The Interwebz: How good is yours?

[Elfgore]

So, the internet. It brings all of use lovely Escapist users together. Without it, this site wouldn't exist. Steam wouldn't be a thing. All of our streaming services would be gone. Anime would somehow be even more annoying to watch. All of my hentai sites wouldn't exist.. Either way the internet impacts pretty much everyone nowadays, but the impact seems to differ from person to person. I've heard a lot of people speak of insanely low data caps, or people saying they're lucky to get a hundred KB. So, I ask you all these questions.

1. How fast is your internet?
2. Do you have a data cap?
3. Who is your ISP provider?
4. What country do you live in?
Bonus Question: Have you ever had to suffer from the horror that is... Dial-up internet?
I'll go ahead and answer them myself.

1. I currently average at around 2.5 MB a second. I can be downloading a game from Steam, while also streaming on Hulu or watching a YouTube video without buffering.

2. I'm lucky. My ISP has no data cap, but they do seem to shut down my internet for a minute if I download a lot at one time.

3. I have Time Warner Cable as my ISP. The lesser of the two evils.

4. The U.S.

Bonus: I lived with dial-up for the first twelve years of my life. It was horrible.

I'd say I'm lucky with my ISP. The cost is a little high, but for unlimited internet at decent speed, I'm content. Better than my dad who has a cap, pays more, and has slower speeds. He lives in the sticks and is stuck with Satellite internet, which is insanely over-priced for the speed. I can also chew through his data as well, seeing as I've used 604 GBs in the past sixty days.

 

[Fappy]

1. How fast is your internet?

I usually get around 4-7MBs per second download speed on Steam, so it's pretty good.

2. Do you have a data cap?

Didn't used to, but Comcast changed their policies. Now we have one and it sucks, but thankfully it's high. I download a lot of stuff and my family streams Netflix all the time, but we've only ever hit it once. I don't think going over the cap is that expensive either, thankfully. Still, there's no reason for it. If we had other viable options in the area I would probably switch ISPs.

3. Who is your ISP provider?

Comcast

4. What country do you live in?

US

 

[Eleuthera]

1) 90/9 Mb/s (11/1.1 MB/s)(just what it says on the tin), people with the same contract but living in fiber enabled areas get 120 mb/s for the same amount of money, but as things stand now fiber won't get here for at least 5 more yeras (more likely 10)
2) No cap
3) Ziggo
4) the Netherlands

Well I'm 37 so yes I did have to deal with Dial up (9600baud to be exact) when we first got internet, but we(I)'ve had some form of broadband since 2000.

 

[seris]

105 down, 5 up
no cap
Charter Communications
United States

 

[Private Custard]

BT Infinity (fibre)
No cap
England

 

[OneCatch]

1. 30 down, 10 up

2. Nope, and EE seems to be very generous when it comes to traffic management

3. As above, EE Fibre. Was the only fibre provider in the area which didn't charge a ridiculous amount

4. Wales, UK. Live in a relatively rural area now and my internet is better than it was when I lived in central Cardiff!

5. I remember having dial up when I was a kid, but we got broadband fairly early (when I was about 11?) because both my parents were self employed at the time.

I'm actually really happy with EE. I was anticipating having to put up with crap internet when I moved out of the city, but it's been consistently good. The speed on paper is less than Virgin 40Meg, but I actually get a higher speed day-to-day because Virgin is pretty restrictive on traffic management, and at peak times the speed used to really dive.

And it's cheaper than most of the others too - the BT package at the same price has a viciously low cap, Plusnet wanted to charge an absurd installation fee, and Virgin don't even have a package of similar price.

I probably sound like a bloody testimonial, but it's been a genuinely pleasant surprise.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

University internet seems to vary at times, but it looks pretty good today.

EDIT: At-home connection:

I remember last year when I could actually have a hardlined connection and it would be 100Mb dl and about the same ul. Those were the days. Alas, now I'm in a dorm where I can't do that. Frigging old dorms.

Data caps aren't an issue with both the uni and at home.

ISP for at-home is Cable One. United States resident. And I have had to suffer through dial-up internet. I used to only be able to use my grandmother's computer to access the internet when I was much younger, and she kept dial-up for many years. She also still uses AOL, which tickles me inside. Though she at least has DSL now or something.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

1. It says "up to 7,2 MB/s" but it's actually 0.5.
2. Yes, 20GB per month. 25KB/s after hitting the soft cap. (They tried to change it to a hard cap silently but I flat out refused so I got the soft one back...yay...)
3. 3 (yes, 3)
4. Sweden
Bonus Question: My family had dial-up when I grew up.

Now, granted, this is not fiber or cable or any sort of land-line internet I have.
I have to use mobile broadband (via a dongle and not my phone).

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

1. How fast is your internet?

It's supposedly 15MB/s down, but in actual practice, it's probably closer to 2MB/s. Like you, I can download something on Steam while streaming a video without buffering. It's adequate for online gaming. I've never had any problems with lag in either MMOs or shooters.

2. Do you have a data cap?

Nope. Thankfully.

3. Who is your ISP provider?

Fairpoint Communications.

4. What country do you live in?

United States.

Bonus Question: Have you ever had to suffer from the horror that is... Dial-up internet?

Yep. My family bought its first computer when I was in 7th grade, and we had 56k Dial-Up provided by... America Online.

We still had dial-up back in 2004 when City of Heroes came out. I remember having to leave the computer on for days straight to download patches for it, praying that no one would pick up the phone accidentally and set my progress back, and inevitably having to face the fallout of no one being able to send or receive calls during that time. Thankfully, it's what I used as an example as to why we should upgrade. So... thanks, City of Heroes!

 

[Z of the Na'vi]

1. How fast is your internet?

2. Do you have a data cap?

Nope.

3. Who is your ISP provider?

Bright House Networks...I think. I'm rather new to the central Florida area so I'm just going off of the speed test above.

4. What country do you live in?

United States.

Bonus Question: Have you ever had to suffer from the horror that is... Dial-up internet?

My memory of it is a little fuzzy, but when my brother and I were little we did have to go through dial-up. At the time it didn't seem so bad for what we were doing with it, but compared to now? Yeah, it's pretty bad.

 

[seventy two]

[http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4084211253]
Exact same DL as the other guy with Cable One.

I pay for 50/3 Mbs and get that, no data cap, and the price is reasonable enough (50$/mo +8$/mo to rent a wireless modem). Other info: I live in the US and have never had to live with dial up since I was very young.

 

[GundamSentinel]

1) 90/9 Mb/s (11/1.1 MB/s)(just what it says on the tin), people with the same contract but living in fiber enabled areas get 120 mb/s for the same amount of money, but as things stand now fiber won't get here for at least 5 more yeras (more likely 10)
2) No cap
3) Ziggo
4) the Netherlands

Well I'm 37 so yes I did have to deal with Dial up (9600baud to be exact) when we first got internet, but we(I)'ve had some form of broadband since 2000.

1) Same
2) Same
3) Same
4) Same

And yes, I have known the horror of dial up until my first years in secondary school. Must've been around 2000, yeah.

 

[NoPants2win]

1. Up to 15/1 Mb/s. Realistically I see speeds around 1.5 to 2 MB. This is over fiber. The best they will sell you is 100 Mb with a 400 GB cap for 93$.
2. Yes, it's 150 GB which I can actually hit in 24 hours. I blow through it every month with streaming TV and steam and they never seem to complain.
3. Telus
4. Canada
Bonus Question: I used to play ultima online over a shared 56k connection.

 

[Zemaddog]

1. I get around 9-10 megabits per second down, and 0.6-0.8 megabits up (and this is pretty average for where I live). Youtube has been a bit of ***** lately though, buffering on 144p videos...

At least I don't have my friends internet. His download speed is 2.5 megabits per second. His broadband connection so bad that a 3g dongle is faster. I guess that's to be expected when you're 5km from the nearest exchange.

2. My data cap is 200gb. Oddly enough xbox one downloads don't count towards this (which is good 'cause I would have exceeded the cap in 2 days).

3. Adam internet. I'm pretty sure they only do service in my state.

4. Australia.

Bonus Question: Yes. Yes I did. I can still remember that horrible noise it made when it connected. Luckily I was only young when we had. I think we got broadband when I was about 8 or 9.


There were some people out the front of my house a few weeks ago who said they'd be installing the NBN (Abbott's shitty NBN) within the next 6 months, so that's a bonus. Even though it's the shitty version it should still be better than what I have now. I doubt it will faster than 30 megabits down, but I can hope.