Internet Speed

Posted by: JamieWednesday on 16 September 2018

Well, that was worth a call.

Those nice people at Virgin have just dropped £35 of my monthly bill for a year and boosted my internet speed. It was already pretty efficient at 220 mpbs and with 4 people in house the bandwidth is needed. New download test just came in at 375mbps (!!!) and upload at 20.

No quibbles either, he didn't even wait for prepared spiel (though one could argue that they could have rewarded my 'loyalty' directly...)

Which is nice.

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by MDS

Nice result, Jamie.  375 mbps - wow!   

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by French Rooster

For me it is 14 Mbs.    The average in France is 9.    The average in Korea South is 27.  For what I found on the net.   I have no fiber in my street.      I wonder if the sound would be better with 50 Mbs ?

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by Hmack
French Rooster posted:

For me it is 14 Mbs.    The average in France is 9.    The average in Korea South is 27.  For what I found on the net.   I have no fiber in my street.      I wonder if the sound would be better with 50 Mbs ?

Not sure whether this is a genuine question or not, but no it wouldn't.

I currently get around 36 Mbs from my provider, and the sound of my external streaming service (Tidal) is to my ears identical to that when my bandwidth was around 3.5 Mbs. The additional bandwidth is very useful for large downloads such as high definition films or when multiple applications are being used, but I found that the Tidal service streamed pretty flawlessly for me with my original 3.5 Mbs connection. 

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by French Rooster
Hmack posted:
French Rooster posted:

For me it is 14 Mbs.    The average in France is 9.    The average in Korea South is 27.  For what I found on the net.   I have no fiber in my street.      I wonder if the sound would be better with 50 Mbs ?

Not sure whether this is a genuine question or not, but no it wouldn't.

I currently get around 36 Mbs from my provider, and the sound of my external streaming service (Tidal) is to my ears identical to that when my bandwidth was around 3.5 Mbs. The additional bandwidth is very useful for large downloads such as high definition films or when multiple applications are being used, but I found that the Tidal service streamed pretty flawlessly for me with my original 3.5 Mbs connection. 

Yes it was a genuine question and thanks for your reply.  So finally, there seems to be no relation between internet speed and sound quality ?     If I subscribe one day to fiber internet, when it will be available, the sound quality of my streaming audio should not improve ?  ( genuine question too).

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by fatcat

Am I missing something.

Why do you need more than 220 mbps if there are only 4 people in the house. Netflix HD only needs 5 mbps, Ultra HD 25 mbps.

Over the last few years, I’ve found it a lot easier to negotiate a reduction with Virgin, no need to actually leave before they come up with a discount. A couple of years ago, they gave me a deal that was definatley a mistake, but because they’d emailed me a contract with package and price, they honoured it.

Virgin mobile sent me a letter telling me my sim only contract was going up from £8 to £10. I phoned them up telling them I didn’t want pay that much. When he asked me how much I wanted to pay, I said £5, he said “yes we can do that”

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by JamieWednesday

I don’t ‘need’ more, they just provided more.

Posted on: 16 September 2018 by fatcat

I wonder what would happen if everybody similtaineously downloaded at their maximum speed.

When a customer phones them up, they have historical information at hand concerning download levels. They could have upgraded you speed to 10,000 mbps with the knowledge your household might only peak at 75 mbps. (except when you're perfoming a speed test. )

Over the years my speed has increased from 25 to 100 mbps, they use this to justify price increases, even though I don’t even need 25 mbps.

Posted on: 17 September 2018 by Innocent Bystander

The greatest demand in my house seems to be two young adults (I have ti try to stop calling them children!) gaming online. We have a nominal 100Mbps connection, though more commonly closer to 50, and not infrequently has been known to drop below 20, even below 10. One son has asked that as soon as they make 200 available we go for that, saying he’ll pay the difference.

However, it’s not just achievable bitrate that can affect usage, I presume also the reliability of streaming: e.g other factors like latency. Others are more knowledgeable than I can doubtless expand.

Posted on: 17 September 2018 by JamieWednesday

Yep, my techie knowledge of this is limited.

Gotta say though that since Virgin took on the NTL internet service many, many years ago, we've found it's been near faultless.

The Virgin TV boxes and OS on the other hand...

Posted on: 17 September 2018 by Tony Lockhart

Some arguments remind me of when someone told me in 1996 that the PC I'd just assembled was over the top. P120, 8mb, 1.7Gb, 16x CD! I replied that nothing smaller/slower was available!

Posted on: 17 September 2018 by Simon-in-Suffolk
French Rooster posted:

Yes it was a genuine question and thanks for your reply.  So finally, there seems to be no relation between internet speed and sound quality ?     If I subscribe one day to fiber internet, when it will be available, the sound quality of my streaming audio should not improve ?  ( genuine question too).

Hi.. yes there can be a relation to sync speed and SQ. A key variable that effects SQ in Naim streamers (potentially like the differences between WAV and FLAC playback) is round trip latency to the streaming service provider. Latency can be affected by many things, but one thing that can affect is very asymmetric connection sync speeds to your service provider, especially when there are many concurrent TCP flows. (The limiting factor becomes the uplink sync speed, not the downlink sync speed). The new  Naim streamers have been designed to mitigate this to a large extent ..but I have not analysed this on the new architectures  as I did with the older streamers.

The remedy I use for the older streamers is to use a streaming UPnP proxy server... it allows internet streaming to sound like home streaming... because that is what it has effectively become..

Simon

Posted on: 18 September 2018 by Hmack

Simon, 

Have you actually heard a positive difference in sound quality with an increased bandwidth. Perhaps it could be apparent with older Naim kit - I have no way of knowing.

I remember comparing FLAC with WAV when I owned a Naim ND5XS streamer, and I believed I could hear a subtle difference between the two on certain tracks. However, although I still transpose from FLAC to WAV using minimserver, I don't actually hear any  difference between the two on my Linn Klimax DS/1 streamer. Similarly, I heard no difference in sound quality streaming from Tidal to my Klimax DS/1 when my Internet bandwidth was increased from 3.6 Mbs to around 36 Mbs. However, I suppose that it is possible that you might hear a difference when using older Naim streamers. I would be surprised, but I guess it's possible.    

Posted on: 19 September 2018 by blythe

This thread makes my 2mbps download speed look somewhat pedestrian...

Posted on: 21 September 2018 by garyi

Yesterday my household downloaded 80gigs.

 

 

Posted on: 21 September 2018 by Beachcomber
blythe posted:

This thread makes my 2mbps download speed look somewhat pedestrian...

You lucky lucky bastard.  I get 1mbps.  If I'm lucky.

Posted on: 21 September 2018 by JamieWednesday

Right. Until last week I could only get half meg if stood in fast lane of t’motorway, whilst feet were soaking in cardboard box wat our mam called home and that were only if our da’ wasn’t thrashing us to within an inch of our lives.

And we counted ourselves lucky.