Connectivity options

[Matt]

Does anyone have any "decent" connectivity here in Kent?

I am looking for something along the lines of a 50Mb dedicated pipe or a share of a 100Mb/1Gb pipe.

Matt

[use-IP]

Virgin Media (http://www.virginmedia.com/customers/upto-50mb-broadband.php) have been threatening to bring 50MB to the home for some time - it must be due any day now ...

You have to be in one of their cabled regions.
Ashford was a test area.

[Matt]

50MB into the house would be nice. Shame they dont come doen my road and they won't dig in anymore cable :(

I am looking for an un-contended connection with symetric bandwidth though so no good for me. Thanks anyway.

[steveh]

Also be aware that a lot of other forums are reporting '50M' as nothing like it in reality - and the upload is still just as low!

[Andrew C]

I supposedly had 20M at home but it was more like 2M. Virgin have a great tv system but rubbish internet in my experience.

[magnus]

I'm still on dial up. All you 20M people just don't know how good you've got it!

[use-IP]

I've got Virgin's 20M cable internet at home, I was an ntl customer before Virgin took over their network, so have had it for many years.

It can be quite a techie challenge to get the most from it. We had to get a new cable modem from Virgin when we upgraded, then we found that our old Belkin wireless router was unable to share the 20MB connection (WAN-LAN) very successfully, so we upgraded to a D-Link DIR655 with gigabit wired network and wireless N.

Even then, we have two wired PCs connected, each with gigabit network interface cards, and we see differing performance between those two; one routinely runs at 17Mbps d/load, the other never gets above 14Mbps.

Another desktop, connected with wireless G, runs at 9-9.5Mbps.

(www.speedtest.net (http://www.speedtest.net) is a good site for checking your connection speed)

So, I'd probably conclude that performance achieved has as much to do with in-house kit & network setup as ISP delivery. I don't fret about it enough to spend any more time chasing it. I will upgrade the wireless PC connection in due course (the N USB adapter was £42 and is now £25).

Virgin are hugely frustrating and no help at all!
Fortunately the service is very reliable and you only need to contact them to re-negotiate packages.

[steve]

Have you tried the local collages? They may have some spare.

[KWHS]

theres an opal telecoms or something in this area i belive that maybe able to help

[Echocomputers]

i'm on the vrigin media 50mb trial and yes you do get 50mbps down but only about 1.5 up