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Basic Q's Re: Broadband Speeds

a complete broadband dilettante here :(

can i just ask as someone who's never experienced broadband, what are the real speeds like? for example, how fast would downloads and uploads be with 512 kbps?

with my 56k modem, the worst connection speed has been around 12000bps, and the highest - 48000bps. standard http downloads would be max 6-7 kbps, while with p2p applications like edonkey it could reach 30kbps.

is it the same with a broadband modem? can the speed go lower than 500kbps if it's a 512kbps modem? and why? what are the true connection and download/upload speeds?

also, what a 512kbps broadband would be best for (from your own experience, please)? viewing videoclips, playing games, listening to internet radio stations, using videophones/webcams?...
 
You can take a look at typical speeds for ISPs here - http://www.adslguide.org/newsarchive.asp?item=2028 . The connection speed remains the same but network congestion or other factors may reduce your effective download rate. Pretty much any decent provider would be fine for all the needs you list though perhaps someone else can comment on gaming (gamers seem to be obsessed with ping time). Providers I've used are Zen and Plusnet who are both well respected. :)
 
500kbits is the theoretical maximun, real life is a bit slower and speeds also depend on how many other people you are contended with.
With dial-up contention means that sometimes when you dial-up you cant connect; with BB it means you share your 500k bandwidth with upto 50 other people.
Much of the time it doesnt matter very much but durring peak hours or if lots of people in your area are using p2p networks then speeds can slow a lot.
Speeds- my average speed today for general browsing is 30kbytes; its been as low as 20 and as high as 65 depending on what i'm doing.
Very few sites will be able to d/l at your full speed, so max speed is achieved while using several sites at the same time.
 
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As for gaming, it depends on where you play your games.. if for example you use Jolt's gaming servers, then Nildram is probably a good choice... well they're a pretty good choice overall anyway, but as they host Jolt services.. they have probably the shortest route to Jolt gaming servers, giving pretty much the best connection you can get to them.

However that said, I can't say Ive had a problem with BT Broadband for gaming.. with pings in the 20-30 ms range for Quake 3 in the past (havent played a while tho)
 
Most sites will comfortably give you your maximum speed, which will be around the 59kbytes/s range.
Congestion on ADSL does happen from time to time however this depends entirely on where you live and how many people are on ADSL at the same time as yourself.
 
512 refers to 512 kilobits per second, which roughly works out to somewhere between 51 and 59 kilobytes a second, depending on overheads, etc. 512k connections don't download 1/2 a megabyte a second unfortunately!
 
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use my rule of thumb... approximately 11% of your download connection - which gives the typical 55kb for 512k, 110k for 1mb, and so forth.
 
Typical download speed is a 1/8 of your current bandwidth availability, you will never get your full 512k, between 440 and 480 is likely on IP stream and 380-480 on data stream,a lot of IPstream providers have bandwidth caps most the datastream dont so they have their advantages and disadvantages.

Gaming u need the fastest ping u can get so go for a ISP in the UK providing IPstream but be aware about the bandwidth caps.

Downloading either will do they wont be much differance in speeds just the amount of data you can have.

The price of IPstream is always higher than datastream if not then they will have a low cap on their monthly limit on IPstream which would do maybe just a couple of days gaming, downloading etc.

Over all the choice is yours, but pick carefully who you go with there is some horror stories out there that I know you wont want to learn about 1st hand.
 
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