Upper limit to connection speed

[mongantlo]

It seems obvious that 8 Mbps should give significant more speed than 2 Mbps. But some months ago someone who was introduced as a broadband expert said that 8 Mbps, for example, was overkill because ACTUAL connection speed - both upload and download, was significantly less than that. His reasons mainly to do with architecture and infrastructure.

Can someone shed some light on this?

Thanks.

 

[Gordon_R]

As stated, the comments are ridiculous!

Perhaps you could provide some context, or a link to the quote?

Does this have any reference to yourself, or are you just curious?

Trying to understand why this question, as your first post on this forum...

 

[Geoff.D]

Agree, need the context to be able to discuss the statements.

Throughput, which everyone calls "speed" , is a rather complicated concept to explain without first discussing basics.

 

[mongantlo]

I want to upgrade my line from 2 Mbps for Skype teaching, but if I need to know at what point I'll be paying too much for actual performance.

 

[Geoff.D]

It all depends on where you are, which exchange area you are in and where your main clients are.

Start with a few basic tests to understand the routing your connections are likely to use, and, if there are times of the day when service is better than others.
Pingplotter is quite useful here. It will show where the bottle necks are and if those are on your local connection, then an upgrade will help. But not if the bottlenecks are somewhere else in the network.

 

[Gordon_R]

If you already have an ADSL line, the first step is to establish the signal to noise ratio (SNR) from your router statistics page. There are many threads that discuss this process. You can post the results here, or in those threads.

If you have a good quality copper connection, you can keep doubling the speed of the line, until the signal deteriorates, when you will no longer be getting value for money. Usually this is around 5-7 Mbps.

This is an experimental process. We cannot predict in advance what your results will be. The biggest factor, over which you have no control, is the physical distance from the exchange.