So I just upgraded my cable speed to 15Mbps from 7Mbps for $10/mo

[azilaga]

I live in Manhattan, and figured that it might be worth the $10 to get some extra bandwidth. I'm still getting the same bandwidth in peak times. I can get the 15Mbps at 7am, but I was hoping to get more of a boost in the evenings. Oh well. Does anyone else have this problem? I'm thinking I might have made an unwise decision.

 

[JackMDS]

Be patient it would come and go for few days until it would stabilize.

RR is in the middle of this upgrade.

 

[boethos]

Is it cable or DSL? With cable, you are still sharing the bandwidth with others. Be sure your modem can handle that much speed. It may be limited. If you have to have that much bandwidth, go buy an industrial strength modem and router of your own that will handle that much speed. What you buy off the shelf works just enough to make the retailers money, they aren't serious pieces of equipment.

 

[Nothinman]

Is it cable or DSL? With cable, you are still sharing the bandwidth with others.

You're sharing bandwidth with DSL as well it's just moved a little farther up the line.

 

[azilaga]

Originally posted by: boethos
Is it cable or DSL? With cable, you are still sharing the bandwidth with others. Be sure your modem can handle that much speed. It may be limited. If you have to have that much bandwidth, go buy an industrial strength modem and router of your own that will handle that much speed. What you buy off the shelf works just enough to make the retailers money, they aren't serious pieces of equipment.

It's cable with roadrunner. Even if i get get an industrial strength modem and router, isn't the bottleneck still the available bandwidth?

 

[zig3695]

imo anything around 10mb is plenty fast for today's internet, but what still gets me is the 1mb upload (PITA!)

 

[kevnich2]

As nothinman said, DSL is still shared bandwidth, it's just moved up. The whole cable is sharing bandwidth so DSL is better is vastly mis-construded and misunderstood. DSL is a dedicated line to your ISP, from there, you're sharing the ISP's pool of bandwidth. If you're DSL ISP who gives you and 30 other people a 3mb DSL connection but only has a few T1's (I have seen this) guess what, you're no better off. Cable just shares bandwidth at the cable companies POP. Which nowadays these have fiber uplinks so IMO bandwidth really isn't an issue. I think the reason bandwidth isn't really up that high is simply because nobody else would buy the bandwidth yet, why buy 100mb when you really wouldn't see it yet so it wouldn't be worth the money. For general web browsing, you won't see a difference going from 7mb to 15mb.

 

[azilaga]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
I think the reason bandwidth isn't really up that high is simply because nobody else would buy the bandwidth yet, why buy 100mb when you really wouldn't see it yet so it wouldn't be worth the money. For general web browsing, you won't see a difference going from 7mb to 15mb.

I purchased the bandwidth with the expectation of receiving at least somewhat of a bump during peak hours, when I do web dev work that involves a lot of ftp'ing. I guess I'll give it a month to see how things pan out.

 

[RebateMonger]

Don't forget that transfer speed is dependent both on the client and on the server. To download something at 10mbps, the SERVER has to be able to upload data at that speed, too. And the server has to be willing to give you that much bandwidth, which might be shared by many other client PCs.

 

[zig3695]

yup, as with my 10mb connection, i rarely even get half of it saturated when im downloading a file. but what is nice is the opportunity to multi task downloads, and bit torrents of course.

 

[spidey07]

You will gain a lot more performance if you tune/tweak your TCP/IP stack. Google it.

Or check dslreports.com for information on your area.

 

[Modelworks]

Not surprising.
I have charter and there are people with the 16mb/2mb package that don't see that during prime time. I got the 10mb package and thankfully do get 1.28MB/sec downloads from host that can push it. I'm not in a high population area though.

Doesn't matter how good the modem is.
If the pipe is only so big, you can't cram more data down it

 

[spidey07]

All consumer broadband speeds are "up to". You are not guaranteed anything. If the provider is doing major work it could take some time before everything is in place.

 

[JackMDS]

RR (at least is in NYC) is in a process of upgrading the regular service from 6Mb/sec. to 10Mb/sec.

When the service was 6Mb/sec. I use to get 600KB/Sec. download, in the last few days I am getting 980KB/sec.

Some one can say well 600 x 8 = 4.8mb/sec. and 980 x 8 = 7840 Mb/sec.

The reality of the Internet connection is that a download of 1KB/sec. (as indicated on the computer) should be consudered with a factor of 10 (not 8) due to system wide overhead.

So a connection of 15Mb/sec. should yield about 1.5MB/sec download a little less if it is a "Quirky" connection, if it is much less call RR.

P.S. due the general upgrade the Grid in NYC is a little unstable in the last 3-5 days.

 

[zig3695]

Originally posted by: spidey07
You will gain a lot more performance if you tune/tweak your TCP/IP stack. Google it.

Or check dslreports.com for information on your area.

i used to do that with winXP and did get some dramatic results. but im with vista now and its as good as its ever been. most small download servers just dont go 1.2MB a sec

 

[QBZ]

I have Road Runner in Western Ohio and did the same thing as the OP and it works. I'm getting at least 13800 on DL and 750-768 uploads. The cap is 15000 DL and 768 upload. It's more expensive then I would like, but there's essentially no competition in my area so I guess I should feel lucky.

I use www.speedtest.net

 

[coolpurplefan]

Try speakeasy speed test in google and find out what your speed really is. There are several servers there.

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Is it cable or DSL? With cable, you are still sharing the bandwidth with others.

You're sharing bandwidth with DSL as well it's just moved a little farther up the line.

It scares me how many people seem to forget this fact when preaching "DSL is dedicated!"