Internet speed help!

ashleyrossuk

I was hoping that someone could help me. I am posting this message on behalf of my sister in law.

She has just bought a new dell computer. She has phoned up BT but was told that she only has 1meg available in her area (her neighbours only get the same). She is currently on 1p a minute dial up connection (1meg).

If she changes to broadband will it be faster than the dial up, also is thier any other way go get it to go faster.

(as an example my sister in law clicked to log on to her mail then went to get a bowl of soup, ate the soup and the page still had not loaded!).


Many thanks for any help provided!

mrJ_5

Dial-up won't get you broadband speeds - dial-up only goes as fast as 56kb (closer to 45kb is the maximum)

Broadband is way faster than dial-up - but if the most she can get is 1mb, then 1mb is the most she can get

is thier any other way go get it to go faster.

Yes ... move closer to the telephone exchange!

telephone_man

It is frustrating when companies advertise 'Upto 8meg superfast BB' and when you order it you find you dont have anywhere near that speed but unless her usage is mainly downloading e.g. lots of movies and music etc. then the download speed wont be such a big issue.

mrJ_5

but the speed does everything it says on the tin - BMW could sell you a car that goes "up to 250mph" - but where in the UK can you go that fast (more so legally)? Since there will be traffic on the road, the road will have many bends, if it rains you should drive slower, and so forth - many things affect the speed

ashleyrossuk

Thanks for the replies!

She is ging to phone up for broadband today! Hopefully that should improve the speed by far!

I think i have heard of something along the lines of an internet booster! (or possibly just imagined it!)

Is thier anything like this that would get the internet to run faster (no down loads just checking mail, ebay, tesco etc....)

Many thanks again!

mrJ_5

this 'booster' you speak of just compresses images, and gives you the illussion of a faster connection - but it is the same speed - google 'onspeed' - but i think it costs something like £25 a year. The 'faster' you want the pages to load, the quality of the images decreases....

telephone_man

Its called On Speed. The concept was originally designed by NASA. BT offered it free to customers that have poor speed. As my posting friend above mentioned it compresses files and it can increase your speed by up 5x's.

A word of warning! Dont go there!!

BT pulled it because it was hugely unreliable and dissapointing.

tweeter

Worth a read.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=3067987#post3067987