# internet speed



## keyser (Mar 3, 2011)

hi all, could you let me know the best internet provider and what is the highest connection speed you can get
thank you


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

keyser said:


> hi all, could you let me know the best internet provider and what is the highest connection speed you can get
> thank you


That would very much depend on where you were going to live. Here in Valencia region I get less than 1 mb. Down the road they get 3Mb. I hear of people who have 6. 
Most everything uses Telefonica lines. There are plenty of secondary suppliers around, but they wont be able to give you any more than the Telefonica system for that area permits

I regularly get people telling me they can give me 3 or 6 mb, but I know its not possible

Your originally from UK, showing expat in Spain but your location is Dubai?


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## keyser (Mar 3, 2011)

hi stravinsky
where we are going to live is the million dollar question!!! ive narrowed it down to south and costal ( love the warm weather). we are living in Dubai right now but because of my husbands future job i will be lucky enough to be able to live anywhere so im looking to move closer to the U.K to be near the family.


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## keyser (Mar 3, 2011)

thats a really slow connection!!!...oh well, i suppose it means i'll spend less time glued to my lap top lol


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

keyser said:


> thats a really slow connection!!!...oh well, i suppose it means i'll spend less time glued to my lap top lol


The speeds to depend on so many thanks. Telefonica (the dreaded) offer up to 20mb through landlines but this depends on where you are in relation to the new upgraded exchanges. Some ISP´s offer faster.

In my old house we had to use WIMAX because telefonica dont exist and we got about teh same as Starinsky but here (again with WIMAX but a diffrent supplier) we get 5mb down and 1.5 up, and they offer faster if youw ant, but for me 5mv is more than enough.

It is hit and miss... my friend has the most dodgy connection through her landline and yet 2 blocks away another friend has an amazing speed. Pick an area and then research your options... WIMAX (with a good firm like i now use) is a good option because doesnt rely on old delaperdated phone exchanges... but WIMAX tends to be mroe rural areas where landlines are not an option.


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

Stravinsky said:


> That would very much depend on where you were going to live. Here in Valencia region I get less than 1 mb. Down the road they get 3Mb. I hear of people who have 6.
> Most everything uses Telefonica lines. There are plenty of secondary suppliers around, but they wont be able to give you any more than the Telefonica system for that area permits
> 
> I regularly get people telling me they can give me 3 or 6 mb, but I know its not possible


I think the service provider DOES make a difference even though they all use the Telefonica network. We used to get an average download speed of 3 Mbs when we were with Telefonica (we were paying for 10); then we switched to Jazztel and the average is 6 Mbs (we are paying for 7). 

We are in a country town surrounded by mountains, 50 km from any major centres of population.


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

Alcalaina said:


> I think the service provider DOES make a difference even though they all use the Telefonica network. We used to get an average download speed of 3 Mbs when we were with Telefonica (we were paying for 10); then we switched to Jazztel and the average is 6 Mbs (we are paying for 7).
> 
> We are in a country town surrounded by mountains, 50 km from any major centres of population.


From what I know of the UK internet system (and I presume Spain works to a similar system), ISP´s buy bandwidth from the wholesalers who in the UK are BT and in Spain Telefonica. This means that they get certain speeds and amounts of data. Therefore they can control what their customers get. This is why often with alternative providers you get a better speed, or more realistic to what they say than with telefonica (who frankly dont really give a monkeys anyway). Obviously there are many "cheapy" providers who buy in bulk and sell cheap and sometimes their service can be very poor indeed, so i say always best to ask for recomendations.

I pay for 5mb down and 1.5 up and pretty much alwyas get 4.91 down and 1.45 up which is near as dam it what I pay for. Also, depending on what you use internet for you should be looking at other factors not just speed. 

For example, i use the internet for voice calls which requires a number of other factors. I use a business telephone system through a very godo supplier but many use things like skype for voice. For voice you only need a tiny upload and download speed but need other things that are worth considering:

Try Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test to get a good idea of your speed and Pingtest.net - The Global Broadband Quality Test to test other things...

Packet Loss. When you browse the net millions of pieces of data go back and forth (packets). Sometimes packets get lost in cyberspace but for browsing the web it doesnt matter because your system will just request them again and in miliseconds they come through, but for voice, video, gaming and other real time applications packet loss is a real problem because when you talk, it only happens once. Test your packet loss with ping test.. it sends out 250 pieces of data and counts how many return

Ping: This is how long each amount of data takes to return back.. again for voice very important to be a small number.

Jitter: This is the varience in pings, the "jitter" in yoru connection shoudl be low to keep voice quality good.

Currently I get the speeds mentioned
I get 0% packet loss every time
I get a ping of about 16ms
I get a Jitter of 1 or 2 ms 

AND its raining and i am on wimax.. would be interesting to see what speed but more importantly what QUALITY of connection others get with various ISP´s... maybe some others will run the two tests and report back!


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## keyser (Mar 3, 2011)

so the question begs , connection first, area second or visa versa .... husband would go with the former, i would go with the latter...looks like area wins!!!! lol
thx so much for all your replies, this will probably be the first of a gazillion questions in the coming months.....xxxxx


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## Alcalaina (Aug 6, 2010)

keyser said:


> so the question begs , connection first, area second or visa versa .... husband would go with the former, i would go with the latter...looks like area wins!!!! lol
> thx so much for all your replies, this will probably be the first of a gazillion questions in the coming months.....xxxxx


Keep 'em coming!

Location, location, location ...  You can always change your service provider, you can't change where you live quite so easily!


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## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

steve_in_spain said:


> From what I know of the UK internet system (and I presume Spain works to a similar system), ISP´s buy bandwidth from the wholesalers who in the UK are BT and in Spain Telefonica. This means that they get certain speeds and amounts of data. Therefore they can control what their customers get. This is why often with alternative providers you get a better speed, or more realistic to what they say than with telefonica (who frankly dont really give a monkeys anyway). Obviously there are many "cheapy" providers who buy in bulk and sell cheap and sometimes their service can be very poor indeed, so i say always best to ask for recomendations.
> 
> I pay for 5mb down and 1.5 up and pretty much alwyas get 4.91 down and 1.45 up which is near as dam it what I pay for. Also, depending on what you use internet for you should be looking at other factors not just speed.
> 
> ...


I'm on WIMAX & mine are 
packet loss 0%
Ping 104ms, normally this is around 70ms but the weather is not good here at the mo.
jitter 18ms
graded at B . Ok for everything but might be a problem with some gaming.
Just a thought, this did the test to a server in Barcelona whereas normally it uses Elda. 
Justtried it on Elda & the ping is at 81ms.


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## keyser (Mar 3, 2011)

lol...this is starting to go straight over my head right now.
my knowledge of jitters , pings and packet loss are non existent chaps.
i appreciate your replies but my understanding of packet loss is when the other half has had one too many and the last time i had the jitters is when i watched paranormal activity lol


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## xicoalc (Apr 20, 2010)

gus-lopez said:


> I'm on WIMAX & mine are
> packet loss 0%
> Ping 104ms, normally this is around 70ms but the weather is not good here at the mo.
> jitter 18ms
> ...


the servers do vary... i usually use elda!

I used to get B all the time with old supplier but always worked well... sad really testing it arent we but its nice to know your getting something good. A friend of mine is on Telefonica broadband and usually gets C or even D!


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## Stravinsky (Aug 12, 2007)

Alcalaina said:


> I think the service provider DOES make a difference even though they all use the Telefonica network. We used to get an average download speed of 3 Mbs when we were with Telefonica (we were paying for 10); then we switched to Jazztel and the average is 6 Mbs (we are paying for 7).
> 
> We are in a country town surrounded by mountains, 50 km from any major centres of population.


It may in some cases, but most definitely not if the exchange is not set up for it or you are on rural adsl. As I said, I get .8 mb. I have had offers of 6 Mb. The first time I accepted the possibility, but they then came back to me and told me it wasn't possible and I would only get about 1 mb. Europa promised 3 Mb and then said they couldnt. A guy down the road 200 mtrs is (somehow) getting 3 mb, but he is on a different exchange to us.

So, as I say, it depends on the setup of the exchanges and also this rural adsl wierdness, that also may differ. 

I live in hope


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## gus-lopez (Jan 4, 2010)

Stravinsky said:


> It may in some cases, but most definitely not if the exchange is not set up for it or you are on rural adsl. As I said, I get .8 mb. I have had offers of 6 Mb. The first time I accepted the possibility, but they then came back to me and told me it wasn't possible and I would only get about 1 mb. Europa promised 3 Mb and then said they couldnt. A guy down the road 200 mtrs is (somehow) getting 3 mb, but he is on a different exchange to us.
> 
> So, as I say, it depends on the setup of the exchanges and also this rural adsl wierdness, that also may differ.
> 
> I live in hope


I 'hoped' for years & then gave up. Fortunately by then there was an alternative. I had dial-up with Telefonica on a seperate line which was very slow . I took advantage of Ya.com saying they could supply adsl even though Telefonica said it wasn't possible. There were a few problems but the main one was The infrastructure . The exchange & lines are atrocious plus you were put to the bottom of the pile for fault repair. It was far better than the dial -up though which we would regularly be cut off & re-connected 200+ times a day.
The ludicrous situation is that although we are in the campo , we are still in the suburbs of the town, albeit 4,6 kms from the exchange which is on the far side of Lorca. Now they keep wanting me to go back to them as they say we can have adsl but we're still at the end of some atrocious cabling which is fit only for telephone calls, plus we're still the last people being offered it as they say the neighbours , 30 m farther on, are too far from the exchange !!!! Doesn't give you much confidence.


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