Connections

[martin]

Hola,

Thanks for putting up this website! A few questions:

1. In the previous posts capped ADSL speeds are often compared to the max dial-up speed (56kb/s or 7kB/s). Is anyone, using dial-up, ever getting anything near 7kB per second? I can't think of ever getting anything more than 5kB/s and that was off-peak. Peak is usually closer to 2kB/s.

2. Has anyone tried out wireless internet? I've phoned some Wireless ISP's and they guarantee that Telkom cannot prosecute the wireless subscribers, only the ISP, and that this is highly unlikely because it seems to be a legal grey area. Wireless "seems" to be a viable alternative to ADSL:
- 24/7 connection
- Low contention ratios
- No cap
- Lower monthly costs
- ISP's 'seem' to have more control over connection

Possible problems
- Lower connection speeds than ADSL
- Limited availability (but improving)
- Line of sight
- Non-guaranteed bandwidth (as in the case of ADSL)

Any thoughts on this?

 

[rpm]

Hi Martin

Thanks for the posting.

If I achieved a minimum of 7 kB/s, this site would not have been here. I have measured as low as a few kbits/s during peak hours, which is less than 1 kB/s. At the end of the month, when people get capped (like now) the speed improves. I would be happy if Telkom can give some bandwidth guarantee, which is one thing I will be asking for.

Regards,

RPM


RPM
[email protected]

 

[martin]

My point with the first question is:
Is it correct to compare capped ADSL speeds to max DIAL-UP speeds? Since I seriously doubt that anyone is achieving the maximum dial-up speed. Wouldn't it be better to compare the capped ADSL to a more realistic dial-up speed?

 

[silversurfer]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by martin</i>
<br />My point with the first question is:
Is it correct to compare capped ADSL speeds to max DIAL-UP speeds? Since I seriously doubt that anyone is achieving the maximum dial-up speed. Wouldn't it be better to compare the capped ADSL to a more realistic dial-up speed?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Well, compare it to 64k ISDN then, cos u get max speed on that.
ISDN is 20 year old technology, ADSL is supposed to be used at
speeds of up to 20-50Mb/s (50Mb/s being the MAX ever achieved)... not
at a crappy 512kb/s which we are not even allowed to make proper use
of.


Anyway... who is responsible for SPLITTING residential analog lines
all over the country. hmmmm really tuff one. They can 'legally'
split your 56k analog line by 4 times. Aslong as they provide
you with 9.6k (they mininum required for analog voice). Telkom
never have and never will try promote technology that helps the
end user in SA.

Thats why you are sitting with a 2k/s speed on your 56k.

The only viable internet solution in ZA atm (for the average user) is
ISDN 64k or 128k. I have no doubt of that.




http://www.silvertubes.co.za

 

[ASnogarD]

Question 1: Not everyone finishes thier quota of 3 gigs at the same time. Does this mean that those who hit thier cap first will still get some decent international bandwidth that will deteriorate as more users get capped ?

Question 2: When you get capped is it a automatic or manual switching to the alternate international connection ? I ask because I hit 8 gigs before I experienced the slowdown.

 

[ijack]

The days of capped bandwidth....

 

[Srack0verflow]

thanks for the bump tjack... *mutter*
anyway, i STILL dont understand, how do you compare 56 kilobit to 4 megabit?