If anything The Rona has shown how inadequate the infrastructure that sits under all of this is..

[GSV
Trig;304]If anything The Rona has shown how inadequate the infrastructure that sits under all of this is..

Er … quite the reverse. I've been working remotely since March and my internet has been down twice.

In the UK this varies from town to town and on the provider. I’m with Virgin, on 100Mb but I’m in an over subscribed area so the lockdown has made this constantly terrible whereas previously I’d only ever notice it on the weekends.

It was a great time for Openreach to fail to install my new fibre wasn't it ;) I've now been without broadband for nearly a month, and it's painful.

4G/5G is fine until you are inside, its stormy outside and you have 1-0 bars of signal.

That's when you realise just how important the internet has become to our lives! 1 more week and then it should be the opposite, with gigabit fibre..but until then, tis a bit painful.

I would say the infrastructure has coped pretty well.

There's an Openreach van in the street. Allow me to just get the pressure washer on them in case they decide to touch the wrong thing. My internet is working fine, thanks. Don't touch anything. Go away.

It's been 3 months since GigaClear fixed the cabinet and I got an email saying they ‘just’ need to send a bloke out to splice my connection in… Each month I get an email, saying the CS operative is having a meeting with her(?) manager shortly and will let me know when they'll be round to finish the connection.

I can see a couple of neighbours have their GigaClear already, which they got installed at the same time as us, and there's only 16 houses within range of my PC wifi, so I know it's one of them and we're all on the same cabinet… I also know their crews are out working, so it's not a Covid issue.

I'd be interested to know the breakdowns of where net traffic is going too. Anyone got stats on that?

ik9000
I'd be interested to know the breakdowns of where net traffic is going too. Anyone got stats on that?

(just a guess)

Interesting that they say they're able to handle all the load and more, I bet the ISPs themselves aren't saying a similar thing with their diddy little routing kits installed at the exchanges. I've known plusnet's to fall over even in ideal conditions

'[GSV
Trig;4223734']If anything The Rona has shown how inadequate the infrastructure that sits under all of this is..

Mine has gone down once, supposedly for ‘planned maintenance’ (I do wish they'd tell me about it though…) at about 1.30am a day or two ago, other than that it's been rock solid….speeds etc have been exactly as they were before but then I don't live in a city where I summise the impact might be felt more.

ik9000
I'd be interested to know the breakdowns of where net traffic is going too. Anyone got stats on that?

I'm still digging through past article but ISPReview would be my go-to for things like that. (link to articles tagged with statistics).

Edit: Found an article on Openreach's Network Traffic by UK Region but it only covers up to the end of April.

I love the infrastructure comments concerning the uk network being ok… - Downtime maybe… but we still have a huge hurdle to overcome in the uk with avg speeds. Outside of major cities which massively alter the avg uk speed currently 60ish Mbps - Many homes are still stuck on less than 40Mbps like mine with no sign of improvement. I don't live in the middle of no-where far from it, the exchange is listed as market b and is less than a mile away.
3 kids and 2 adults working from home has made for some lively discussions - particularly when the two oldest put the xbone on and it's ping central.
Copper sadly is the enemy here - I can't even get one of the FTTP providers to quote ;(

syristix
I love the infrastructure comments concerning the uk network being ok… - Downtime maybe… but we still have a huge hurdle to overcome in the uk with avg speeds. Outside of major cities which massively alter the avg uk speed currently 60ish Mbps - Many homes are still stuck on less than 40Mbps like mine with no sign of improvement. I don't live in the middle of no-where far from it, the exchange is listed as market b and is less than a mile away.
3 kids and 2 adults working from home has made for some lively discussions - particularly when the two oldest put the xbone on and it's ping central.
Copper sadly is the enemy here - I can't even get one of the FTTP providers to quote ;(

same issue. We at least have access to Virgin but it's through gritted teeth and I long for FTTP

Spud1


(just a guess)

i was wondering about a certain online river retailer, but there is that too i guess.

ik9000

Spud1


(just a guess)

i was wondering about a certain online river retailer, but there is that too i guess.

The river is the other 5% ;)

I wonder what is classed as “internet usage”. In the broadest sense you could say I never stop using the internet as my phone is always connected to it and always exchanging data. Beyond that you could differentiate between spotify use of streamed and already downloaded songs as an example. Or does using my kindle (which is connected to the internet, yet I am reading an already downloaded book but constantly synchronising my progress / looking up words) count or not count? What about playing COD? It demands an internet connection even in single player but is offline but online. And don't get me started about smart TVs….

It gets very complicated. Almost as complicated as the question “how many computers do you have in your house?”

I could be wrong but i think they measure usage in terms on bandwidth consumed, going on that article i posted earlier in the last week of April London downloaded and uploaded 112.37 PetaBytes in a week.

I've been very happy with how well my internet has performed (Plusnet 66Mb fibre). I think it may have only dropped once or twice from memory and thankfully it was never during the work day. Considering I live in zone 4 Greater London, it's somewhat populated here.

I know for my gf on the other hand who is on Virgin, her internet has gone down more than a handful of times. I remember back when I had Virgin and they'd throttle me, I vowed never to give them money again. Advantage of Virgin are the speeds when it works though but as I'm only living with 2 others in the house, 66Mb download is more than enough for us.

I did notice streaming sites seemed to be a bit more temperamental than normal though - I think even YouTube and Netflix would sometimes have to buffer and admittedly I never binge watched much on Netflix but I don't remember ever having to buffer.

Working in software, I've been pretty happy with how work has been - never had any downtime due to issues.

What I have noticed however is how crap Microsoft and Android are - I was having internet issues where my USB WiFi adapter would drop connection around once or twice every day or so and the only way to resolve it was to reset the adapter through the windows networking menu. I googled the issue and it seems to happen to lots of other people. Ended up buying a PCIe card which seems to have fixed the issue.

A second issue I can't believe I'm having with is with bluetooth support on Android and Microsoft - if you use a bluetooth headset and you're in a call, your sound quality will be crippled. Your expensive bluetooth headphones/headset/earphones suddenly sound like some broken trashy earphones you found at the bottom of the wires draw. I don't own any Apple products as I feel they are overpriced so I don't know if this is any better there but I can't believe in 2020, bluetooth support is so abysmal. Again, I googled the issue and it is a software issue with both platforms. Supposedly claims that bluetooth does not have enough bandwidth to support high quality duplex channels for both sound in and out but someone did the calcs and proved bluetooth has more than enough bandwidth. It's just very disappointing that I can't be in a call and just have some music playing in the background with good sound quality.

another reason why i insist on 3.5mm jacks wherever I can

ik9000
another reason why i insist on 3.5mm jacks wherever I can

Assuming that was in reply to me - yes for pure sound quality, 3.5mm is king but bluetooth audio has come a long way in terms of latency and quality. I'm sure the issues I'm facing are purely driver side.