Re: ADSL / CableModem (was [Sheflug] anybody found Linux Formataround Sheffield?)

[Damion Yates <nospam [at] rd.bbc.co.uk>]

On Thu, 4 May 2000, Steve Brown wrote:

> Damion scrawled:
> 
> > Just incase people didn't spot when I boasted about it before.  I have
> > ADSL now 512kbps :-p
 
> Excellent. I'd be interested in how the performance ends up.
> 
> I've had NTL's Cablemodem service since August '98. It's capped at
> 512kb/s to me, and 128kb/s from me, with DHCP based dynamic addressing
> (which I hold on to quite well - so it's sort of semi-permanent).
>
> I have my Linux box as a gateway/router/server (there see - on topic :o)

Me too for ours, ipchains masq rule was a tad simplistic and I think I caused
my kernel some confusion as the d/l rate dropped from 50K/sec to 10 then 5
over a matter of minutes on internal boxes, since then my boss who also just
got adsl spotted that the router they provide will happily allow multiple
boxes to work anyway on their own ip.

> In the beginning, I was seeing in excess of 2Mb/s mostly, occasionally
> dipping down to 700kb/s or so at a busy time; like Sunday afternoons.
> Now, especially since NTL launched their free-phone-calls Internet
> thang, I guess I'm seeing about 300kb/s average, peaking at 512kb/s (ie
> hard capping).

Mine is apparently capped at 512/256 and the rates I see confirm this most of
the time but sometimes I seem to get half that on one connection to some site
then if I make a 2nd I get the same rate again, this is probably squid's
transparent proxying taking effect with some rate limitation on them.
 
> I can't grumble yet, since I do still get a pretty good service for 40
> squid per month flat rate, and I do give their News server a good
> hammering (to the tune of 400Mb/day), and it's *almost* as good as ISDN
> for gaming.

ISDN sucks when I've tried it not just cos the b/width is so low, my latency
is high too.  I still use ISDN for BBC work as we're not at officially an
ADSL provider (working on it) and I need a secure dialin.  I'm getting as low
as 54ms sometimes, which means even though I suck big time at Q3A I can still
do quite well.

> ADSL is contended at a 50:1 ratio isn't it? Who are you with and what's
> the deal like?

I've not seen any real problems so far, I'm really really impressed with the
service so far despite the fact that it's .. wait for it.. Freeserve that I'm
with!  It's 50 squid a month but I'm hopeing to claim that as it's a trial.
I'm seriously looking at switching to demon but keeping the BT provided
hardware on my wall.

I get about 50K/sec almost to every site I try most of the time, but can peek
at 60K/sec (roughly the full 512k/sec) with an ftp connection.  I've not
managed to find any good high rate realmedia stuff better than 300kbps but
that's pretty nice to watch full screen, with the new Linux G2 player.

Damion

-- 
Damion Yates - Senior Internet Operations Engineer - Internet Services
email: Damion.Yates [at] bbc.co.uk - phone: +44 1737 839510



---------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheffield Linux User's Group - http://www.sheflug.co.uk
To unsubscribe from this list send mail to
- <sheflug-request [at] vuw.ac.nz> - with the word 
 "unsubscribe" in the body of the message. 

  GNU the choice of a complete generation.