By Tim Ferguson, 23 February 2007 17:00
NEWS
Broadband speeds have more than quadrupled since 2003 but many users still aren't receiving the level of service they think they are getting.
The average UK broadband speed is 2.03Mbps, according to research from independent broadband information site thinkbroadband.com. Similar figures taken from 2003 showed an average download speed of just under 500Kbps.
But speeds are often slower than broadband users expect, given that many providers promise speeds of 'up to' 8Mbps - which can vary based on time of day or the number of people who are online.
Andrew Ferguson, editor of thinkbroadband.com said broadband providers could do better at informing customers of speeds they can realistically expect to get.
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He said not everyone understands that ADSL provides inconsistent connection speeds.
Ferguson also suggested new, bandwidth-intensive services such as IPTV have the potential to cause even slower broadband speeds. "A provider only needs around 1.5 per cent of users to make use of, say, the BT Vision product at the same time to use up all the capacity," he said.
He added: "The UK does not yet have the infrastructure to support millions watching EastEnders via broadband at the same time," because of the high cost of retaining spare network capacity for times when online traffic is high.
The research comes from 365,000 download speed tests carried out by thinkbroadband.com during the peak period of 18:00(GMT) and 22:00(GMT), from October 2006 to the end of January 2007.
Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. Richard Davies
half of this slow down is due to streaming media because they generally use UDP protocol whilst all other things on the web generally use TCP. The difference is that TCP has built in congestion control which basically backs off when it senses congestion...UDP though is TCP un-friendly and will just barge through taking up this bandwidth that TCP has just freed up!!!!
Streaming Media products should therefore be forced to use TCP friendly protocols which should help with the problem although might not suit Streaming Media as much as UDP!
2. anonymous
Richard, are you saying that using the wrong routed protocol for the application will help push hardware sales? With a knock on effect with regard to the amount of power consumed?
Sorry, TV over the night is not a 'killer app'.
What a wrong headed idea.
Let's really mess up something that was really good by stuffing stuff down it that has for decades been available elsewhere?
Does TV on demand really necessitate crippling the Internet for?
Oh I forget, it's a chance to make a buck, therefore it's ok :(
3. Dave Price
The original article said...
"The UK does not yet have the infrastructure to support millions watching EastEnders via broadband at the same time,"
However, if they are all really watching the same episode at the same time, then the solution is that we need a proper deployment of multicast IP. With multicast IP, the server only needs to generate a single copy of the media flow and it is duplicated where needed by the network routers onto paths leading to people that wish to watch. The network links are only carrying a single copy and even with those "millions" watching it would all still work....
However, these needs all the ISPs to get their acts together and properly enable their routers and the links that lead to their customers and of course customer located routers/ADSL interfaces need multicast support too.