Why 50meg?

Nilrem

Aye, compared to office networks 50mb is nothing, but then offices often don't use a fraction of that, it's just that 10/100 (and now 10/100/1000) mbit cards have been the standard for years, so it doesn't cost them anything extra to have it setup for that speed than any other speed if they need to connect the machines at all, despite the fact that in many offices the actual amount of business data being moved between machines is relatively small (many offices still get by with just <10mb connections to the outside world as that's all that's really needed for them for the business purposes of say getting email and the like).

One of the better DIY related things I've done round our house, was about 7-8years ago to put in proper cat5 cabling/wall sockets and hook all the machines up to a LAN (prior to that I had a thinwire network which was a PITA but cheap compared to the now current standard), as such I've got a network that allows wired machines in most rooms, and it was very simple to add multiple wireless access points to give the best of both worlds (we have 3 PC's permanently wired in, a couple of laptops that are in use wirelessly from time to time, and assorted other gear*).

It amazes me how much the cost of BB and networking gear has come down - I pay now about the same for 50mbit as I did at one time for dial up, then for 512k when we first got cable, and the networking gear has plumeted in price - when I put in our network about the best value for the switch (as opposed to a hub), was an SMC 10/100 8 port unit (that is still working well apart from one port that seems to have died), now I can get a much smaller switch of an equivalent/better spec for about 10% of the cost! (and indeed I have one as a spare/for adding additional ports to the network when needed).

Ultimately I can see people needing high speed connections more and more, as these days everything from TV's to game consoles, to dvd/blu-ray players, to ebook readers can make use of the internet, in addition to the way that many people are also now having 2+ PC's (or laptops), as we've gone from the days when the internet was used mainly for things like email and shopping, with a little gaming (with the games themselves bought on discs), to large amounts of multi media content for all sorts of devices being delivered over the internet.


*Games consoles/Blu-ray players.

Nilrem

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

With the take up and acceleration of things like video streaming, video conferencing and so forth, the need for bandwidth will grow not in a slow linear way but pretty exponentially.

We used to call broadband - well, broadband - because it wasn't narrowband. That term was reserved for dial-up modems.

Here in 2011, I'd venture that 4Mbps is the minimum threshold for something to be called "broadband" and everything below that is narrowband.

Thus, around 20% to 25% of the country cannot actually get broadband at all.

Fast forward to 2020: the minimum speed for something to be reasonably called "broadband" will be 10Mbps at the very least.

In essence - infrastructure isn't about building what we need. By then, it's too late. It is about building what we will need.

Whilst I might quibble a bit about the definition of BB, I agree with the fact that when you realise we need the speeds it's already getting too late to try and improve the infrastructure.

It's one of my pet bugbears that many people seem to complain about their BB costs being too high, then complain about the fact the ISP's aren't doing more to improve the infrastructure - unfortunately at the moment most of the ISP's either don't make enough to do the work needed to improve the speeds available, or simply don't care as they can piggyback off BT, and instead advertise around the fact they can deliver it cheap.

What is needed if we're to see better speeds in any realistic timescale is for all the major ISP's to make a point that cost isn't everything when it comes to the service - I know a lot of people think VM charge far too much for their service, but VM tend to be the only ISP (other than BT) that has actually invested in it's network and especially to the connection to the customer.

FleetFanatic

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Why not if you can afford it?

You're confusing whether I can afford it or not with whether I feel it's needed or not.

timberflake wrote: »

As someone else said because it allows multiple devices to be connected at once and all have a good speed. On a normal night my laptop is on downloading, my PS3 is downloading content from the store and my girlfriend will be surfing the net on her ipad.

For example, tonight my laptop was upstairs downloading away, my girlfriend was watching video's on youtube and I was downloading a game from the PSN store, and even though the game was 1gb in size it still only took 5 minutes to download.

There's 3 laptops in this house, one that is loading torrents all the time, another that's running a pokerbot online 24/7 & the missus on facebook, along with a PS3 online.

10meg copes perfectly well was my point, I don't care if a game takes 5 minutes to download or 20, I'm in no rush

Mark_In_Hampshire

FleetFanatic wrote: »

You're confusing whether I can afford it or not with whether I feel it's needed or not.

There's 3 laptops in this house, one that is loading torrents all the time, another that's running a pokerbot online 24/7 & the missus on facebook, along with a PS3 online.

10meg copes perfectly well was my point, I don't care if a game takes 5 minutes to download or 20, I'm in no rush

There are several ways of delivering broadband. For instance ADSL, 3G, 4G (LTE), fibre to the cabinet and fibre to the premises.

ADSL speeds are zero (not available) to a theoretical 24Mbps top, though most people will get nearer to e.g. 2Mbps than 24Mbps which almost nobody will get.

3G speeds are pants (7.2Mbps tops, and rarely achieved - 2.2Mbps average)

4G isn't here yet (100Mbps+) though it's in other countries.

Fibre to the Cabinet is Virgin Media and BT are now rolling this out.

Theoretically, Virgin's network can do 445Mbps to every home - theoretically, anyway if it had the backhaul - and BT's Fibre to the Cabinet can do 40Mbps planning to increase up to 60Mbps at some point, though only if you're very close to the cabinet and have a good quality line. You may only get 5Mbps.

The only way to actually deliver superfast broadband speeds of the type that we will need (eventually, granted not now) is to either have lots and lots of cabinets (we're talking many, many thousands more) OR to run fibre to the premises (not sure what the maximum throughput that be achieved on that is, but it's as high as we can go at the moment)

There's no "middle ground". BT rolled out something called ADSL2+ which still can only supply broadband (4Mbps +) over short good quality lines.

It might be possible to develop ADSL3 which manages say 30Meg to people living in the phone exchange or near as, but it's still only broadband if the line is short and good enough. Phone lines and broadband don't go well together.

You have to introduce fibre, which means you go from rubbish speeds over ADSL and phone lines to finally broadband and superfast broadband speeds. It isn't an "upgrade" or some gradual improvement.

Virgin Media already have the (part) fibre network, and so can simply show off with relative ease compared with BT and laugh at people with ADSL with a couple of meg while BT run round bits of the country putting a fibre cabinet here and there.

timberflake

FleetFanatic wrote: »

You're confusing whether I can afford it or not with whether I feel it's needed or not.

There's 3 laptops in this house, one that is loading torrents all the time, another that's running a pokerbot online 24/7 & the missus on facebook, along with a PS3 online.

10meg copes perfectly well was my point, I don't care if a game takes 5 minutes to download or 20, I'm in no rush

You're question is, why 50 meg? And the answer is because its a damn sight faster than 10 meg. It may not matter to you, but there's a lot of people out there (me included) that like to know I can download at 6mbps. Just because you dont want/need it doesn't mean others dont.

FleetFanatic

timberflake wrote: »

You're question is, why 50 meg? And the answer is because its a damn sight faster than 10 meg. It may not matter to you, but there's a lot of people out there (me included) that like to know I can download at 6mbps. Just because you dont want/need it doesn't mean others dont.

So essentially it's all down to being impatient, is that what you're saying?

I'm didn't start this thread to cause an argument, just to debate the benefits/performance vs increased cost. I'm fully aware it's faster, I'm just trying to understand WHY it's deemed so important by some.

As I said, regardless of what speed you have, you can only download something as quick as the host upload can supply it.

Mark_In_Hampshire

Correct. However not that long ago, web servers tended to be on the end of 2Mbps or 10Mbps fixed pipes, so as you say, you're not going to download at more than 10Mbps anyway. From that site.

However, you could be downloading at 10Mbps from that site, watching a streamed HD film (think this needs 12Mbps, can't be sure) and someone else could be chatting on VOIP and browsing/YouTube - another 3Mbps or so needed.

You couldn't really do all of those things when "broadband" was 2Mbps. Additionally, the number of people in a household using it is on the up.

The number of people even now who can get an affordable 25Mbps connection is barely half - basically the cabled areas and those which have BT's FTTC AND who live right next to the cabinet.

It's about what we will need, not what we do need.

To put it into another context: where we are is 2.5km from the exchange with a line length of 3680m. We can get ADSL at 1.7Mbps tops or 3G at 3Mbps tops. It's pitifully slow but hardly an unusual situation.

To "upgrade" this to something useful, given that there are no cabinets here would require:

Virgin cable - 100Mbps available
FTTP - 110Mbps planned to be available

There's no in-between. I could get by with 10Mbps, like you. But 10/30/50/100Mbps would be the next step up requiring an entirely new network to be built supporting those speeds.

The only alternative being wireless access (patchy) or 4G LTE (the country doesn't have this yet)

spike7451

One of the reasons NTL/VM offered 50meg as opposed to,say,75 or 100,is because quite simple,they use two types of cabinet,a main,boosted DP cabinet & an unboosted E Cabinet.(the one the size of a large suitcase)
Because the E-Cabs are not boosted,it may not be possible (or fair) to sell a customer 75meg when their connection may not support it.

kwikbreaks

FleetFanatic wrote: »

You're confusing whether I can afford it or not with whether I feel it's needed or not.

I'm not confusing anything. I really don't care whether or not you can afford it or consider it necessary. I only answered on my own behalf.

I don't consider it necessary myself but the cost of 50Mbps now is less than I was paying for 1mbps under 10 years ago and only marginally more than I was paying for 20Mbps.

Due to BT Openreach incompetence I was forced onto cable when they failed dismally to fix a phone line fault. I took 20Mbps as my old ADSL exceeded 10Mbps and when the price of 50Mbps was reduced such that the upgrade was only £5 a month I took it. Had they introduced the "free" 30Mbps upgrade before I took 50 I'd probably have stuck with that instead.

timberflake

FleetFanatic wrote: »

So essentially it's all down to being impatient, is that what you're saying?

I'm didn't start this thread to cause an argument, just to debate the benefits/performance vs increased cost. I'm fully aware it's faster, I'm just trying to understand WHY it's deemed so important by some.

As I said, regardless of what speed you have, you can only download something as quick as the host upload can supply it.

No, its not impatience, its having the speed & bandwidth to do whatever I like with my connection.

Quite simply my connection can do more things at once than a 10 meg connection, plus I have no download limits, thats the benefit & that's what justifies the cost for me.