Digital Dales Broadband Blog
Onwards and upwards - Korea tests WiBro (a sort of 3.5G type tech) and O2 and Nortel try out HSDPA with speeds of about 3 x 3G. Odd though, what dial up does this journo have that downloads 5Mb in two minutes? I can't even do that on ADSL - I just tried! LLU unbundling costs hacked by Ofcom again, but BT welcome here. Should now see an upturn in number of lines being unbundled by Wanadoo et al. They've been waiting on this announcement. All links posted into
delicious
Bored of ADSL now, pages take far too long to download. Minor improvement on Skype than over satellite but not enough Skype calls to justify staying plugged into ADSL when it affects surfing so badly. Especially when I'm trying to update the sites and the upload is so poor, I could eat my keyboard in the time it takes to reload pages.
Interesting fact discovered today
Sean Maloney, executive Vice President and General Manager of Intel said during the press briefing, “Wi-Fi is steadily growing; the number of users will reach 700 million by 2008. By then 89% of 350 thousands hotspots and 70 million laptop computers will be Wi-Fi enabled.”
And some good stuff found and posted to
del.cio.us
Following day - TGIF! I could get really depressed otherwise. I feel so sorry for all those people out there who think ADSL is broadband. Having not suffered dial up for getting on for 18 months or more, I have probably forgotten how bad that is too, but ADSL is dire for my purposes - mainly scooting round websites as fast as I can trying to absorb as much info as possible and forwarding big docs to other equally busy people, whilst drinking copious cups of tea, answering two phones and running a semi-renovated household with twins in it whilst owning two businesses and being involved in two national broadband initiatives -
ABC and
CBN.
A house of 2's?!
I have two PC's next to each other and within arm's reach which I use continuously together - I'm female, multitasking is normal! I have however discovered that trying to absorb an Ofcom report and watch Working Lunch at the same time is quite hard! I need VoIP and the kids need video conferencing - far more than I do at present. Online gaming may become more important in future, as will the wabbit webcast needs etc, but the wabbits weturn tomorrow from their holiday so we'll try that next week.
If the majority of this country still believe ADSL is what we are after, it's time to make more noise. This country is being so badly misled. I ran some tests to compare sat and broadband. I do not believe anything under 2Mbps should be called broadband anyway and have tried to talk to Trading Standards about this on several occasions, but that's an ancient bone of contention!
Ok, the two services I'm comparing are completely incomparable so this is a highly scientific (not) set of results and conclusions. Designed to start a discussion maybe?!
1 PC is on sat, 1 on ADSL (connections soon to merge when all the load balancing sorted - LA's best network?!). The only test so far ADSL has come out better on is ping times. The worst browser/connection mix is Internet Explorer and ADSL. Firefox and sat for downloads/surfing is just funky.
Test 1 - Ping
ADSL - average 28ms
sat - average 660ms
Test 2 - toast.net speed test with F-1 fighters (largest file)
ADSL - 34.61 secs
sat - 8.371secs
The sat photo downloads in massive chunks, the ADSL line by line yawn.
Test 3 - Skype v 1.0 (uploaded newer version to see if improved performance on sat)
ADSL - reasonable
sat - far better than previously and no noticeable difference with ADSL now
Test 4 - Skype out to mobile
ADSL - slight lag
sat - ditto
Voice quality is not as good as it could be as I have mike and speakers. I am waiting for Santa to bring me a Bluetooth headset so I can wander round the house and pick Skype up off the dongle on the PC. No idea if this idea will work or how but desperately want hands free phone calls so I can make cups of tea etc whilst on phone!
(Errr, as VoIP was one of the reasons I got a BT line back at all into the office, this 'not much difference in quality' has p'ed me off!)
Then, had to dash off to kids' puppet show so FWD, SIP phone, webcam etc tests will have to wait. But ever more determined to keep evangelising ADSL = JOB NOT DONE!
Right, shopping next and finish painting the ceiling and then ....and then TGIF! On sat, far faster at weekends as mainly business users. I suspect the opposite will prove true for ADSL........
6.06pm After a couple of hours awaiting Gordon's call back, we have spent the last 20 mins or so faffing with all the settings and then trying a BT test account to get the router working. Bingo! Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating so back on with Skype and let's see who we can call..........Right now, I am quite a happy bunny! Just got the load balancing to sort out and then all should be hunky dory. Fingers crossed. And maybe the coffee was a bit strong this morning!!
Ok, next installment 3.15pm. Trawled round CBN for a while as never much time to do that normally, and found interesting post from Helen about getting your ADSL working, bizarrely under ICT Funding, subject mesh network! Useful stuff, if that was the prob but it isn't.
So, phoned Phone Co-op after reading two ofcom reports about working out value of BT's copper network (that's easy - zero except as second hand copper for making garden statues from), and their strategic review of telecoms, drinking several cups of tea, and working out the IP address for the router had to be wrong. Ipconfig /all and bingo, I'm into the router on 2.254, not 1.254. Gordon, who is very nice and patient as he rightly assumes I am an idiot as far as setting up ADSL and dealing with BT goes ;o) suggests I re-enter password etc just in case.
Reboot router after changing settings again, he talks to ADSL team who say there is no IP address being dished out as it is trying to authenticate on the radius server with wrong password still. Joel phones. We walk through it all over again, and nope, nowt. Upstream of 288, down 576, but can't access Net as no IP!
Lucky I never thought this would be easy. Right, let's phone Gordon again.........maybe I did need this phone line after all..........
13.50 Nice guy from the Phone Co-op calls. Maybe the router is dodgy? Well, it wasn't yesterday when Joel was logged into it. It just wouldn't give an IP address out. Beginning to think BT are just thinking up excuses to save letting a poor unsuspecting BT engineer near me!! Last time I found out where the nearest fibre was, and then gave him my ABC business card. He went white, assuming that I was some sort of fibre Swampy, going to tunnel my way down there and hold it to ransom - as if. Although a 'breakout party' would be fun ;o)!
Anyway, tried logging into router over the Cat5 and nowt, so maybe they have a point. More Cat5 in this house than you can imagine, strung out down walls, under and over carpets, but narry a short piece as an alternative test cable, but PC network is operative - Ethel and Hermione can see each other fine so nowt wrong with the string. (No sign of Gertrude - kids comp - so another job for today, getting her back on the network so I can use their whizzbang printer!).
Nice phone co-op guy decides to phone Joel ........I go and make toast and Marmite to get me through the next phase and ponder why router is ignoring Ethel!
The ADSL saga begins........
Aramiska 2Mbps satellite connection running fine but latency an issue on VoIP etc. It works but it could be better and I'm trying to stay alive here, not pay BT my pension. So, get this, had to reinstall a BT phone line (which I have done without for months) to get ADSL so I can run Skype, FWD etc ie not to use for phone calls at all!
Order ADSL from Phone Co-op. No problem, line switched on no fuss in under a week. Gap of a couple of weeks whilst Joel works through his hectic schedule to fit me in on his travels. Arrives yesterday armed with ADSL router, load balancing kit, and armfuls of other bits and bats to sort out minor issues on mesh, with cat5 network etc. Office and house now emptying national grid at alarming rate!
ADSL router plugged in and configured in several seconds. Line comes up with acceptable ADSL speeds 512+ down and 240 ish up) - yeah, OK it's crap and shouldn't be called broadband but I just need that stability on the upload for voice and video to work. Line down, line up, line down, constantly. Phone Phone Co-op who arrange a BT line test. Call this morning from Phone Co-op - BT say your phone line isn't working and your router isn't powered on. Odd that as the call is on the phone line that apparently is non-functional, and the router has multiple green lights on - just not the permanently on PPP light which will indicate the ADSL is working properly.
I await the next call........And start planning the next major UK-wide survey which I proposed as part of the 'Job not done' project some time back. Yep, I am going to prove 1) that just because exchanges are enabled does not mean you can get broadband 2)what percentage of the UK will be ADSL have-nots during summer 2005 when everyone is supposed to be back-slapping about us being the most extensive and competitive nation for broadband 3) that 95% coverage is a load of marketing crap to avoid the real issues and 4) ADSL is not f***ing broadband.
Watch this space.
