Cable Broadband Upgrade

[AlanHo]

Some montha ago Virgin media upgraded their network in Staffordshire and andsome was one of the beneficiaries of the increased speed. They have eventually upgraded all their broadband customers in our area without any increase in monthly fees.

Hence, earlier this week they upgraded my broadband connection from 20 Mbps to 60 Mbps complete with a new so-called high speed Wireless/Ethernet hub.

(Incidentally I pay £58 per month for cable broadband, the telephone line, free domestic landline calls 24/7, caller display and the basic 140 channel cable TV with the V plus box).

The hub is located in the ground floor lounge and our study is a converted bedroom on the opposite side of the house on the first floor – it happens to be as far as you can get from the hub unless you climb into the attic. With the previous 20 Mbps hub we used to get download speeds of 15 to 19 Mbps using a wireless connection on both desktop computers in the study. With the new “high speed” 60 Mbps hub I was getting download speeds of only 8 to 17 Mbps.

I tried using my laptop in the lounge with the wireless connection and could get speeds of 52 to 58 Mbps. Connecting the laptop directly to the hub with an Ethernet cable produced download speeds of 55 to 62 Mbps. When I moved the laptop to the opposite side of the house or on to the first floor the download speeds dropped to 8 to 16 Mbps – far short of the advertised 60 Mbps.

It is clear that the new hub has a very weak wireless signal compared with the previous one.

I have spent the past couple of days fiddling and farting about using Google, various forums and Virgin support to try and get a solution without success. The consensus is that it is the house structure that is soaking up the wireless signal – but why it didn’t with the previous hub has yet to be explained.

I didn’t want the bother of hard wiring the house, so I bought 3 Newlink 500mbps Pass Through Homeplug Power Line Adapters – to ethernet connect both desktop computers to the hub via the house power mains. http://tinyurl.com/ctdhtct

They are literally plug and play - just plug an adapter into a power socket adjacent to the hub and connect an ethernet cable from the adapter to the hub. Now plug one into a power socket adjacent to your computer and connect it with an ethernet cable and you are done.

The result is that I am now getting internet download speeds of 51 to 62 Mbps on both desktop computers.

It is also noticeable that the network connection between the two computers for transferring files between them is much, much faster. I haven’t measure the speed – because I don’t know how - and cannot be arsed to find out.

However (and why is there always an “however) I have yet to notice much improvement in speeds when using the internet. The system was previously quite fast and probably limited by the speed of the source server. The main benefit will be when downloading software updates or large files – assuming that the source server is running at a high speed. The upgrade has not increased my upload speed – it is still a nominal 3 Mbps - but if I had a spare arm and a leg I could pay to have this increased.

So I am now happy with the connection - but it cost me an unexpected £95 for the adapters and ethernet cables to get there.......

[andsome]

Just did a quick check. I pay for up to 60MB the same as Alan, and use Ethernet.

[D4\/!d]

...but it cost me an unexpected £95 for the adapters and ethernet cables to get there.......

Yeah me too!

[Alan2273]

Still on 60Mb's but should be upgraded to 100Mb's sometime in November.

[-pops-]

I stopped using wireless as my default Internet connection ages ago. Just not reliable enough. I use Homeplugs and Ethernet.

Wireless is available for my Kindle devices and suchlike but otherwise, it is unnecessary.