Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

GDB2222

PasturesNew wrote: »

A slow broadband and an old PC. Even if/when anything works it just buffers before the PC gives up the ghost.

We had pretty slow broadband and no probs with iplayer. So, it might just be the PC.

silvercar

GDB2222 wrote: »

We had pretty slow broadband and no probs with iplayer. So, it might just be the PC.

No buffering?

Pyxis

Before I upgraded my iPad, I found that at some point, the TV companies changed their something or other, which meant that after a certain date, the Apps I had didn't work.

Perhaps if Pastures' PC is very old, it's something like that?

Have no idea really, though.

LydiaJ

DD's last day of term was today. She gets two weeks of Easter holiday. For me, that means two weeks off getting up to take her to the bus stop at 7:20.

GDB2222

silvercar wrote: »

No buffering?

No buffering. Ŵe had 5 Mbps adsl, which is pretty poor.

Obviously, it buffered for a few seconds at the beginning, and then it started playing and normally just continued.

'BBC iPlayer programmes stream at up to 2.8 Mbps or megabits (2800 kbps), depending on the quality. Our standard quality version is 1.5 Mbps (1500 kbps). You'll actually need a little more bandwidth than this to watch programmes on iPlayer.'

PasturesNew

GDB2222 wrote: »

No buffering. Ŵe had 5 Mbps adsl, which is pretty poor.

Obviously, it buffered for a few seconds at the beginning, and then it started playing and normally just continued.

'BBC iPlayer programmes stream at up to 2.8 Mbps or megabits (2800 kbps), depending on the quality. Our standard quality version is 1.5 Mbps (1500 kbps). You'll actually need a little more bandwidth than this to watch programmes on iPlayer.'

The multiple times I've tested mine it's never got over 2Mbps.

So I just tested it right now ... to see.

http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/

And here it is, test results from right now. 1.87Mb

Pyxis

Probably a dim question, but why is the upload speed so much smaller than the download speed? I just did mine, and was wondering.

Interestingly, although my download speed is faster than Pastures', my upload speed is half hers! Don't understand that!

Also, what do you use the Ping figure for? I did google Ping, but am none the wiser, really.

PasturesNew

Pyxis wrote: »

Probably a dim question, but why is the upload speed so much smaller than the download speed?

Also, what do you use the Ping figure for? I did google Ping, but am none the wiser, really.

Most people don't use upload much - we're mostly downloading from the Internet, not to it, so priority is given in that direction to the masses. If you have a specific requirement for it to be higher you'd seek out a provider that did provide faster upload speeds, but few do.

When you type ping into your PC it goes off to find the IP address you pinged - and the speed it gives you back is how long it took to find it. When you send/receive things to/from your PC the route the information takes can vary.

I guess you could look at it as comparing bus routes to work from a potential new house - two houses might be the same distance, but one might take 3 buses and 1.5 hours to get there - and the other might be on a direct bus route and take 20 minutes.

The Internet is built in such a way that something you "send out there into the Internet" is immediately broken up into pieces. The pieces are sent by "the most available route right now" - and at the other end they are reassembled before arriving in one piece where you intended the whole message/package to arrive.

If you were sending, say, 12 lego pieces to a friend in different envelopes, you'd be interested to know which courier got all 12 pieces to the destination quickest.

It's not something we can choose/change, but it's a measure of speed between two points.

That probably didn't help much ... I know what I meant

For some, say, a ping speed could indicate that there's a problem somewhere ... and that's why their access is slow to a particular site ... or it's a way to get the "unreachable" message back so you know there's a big problem.

In the main, "people don't use ping", it's for geeks etc.

The question "can you ping it ....?" is really an enquiry as to whether the address you are trying to get to exists at all .... and sometimes the answer is that you can ping it/get a result but the webpages don't load or you can't connect remotely. All clues along the fault finding route.

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

Probably a dim question, but why is the upload speed so much smaller than the download speed? I just did mine, and was wondering.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Most people don't use upload much - we're mostly downloading from the Internet, not to it, so priority is given in that direction to the masses. If you have a specific requirement for it to be higher you'd seek out a provider that did provide faster upload speeds, but few do.

Spot on.

It's what the A in ADSL stands for - Asynchronous, meaning that the upload and download speeds are different.

There is/was a product SDSL - Synchronous DSL for people who do want the upload and download speeds to be the same. I think it does it by reducing the download speed and using the now vacated bandwidth to increase the upload speed.

Pyxis

And another question - well, more of a rant, really; why is BT, with a British web address, using an American date format?

It's confusing! Grr!