14Mb on a copper pair

GarfieldConnoll

FYI:

14Mb on an ADSL2+ line.

Garfield.

TimTim

My good god, its every geeks dream.....

Stark

How did you get that?

Are you sure you're not in a Smart fibre-optic wired building?

TimTim

Stark wrote:

How did you get that?

Are you sure you're not in a Smart fibre-optic wired building?

If it was fibre-optic I'd be very very very very x1000 disappointed with 14Mb, I'd be expecting 1Gb+ and one hell of a distance.

Blaster99

So Eircom's copper rocks then? Or was this with a laptop inside the exchange...

GarfieldConnoll

Blaster99 wrote:

So Eircom's copper rocks then? Or was this with a laptop inside the exchange...

ADSL2+ router in my house on an eircom copper pair. The modem actually trains up at 17Mb. Get 10Mb to www.irishisptest.com

Garfield.

jesus_thats_gre

Its great that you have provided a showcase of what Smart's unbundling can offer..

Now how about blowing the market wide open and actually offering something that is noticeably different to what Eircom offer?

Praetorian

Exactly what jesus thats gre said. Why did Smart bother installing adsl 1 equipment at all. Why didn't ye skip straight to adsl 2+ hardware? Or is your equipment capable of both?

What are the ping times like to www.eircom.net or www.boards.ie

What speed do you get downloading from

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-amd64/6.0/6.0-BETA3-amd64-disc1.iso

GarfieldConnoll

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Its great that you have provided a showcase of what Smart's unbundling can offer..

Now how about blowing the market wide open and actually offering something that is noticeably different to what Eircom offer?

Fair point. We've done a fair bit already though. 2Mb for €11 on top of line rental is a fairly big move. Regarding a really big move forward:

1. Not everyone would be able to get services in the region of 14Mb (copper loop length, quality etc), though over 80% of our customers can achieve 6Mb+ without additional ADSL2+ tweaks.
2. International IP transit costs money. We've one customer on a 2Mb/ 128k connection that downloaded 300Gb+ in a 30 day period. Imagine what he could have done with a 14Mb connection?

On that point, would there be an interest in a much higher speed product if there was a reasonable CAP on it (100Gb)?

Garfield.

GarfieldConnoll

Praetorian wrote:

What are the ping times like to www.eircom.net or www.boards.ie

What speed do you get downloading from

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-amd64/6.0/6.0-BETA3-amd64-disc1.iso

Not at home now, will check and post later.

Garfield.

Praetorian

Yes there would be interset in a product like that. I don't monitor my downloads, I don't actually have a capped service. But I'd imagine I download at the most 10-20 gigs per month. I'd be happy if I got my data quicker. So would a lot of people. That guy downloading 300 Gb+ is taking the mick, and you should write to him.

Smart don't have any plans to move to Balbriggan, or the Belfield exchange (where I work).

Blaster99

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

ADSL2+ router in my house on an eircom copper pair. The modem actually trains up at 17Mb. Get 10Mb to www.irishisptest.com

Have you moved or have you guys done something, as I thought you said you got 6Mbps on your line that Eircom had failed for ADSL, when you initially started out here?

A 100GB cap would be massive for me, half of that would work fine too. But I'd say upload speed would be more important for me.

chorus techy

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

On that point, would there be an interest in a much higher speed product if there was a reasonable CAP on it (100Gb)?

If it was a reliable 14Mb connection, then 100GB would me more than reasonable (for me anyway).

GarfieldConnoll

Blaster99 wrote:

Have you moved or have you guys done something, as I thought you said you got 6Mbps on your line that Eircom had failed for ADSL, when you initially started out here?

Same line, tweaked for ADSL2+.

Stark

TimTim wrote:

If it was fibre-optic I'd be very very very very x1000 disappointed with 14Mb, I'd be expecting 1Gb+ and one hell of a distance.

Well they do throttle these things :rolleyes:

I know Ixoy lives in a Smart fibre-optic enabled building and he typically gets speeds of around 5Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up. Obviously it's likely fibre-optic going into the building/building complex and shared out to all the apartments using ethernet. Also they would have to throttle it as even if the link from Smart exchange to the building could support huge speeds, the bandwidth infrastructure from the exchange on wouldn't.

GarfieldConnoll

Stark wrote:

Well they do throttle these things :rolleyes:

I know Ixoy lives in a Smart fibre-optic enabled building and he typically gets speeds of around 5Mbit/s down and 1Mbit/s up. Obviously it's likely fibre-optic going into the building/building complex and shared out to all the apartments using ethernet. Also they would have to throttle it as even if the link from Smart exchange to the building could support huge speeds, the bandwidth infrastructure from the exchange on wouldn't.

Just to clarify:

1. Smart's Fibre To The Home (FTTH) sites don't connect back to Smart's DSLAMs in exchanges. They are on their own fibre ring lit at 2.5G.
2. Smart DSLAMs are connected to the Smart core on fibre pairs lit at 2.5G, so even if the FTTH sites came via the exchanges, there would be ample capacity.

But essentially, yes, we throttle FTTH sites.

Garfield.

ricey

what we need is good dsl lines say 3mbit e/w up and down and no cap
then i would be a happy man.

jesus_thats_gre

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Fair point. We've done a fair bit already though. 2Mb for €11 on top of line rental is a fairly big move. Regarding a really big move forward:

1. Not everyone would be able to get services in the region of 14Mb (copper loop length, quality etc), though over 80% of our customers can achieve 6Mb+ without additional ADSL2+ tweaks.
2. International IP transit costs money. We've one customer on a 2Mb/ 128k connection that downloaded 300Gb+ in a 30 day period. Imagine what he could have done with a 14Mb connection?

On that point, would there be an interest in a much higher speed product if there was a reasonable CAP on it (100Gb)?

Garfield.

In general, it is fair to say that your initial product offering was to be commended. However, there is no point resting on your laurels..

The way I see it, Smart offer very little over Eircom at the moment besides price. Price is always an important factor but Eircom do not really have to compete as there are very few locations that Smart and Eircom complete directly..

When Smart originally came to the market however, Smarts offering was both faster and cheaper.. This gave Smart a massive advantage over Eircom as the majority of Bit Stream customers knew they were getting shafted and they all longed for Smart to unbundle their exchanges.. Eircom consequently upped their speeds and this advantage was lost..

So what to do now.. I say up the speeds to limits beyond what Eircom's older technology cannot offer. This will put Smart in the limelight again and expose Eircom's offering for what it really is..

Imagine Smart offering a 4, 6 or ever 10meg service with a cap of 100GB.. Not only would it massively increase you profile in Ireland, but it would be the envy of half of Europe and restore some credibilty back to the Irish telecoms market.

mr_angry

Before we all rush to pat everyone on the back, to be perfectly honest, 14Mbps really isn't that great for ADSL2+. In Britain, NTL, BT, and BE Unlimited are all currently testing ADSL2+ technologies and expect to provide their customers with 24Mbps.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/22/ntl_adsl2/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/01/broadband_be/

While this might wow everyone with the difference between current Irish ISP speeds, the reality is that this is just another example of Ireland's sub-standard telecommunications network. Best of luck to you Garfield for trying to break the mould every now and again, but I'm gonna resist the urge to jump up and down, particularly since the upload bandwidth displayed is also significantly below the upload provided by at least one other Irish ISP, albeit not over copper.

n0mad

I can't really say that 14mbps is bad, however I can say that using the tech described you should have no problems reaching 24mbps or even higher (depending on copper quality and length of wire).

What is more interesting is the way that broadband solutions seems very bad, or atleast the "better" ones are very scarse.

You mentioned you had a user that downloaded 300gb in a month. You seem to think that the user should "know" better. Why? If I pay for a service I do intend to use it. The deal with ISPs limiting bw / setting caps is pretty ridiculous to me.

I can understand using firewalls to disable viruses / masks and thus disabling some of the bw hogs.
I can understand using priority for certain traffic such as http, ftp, smtp, pop3 to make sure that everybody has an "easier" & what would seem like a faster internet connection.

But in my mind charging for bw like they do in Ireland is just plain wrong.
102 euro per month for a 3mbps/0.256mbps dsl (netsource) with 48gb dl limit (no extra charges for going over apparently) is ridiculous.

I think most users would agree with me. Now then, netsource is not a "residential" supplier by default, but if I can have any dsl connected to my house I do believe it will have to be netsource since all other ISPs that don't enforce limits don't deliver to where I live in Cork City.

I have no idea how the fact that most lines seem to be aerial affect quality of service for adsl but I believe that it can't be good.

Having a limit on how much people should be able to download is bad. However, as far as I have understood it prices for bandwidth in Ireland is really high, in Sweden where I'm from you can get a 100mbps fiber connection for a bussiness for around 700 euro/month.

If anyone has any price info on those kinds of connections for me I'd very happy if you could direct me or just contact me directly (just send an pm through the forum and I'll reply).

Cheers

jesus_thats_gre

The one thing that astounds me though is that Smart have not taken advantage of the technilogical advantage they have over Eircom..

Eircom are reaching the upper limit of what they can offer and must be considering upgrading their hardware while Smart are under utilising their own hardware and could nearly role back to Eircoms technology without having to change their service offering..

RangeR

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

On that point, would there be an interest in a much higher speed product if there was a reasonable CAP on it (100Gb)?

Absolutely, yes. Currently I have two broadband connections. One with BT adn the other with Clearwire. Both are 2Mb/256Kb. I rarely go above 15GB in a month with those two lines combined.

For work, speed is a factor for me, not download allowance. 5Mb to 10Mb download with AT LEAST 512Kb upload [prefare more] witheven a 50GB cap would be more than sufficiant. This will alow me to VPN and VoiP all day at a much faster pace.

Won't pay more than 70 to 80 Euro inc VAT for it, though

Blaster99

mr_angry wrote:

Before we all rush to pat everyone on the back, to be perfectly honest, 14Mbps really isn't that great for ADSL2+. In Britain, NTL, BT, and BE Unlimited are all currently testing ADSL2+ technologies and expect to provide their customers with 24Mbps.

Maybe before we all rush to conclusions, it might worth pointing out that ADSL2+ is distance dependent and you'll only get 24Mbps in ideal circumstances, something like 1 km from the exchange if memory serves. That's the same in Ireland, UK, Sweden, or Utopia. ADSL2+ is always advertised as 24Mbps best case.

Considering the last we heard from Smart was that it was difficult to get above 6Mbps on Eircom's copper, this is very good news. Even better news would be a service that took advantage of this, as noted above.

beller b

No point in us getting excited & expecting massive speeds just yet.From Smarts point of view a cheeper priced 6-8 mbit service would certinly liven up the market.Smart are in a good position now for signing up new customers,but the hassle with Eircom remains.For someone using an ISP besides Eircom to go trough the hassle of reconnecting to Eircom etc... is still the main thing holding them back..
Any plans to challange this ruling Garfield?

bk

mr_angry, n0mad, 24mbps is the theoritcal maximum for ADSL2+, in reality you won't get anywere near that. Likewise 8mbps is the max for ADSL, yet no one can come near those speeds in the real world.

NTL have reported they can get 18mbps in trials. It should be noted that NTL's copper network is far more modern and well designed then either BT's or Eircoms, with much shorter distances typically under 1km.

BT is likely to get roughly the same speeds as Eircom, in fact I'm amazed Smart have managed to get so a high speed out of Eircoms crappy network.

damien

bk wrote:

Likewise 8mbps is the max for ADSL, yet no one can come near those speeds in the real world.

Using ADSL not ADSL2+, Irish lines have managed to get above 6mbps. That comes near enough to the theoretical max.

bk

damien.m wrote:

Using ADSL not ADSL2+, Irish lines have managed to get above 6mbps. That comes near enough to the theoretical max.

Nice, however the 8mbps is only at distances below 1.5km. The majority of users would be outside that distance. Eircom could probably push it up to about 4mbps for most users, but not much more.

Personally I'd be more interested in seeing Eircom pushing the range of lower speed DSL (512k - 1m) out to greater distances like BT have done in the UK, so more people can avail of BB, then seeing high speeds for a small number of people.

Sponge Bob

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

The one thing that astounds me though is that Smart have not taken advantage of the technological advantage they have over Eircom..

My sentiments exactly. The one new product they (Garfield) did announce is still invisible and unorderable on the website ....that being 2048/256 for about €45 a month .

The technical advantage may even now be tilting towards the Magnet 4096/256 product with TV which has just gone into trial mode .....albeit inside the canal on the southside only

Its no good annoying us here down the wesht with tales of 14 mbits and TV over DSL Garfield , screen shot or no screen shot.

bk

Garfield I would certainly be very happy to see a greater range of products from Smart to suit different customers needs and a much higer speed product with a 100GB cap certainly sounds like a good idea.

However while I'm certain that it would be very popular with the power users here on boards, I'm not sure if it would make a major difference with mainstream users.

I've gone from dial-up to 512k DSL to 2m DSL to 3m NTL and to be honest, the jump from 512k to 2m/3m hasn't been all that big. Sure, things download a little faster, but the real revolution for me was going from dial-up to 512k, with always-on, fixed price, low latency and fast downloads. The jumps in speed since have been nice, but nothing revolutionary, only downloads have improved, but that isn't that important if you are not doing a lot of downloading and usually it is the other end that is the bottleneck at those speeds (P2P apps etc.)

In fact getting the 300kbps upload speed from NTL was more important then the download speed as it made, VPN, VNC and VoIP better for me.

When we start talking about speeds of 14Mbps, there really isn't much "legal" content out there to fill that bandwidth, mostly only illegal video downloads. Hopefully this will change in time as companies start offering VoD services like the BBC. If Smart has these sorts of speeds available, then I think they should focus on offering IPTV, Vod and BoD services over these pipes, like Magnet Networks and others. That is where the demand for higher speeds on BB lies IMHO.

machalla

Personally I would think price is the major determinant for home users of BB in the Irish market. In the vast majority of cases anyway (and excluding large swathes of the boards.ie broadband forum folks). The average user just wants faster than dialup and even a 1mb line will do that for them.

I just looked at that last line in shock. Last year I would have KILLED for a 512kb connection due to Eircons muppetry.

14mb is nice but I had a German guy in work the other day look shocked when I mentioned the standard dsl business package was 4mb down. He proceeded to tell me that his home connection (in Frankfurt I think) had 4Gb download speeds. Although he softened the blow a teensy bit by mentioning that not many sites support these kinds of speeds so its not much use for anything above the norm speed wise. This was for €30 a month including a landline I believe.

Gone West

Garfield, I know this is apples and oranges, but when I was in the USA, I was taking well over 300 gig down a month. And uploading a similar amount. This went on for the duration of my stay there (several months) and I heard nothing from my ISP.
Why the big difference in Ireland? Is backhaul bandwidth much more expensive here?
I was paying $30 for a 12mbit cable service in the US with no cap. Again, I know its a completley different tech, and the infrastructure is allready laid down, etc.
Now, I know. 300 gig on a capped service is definetly pushing it, but I'd pay for a service with a nice reasonable cap. (ie-80~gb) As soon as you migrate to the rest of the country. (westmeath)

nomad: €700 for 100 mbit fibre in Sweeden is B/s.
I know people on 100 mbit personally on their home lans who pay at most €80 a month.

crawler

bk wrote:

mr_angry, n0mad, 24mbps is the theoritcal maximum for ADSL2+, in reality you won't get anywere near that. Likewise 8mbps is the max for ADSL, yet no one can come near those speeds in the real world.

NTL have reported they can get 18mbps in trials. It should be noted that NTL's copper network is far more modern and well designed then either BT's or Eircoms, with much shorter distances typically under 1km.

BT is likely to get roughly the same speeds as Eircom, in fact I'm amazed Smart have managed to get so a high speed out of Eircoms crappy network.

NTL's -> UK <- network is 4 wire siamese cable ( 4 copper and Coax in one cable) they got the faster speeds using channel bonding on two copper pairs. The Voltage over the NTL copper has always been very low also so it did not degrade the molecular structure of the Copper as happened here.

Also Garfield Sponge bob is right......

Jorinn

n0mad wrote:

I can't really say that 14mbps is bad, however I can say that using the tech described you should have no problems reaching 24mbps or even higher (depending on copper quality and length of wire).

What is more interesting is the way that broadband solutions seems very bad, or atleast the "better" ones are very scarse.

You mentioned you had a user that downloaded 300gb in a month. You seem to think that the user should "know" better. Why? If I pay for a service I do intend to use it. The deal with ISPs limiting bw / setting caps is pretty ridiculous to me.

I can understand using firewalls to disable viruses / masks and thus disabling some of the bw hogs.
I can understand using priority for certain traffic such as http, ftp, smtp, pop3 to make sure that everybody has an "easier" & what would seem like a faster internet connection.

But in my mind charging for bw like they do in Ireland is just plain wrong.
102 euro per month for a 3mbps/0.256mbps dsl (netsource) with 48gb dl limit (no extra charges for going over apparently) is ridiculous.

I think most users would agree with me. Now then, netsource is not a "residential" supplier by default, but if I can have any dsl connected to my house I do believe it will have to be netsource since all other ISPs that don't enforce limits don't deliver to where I live in Cork City.

I have no idea how the fact that most lines seem to be aerial affect quality of service for adsl but I believe that it can't be good.

Having a limit on how much people should be able to download is bad. However, as far as I have understood it prices for bandwidth in Ireland is really high, in Sweden where I'm from you can get a 100mbps fiber connection for a bussiness for around 700 euro/month.

If anyone has any price info on those kinds of connections for me I'd very happy if you could direct me or just contact me directly (just send an pm through the forum and I'll reply).

Cheers

Thing is, prices for bandwidth in ireland aren't really high. In fact they should be cheaper than elsewhere because trans atlantic cables land on us and of course there is apparently a lot of dark fibre lying about as well.

You should probably also mention that residential users can get 100MBit symmetrical connection in Sweden for about 35euro a month since most users here would be probably looking at it for residential use.

14mbps is nice, I miss my 17 euro 10Mbit symmetrical connection with no line rental each month though. Once you have that kind of upload VOIP, VNC etc. are soooooo much more realisitc and convenient. With 128k up on bitstream it's just a chore. Though I notice the screenie was giving about 750k up, is that a cap or is it maximum that was possible on the line Garfield?

Also, ETA on Rathmines exchange?

Laguna

Jesus, down here in the sticks in Carlow, we can't even get basic 512k BB. It's so unfair that the whole Irish BB initiative was left in the hands of a private company in Eircom who will roll it out in locations (i.e. Dublin/Cork/Galway) if and when it suits them. I think Smart would instantly control the market if they offered a service of BB to the whole country regardless of location, never mind doing bigger and better deals for the customers living in the town who already have the luxury of BB available to them.

Sponge Bob

Big Pipes out of Dublin are very cheap , see

http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com/hibernia/Main/Products.htm

Blaster99

Jorinn wrote:

You should probably also mention that residential users can get 100MBit symmetrical connection in Sweden for about 35euro a month since most users here would be probably looking at it for residential use.

14mbps is nice, I miss my 17 euro 10Mbit symmetrical connection with no line rental each month though. Once you have that kind of upload VOIP, VNC etc. are soooooo much more realisitc and convenient. With 128k up on bitstream it's just a chore. Though I notice the screenie was giving about 750k up, is that a cap or is it maximum that was possible on the line Garfield?

Also, ETA on Rathmines exchange?

You are referring to FTTH, though. It's available in Sweden, but it's far from universal. FTTH exists here too except the services offered are pathetic to remain in harmony with the rest of the broadband offerings available. ADSL2+ with 24Mbps/1Mbps (theoretical) is on the other hand very common for reasonable sums of money (like €50 a month the last time I looked).

jesus_thats_gre

Laguna wrote:

Jesus, down here in the sticks in Carlow, we can't even get basic 512k BB. It's so unfair that the whole Irish BB initiative was left in the hands of a private company in Eircom who will roll it out in locations (i.e. Dublin/Cork/Galway) if and when it suits them. I think Smart would instantly control the market if they offered a service of BB to the whole country regardless of location, never mind doing bigger and better deals for the customers living in the town who already have the luxury of BB available to them.

Problem is, Smart is a business, not a charity.. If Smart decided to unbundle every exhange at one go, they would probably not survive..

Blaster99

Perhaps the same can be said about Eircom?

Laguna

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Problem is, Smart is a business, not a charity.. If Smart decided to unbundle every exhange at one go, they would probably not survive..

Yeah I'm aware they're a private company. In effect this means only Dublin will be serviced for the forseeable future, as is always the case in this country. You think with the majority of people in this country *not* living in Dublin, the Government with their *nationwide* broadband program would have forseen this. Maybe it's on their to do list, right after opening their brown envelopes.

crawler

Sponge Bob wrote:

Big Pipes out of Dublin are very cheap , see

http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com/hibernia/Main/Products.htm

These are actually quite expensive - there are 2.5Gbps lambdas going a begging for buttons if you know where to get em! (meet me behind the chip shop at 5.00!!!) and Most bigger operators peer in Dublin now for IP transit anyway....

zuma

Laguna wrote:

Yeah I'm aware they're a private company. In effect this means only Dublin will be serviced for the forseeable future, as is always the case in this country. You think with the majority of people in this country *not* living in Dublin, the Government with their *nationwide* broadband program would have forseen this. Maybe it's on their to do list, right after opening their brown envelopes.

Hahahahaha!!!

Blaster99

Laguna wrote:

Yeah I'm aware they're a private company. In effect this means only Dublin will be serviced for the forseeable future, as is always the case in this country. You think with the majority of people in this country *not* living in Dublin, the Government with their *nationwide* broadband program would have forseen this. Maybe it's on their to do list, right after opening their brown envelopes.

The government has no nationwide broadband programme. In fact, I don't believe it has a broadband programme of any description. Apart from studying the content of brown envelopes, it's currently busy "challenging the industry" by releasing the odd press release with broadband usage targets.

Jorinn

Blaster99 wrote:

You are referring to FTTH, though. It's available in Sweden, but it's far from universal. FTTH exists here too except the services offered are pathetic to remain in harmony with the rest of the broadband offerings available. ADSL2+ with 24Mbps/1Mbps (theoretical) is on the other hand very common for reasonable sums of money (like €50 a month the last time I looked).

Nah, I think it was more like fibre to the premises, but as far as I know where I was they've had ti for like a decade or something.

Even if I was to get ADSL though I would of most likely have been able to get 24Mbps for 45 euro. (Telia seem to offer it as a FREE upgrade on exchanges that support it, if it's not available they give you 8mbps for the same price.)

jubbly

bk wrote:

Personally I'd be more interested in seeing Eircom pushing the range of lower speed DSL (512k - 1m) out to greater distances like BT have done in the UK, so more people can avail of BB, then seeing high speeds for a small number of people.

I agree totally!!!!!!!

SeaSide

Sponge Bob wrote:

Big Pipes out of Dublin are very cheap , see

http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com/hibernia/Main/Products.htm

Pricing information seems to have disappeared - hows that for a response time

steve-hosting36

What were they? lol

TimTim

http://web.archive.org/web/20041029083210/http://www.hiberniaatlantic.com/hibernia/Main/Products.htm

Maybe out of date since it is from october last year, but hey I don't know where to find a more up to date version.

You gotta love the waybackmachine

Mutant_Fruit

From as Low as €10 per megabit per month

And here's me paying €48 for 24:1 contended 2meg/2meg. They're making a killing i tell ya!

At that rate could you please offer a standard rate of 512kbps upload? Thats my new target for switching ISP's. As much as i love my 2meg/2meg, and i do use the upload a lot when i'm accessing my computer from elsewhere (VNC), i really need something more reliable than IBB.

WizZard

ETA on Nutley please Garfield?

The speeds and tech are great, but until they are available to more people via unbundled exchanges they are just a pipe dream (pun intended).

bk

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

At that rate could you please offer a standard rate of 512kbps upload? Thats my new target for switching ISP's. As much as i love my 2meg/2meg, and i do use the upload a lot when i'm accessing my computer from elsewhere (VNC), i really need something more reliable than IBB.

Well NTL have 3m/300k which I use for VPN, VNC and VoIP all the time and works great, much better then my old 2m/128k DSL line.

Mutant_Fruit

bk wrote:

Well NTL have 3m/300k which I use for VPN, VNC and VoIP all the time and works great, much better then my old 2m/128k DSL line.

NTL have been upgrading my area in "two-three months time" for at least the last 4 years. I've given up hope :P

128 is too much, 300k is barely enough to stream music to me (if i wanted to do that, and i do when i'm in college studying) so thats why i'd like at least 512. That gives me plenty of room to stream some music AND still have sufficient bandwidth to not kill everything else completely.

Of course, i won't be able to bittorrent and stream music with a mere 512k upstream, but thats something i can learn to deal with.