Rural broadband speeds
Peter Scott
improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. The government has
proposed three levels of improvement to the broadband system. Only one
level would help in rural areas. Up to now I have been resigned to poor
speeds. Now that urban speeds are set to rocket, services will change to
use them and soon rural users will be right out in the cold. Wouldn't be
so bad if I paid a lot less!
I have written to Ofcom and attach the text below. Is anyone else
interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?
Text of letter...
"I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
kbit/s. Each time I do a speed test I see what speed people get who live
in the towns and cities. I have done all of the recommended things to
improve it, but it is clear that it is simply distance from the exchange
over copper cables that is the problem.
"Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
"The government talks about action to improve speeds. I note that of the
three proposals the one that would improve rural speeds is the last
option and, of course, costs the most. The hardened cynic in me knows
that this is put in as a sop, to make it appear that it is being
considered. You and I know there is no intention of this being done.
"So what is to be done? The only way that things change in the business
world is for there to be a threat to income. At the moment there is no
commercial pressure to spend and improve. In fact ISPs and BT benefit
from the situation because their cables have to carry less data but they
get the same money. Creative solutions are needed and money is the
driver of these things.
"I think that anyone who gets regularly poor speeds should get a refund
of subscription in the same way that railway companies have to
compensate lateness. Even better, they should get a much lower rate to
start to start with. You really do have to do something and this is one
simple and effective tactic. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept
rural connections then the situation would be out in the open!"
Peter Scott
TMC
"Peter Scott" <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote in message
news:uPGdnU4hooPwU_jU...@brightview.com...
This is one of the consequences of choosing to live in a rural area
I suppose that you would also want the same level of mobile phone coverage,
bus services, and shopping facilities, as urban areas do
Would you give up the lack of congestion, lower crime rates, lower car
insurance premiums, cleaner air and the other benefits of a rural
environment to get your higher broadband speed
You pays your money and you takes your choice
And yes it is off topic and should have been posted as such
Tony
TheOldFellow
"TMC" <an...@anon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> "Peter Scott" <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote in message
> news:uPGdnU4hooPwU_jU...@brightview.com...
<snip>
> > "I think that anyone who gets regularly poor speeds should get a refund of
> > subscription in the same way that railway companies have to compensate
> > lateness. Even better, they should get a much lower rate to start to start
> > with. You really do have to do something and this is one simple and
> > effective tactic. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural
> > connections then the situation would be out in the open!"
> >
> > Peter Scott
>
> This is one of the consequences of choosing to live in a rural area
>
> I suppose that you would also want the same level of mobile phone coverage,
> bus services, and shopping facilities, as urban areas do
>
> Would you give up the lack of congestion, lower crime rates, lower car
> insurance premiums, cleaner air and the other benefits of a rural
> environment to get your higher broadband speed
>
> You pays your money and you takes your choice
>
> And yes it is off topic and should have been posted as such
>
> Tony
>
>
The point is that even if we wished to pay more to get the same service
as the poor townies, granting that the costs are higher, we can't 'cos
the infrastructure can't support it.
As for Mobile Phones, I for one, am really pleased that they don't work
here. My brother sends me texts, and once a fortnight or so, I get
into a region when I can receive them.
As it happens, I'm in rural Cumbria, and get 4500kps on my broadband
even though I'm 6 Km from the exchange. So I'm happy, but I
sympathise with Peter as until late last year my max was 1700kps -
Buttocks Telecom then improved the lines for unrelated reasons.
And it's not Off Topic, as I do my own telecoms wiring - which is a
major contributor to my fantastic broadband speed!
R.
Peter Scott
> This is one of the consequences of choosing to live in a rural area
Doesn't have to be
>
> I suppose that you would also want the same level of mobile phone coverage,
> bus services, and shopping facilities, as urban areas do
Certainly not. But I would not expect to be riding in a slow open cart
and still pay the same fare as on a fast heated bus!
>
> Would you give up the lack of congestion, lower crime rates, lower car
> insurance premiums, cleaner air and the other benefits of a rural
> environment to get your higher broadband speed
I'm not complaining about the benefits of living the country, expensive
though it is. My point is that I pay the same for a poor service, that
it is technically possible to provide a higher speed service to rural
areas, but that there is no commercial pressure to do so.
The threads we have had about improving broadband speeds in the home by
filtering and rewiring mean that this is a problem for DIYers. I was
pointing out that there are perhaps other things that we can do as well.
Peter Scott
meow...@care2.com
Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
the time?
Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
can over double the average speed?
Do you use advert blocking on your browser?
Do you use DNS caching?
Its simply a question of economics. You are unfortunately more
expensive to provide for, so you get less per given price. If you want
to invest the time and money in upping it, you can. You can do this by
implementing the few technical options open to you. Perhaps you
already have.
Look at your suggestion from the point of view of basic market
economics: if your ISP had to pay out £25 every 4th month (for failure
to meet targets) they would simply up the price of the service by
£25/4 per month plus the cost of administering such a scheme. And
anywhere they were not confident of succeeding most of the time they
would simply withdraw the service altogether, and you'd be back to
56k.
Writing whining 'its not fair' letters asking others to solve your
problems has little chance of working. Solving your life problems
yourself does. Life is like that.
I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
NT
The Natural Philosopher
> This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying to
> improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. The government has
> proposed three levels of improvement to the broadband system. Only one
> level would help in rural areas. Up to now I have been resigned to poor
> speeds. Now that urban speeds are set to rocket, services will change to
> use them and soon rural users will be right out in the cold. Wouldn't be
> so bad if I paid a lot less!
>
> I have written to Ofcom and attach the text below. Is anyone else
> interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?
>
> Text of letter...
>
> "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
> kbit/s. Each time I do a speed test I see what speed people get who live
> in the towns and cities. I have done all of the recommended things to
> improve it, but it is clear that it is simply distance from the exchange
> over copper cables that is the problem.
>
> "Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
> speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
> Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
> resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
> the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
>
The kit you are using costs the same..
and multiple tariffs for speed don't really make sense, as what tends to
count for the ISP is the total amount you download, not how fast you get it.
> "The government talks about action to improve speeds. I note that of the
> three proposals the one that would improve rural speeds is the last
> option and, of course, costs the most. The hardened cynic in me knows
> that this is put in as a sop, to make it appear that it is being
> considered. You and I know there is no intention of this being done.
>
> "So what is to be done? The only way that things change in the business
> world is for there to be a threat to income. At the moment there is no
> commercial pressure to spend and improve. In fact ISPs and BT benefit
> from the situation because their cables have to carry less data but they
> get the same money. Creative solutions are needed and money is the
> driver of these things.
>
> "I think that anyone who gets regularly poor speeds should get a refund
> of subscription in the same way that railway companies have to
> compensate lateness. Even better, they should get a much lower rate to
> start to start with. You really do have to do something and this is one
> simple and effective tactic. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept
> rural connections then the situation would be out in the open!"
>
> Peter Scott
Mate, you are lucky to get even that at the sorts of prices you are
talking about. When I started installing internet links, there was only
256kbps of bandwidth into the entire country..
What you need is for BT to out in a whole new exchange nearer to you, or
run fibre or a microwave link to you. They will do that, if you pay. A
lot. If not, put up and shut up, or move.
Why not also complain that you have to drive ten miles to a supermarket?
The Natural Philosopher
There are not.
It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.
make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
can get more speed.
All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.
The Natural Philosopher
Very complicated.
> Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
> can over double the average speed?
No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
> Do you use advert blocking on your browser?
Irrelevant to real download speeds.
> Do you use DNS caching?
>
Irrelevant to download speeds.
>
> Its simply a question of economics. You are unfortunately more
> expensive to provide for, so you get less per given price. If you want
> to invest the time and money in upping it, you can. You can do this by
> implementing the few technical options open to you. Perhaps you
> already have.
>
> Look at your suggestion from the point of view of basic market
> economics: if your ISP had to pay out £25 every 4th month (for failure
> to meet targets) they would simply up the price of the service by
> £25/4 per month plus the cost of administering such a scheme. And
> anywhere they were not confident of succeeding most of the time they
> would simply withdraw the service altogether, and you'd be back to
> 56k.
>
> Writing whining 'its not fair' letters asking others to solve your
> problems has little chance of working. Solving your life problems
> yourself does. Life is like that.
>
> I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
> great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
> and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
> things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
>
And the taxpayers would get pretty pissed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
are paid for out of public money.
>
> NT
Bob Mannix
news:123141193...@proxy02.news.clara.net...
If the OP wishes to get back on topic, he needs to get together with the
rest of his community to investigate the price of a cable link for the whole
community, sharing the installation cost. As you say, writing letters won't
make a difference, sharing the cost round 50-100 people might. At the end of
the day it's the same as complaining you aren't on mains gas or sewerage.
The community has to pay for the infrastructure in all cases at the end of
the day.
--
Bob Mannix
(anti-spam is as easy as 1-2-3 - not)
Bruce
>
>What you need is for BT to out in a whole new exchange nearer to you, or
>run fibre or a microwave link to you. They will do that, if you pay. A
>lot. If not, put up and shut up, or move.
>
>Why not also complain that you have to drive ten miles to a supermarket?
Or that he has no mains drainage, and needs a septic tank instead.
It seems ridiculous to choose to live in the country "to get away from
it all", then complain bitterly when you find that there is one thing
you would have preferred not to get away from.
Rural living is about the whole package, which comes with many benefits
but some fundamental disbenefits. If you can't live with one or more of
the disbenefits, don't live in the country. Simple as that.
The OP is getting broadband speeds that actually seem very good for a
remote location. I hope OFCOM will tell him politely to stick his
"complaint" where the sun don't shine.
In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
http://www.avcbroadband.com/
Bruce
>
>Writing whining 'its not fair' letters asking others to solve your
>problems has little chance of working. Solving your life problems
>yourself does. Life is like that.
Well said.
Bob Mannix
news:n1obm456t4q15oo4h...@4ax.com...
I agree with all your points but the last "practical"? - the cost would make
clubbing together to get a fibre laid into the village an alternative. Doing
that together might even be a bit on topic!
TMC
I only live 1/2 a mile from the post office sorting office yet I have to pay
as much as you to get a letter delivered
The white van man who delivers mail order stuff here does dozens of drops in
a few square miles for very little time and fuel cost yet I have to pay as
much as you for delivery
I do not think that it is fair that I should be subsidising your broadband
as well
Think yourself lucky that you have copper wiring rather than the oxidising
aluminium stuff we have round here
And just because I build my own wardrobes does not make it on topic to
comment here on the cost of the clothes in them
If you want a better broadband try this
http://www.broadbandwherever.net/?gcid=S18514x001&keyword=Rural%20Broadband
Tony
robgraham
Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
near enough offensive.
My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.
I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
see the attitude that is coming across.
All I can say is shame on you all.
Rob
Tim S
>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
>> the time?
>
> Very complicated.
Not necessarily. It's called link aggregation or bonding and if you use an
ISP that supports it, and (for an easy life, but you could DIY it[1]) buy
their recommended router widget that does link aggregation/bonding then in
principle you could do this:
Fit master sockets with ADSL filters to both lines.
Bring both ADSL outputs into one house, and into the modem-router.
Send a bit of CAT5 back into neighbour's house.
If your usage times tend to randomly be different, then you'll tend to see
double normal speeds most of the time.
Now, both neighbours are already paying for the lines, so no extra cost
there.
http://www.aaisp.co.uk/kb-broadband-bonding.html
If the OP wanted to start a cooperative, the in principle, he could get
perhaps 3 or 4 neighbours together to share a common service, depending on
wire lengths between the houses.
Never tried it with ADSL, but I've done multiple gigabit link bonding on
linux servers and it works well.
Cheers
Tim
[1] If the ISP does it using 802.3ad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_aggregation
Then a little cheap Linksys WRT54S running OpenWRT could handle the customer
side quite nicely.
Bruce
>I agree with all your points but the last "practical"? - the cost would make
>clubbing together to get a fibre laid into the village an alternative. Doing
>that together might even be a bit on topic!
It's practical because it works, it solves the problem and, in the
context of the overall cost of a household, it is not unaffordable.
Not cheap, I grant you, but the backup service at Ł39 per month hardly
costs a fortune. Compared to the overall cost of owning/renting/running
a household, it is small beer.
Bruce
>
>I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
>should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
>see the attitude that is coming across.
I think the OP's attitude is utterly selfish and self-indulgent. It has
nothing to do with urban/rural jealousy; city dwellers who moaned about
some negative aspect of city life in the same selfish and self-indulgent
manner would also get short shrift.
I am only surprised that he didn't get a far rougher ride.
Bob Mannix
> "Bob Mannix" <b1o...@mannix.org.uk> wrote:
>>I agree with all your points but the last "practical"? - the cost would
>>make
>>clubbing together to get a fibre laid into the village an alternative.
>>Doing
>>that together might even be a bit on topic!
>
>
> It's practical because it works, it solves the problem and, in the
> context of the overall cost of a household, it is not unaffordable.
>
> costs a fortune. Compared to the overall cost of owning/renting/running
> a household, it is small beer.
Backup service isn't "broadband". The £69/month "broadband" gives you dial
up speeds. For 2Mb it costs £369 per month plus £999 for the equipment plus
£275 installation - hardly small beer!
The Natural Philosopher
pandered, because there ain't no one to pander us. We cut our own trees
down when they fall across the road. We hanlde the inch of ice on the
roads outside that aren'; gritted, We moan about the fact that no matter
how little we use it, a 4WD which is essential, is taxed out of all sense.
We don't moan about the fact that broadband came late, and isn't fast.
Nor te fact that postal deliveries are late, and irregular.
Nor the fact that the nearest supermarket is ten miles away.
Thats why we chose to LIVE here.
Broadband is a commercial entity: Not a government supplied basic human
right.
Martin Bonner
> Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
> aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
> in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
> near enough offensive.
>
> My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
> is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
> environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
> living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.
I don't think so.
For the last two years I have been an urbanite, but for ten years
before that, I lived in a mud hut in rural Suffolk so I understand
both sides of the trade-off.
The aggression is partly because many people (townies and country-
folk) disagree with the OP, and partly because the post is OT and he
won't admit it. (How to insulate the house is on-topic, campaigning
for the gas company to reduce the price of gas is OT.)
TMC
"robgraham" <robkg...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:126feeb2-0bd6-48c7...@y1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
Rob
I have done as you suggest
I stand by all that I have said
It is not a 'city v country' thing its an 'I should be entitled to it
regardless of the cost and my personal choices because others elsewhere have
it' thing
I find it difficult to have any sympathy for the OP who does not even have
the grace in the original post to acknowledge that he is paying no more for
the far more expensive to install and maintain telephone line/exchange that
he complains about than urban users do for theirs
Country dwellers make a reasoned choice to move to or remain in the country,
they know what limitations exist
Is not the principle of the following scenario much the same?
People who live in urban terraced houses should be provided with adequate
parking for several cars as presumably people in the country have this
facility. They should all write to their local council to force this to
happen as they pay their council tax and as much road tax as country
dwellers. Its only a commercial decision after all to knock down some of the
houses to provide the extra parking
Tony
Adrian C
>
> http://www.broadbandwherever.net/?gcid=S18514x001&keyword=Rural%20Broadband
>
> Tony
>
From their description of the Pro-Range service.
"Our Pro-Range is one of the newest Satellite Broadband Products to be
introduced into the UK market, and is fully RoHS Compliant( see FAQ's ).
Using DVB-S standards the Pro-range offers both performance and
reliability to those who can't get broadband via traditional landlines."
Very engaging to start mentioning RoHS in the first sentence!.
"Hell, it's RoHS! - I _must_ get this service!"
;-)
--
Adrian C
meow...@care2.com
Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
> > Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
> > can over double the average speed?
>
> No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
> meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
Yes, but
a) further compression is often possible
b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
speed up webpage loading
> > Do you use advert blocking on your browser?
>
> Irrelevant to real download speeds.
to webpage dl speeds its very relevant. To compressed file dls its not
- but it all makes for higher mean speed.
> > Do you use DNS caching?
> >
> Irrelevant to download speeds.
No pause while it looks up dns info, it removes one instance of
latency
> > I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
> > great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
> > and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
> > things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
> >
>
> And the taxpayers would get pretty pissed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
> are paid for out of public money.
Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.
NT
Andy Burns
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> meow...@care2.com wrote:
>>
>>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
>>> the time?
>>
>> Very complicated.
>
> Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
> and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
Not to do proper load balancing of multiple ADSL lines it doesn't, no
version of Windows does, if you channel bond multiple lines from the
same ISP to a single router it's easier, but lines from different ISPs
is tricky even with Linux, and any one download will tend to use a
single line.
meow...@care2.com
Businesses have now realised that getting real with potential
customers costs money, and its no longer acceptable. 750k isnt bad at
all for a rural location. If he were getting 56k I'd be more
sympathetic.
Another thing that can be done is to have the local server cache as
much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real
fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site.
Browsers already do this of course, but only with limited cache, and
only one a per one user basis.
> In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
> http://www.avcbroadband.com/
Looks usable for business use. Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
sites. Whatever we have, the bloat will simply expand to fill the
space and more.
NT
dennis@home
"Peter Scott" <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote in message
news:uPGdnU4hooPwU_jU...@brightview.com...
> This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying to
> improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. The government has
> proposed three levels of improvement to the broadband system. Only one
> level would help in rural areas. Up to now I have been resigned to poor
> speeds. Now that urban speeds are set to rocket, services will change to
> use them and soon rural users will be right out in the cold. Wouldn't be
> so bad if I paid a lot less!
It costs more to give you any sort of communications..
think yourself lucky we are subsidising you.
You wouldn't want to pay what it costs.
>
> I have written to Ofcom and attach the text below. Is anyone else
> interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?
>
> Text of letter...
>
> "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
> kbit/s. Each time I do a speed test I see what speed people get who live
> in the towns and cities. I have done all of the recommended things to
> improve it, but it is clear that it is simply distance from the exchange
> over copper cables that is the problem.
You can buy a fibre connection or a satellite connection.
There is nothing stopping you and some other locals clubbing together to get
a faster link to share.
>
> "Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
> speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
> Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
> resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly the
> same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
Even though it costs a lot more to give you your connection.
I agree with you you shouldn't get it at the same cost.
I think double or more would be about right.
>
> "The government talks about action to improve speeds. I note that of the
> three proposals the one that would improve rural speeds is the last option
> and, of course, costs the most. The hardened cynic in me knows that this
> is put in as a sop, to make it appear that it is being considered. You and
> I know there is no intention of this being done.
>
> "So what is to be done? The only way that things change in the business
> world is for there to be a threat to income. At the moment there is no
> commercial pressure to spend and improve. In fact ISPs and BT benefit from
> the situation because their cables have to carry less data but they get
> the same money. Creative solutions are needed and money is the driver of
> these things.
Longer cables cost more to maintain, you don't pay any extra.
>
> "I think that anyone who gets regularly poor speeds should get a refund of
> subscription in the same way that railway companies have to compensate
> lateness. Even better, they should get a much lower rate to start to start
> with. You really do have to do something and this is one simple and
> effective tactic. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural
> connections then the situation would be out in the open!"
So you want rural dwellers not to have broadband just because you get less
for your money?
>
> Peter Scott
dennis@home
"Peter Scott" <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote in message
news:PZmdnbBE1KzARfjU...@brightview.com...
> I'm not complaining about the benefits of living the country, expensive
> though it is. My point is that I pay the same for a poor service, that it
> is technically possible to provide a higher speed service to rural areas,
> but that there is no commercial pressure to do so.
If people were prepared to pay for a better service someone would provide
it.
However I doubt if you are prepared to pay.
If you were you would already have a faster service.
> The threads we have had about improving broadband speeds in the home by
> filtering and rewiring mean that this is a problem for DIYers. I was
> pointing out that there are perhaps other things that we can do as well.
DIY fibre laying down rural roads?
meow...@care2.com
> On 8 Jan, 09:59, Peter Scott <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote:
> > I have written to Ofcom and attach the text below. Is anyone else
> > interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?
> >
> > Text of letter...
> >
> > "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
> > kbit/s. Each time I do a speed test I see what speed people get who live
snipped
> Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
> aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
> in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
> near enough offensive.
... and some found the op offensive. Personally I just think its an
attitude that pervades our society today and is absolutely the core of
so many problems people face today. And there is only one solution, to
grow up and act to solve one's own problems. If/when people accept
this, they do so much better in life.
> My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
> is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
> environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
> living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.
I'm glad you acknowledge it is just an assumption. FWIW it has nothing
whatever to do with where I'm coming from.
> I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
> should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
> see the attitude that is coming across.
>
> All I can say is shame on you all.
>
> Rob
Shame on society for fostering this kind of foolishness, and many
people for never getting real and sharing life's solutions with
people. This stuff changes lives. Many people suffer so many problems
from being stuck in the foolish attitude presented. And I mean serious
problems. I shan't apologise for speaking of the real solution, I only
wish people did so more. We still have freedom of speech, and the op
is free to add me to the killfile if they wish.
Part of the solution,
NT
pete
>
>> This is one of the consequences of choosing to live in a rural area
>
> Doesn't have to be
>>
>> I suppose that you would also want the same level of mobile phone coverage,
>> bus services, and shopping facilities, as urban areas do
>
> Certainly not. But I would not expect to be riding in a slow open cart
> and still pay the same fare as on a fast heated bus!
>>
>> Would you give up the lack of congestion, lower crime rates, lower car
>> insurance premiums, cleaner air and the other benefits of a rural
>> environment to get your higher broadband speed
>
> though it is. My point is that I pay the same for a poor service, that
> it is technically possible to provide a higher speed service to rural
> areas, but that there is no commercial pressure to do so.
The ISPs and infrastructure providers are commercial companies, with a certain,
limited amount of money available for hardware and cabling.
You seem to be suggesting that they spend it on upgrades in your sparsely
populated region - which would benefit a small number of people, rather than
spending it in a highly populated area, where it would benefit a larger number.
I would suspect that what you pay for your speeds are still considerably less
than what *everyone* paid for that speed when it was considered cutting-edge.
I would like to be able to view your situation sympathetically, but I can't
think of a single factor that gives me cause to think you're being hard done by.
Andrew Mawson
> This is not OT. Comms is a DIY matter when, like me, you are trying
to
> improve lamentable speed by filters, wiring etc. The government has
> proposed three levels of improvement to the broadband system. Only
one
> level would help in rural areas. Up to now I have been resigned to
poor
> speeds. Now that urban speeds are set to rocket, services will
change to
> use them and soon rural users will be right out in the cold.
Wouldn't be
> so bad if I paid a lot less!
>
> interested in offering an opinion to Ofcom?
>
> Text of letter...
>
> "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around
750
> kbit/s. Each time I do a speed test I see what speed people get who
live
to
> improve it, but it is clear that it is simply distance from the
exchange
> over copper cables that is the problem.
>
The
> speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
> Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
> resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay
exactly
> the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
>
the
> three proposals the one that would improve rural speeds is the last
> option and, of course, costs the most. The hardened cynic in me
knows
> that this is put in as a sop, to make it appear that it is being
> considered. You and I know there is no intention of this being done.
>
> "So what is to be done? The only way that things change in the
business
no
> commercial pressure to spend and improve. In fact ISPs and BT
benefit
> from the situation because their cables have to carry less data but
they
> get the same money. Creative solutions are needed and money is the
> driver of these things.
>
refund
> of subscription in the same way that railway companies have to
> compensate lateness. Even better, they should get a much lower rate
to
> start to start with. You really do have to do something and this is
one
> simple and effective tactic. If it meant that ISPs refused to accept
> rural connections then the situation would be out in the open!"
>
Well I moved from the fringes of London, where I got about 2Mb/s to
here where we have no gas and no mains sewage, but my broadband is now
8Mb/s !!!!!!!
AWEM
The Natural Philosopher
> The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:
>
>>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
>>> the time?
>> Very complicated.
>
> Not necessarily. It's called link aggregation or bonding and if you use an
> ISP that supports it, and (for an easy life, but you could DIY it[1]) buy
> their recommended router widget that does link aggregation/bonding then in
> principle you could do this:
>
> Fit master sockets with ADSL filters to both lines.
>
> Bring both ADSL outputs into one house, and into the modem-router.
>
That the complicated bit.
Easier to order two phone lines and be done with it.
But even so its only double the speed.
Man at B&Q
> "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
> kbit/s.
I don't consider my location particularly rural and i only get 1Mbit/
s. it's more than enough for any normal use.
MBQ
The Natural Philosopher
And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.
>
>>> Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
>>> can over double the average speed?
>> No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
>> meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
>
> Yes, but
> a) further compression is often possible
> b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
> speed up webpage loading
>
>
Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international
links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in
latency.
About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is
usenet and text emails.
>>> Do you use advert blocking on your browser?
>> Irrelevant to real download speeds.
>
> to webpage dl speeds its very relevant. To compressed file dls its not
> - but it all makes for higher mean speed.
>
>
>>> Do you use DNS caching?
>>>
>> Irrelevant to download speeds.
>
> No pause while it looks up dns info, it removes one instance of
> latency
>
DNS lookup are trivial in the context of even a 9.6 kbps link.
>
>>> I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
>>> great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
>>> and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
>>> things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
>>>
>> And the taxpayers would get pretty pissed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
>> are paid for out of public money.
>
> Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
> lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
> expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
> well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.
>
>
Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30
people in his location.
> NT
The Natural Philosopher
You need to run BGP on the router, and unless you are technically
competent no ISP will let you. Well you can run it, but they wont
propagate it. or listen to it.
and any one download will tend to use a
> single line.
>
Not if you do the routing properly.
With equal weighting and a choice of two routes, most routers will round
robin on a packet by packet basis.
>
The Natural Philosopher
> Bruce wrote:
>> The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> wrote:
>
>>> What you need is for BT to out in a whole new exchange nearer to you, or
>>> run fibre or a microwave link to you. They will do that, if you pay. A
>>> lot. If not, put up and shut up, or move.
>>>
>>> Why not also complain that you have to drive ten miles to a supermarket?
>>
>> Or that he has no mains drainage, and needs a septic tank instead.
>>
>> It seems ridiculous to choose to live in the country "to get away from
>> it all", then complain bitterly when you find that there is one thing
>> you would have preferred not to get away from.
>>
>> Rural living is about the whole package, which comes with many benefits
>> but some fundamental disbenefits. If you can't live with one or more of
>> the disbenefits, don't live in the country. Simple as that.
>>
>> The OP is getting broadband speeds that actually seem very good for a
>> remote location. I hope OFCOM will tell him politely to stick his
>> "complaint" where the sun don't shine.
>
> Businesses have now realised that getting real with potential
> customers costs money, and its no longer acceptable. 750k isnt bad at
> all for a rural location. If he were getting 56k I'd be more
> sympathetic.
>
Its brilliant. I only changed from 512k last year. That was in fact more
than adequate for most of what I wanted.
> Another thing that can be done is to have the local server cache as
> much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real
> fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site.
> Browsers already do this of course, but only with limited cache, and
> only one a per one user basis.
>
>
>> In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
>> http://www.avcbroadband.com/
>
> Looks usable for business use. Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
> in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
> sites. Whatever we have, the bloat will simply expand to fill the
> space and more.
>
Well I am designing a web site that has to work on the need of s
broadband line: so its only able to deliver at best about 700kbps upload
to the net.
So I compressed it, and shrunk a 60k page to 16k..hahah.
>
> NT
Peter Scott
points raised. The county where I live subsidises cities. I am not
making that up, it is a fact. I pay the same taxes as anyone else but
the amount of tax-payers money spent per head in the cities is much
higher than in the country. That's why, though I pay very similar
council tax rates, I get much poorer services like roads, policing and
education spending. Central government support is much lower.
Lets take a parallel example - television reception. It is thought
proper that the whole country should get a television signal. Some areas
like hilly and coastal regions couldn't do so without local relays
serving a small number of people. Do we complain about the extra cost?
Does the relay user pay a higher licence fee? No, we accept the premise
that it is an essential service. Do we object that electricity users in
the country have to be provided with long lines at extra cost? No of
course not.
Happily I ignore the ad hominem attacks. If you can't win the argument,
then attack the person. Such tactics have always been looked down on.
Similarly the PC word 'offensive' should be struck from the dictionary.
Peter Scott
The Natural Philosopher
> Now this really is getting off-topic but I want to answer some of the
> points raised. The county where I live subsidises cities. I am not
> making that up, it is a fact. I pay the same taxes as anyone else but
> the amount of tax-payers money spent per head in the cities is much
> higher than in the country. That's why, though I pay very similar
> council tax rates, I get much poorer services like roads, policing and
> education spending. Central government support is much lower.
>
person for years, I subsidised the rest of the population.
So what?
Cities alos benefit you, by making the countryside a nicer place to live in.
> Lets take a parallel example - television reception.
Not the same at all.
For a start the BBC is a subsidised operation, with a mandate to achieve
ncoverage. BT aint. Once a tranmitter exists, its trivial to add
commercial stations to it.
You should be complaining that the licence fee subsidises commercial
stations..
It is thought
> proper that the whole country should get a television signal.
Not by me it aint.
> Some areas
> like hilly and coastal regions couldn't do so without local relays
> serving a small number of people. Do we complain about the extra cost?
> Does the relay user pay a higher licence fee? No, we accept the premise
> that it is an essential service.
I dont.
> Do we object that electricity users in
> the country have to be provided with long lines at extra cost? No of
> course not.
well actually they do end up with a worse service as a result. Cheap
overhead lines prone to lightning damage and trees falling..
>
> Happily I ignore the ad hominem attacks. If you can't win the argument,
> then attack the person. Such tactics have always been looked down on.
> Similarly the PC word 'offensive' should be struck from the dictionary.
>
Te argument is whether or not fast broadband shuld be considered a basic
citizens right, and subsidised to make it so.
So far, Bt has managed to resist being re-nationalised, and we have
believe it or not, a better service than we ever had when it was.
If you want a monopoly state supplier of indifferent broadband,
throttled back so that we all only get 512k,nbecauseits fair that way,
say so.
> Peter Scott
>
Peter Scott
> Peter Scott wrote:
>> Now this really is getting off-topic but I want to answer some of the
>> points raised. The county where I live subsidises cities. I am not
>> making that up, it is a fact. I pay the same taxes as anyone else but
>> the amount of tax-payers money spent per head in the cities is much
>> higher than in the country. That's why, though I pay very similar
>> council tax rates, I get much poorer services like roads, policing and
>> education spending. Central government support is much lower.
>>
> Well if you want to go that route, as a single non married childless
> person for years, I subsidised the rest of the population.
>
> So what?
>
> Cities alos benefit you, by making the countryside a nicer place to live
> in.
Don't quite follow the last point. I don't see how I benefit from
cities. Did you mean by not having lots of houses?
I entirely agree about subsidies however. There are all kinds of them,
including, I hope, one for the cost of providing better broadband in the
country. I was attempting to point out that rural areas subsidise the
cities, and would like a bit back.
To pick up the child point, without people willing to devote time and
money to bringing up children there would not be the future earners to
pay for the care of older people. Even if an older person is entirely
self-sufficient on investments, there has to be a thriving economy to
keep up the value of those investments, and this relies on young
generations.
Peter
GMM
(because the BT lines are rubbish and I can't have cable) while my TV
reception is also rubbish (and I can't have satellite). Can I have a
subsidy to have a more rural lifestyle to compensate for this?
chunkyoldcortina
> This is one of the consequences of choosing to live in a rural area
>
Depends on your definition of rural. I've seen many rural village residents
get excellent broadband speeds, as nowhere is within more than a mile or so
at most from the village's exchange....
Alan Braggins
>meow...@care2.com wrote:
>>>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>>>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
>>>> the time?
>>> Very complicated.
>>
>> Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
>> and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
>
>And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.
As he was already suggesting.
nightjar
"Peter Scott" <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote in message
news:uPGdnU4hooPwU_jU...@brightview.com...
> "I live in the country and have very poor broadband speed, at around 750
> kbit/s....
Better than I do at my business. However, I found that paying for a 5:1
contention ratio made a great improvement to the service.
Colin Bignell
Dave Liquorice
> However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly the same as people
> who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
I don't like the way ADSL is marketed with the "up to" in a 6pt font or in
a footnote against the 8Mbps or 24Mbps in 144pt. Neither does OFCOM and is
attempting to do something about it.
> If it meant that ISPs refused to accept rural connections then the
> situation would be out in the open!"
And there would be no rural broadband at all, just like there is no cable
outside urban/medium sized town areas.
Solution is to get off your bum and get a community broadband service
running. Plenty of experienced help available, good starting point:
Fibre DTH is possible, digging up roads is expensive and complicated
legally. So you don't dig up the roads but bring the land owners on board
to have fibre ducts laid under their land. Commercial contractors charge
for digging holes but out in the country there are plenty of people with
diggers, get them involved. There may even be some one with kit that can
mole the ducts through rather than having to cut 'n cover.
Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more
and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps
internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third
party content providers.
Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally
the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection
these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an
e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can
piggy back on those connections.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Peter Scott
> Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or more
> and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical 100Mbps
> internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services from third
> party content providers.
>
> Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is normally
> the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre connection
> these days. How are your local schools connected? Or hospital, is there an
> e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe line? Maybe the community can
> piggy back on those connections.
Does fibre have to be laid in ducts? I know it is fragile in itself but
surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the
edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been
installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must
be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial
imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal
rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people
worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the
English habit of putting up with things.
Peter Scott
meow...@care2.com
> meow...@care2.com wrote:
> > The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> >> meow...@care2.com wrote:
> >>> Peter Scott wrote:
> >>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
> >>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
> >>> the time?
> >> Very complicated.
> >
> > Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
> > and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
> >
>
> And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.
yes, that is what was being suggested. 2 lines achieves upto twice
peak and mean data rates. The clever bit is that it doesnt increase
ISP subscription costs any.
> >>> Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
> >>> can over double the average speed?
> >> No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
> >> meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
> >
> > Yes, but
> > a) further compression is often possible
> > b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
> > speed up webpage loading
> >
> >
> Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international
> links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in
> latency.
>
> About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is
> usenet and text emails.
Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?
> >>> I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
> >>> great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
> >>> and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
> >>> things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
> >>>
> >> And the taxpayers would get pretty pissed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
> >> are paid for out of public money.
> >
> > Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
> > lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
> > expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
> > well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.
> >
> >
>
> Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30
> people in his location.
I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think
it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do
you not think it would?
NT
meow...@care2.com
Thats exactly what we need more of. I load so many webpages using 100s
of k, and would be happier if they used just 1/10th that. Grossly
bloated code plus bloated content are a pain.
The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix
displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates
total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason. People who do
that typically say 'but we have to think of dialup users' - do they
not realise that for dialuppers theyre making it even worse by loading
10 pages instead of one?
NT
Bob Eager
> Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
> size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?
Because most of them are lossily compressed already?
--
The information contained in this post is copyright the
poster, and specifically may not be published in, or used by
http://www.diybanter.com
TheOldFellow
The Natural Philosopher <a@b.c> wrote:
>
> It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.
>
>
> make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
> can get more speed.
>
>
> All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.
No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse
to even offer it.
R.
Adrian
they were saying:
>> All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.
> No-one ever asks us if we are willing to pay for it. They just refuse
> to even offer it.
Bollocks.
They "refuse" to offer faster ADSL because of the limits of the
technology.
They "refuse" to offer cable, because new cable hasn't been laid
_anywhere_ in the country for YEARS, because of the back debts from
laying the last lot.
You've been given links to faster rural broadband options, available
today. But they're clearly too expensive for you. Oh, wait, you've
claimed that's not the problem.
You'll get faster broadband at some stage, when BT's 21CN upgrades get
around to you. But that probably won't be fast enough for you, because
other people will still have better than you.
I bet you're a _nightmare_ whenever a delivery wagon pulls up outside
next door, trying to see if they've gone a step ahead of you so you need
to go and buy a newer/bigger/faster widget to stay level.
TheOldFellow
Huge <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote:
> On 2009-01-08, meow...@care2.com <meow...@care2.com> wrote:
>
> > Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
> > neighbour's
>
> Neighbour? Wossat?
>
>
The farmer in t'next valley.
R.
Frank Erskine
<pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote:
>Lets take a parallel example - television reception. It is thought
>proper that the whole country should get a television signal. Some areas
>like hilly and coastal regions couldn't do so without local relays
>serving a small number of people. Do we complain about the extra cost?
Many people in rural areas have to club together at their own expense
to build a 'self-help' TV relay station.
>Does the relay user pay a higher licence fee? No, we accept the premise
>that it is an essential service.
I don't accept that it's essential - I don't have a TV set...
--
Frank Erskine
robgraham
I've just found this on the BBC News website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7817748.stm
and would suggest that it is relevent to the discussion.
Rob
Derek Geldard
<theold...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Neighbour? Wossat?
>>
>>
>
>The farmer in t'next valley.
"On the other side"
Na na na na, Na na na na.
Derek
Dave Liquorice
> The other thing that totally pees me off is the likes of screwfix
> displaying just 10 search results per page, which grossly inflates
> total data dl and dl time, and for no visible reason.
For the first page of say a search result but after that there is the "See
All" option. What pees me off is sites that don't have that and/or no
crumb trail.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> Does fibre have to be laid in ducts?
Normally yes. You lay the duct then blow the fibre through. So each end
point needs its own duct all the way back to a fibre hub. The fibre itself
contains two optical cores and two balancing ones but is still pretty
light and feeble. "Duct" might be misleading, AIUI, it's more of a bundle
of tubes one for each end point, I believe a 24 tube duct is about 2" dia.
> I know it is fragile in itself but surely the cables are robust?
Robustish you can get robust fibre cables but I doubt they come cheap
compared to stuff you blow through a duct.
> Has fibre ever been installed overhead?
Attached to the outside of the terraced houses is one of the ways that
fibre might be distributed in the town. It would make sense to be able to
fly across building gaps rather than go up and down.
Putting poles in probably isn't all that cheap, 20 poles per km? Not to
mention the visual impact. Not sure BT would let you share theirs.
> I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must be done, but my
> original point is there has to be some commercial imperative to get
> companies to do it.
With low rural population densities it just isn't going to happen. Even
the government are baulking at the cost of a full UK wide "Next
Generation" installation, figures of £25bn being bandied about, they might
spend £10bn. The big plus is that the government are aware that commercial
companies will not cover rural areas and don't want that digital divide to
get any wider. I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.
> Allowing them to charge normal rate for inferior service (and yes of
> course I know there are people worse off than me) is not going to
> motivate them.
And getting them to charge an even lower rate is?
--
Cheers
Dave.
Owain
"area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..."
Owain
Dave Liquorice
> "area of outstanding natural beauty ... not allowed a dish ..."
Which AONB? No such restriction here (that I'm aware of). National Parks
are different ball game.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Gordon Henderson
Bruce <n...@nospam.net> wrote:
>In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
>http://www.avcbroadband.com/
Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again,
however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes,
it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience.
Big contrast the day before when I did an install that achieved 23Mb/sec
on ADSL2+... However that was in the big city (Bristol!) and 0.5Km from
the main exchange...
The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
willing to share the costs though...
Gordon
(Living on the edge of Dartmoor in rural Devon, getting 8Mb ADSL :)
Rod
arrived at when challenged by that problem. It was accepted. But I'd
guess they could have done that without even being noticed - but they
initially asked about putting one on their house. (That would have been
on a G2 house in small town - can't remember if it was a conservation
area or anything else, but it looked like it)
--
Rod
Hypothyroidism is a seriously debilitating condition with an insidious
onset.
Although common it frequently goes undiagnosed.
<www.thyromind.info> <www.thyroiduk.org> <www.altsupportthyroid.org>
meow...@care2.com
> On Thu, 8 Jan 2009 18:41:43 UTC, meow...@care2.com wrote:
>
> > Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
> > size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?
>
> Because most of them are lossily compressed already?
doesnt make any difference to the fact that one can greatly reduce
file size by further (lossy) compression
NT
meow...@care2.com
Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt. When there is
you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time. When there
isnt...
NT
Dave Liquorice
> Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
> endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone
line for that? The satellite only providing the down link?
> The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
> willing to share the costs though...
It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the
uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy,
any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing
you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt.
Not there for a list with less than 10 items?
> When there is you get to load the page twice - what a waste of time.
True it would be better if you could make it sticky with a cookie or
something.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Gordon Henderson
Dave Liquorice <allsortsn...@howhill.com> wrote:
>On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 08:57:38 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson wrote:
>
>> Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
>> endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
>
>Does that use the satellite for the uplink or do you still need a phone
>line for that? The satellite only providing the down link?
According to the website, it's 2-way.
>> The faster ones might be very suitable for a small community who were
>> willing to share the costs though...
>
>It's certainly an option for the backhaul but you really need one with the
>uplink on the satellite as well. Satellite doesn't do a lot for latentcy,
>any gamers would throw a hissy fit. B-) I guess for ordinary browsing
>you'd get use to the second or so delay from click to anything happening.
Yup. Gamers would not be happy, but for people doing businessey type
stuff - ie. no games/p2p, big streaming stuff, it looks OK. They even say
that VoIP works OK over it. There will be latency, but that's managable,
even in VoIP.
I used an aramiska link some time back for interactive stuff (ssh)
and it was mangable. The latency wan't really noticable for general web
browsing or email.
Gordon
Peter Scott
in my knowledge about fibre. If BT were to do the cabling then they
would use their own poles of course and they are already there in most
places. Satellite is not really the answer. The relatively low speeds
and high cost and latency makes them unviable.
As you will see from my original posting I don't believe that there is
any intention of providing a remotely comparable service outside of
towns. I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community
enterprises.
I later made the point that rural areas subsidise the cities and it is
not unreasonable to expect some subsidy in the opposite direction for
such as data transmission. This might answer your valid point about
maintenance costs not being met by income. We now have a generation that
has never known other than Thatcherite 'thinking' about the infinite
'wisdom' of the market. There are areas where the market is
inappropriate and this is one of them. Don't get me wrong. I remember
the bad old days of waiting six months to get a phone line. Privatising
BT was mostly a great idea. But as enormous sums of tax revenue are
pumped into rail, a similar case can be made for money to be put into
the data system. Indeed more people use the Internet than trains.
My point about lower charges for lower speeds was not entirely serious.
However whilst suppliers can say 'well they've now got broadband so stop
whining' (not mentioning the increasing differential in speeds), the
future problems become hidden. Yes there are many inefficient web sites
that soak up bandwidth. IT was ever thus. Just take a look at
Microsoft's bloatware! Back in the 80s who would have thought that PCs
would need to store digital photos each of which would take up more than
entire hard disk of 10Mb? Why on earth do we need bus speeds higher than
1MHz? The Internet is a wonderful resource that enables business and
draws people together nationally and across the world. It must not be
throttled in its application by failure to invest.
Peter Scott
Rod
Only available where there are fewer than, I think, 6 'normal' pages.
Hacks me off that even sites that allow a full 'see all' option (or just
'long' pages) frequently cannot remember from one session to another -
even when they store cookies anyway.
The Natural Philosopher
> In article <123142883...@proxy01.news.clara.net>, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> meow...@care2.com wrote:
>>>>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>>>>> neighbour's broadband lines so you both get twice the speed most of
>>>>> the time?
>>>> Very complicated.
>>> Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
>>> and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
>> And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.
>
No he wsn't He was suggesting that te combination of a
a twin NIC windows box
a neighbour some unspeified distance away
was a magic solution for bandwidth.
Well it isn't.
The Natural Philosopher
>
>> Fibre is the way to go if possible, should have life of 20 years or
>> more and upgrades just mean changing the kit on the ends. Symmetrical
>> 100Mbps internet connection? See if you can sell bandwidth/services
>> from third party content providers.
>>
>> Backhaul rather than local distribution (fibre or wireless) is
>> normally the hard bit, not sure how much BT want for a gigabit fibre
>> connection these days. How are your local schools connected? Or
>> hospital, is there an e-Health initiative happening or in the pipe
>> line? Maybe the community can piggy back on those connections.
>
> Does fibre have to be laid in ducts?
Yes, but they dont have to be underground.Its normally 'blown' dwon
plastic tubes.
I know it is fragile in itself but
> surely the cables are robust? The copper runs are all overhead once the
> edge of the town is reached about 3km away. Has fibre ever been
> installed overhead? I can see that fibre or wireless is the way it must
> be done, but my original point is there has to be some commercial
> imperative to get companies to do it. Allowing them to charge normal
> rate for inferior service (and yes of course I know there are people
> worse off than me) is not going to motivate them. It all smacks of the
> English habit of putting up with things.
>
> Peter Scott
Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of
optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto..
Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't
need a lot of em.
The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters.
A whole new architecture is needed.
* from memory.
The Natural Philosopher
> I'm confident that money will be available for community
> based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
> available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
> the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
> subscriptions are pretty much essential.
>
Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?
Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.
The Natural Philosopher
> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> meow...@care2.com wrote:
>>> The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> meow...@care2.com wrote:
>
>>>>> Have you considered using a server to use your and one or more
>>>> Very complicated.
>>> Even a humble win98 box supports this. Just need a second nic
>>> and the cd or 98 files to install the necessary non-default bits.
>>>
>> And waht will that achieve? you need a second phone line.
>
> peak and mean data rates. The clever bit is that it doesnt increase
> ISP subscription costs any.
>
>
>>>>> Do you use a compression service that sends all files compressed, this
>>>>> can over double the average speed?
>>>> No one sends uncompressed data over the internet anyway. Even the
>>>> meanest of web pages probably is compressed.
>>> Yes, but
>>> a) further compression is often possible
>>> b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
>>> speed up webpage loading
>>>
>>>
>> Sorry mate, but we tried this way back in the 90's on international
>> links. we got about 10% improvement, at the expense of a doubling in
>> latency.
>>
>> About the only ting that isn't compressed to the hilt these days is
>> usenet and text emails.
>
> Why would lossy compression of images, which can reduce image file
> size by a factor of say 8, make little difference?
>
Images are always compressed. GIF, JPEG, PNG - all compressed to the
hilt.If you mean reducing image *size* or *quality*, that's a different
matter. Most compresion f data streams is designed to give 100% recovery
of the actual raw data: with an overcompressed JPEG you don't get the
quality back ever.
I did that on the fly to ensure that thumbnails weren't massive pictures
displayed small..
>
>>>>> I think national investment in rural broadband provision would be a
>>>>> great thing, but you and I thinking that doesnt make any difference,
>>>>> and saying it makes even less. The think tanks that decide these
>>>>> things arent paid to spend months sitting around reading letters.
>>>>>
>>>> And the taxpayers would get pretty pissed if the 0.1% who cant get 1Mbps
>>>> are paid for out of public money.
>>> Its infrastructure that makes businesses work. Taxpayers dont mind
>>> lots of other infrastructure with the same goal - and far more
>>> expensive infrastructure at that. Although its not libertarian, it may
>>> well add up financially for the public purse and country as a whole.
>>>
>>>
>> Get real. This is infrastructure for one person,. or at beast 20-30
>> people in his location.
>
> I was discussing national investment in rural broadband. I would think
> it clear that this will have a positive impact on british business. Do
> you not think it would?
>
Not really, no.
Since the numbers of people living at the end of very long lines is
rather small.
>
> NT
The Natural Philosopher
Why not replace all images with a line saying 'here used to be an image
here' and be done with it?
>
> NT
The Natural Philosopher
>> much as possible with a big disc, then revisits to pages load real
>> fast, plus all the reused elements of new pages on the same site.
>
> I already do this; I run a squid proxy.
>
>> Perhaps slow rural speeds is a blessing
>> in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
>> sites.
>
> Won't happen. Web sites are designed by gel-haired, oddly bespectacled weirdoes
> dressed all in black with perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to their
> servers with gigabit ethernet. That's why so many of them are crap. Someone
> pointed me at a "5 a day" video this morning on an HMG website; it's 176Mb. Like
> I'm going to wait 30 or 40 minutes for *that* to download.
>
I resent that. Apart from the bespectacled weirdo bit.
My eyesight is crap and I never wear black, and never use gel.
Tim S
What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?
I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).
If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.
That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.
It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.
Wonder if any village has done this?
I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
woks) as signal directors.
Cheers
Tim
pete
> Bruce <n...@nospam.net> wrote:
>
>>In the meantime, here's a practical alternative:
>>http://www.avcbroadband.com/
>
> Hm. Prices have certinaly come down a lot for satellite internet. The
> endty level @£69 is OK for email and some lightweight web browsing
> if you're patient. Web sites seem to have gone overboard a bit again,
> however I was at the end of a 512Kb ADSL line ysterday for a bit, and yes,
> it really felt slow, but it was more than usable with a bit of patience.
Prices may have dropped, but have you seen the (frankly unusable) data
limits? 1GB before they start to drop your speed from 512Kbit/sec.
If you're unhappy with a 750kbit/sec landline speed, then I can't see
that a 1Gbyte limit will last long. You certainly couldn't run a web-
based business with such a poor and expensive service agreement.
Gordon Henderson
I did this for real some years back. Supported 3 communities in
Devon & Cornwall via Wi-Fi. 2 companies went bust trying to make it
work. (fortunately I just staff/contractor) I only kept it going with
a grant before BT enabled the exchanges...
It really wasn't financially viable. Probably still isn't. Our biggest
hit was the installation because we did it properly with outdoor kit,
proper line of sight and so on. We had to pay farmers, and others for
the use of their roof-tops to put the kit on, then getting in a 10Mb
backhaul feed wasn't cheap. (Neither was the kit to send that signal
17.5Km via a 5.8Ghz link to the local head ends)
You can bodge it with mesh, indoor antennae and so on, but it won't be
reliable with no guarantees of service, limited bandwidth, and so on.
Ah well, those were the days. Money up-front if I ever had to do it again.
Gordon
The Natural Philosopher
> The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:
>
>> Dave Liquorice wrote:
>>> I'm confident that money will be available for community
>>> based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
>>> available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
>>> the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
>>> subscriptions are pretty much essential.
>>>
>> Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?
>>
>> Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
>> at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
>> laying that kills you.
>
> What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?
>
Not cost effective versus BT copper basically.
If people were prepared to sign up to £30 a month for high speed
broadband, many things would be possible.
With people offering deals at £15 or less, its not worth raising capital
for.
Wifi only covers the last couple of hundred yards at best anyway. - you
still have top lay fibre or tight beam microwave TO it. And it congests
fast.
> I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
> and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
> needed).
>
> If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
> hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.
>
Yup. Its doable if thats what people want.
But you need s strong technically competent local team to do it.
> That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
> a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
> of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
> couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
> to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
> might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
> taking a supply.
>
You can get anything of BT/ISP's if you pay for it. 2Mbps to your house
rock solid 1:1 contention ration and zero throttling..for a mere 12k a
year or so.
> It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
> Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
> advantageous.
>
> Wonder if any village has done this?
>
WE tried, but it was doomed. BT imply saw where the interest was, and
broadband enabled the villages that looked like their act was getting
together. At silly prices as hey get their backhaul at trade prices..
> I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
> mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
> woks) as signal directors.
>
Woks are good, yes.
> Cheers
>
> Tim
Gordon Henderson
Tim S <t...@dionic.net> wrote:
>The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:
>
>> Dave Liquorice wrote:
>>> I'm confident that money will be available for community
>>> based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
>>> available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
>>> the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
>>> subscriptions are pretty much essential.
>>>
>>
>> Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?
>>
>> Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
>> at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
>> laying that kills you.
>
>What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?
>
>I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
>and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
>needed).
And that's the crux of the proble. It was costing us £200+ to do each
install and the punters would not pay that. You need people with insurance
and ladders - specially if you're going to drill into peoples houses. We
used local sky installers and they weren't cheap. Do it yourself, crack
some external render/plasterwork and you've suddenly got something more
to wory about than just putting a cable through the wall...
>If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
>hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.
And one p2p'er will kill the lot.
>That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
>a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
>of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
>couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
>to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
>might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
>taking a supply.
We got just over 100 people (out of 1800 houses) to put their names on
a bit of paper in one town. This was after running an 18-month funded
project to raise awareness and research the effects of broadband in a
rural community. Then barely 50 committed to the install of £99, which
was less than half what it was really costing. Our first customers
cheque bounced on us. Then trying to get £25 a month out of them was
like pulling swords out of stone )-:
On paper, 50 customers at £25 looks good, but the running costs (without
staff) were close to £1000 a month - to buy the backhaul, pay for space
on the masts and farmers, etc.)
>It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
>Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
>advantageous.
>
>Wonder if any village has done this?
Do yourself a favour and don't do it.
>I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
>mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
>woks) as signal directors.
You don't need woks - I recently did help a friend in Wales as it happens,
to get a link to his neighbour about a mile away - good line of sight at
roof-top level using older, but good outdoor kit with flat-plate antennae.
(smartBridges kit)
The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles in Cornwall using a standard
12db omni at the access point and and an 18db grid parabolic antennae
at the client end. Good line of sight though - client was uphill from
the base.
Gordon
Dave Liquorice
> Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of
> optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto..
If jointing the fibre no, that is a skilled and time consuming process. If
the lenghts aren't particulary long it's probably easier to blow the old
ones out and new ones in.
> Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't
> need a lot of em.
DTH needs one fibre cable per home/end point back to a "hub". Another way
of distributing the connections is fibre to "good site(s)" then wireless
as the final link. You can get reliable wireless stuff these days that
doesn't use 2.5GHz (WiFi and loads of other stuff) and will give speeds to
a few tens of Mbps over decent distances. Personally I'd want to put in
DTH fibre with development grant support.
> The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters.
Find suitable places with mains, install your kit there, give the owners a
free connection as payment.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
> at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
> laying that kills you.
IIRC our backhaul (5Mbps symmetrical with allowed bursts to 10Mbps no
useage limits) costs 10k+/year for 300 customers. £33/year/customer or two
months subs at our top rate. Trouble is most of our subs are at £8/month
not £18. After the backhaul cost there is about £30k to pay for the full
time admin and network maintenace staff (one of each) plus network
maintenance and all the other on going costs like site/office rental,
power, marketing, not forgetting a sinking fund to upgrade/replace the
network infrastructure after say 5 years. Though with fibre that might not
be so pressing, our network is now 6/7 years old based on WiFi and is
creaking both from increased traffic levels and equipment failure due to
age.
Of course if you have people volunteer to do the admin/network maintenance
for free from home that helps an awful lot but possibly with quite an
impact if the network dies and your volunteer is busy doing their paid day
job.
The chances are you would get grant funding for the capital outlay
associated with digging holes, installing servers, and possibly the first
12 months backhaul costs. What you won't get funding for is all those
ongoing costs, like the backhaul after the 1st 12 months...
Yes, a "village ISP" is viable, there are plenty of places with such self
help systems in place but the economics can be a bit border line.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> If BT were to do the cabling then they would use their own poles of
> course and they are already there in most places.
But you'd need to provide the arms and legs of all your customers to pay
for it. Anyway I don't think BT would do it. If they are going to fibre an
area why do it for some one else when they could do it for themselves and
get the income from that work.
You do it, own the network and sell capacity to content providers.
> I am encouraged that you think there will be money for community
> enterprises.
I don't think I know there is money available. What I think is that there
is going to be even more money available in the not too distant future.
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> With people offering deals at £15 or less, its not worth raising capital
> for.
That depends on the distrubution of the population in relation to the
telephone exchange. If there are a lot of people more than say 3 miles
from the exchange and/or the local copper(ali...) is crap then ADSL is
going to be slow and at the mercy of BT Openreach fixing it (residential
line, two, three, 5 days?).
> Wifi only covers the last couple of hundred yards at best anyway.
Spherical objects. We have many AP to end user hops well over a mile. You
do need line of sight though, which for places with trees can be a
problem. Few trees up here...
> - you still have top lay fibre or tight beam microwave TO it.
Not impossible.
> And it congests fast.
Agreed, our WiFi based network was fine when it was installed but now down
in the town with the plorification of home WiFi LANs the air space is
*very* crowded. We offer a cheap "set up your wireless LAN" service to try
an mitigate some of the problems by shifting private LANs to different
channels to reduce mutal interference problems.
Network congestion hasn't been to much of an issue until recently and then
only on some links, users are bandwidth limited though.
> You can get anything of BT/ISP's if you pay for it. 2Mbps to your house
> rock solid 1:1 contention ration and zero throttling..for a mere 12k a
> year or so.
Which will probably be provided on fibre so why mess about with 2Mbps go
for the 1Gbps. B-)
--
Cheers
Dave.
Dave Liquorice
> And one p2p'er will kill the lot.
Yep, when we put our network in there was no bandwidth or useage limit.
One or two people then started to hog the bandwidth and effectively
denying everyone else access to the internet. We had to introduce a scale
of tarrifs with different bandwidth limits, still true unlimited useage
though.
> The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles ...
We have several backbone links of that length and a couple considerably
longer. 24" dishes each end for the long hops, yagis in tubes for shorter
ones.
--
Cheers
Dave.
The Natural Philosopher
> On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:53:53 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> Trouble with overhead, is that its not as simple to replace a bit of
>> optical fibre that a tree has crashed onto..
>
> If jointing the fibre no, that is a skilled and time consuming process. If
> the lenghts aren't particulary long it's probably easier to blow the old
> ones out and new ones in.
>
>> Mind you since a fibre is currently capable of about 8Gbps*, you don't
>> need a lot of em.
>
> DTH needs one fibre cable per home/end point back to a "hub".
I think we are slightly at cross purposes.
What I had in mind ws that BT would install a load of one to many fibre
repeaters/multiplexers in street cabinets fed with power from the exchange.
The a single fiber from the street cab to the home.
And probably some sort of video caching kit in each exchange. So that
downloading videos was real time.
> Another way
> of distributing the connections is fibre to "good site(s)" then wireless
> as the final link. You can get reliable wireless stuff these days that
> doesn't use 2.5GHz (WiFi and loads of other stuff) and will give speeds to
> a few tens of Mbps over decent distances. Personally I'd want to put in
> DTH fibre with development grant support.
>
wots DTH?
>> The real issue is taking power down to repeaters and splitters.
>
> Find suitable places with mains, install your kit there, give the owners a
> free connection as payment.
>
Till that mains goes..
Nope. For resilience it all has to be fed from the exchanges.
I cant see a better solution than using BT streetboxes as fibre fed
exchange powered concentrators.
Even if you still had copper to the home, you should be able to get
about 20Mbps over a 100m or so. With rewire with cat 5, 100Mbps.
That is what needs to be done realistically: Upgrade each exchange for
more bandwidth, then start pushing the fibre further towards the
customer on a case by case basis.
Mark
<pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote:
>"Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
>speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
>Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
>resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
>the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
Why not get a 512K or 1M product? Then you won't be paying the same
as people who get 4-8M.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.
See http://improve-usenet.org
meow...@care2.com
I used to when on dialup, but a lot of pages dont render acceptably if
you do that today. Plus pictures do have their use!
NT
meow...@care2.com
> On Fri, 9 Jan 2009 01:59:30 -0800 (PST), meow...@care2.com wrote:
>
> > Sometimes there is a 'see all', sometimes there isnt.
>
> Not there for a list with less than 10 items?
Often not there for multipage results. It turns a simple task into a
monumental waste of time.
Toolstation site is even worse, for other more basic reasons. Why dont
these sizeable businesses realise theyre screwing up on basic stuff
and losing sales.
NT
meow...@care2.com
> > in that it will encourage many businesses to create less bloated
> > sites.
> Won't happen. Web sites are designed by ...
> perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to their
> servers with gigabit ethernet.
(snipped)
Thats the cause, but any web designer with a clue should try their
site on the connections users actually use - which includes 56k.
Failure to do so is incompetent.
NT
Andy Champ
>
> There are not.
>
> It's entirely - in the limit - down to the length of wire to the exchange.
>
>
> make it shorter, make it fibre, or replace with microwave link, and you
> can get more speed.
>
>
> All of those cost more money than you are willing to pay.
I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
doing it right in the first place would not have been.
Andy
Andy Champ
>
> Yes, but
> a) further compression is often possible
> b) lossy compression is possible for images, this can dramatically
> speed up webpage loading
>
Oh there's an idea I can use lossy compression on those jpeg images on
the web server. Oh hang on...
Andy
Andy Burns
> I didn't get asked when they chose to use aluminium instead of copper to
> our local exchange. The cost of _replacing_ it is high; the cost of
> doing it right in the first place would not have been.
I thought the reason they DID use copper (in the 70's?) was because
copper prices HAD gone through the roof?
Bruce
They didn't know that at the time.
Much of Milton Keynes was wired with aluminium, and this apparently
restricts broadband speeds quite severely.
Andy Burns
> I thought the reason they DID use copper
^^^^^^
aluminium obviously
PCPaul
Right-sizing them does help, though. Many web servers still have huge
images displayed as a 100x100 thumbnail on the web page.
Peter Scott
> On Thu, 08 Jan 2009 09:59:10 +0000, Peter Scott
> <pe...@peter-scott.org.uk> wrote:
>
>> "Doing a speed test today set me thinking about what should be done. The
>> speed I get is just about acceptable for the uses to which I put the
>> Internet. I won't be able to use any of the new services, but I am
>> resigned to that. However what really annoys me is that I pay exactly
>> the same as people who get 4 Mbit/s or better.
>
> Why not get a 512K or 1M product? Then you won't be paying the same
> as people who get 4-8M.
>
>
these are at the same price as my 'up to 8'. Unless you know better...
dennis@home
"Huge" <Hu...@nowhere.much.invalid> wrote in message
news:gk5bti$ii4$2...@anubis.demon.co.uk...
> Won't happen. Web sites are designed by gel-haired, oddly bespectacled
> weirdoes
> dressed all in black with perfect eyesight and huge monitors connected to
> their
> servers with gigabit ethernet. That's why so many of them are crap.
> Someone
> pointed me at a "5 a day" video this morning on an HMG website; it's
> 176Mb. Like
> I'm going to wait 30 or 40 minutes for *that* to download.
That would only take about 3 minutes on my ADSL link. 8-)
dennis@home
"robgraham" <robkg...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:126feeb2-0bd6-48c7...@y1g2000pra.googlegroups.com...
8<
> Having read through this thread, I have been surprised at the
> aggression of the responders. This NG is normally extremely tactful
> in its comments to OP's but in this case I found many of the answers
> near enough offensive.
>
> My assumption is that this is a demonstration of the disconnect that
> is occurring in UK society between those living in urban and rural
> environments, with the urbanites all too often classifying anyone
> living outside the towns and cities as winging scroungers.
>
> I would suggest that all of you who have contributed to this thread
> should do as I have done and re-read all the responses and you will
> see the attitude that is coming across.
>
> All I can say is shame on you all.
His whinge is in the same class as the idiots that buy houses on flood
planes and then demand a flood control scheme at great expense to everyone
else who wouldn't have bought a hose that floods in the first place.
All his letter says is "It costs more to supply broadband to me but its
slower and I want a bigger subsidy and sod the others".
>
> Rob