

Just because we have one person on dial up right now does NOT mean that we are going to let that one person down! NO WAY!!! But it might mean that quite a few people could see some things in the future that he cannot. He would simply avoid entering those areas.

 

Thanks all. I really hope that more folks will check in. This information is of fantastic help to us on keeping the Den "In Sync" with the world.

 

W

[buzztan]

High speed cable here

[Joe]

 

http://i18.tinypic.com/8az5rok.png

 

Hmm...my family's wireless connection. Should be faster.

 

J.

[hopplewite]

Well now you have two on dial up. Would hate to see the site go totally to the high speed crowd but does seem to be the way - that is until internet hits overload - ironically on the CTV (Canada) news last night there was a segment on the internet's capability to handle the volume of traffic it is facing as the infrastructure is not there to handle it. Basicly the telephone and cable companies don't have enough wires in place because they underestimated the use and advancemrnt of technology. So as on our road systems which have gridlock the internet could face the same thing no matter how fast a connection you have.

 

hopplewite

[White Fox]

Hopplewite...

 

Great to see another new member here. Especially when they are Canadian...

 

Don't worry. We will not be forgetting you! It has been a real surprise here just how many here are on high speed though.

 

Yes, this could mean that are some photos allowed here (with a warning) that you might not want to load or things like that. However, you will always be able to use the site and it will pretty much always all be as fast as it is now for the most part. You just might see a few more things with "Large file" warnings on them, etc as we develop.

 

W

[Worker 11811]

Well now you have two on dial up. Would hate to see the site go totally to the high speed crowd

 

I only recently graduated from dial-up to DSL so I won't be forgetting about others who still communicate by dial-up modem.

 

Second, you may or may not have heard this from me before:

Where I work I am known as a big S.O.B. because I constantly yell at people who send large files or use up too much bandwidth unnecessarily. They have a T-1 connection to the 'net so a lot of people there are spoiled when it comes to bandwidth. I am the one who always bitches at people when they forget about the dial-up users.

 

I try to be the same type of advocate at the Den only with the "bitch level" turned way down.

 

Dial-up users: If you're out there, please sound off even if it's only to check off your response in the poll.

 

Also, it might be useful for dial-up users to tell us how they feel about the bandwidth experience at the Den. Is our site too slow? Fast enough? About average?

 

Let us know!

[Guest]

Hi folks,

 

we got a very fast connection in the company fast also at home and even WLANS are fast around here. However when I'm for a vacation (e.g. in Spain) I have to deal with much slower connections or even dial up with an analogue modem. I am a big fan of simple sites who deliver the big contents by request .

 

Fuzzy greetings,

Joe Al

[sowa]

Hi!

 

Thanks for this great site.

 

I still use dial-up. My comm. bills every month are a killer. But, when the power goes out, somehow POTS (plain old telephone system) seems to work.

 

Don't know what you're planning, but I'm sure it's gonna be good. I don't mind waiting for a download. Just keep us dialers in mind. Please.

 

Sowa

[Worker 11811]

But, when the power goes out, somehow POTS (plain old telephone system) seems to work.

 

That's the beauty! The phone company supplies the power from the central office via the phone lines. When the power goes out in YOUR location, it's likely still on at the phone company. Even when the power does go out at the central office, they switch over to emergency generators.

 

The move to switch customers to VOIP and fiber optic drops is going to bring this to an end. Either there will need to be a battery backup system in the customer's premises or the customer will have to have their own emergency power system. If they don't, their service will go out.

 

If there is ever a civil emergency where large sections of the country are without power for an extended period of time, emergcncy communications will be cut for MILLIONS of people. They won't be able to contact the police or the fire department or call for an ambulance.

 

Sometimes there's a BENEFIT to doing things the "old fashioned way".

 

Sowa,

 

How does the site work for you on dial-up?

Especially, how does the gallery work for you in terms of download speed?

[Guest]

There's always the one exception.

 

Like the drunk that hit the power/phone pole(s) last weekend. Sheared them BOTH off at the base and took down everything!!! For over 8 hours and I live right next to downtown.

 

Power and phone trucks were busy for over 24 hours repairing the damage.

 

When it went out a series of transformers went out like bombs with bright flashes.

 

The driver walked away from it!!!!

 

After the first two hours only five houses along with mine were without power though.

 

 

OFF