Bandwidth depends on 4 things:-
How far you are from the exchange / hub /switch (i.e. amplification or switch to fibre point)
How many people are using the network
How much Data you have downloaded per measurable unit of time
The speed of your router
The advertised bandwidth is never what you will actually get whether on BT, Tiscalli or Virgin Media. I have Virgin and to be honest it is pretty fast, I used to work for them designing the network but know that in some areas the speed will be lower. IT's advertised as a fibre network but aside from huge fibre rings it is all copper and despite what they say, like BT's network it was never designed to take the amount of Data it is doing. Only by very clever multiplexing and filtering are they making the most out of what's available.
I just found this post on a forum that is very interesting woth regards to download speeds:-
Many people get confused over how Virgin and other Internet service providers actually sell broadband packages and the speed
So, I will explain to everyone, the cons in Internet, especially with Virgin Media
First of all, they make the numbers look so big, 2Mb might not sound like a lot, but 10Mb, woooow, and 20Mb
They try to make them sound so big, but how they should really do it is, 20Mb = 2MB, 10Mb=10MB, 2Mb=2MB
Notice the difference?
Mb=Megabits
MB=Megabytes
There is 8 bits in a byte
So 2Mb (2 million bits), is the equivalent to 0.25MB (0.25 million bytes)
Now if they were to sell you a package which contained 0.25MBps, would you go ahead with it?
NO
Because it seems so little
So they just rename it to 2Mb
So dont be confused, 2Mb actually refers to you being able to download at 0.25MBps (250Kbps)
But, 2Mb averages out to about 0.9Mb because of Virgin Media traffic shaping
How does it work?
Once you download 350MB with the 2Mb package, they limit your speed to 1Mb, then if you download a further 350MB, they limit you to 0.5Mb
A quarter of what you are paying for?
Did you know this?
For more details, read this:
allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
Do you know what 10Mb averages out at?
4Mb
And 20Mb?
10Mb
It is all a con
Also remember that Most non BT networks such as Tiscalli still use the BT network so if it's slow with one it might well be slow with another.....
In a few years it will all be wireless anyway, the next generation of mobile phone technology will be with us and we won't have to bother with BT at all......
