RB5-Black

I was just having a look into the cost of an upgrade to a 1Mb Broadand supply for home use.

I surf and use Xbox live and a bit of Kazza but can't really decide if it's worth it or not.

Craig.

ozzy

If you're just playing XBox, then the extra download/upload speeds probably aren't that important.

Kazaa or other P2P on the other hand would benefit. Do you have Blueyonder? If so, you can try 1Mb for 2 months without having to commit to a full 12mth contract.

I'm trying it now and my downloads went from 60Kb/sec max to 150Kb/sec. It's great if you can find another broadband user to download from or need to stream video or download music.

For general surfing (like SN) you'll not see a difference.

At the end of the day you'll only see a great benefit if the other end can supply you with the data just as quickly. It is more than twice the speed, so when you find a good supply it's well worth it.

Stefan

RB5-Black

so it's good for P2P but Xbox and net no better.....

that's what I thought Kazza nerver uses the full bandwidth unless I'm really downloading lots of stuff all around the 5-10K per sec mark.

I'm with BT Broadband at the moment and don't have any problems with it 100% uptime and constant 60K per sec. Somehow I don't think BT will let me trial 1Mb for free

Craig.

ozzy

With stuff like online games, the actual amount of traffic isn't that spectacular.

On my BY 1Mb connection I can be downloading stuff at 60Kbps and my brother can be playing XBox Live without any problems. Trouble is usually from high ping times (lag) and can be a combination of things; not just your local connection.

The only reason to upgrade with an XBox would be to allow you to surf and download from other machines without affecting XBox games. If you're doing one or the other, then I'd save your money.

Stefan

ozzy

Craig, BY don't allow you free either. You just pay the extra for a couple of months and then you can downgrade again.

For the extra £20 (in total) it was worth the extra bandwidth for 2 months of large downloads

Stefan

RB5-Black

May upgrade so I can play and the GF can surf at the same time.

Cheers.

brett555

RB5 , i dont think you would .... i have 3 machines using our BT Broadband , 1 machine is permanently playing Unreal Tournament , i play on X box live and other 2 are used for surfing . I dont lag at all on games and the machine playing UT has no problems, not really any issues on d/l time either.

Brett

Daz34

I had a 1mb connection & when I moved house I dropped down to the 512mb service. Surfing is basically the same, as is gaming as my ping remained about the same. You only notice it when downloading multiple files but it is still fast. I wouldn't bother going any bigger unless there is more than one pc using the connection.

Darren

Iain Young

I've got up to 3 pcs (and sometimes a wireless laptop) using my connection, and I really noticed a difference when I upgraded from to 600kb to 1mb connection. If you only have 1 pc (and a xbox) I'm not sure youd notice the difference though (unless the missus starts downloading large files or streaming video over the net)

ozzy

At the end of the day, it's all to do with the amount of bandwidth used by each device.

You could have 2 or 10 PC's easily sharing a 512Kb connection if they are simple browsing web pages. Just one machine could cripple the bandwidth if it started downloading a 1Gb file.

That could just as easily happen on a 512Kb connection with only 2 PC's.

Like I said, it all depends on the use and not just whether it's 1, 2 or 3 machines.

BTW, I didn't notice any difference in browsing when I went from 512 to 1Mb with 3 PC's and an XBox. What I did notice was I could now download larger files much more quickly and the extra bandwidth allowed the capacity to download as well as playing XBox or browsing on other PC's with the minumum of impact.

So, if you find yourself making use of the extra bandwidth or increasing your downloads, then it would be better to have the extra capacity to handle everything.

Stefan