Should you notice a change when you upgrade broadband

UKSBD

I finally upgraded my broadband to fibre on Monday.

According to the speed checkers I'm getting about 40Mb now compared to the 8Mb I was previously getting.

The thing is though, everything seems to be exactly the same

Should you notice a difference between 40Mb and 8Mb?

Ms_Chocaholic

I'm not much help but the exact same has happened to me, I thought I'd notice a huge difference and I haven't. Looking forward to seeing some replies from people who know what they're talking about.

UKSBD

Ms_Chocaholic wrote: »

I'm not much help but the exact same has happened to me, I thought I'd notice a huge difference and I haven't. Looking forward to seeing some replies from people who know what they're talking about.

I was exited all morning on activation day, noticed it had gone off, 30 minutes later it came back on, I did a speed check to reveal they had done it, thought hurray.

Did a bit of general browsing and everything was virtually the same, big disappointment

stockton_2

I was getting about 17mb before upgrade to Infinity and like the o/p the increased speed has not made any difference to my online surfing. On the other hand, a friend of mine currently gets a speed of about 3mb on ADSL and when she upgrades to Infinity within the next month I think she will see a huge difference. Poor download speeds are particularly noticeable when she is downloading peer to peer or downloading sky programs.

flashg67

I don't think for general surfing, there is a noticeable difference. When downloading bigger files, or having multiple users stream video is when you'll likely see the difference.

I've found fibre to be more consistent - my adsl would disconnect quite often - fibre, hardly ever.

Pincher

I have a 13Mbps ADSL connection, and a 38Mbps fibre connection.


The ADSL is slightly slower, when using the same computer.


The proof of the pudding is when you have multiple devices streaming. Of course ADSL will lose.

Nilrem

flashg67 wrote: »

I don't think for general surfing, there is a noticeable difference. When downloading bigger files, or having multiple users stream video is when you'll likely see the difference.

I've found fibre to be more consistent - my adsl would disconnect quite often - fibre, hardly ever.

Exactly.

The main difference when you go with a "faster" BB is that it can cope better with multiple or heavy usage..

I suppose really it should be referred to as "wider" rather than faster as you can get more down it at once, but the ping speed may not improve much unless you're connection tech changes (IE ADSL, Fibre and Cable might get 7-15ms pings, dial up might have been 120+, lower is better).

lee111s

For daily usage of a single user, you'll see no difference. 8 meg is enough to stream in HD.

Where it comes into its own is when you have multiple users online watching videos, streaming music, playing online gama etc.

brewerdave

I get a relable 16Mb on ADSL2+ connection - we regularly have two streams running without any buffering.
I noticed no real difference on surfing when upgrading from vanilla ADSL (@ ~6Mb) to ADSL2+ .
I suspect a lot of people have upgraded to FTTC from ADSL2+ and have noticed no significant difference. Where it may come into its own ,is when streams in UHD become generally available.

esuhl

According to the following site, the average small webpage is approximately 12KB, while the more complex BBC homepage is around 158KB.
http://smallseotools.com/website-page-size-checker/

So with simple maths...

For small pages:
An 8Mb/s connection could download a 12KB page in 0.0117 seconds.
A 40Mb/s connection could download a 12KB page in 0.0023 seconds.

For larger pages:
An 8Mb/s connection could download a 158KB page in 0.1543 seconds.
A 40Mb/s connection could download a 158KB page in 0.0309 seconds.

Even on the fairly large BBC homepage, the faster connection only shaves an 1/8th of a second off the page load time.

There are other overheads, such as the time required to establish a connection, which is why web pages don't load as quickly in practise as the times above would suggest, but there is probably little difference in overhead time between an 8 and 40 Mb/s connection.

DavidP24

It is largely going to depend on what you are doing, what sites you visit and the number of concurrent things you do (I have a plethora of tabs open at any one time).

Think of it like adding 3 new lanes to a motorway, if you are just the one car you are not going to get there much faster unless you get a better car or more cars.

I am a power user and when I visit friends with Fibre I really notice it, I also notice it on downloading big files.

If you access a website the server for that site "serves" you and everyone else in an equal way, depending on the plan that host has.

The thing is you will get used to it quickly but then if you go back you feel it bad.

The worst thing about basic broadband is the upload speed, you are lucky to get 0.5mb so if you want to upload photos or a website it can take a while, but on fibre this will fly. You will notice it on sites like onedrive and mega.nz when you archive data.

There may be some settings in your profile that tell sites what you speeds you can cope with, if you download ccleaner (free) and use it to clear stuff then you may find things improve.

You can also improve speed by disabling all those pesky "check for update" things that are in Startup, again Ccleaner can help you disable those, but also make sure you turn off monitoring in Ccleaner and tell it to not start automatically.

Some are also installed as Windows services, things like Google update (for Chrome), Flash Update, Skype Update, to name but a few. You can disable these clicking start menu and tying services.msc in search box, then when it comes up right click it and choose run as administrator, then find the service and disable it. You can do the same with Task Scheduler, you will be amazed at what kwap get stuck in there by software companies that you do not really need.

When these things kick off all at once they can slow down your network speed no matter how fast your broadband.

You could also set Windows Update to notify you rather than go straight ahead and download.

Some AV software slows down your system, if you have them monitoring.

The other thing to check is how you are accessing broadband, if you are using an old laptop with a Wireless G adapter then consider getting it upgraded or try connecting by wire. My laptop only has 100mb on wire and it had Wireless N, I can't change the build in wire connection but I bought a Wireless AC router on ebay for under £40, I then got a Wireless AC Mini PCI card, it is faster than my 100mb wired connection when I copy files to my server in house.

I guess there was some reason you upgraded to Fibre, some tasks you found slow, maybe they could be tweaked now that you have more bandwidth.

There is usually a settling period once a new line is installed and you could ask your ISP to see if they can improve it.