Zardon

^_^ has written a nice little guide for all the USA guys here new to broadband and looking for an ISP.

you can read the guide over here

Drakon

Nice article ^_^

I tested my cable internet and here are the results:

Btw, comcast only charges $3 for a rental fee of the modem. Dunno if that's a good deal or not.

aaronbond

I think that's an unfair statement. In no way are they tricking you nor are they being deceitful. They are being 100% true to their capabilities. The wording is abit harsh. I always believed 3mbps = 3mbps never 3MB/sec.

Like mine is 5mbps/384kbps which is roughly 640KB/sec down and 48KB/sec up

Use the bit calculator if you want to find out in the "Byte system" as it's called in the article.

http://www.matisse.net/bitcalc/

btw I get 620 consistently from good servers with good routes. 44 out on my FTP.

I find that the site below is better than the dslreports servers because they are usually overloaded and don't get the values right. Testmy has truer results.

http://www.testmy.net/

Nonetheless thanks for the article ^_^

__________________
Windows® XP Pro w/ SP2 // Athlon 64® Venice 3500+ E3 2.2Ghz w/ MSI Neo2 Pro Plat // BFG 6800GT OC @ stock // ASUS K8N // 2GB Corsair Perf. 2.5-2-3-6 // 74GB WD Raptor // Creative Audigy2 Value

Good Times!

mike2h

nice article! gets the basics out to people in an easy to understanf format. thx.
bty i just went through all this with my cable provider. kinda funny.
the above poster needs to reread your article. they are NOT saying 3mbps, they ARE saying 3 meg. which is exactly what you stated. and you hit the level1&2 support not having a clue about this diff right on the head.
one thing you might want add in is latency. overall cable is faster but tends to have higher latency. dsl is slower but lower latency. at least this holds true for where i live, a part of oregon, parts of the la area, & a small part of florida. i know quite a feww gamers who have gone back to dsl just for this reason.
thx again for a nice article.

__________________

MIG-31

http://www.testmy.net/

that test does not show good results. i just upgraded to 2mb (this were tested by a demo download yesterday and the download rate were bang on) bb and this link states i have 1mb for downloads.

uploads is not good either.i am also taking a small note of router differences as im in the uk....but this did also note who my provider is.

but as the main article in question,it were a good read.

__________________

Zardon

Its a USA site mig, you are in the UK, use one of the many UK broadband tests.

MIG-31

i Know just stateing a small point.. (i meant to add this to my original post) i am aware of the performance drop of the distance between all tests.

(got sidetracked on the time for the edit)

the test were still interesting..

__________________

Vikingod

Good guide, i told a guy I work with about it, he found it helped him understand a lot. Good work

__________________

@/2ct!<

I would also like to add some generalizations that I tend to see. Cable is more susceptible to prime time slowdown in evenings than dsl, more tv watchers and more people in general overloading the community node. My DSL is slower than local cable for download, but much higher for upldoad. Also, my DSL has some craptastic interleave error correction for more stability than cable, but it also has an increase ping. In general, it seems people with cable have lower pings than people with DSL.

__________________
A64 @ 2.45 Ghz, x800xt, l90d+, 1 Gig DDR 400 @222

Judas

i find DSL reports and that testmy.net site absalutely terrible.

Specially if your load balancing... it'll totally throw you out.

For example... my nets rating is this : 5mb/1mb

DSL reports reguardless of what one i use, spits out that i'm running a smidge over 1.5mb/32kb connection

testmy.net preformed even worse, spitting out a 512kb/8kb connection saposedly

IMO, for your general overall "round the world" test.... not to mention load balancing support if you pick test with 2+ things to load at once...

http://performance.toast.net/default...vers=1&checkid=



Article was good though

__________________

digerati

I'm glad you all enjoyed my article.

And Aaron, I do not think it's unfair to call them deceitful. When they first started advertising around here they would not use the term "Meg" and they would state speds such as "50 times faster than dialup" comparing it to a 56k modem. But now they're doing things like calling it 3 meg system and saying "100 times faster" and are comparing it to a 33k modem which I don't even think any company makes anymore! So I do think that they have gone down a deceitful route in their advertising.

And when I get home and have some free time I think I'll work on an Internet Shopping Guide as I can see it being really useful to a lot of people. I'll go through information nranging from choosing what sites to buy from, how to protect yourself from false sites, and how to take care of yourself on ebay

Anyways I've got to go back to entertaining my friend. I'm really happy you guys enjoyed the guide and I hope many more will enjoy it soon

Judas

remember to try and include canada....

__________________

digerati

lol All I know about Canada I learned from jokes. eg.
Robin Williams: "You know the canadian currency is also called the looney. How can you take an economic crises seriously? The Looney Is Down! Oh how sad for you!"

TJ-

so true....

the loonie and the toonie.... soo funny, gunna be going back for a holiday soon, cant wait...

__________________
new sig comming soon

Randy P

Yeah gotta love us whackey Canadians.....

Great article by the way!!!