Internet access

[barrysharp]

I'm interested to survey how forum members connect to the internet. The two most popular methods are Dialup that is limited to download/upload 56 kilo bits per sec (Kbps) and the Cable/DSL broadband type connections that can provide download date rates of 1.5 Mega Bytes per sec (MBs) and upload data rates up to 256 Kbps if you're lucky as I am with AT&T in my Washington state local area.

Please indicate in the poll if you have Dialup or Cable/DSL.

Thanks.

[pico de luuks]

Interesting poll Barry, but where is the satellite-connection-option http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/alien.gif

http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/pico.gif

[coastal]

I'll be following the results of this poll closely. Though I always develop my work with dial up users in mind, it will be very interesting to see how quickly you're getting all this info. http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Hiro's XC]

I used to have the dial-up option, when I first joined. I have a DSL now and average about 600KBPS according to CNET. The old board took FOREVER to load pages. The changes last fall made it faster to load pages for me anyway. I would NERVER go back to a dial up connection. NEVER! The next home I build will have a sat link if the DSL/CABLE option is not available.

Jason

[Nick Roger]

I have an ISDN connection: 64/128 kbps.
So what should i vote ?  http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif
Ok i'll go for dial up, since ny speed is very far from DSL one.

In the next months i will transfer my office to a new building. And then i will connect thru DSL for sure!  http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/hehe.gif

[barrysharp]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I have an ISDN connection: 64/128 kbps.
So what should i vote ? &nbsp; &nbsp;http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

Hmmmm -- I suppose then that you vote/choose the one closest to your internet connection speed.

That goes for the lucky ones that have T1 or better connections. &nbsp;http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I think maybe ISDN is more popular in Europe than in USA. I didn&#39;t consider satellite either as I believe this type of internet connection is seldom an option for home users.

I think the survey still has merit by providing some insights on how a percentage of forum members connect to this web site -- that is, slow vs. fast.

As Taylor/coastal posted -- he has an interest in this as moderator, site designer and site administrator.

Thanks.

[Low Tide]

Barry-

Satellite is pretty common in rural areas here in CA. &nbsp;Its cheap and reliable, certainly better than the phone line options now that 2 way communication ensures quick upload as well. &nbsp;

DSL/Cable seems everywhere. &nbsp;We are on our 5th year now averaging about 1.2MB sec, with a wideband DSL doubling that in a few areas near the central offices on fiber.

[barrysharp]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Low Tide @ April 09 2003,09:15)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Barry-

Satellite is pretty common in rural areas here in CA. Its cheap and reliable, certainly better than the phone line options now that 2 way communication ensures quick upload as well.

DSL/Cable seems everywhere. We are on our 5th year now averaging about 1.2MB sec, with a wideband DSL doubling that in a few areas near the central offices on fiber.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Low Tide
Thanks for the update/feedback on the Satellite use in rural areas. We city folk sometimes forget that there are people beyond our horizon http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif &nbsp;-- and satellite facilities do make much sense in the wide open plains where there&#39;s not enough population for Cable/Telcoms to justify capital investments such as laying down copper/fibre etc.

Yea -- when I looked into satellite internet the upload was either not there at all or was abysmally slow http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif &nbsp;Glad to hear/read that it has improved. Hmmmmm, how cheap is cheap?

[littlewaywelt]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (barrysharp @ April 09 2003,10:53)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I didn&#39;t consider satellite either as I believe this type of internet connection is seldom an option for home users.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
DirectTv has been offering high speed to its dish subscribers and there are quite a lot of them. &nbsp;I would pick it over cable without a 2nd thought if only for customer service which blows cable away.

[barrysharp]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">DirectTv has been offering high speed to its dish subscribers and there are quite a lot of them.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

What&#39;s the rated and effective rates for download and upload using DirectTV. I&#39;m curious as I have DISH Network to my home -- is this same as DirectTV?

[Low Tide]

The satellite service runs at about 500KB/s effectively from what I have seen. &nbsp;Its a happy medium and better than conjested cable lines in some areas. &nbsp;In northern CA, the satellite is most useful in the highland coastal areas- like where the XC90 commercial promo materials were shot. &nbsp;I had a think tank office out there awhile back and satellite was all we could get. &nbsp;

Cheap is relative at &#036;30 mo. or &#036;20mo if you have full TV services as well.

[littlewaywelt]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (barrysharp @ April 09 2003,13:36)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What&#39;s the rated and effective rates for download and upload using DirectTV. I&#39;m curious as I have DISH Network to my home -- is this same as DirectTV?[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
it&#39;s not the same as dish, but there is no slow up like cable when everyone gets home from work. &nbsp;I don&#39;t know the rates/numbers, but it is pretty darned fast imo.

[barrysharp]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (littlewaywelt @ April 09 2003,12:22)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">it&#39;s not the same as dish, but there is no slow up like cable when everyone gets home from work. I don&#39;t know the rates/numbers, but it is pretty darned fast imo.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Thanks for the feedback.

Yes -- Cable internet is essentally a neigborhood LAN and as such the bandwidth is a shared resource. However, this limitation on bandwidth is one that the Cable Company controls and it&#39;s my understanding they purposely constrain the overall bandwidth to not allow any single user to exceed the 1.5 MBs/256kbs data rates. The actual Cable&#39;s bandwidth is much much higher and so the issue of all users on the neighborhood LAN colliding wrt to data rates is really quite artificial as the Cable Company could easily open up the spiget so that useage collisions don&#39;t effect data rates to any extent at all.

I&#39;m sure as soon as Cable Company can figure a way to market the higher data rates they will do so and have the means to immediately offer the higher rates as a premium service without any expense on their part http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/confused.gif &nbsp;It could be that they simply constrain the number of users they configure on the local Cable neigborhood LAN and the bandwidth throttle and wait for complaint levels to reach some point and then announce their wonderful new premium service and have people knocking on their door ready to pay for premium data rate service http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif &nbsp;Pure business marketing ploy at work, right?

[Gundo]

Can you say &quot;Off Topic&quot;?

This should be moved to the Off Topic Forum

[Ab_Fab]

One other access &nbsp;technique missed is mobile phone. I frequently use my Ericsson P800 using the Opera browser to catch-up on the latest threads.

Works a treat&#33;

[coastal]

Ab Fab.. have you got a photo of your phone accessing the forums? that&#39;d be very cool to see. http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I&#39;m quite surprised at the high percentage of speedy connections actually, probably a much higher percentage here than most other places.

Gundo, I&#39;ll eventually file this thread in Off-Topic, just being a bit selfish in wanting to see all the replies as they affect how I might develop the website in the future. Just don&#39;t seem to get this amount of activity over in the poor ole OT&#39;s http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

[barrysharp]

coastal/Gundo:

Forgive me for posting this Poll here. However, I was also thinking along same lines as coastal and really did hesitate before clicking &#39;submit&#39; but found that I had clicked before having made final decision on where to post.

Thanks for being understanding about this. http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[gary]

I have 56K/dialup here in my small village on the outskirts of Stuttgart. &nbsp;BUT only because Deutsche Telekom doesn&#39;t have DSL service to my neck of the woods [yet]. &nbsp;It&#39;s supposedly coming imminently. &nbsp;However, we leave here next summer -probably back to the States. &nbsp;I&#39;ll definitely have some type of broadband access back there.

[Ab_Fab]

Hi Coastal,

This definitely off topic but here is a link with pictures and info on the phone. You can use the standard browser or there is a &quot;opera&quot; browser available that formats the web page to the size of the screen (very good) http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/thumbs-up.gif

P800 Reveiw (http://electronics.cnet.com/electronics/0-20497514-1304-20790461.html)

[coastal]

Thanks Ab Fab, very cool&#33; http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

I take it the site is reasonably readable on the phone? I see it also has a digital camera built in, too bad it can&#39;t take photos of itself as I&#39;d be interested in seeing how well it formats this site, and to see if there&#39;s anything I could do in order to improve the display for handhelds.

hmm.... wait a sec, got a couple mirrors handy? just kidding, probably wouldn&#39;t work.

[Ab_Fab]

Hi Coastal,

No but I do have a digital camera as well (I subscribe to the &quot;he whos dies with the most toys wins&quot; approach)

I will take some photos of what the site looks like on the P800 and send them to you.

Cheers
Neil

[Willy]

Hello All,
I use a dial-up connection at home, at work the main server is very close to the internet backbone structure, I think.
Having a slow connection it can take a very long time if members use high-resolution pictures as avatars (I remember Barry using one with may faces, it took ages to get here).
Willy

[AWD*V70XC]

Seems a little dated now, nowhere for broadband 600K or even 1M.

[XCMark]

http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Comcast Cable Modem &nbsp;http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif 1.9 Mbps &nbsp;http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif &nbsp;The only way to go really once you get a taste of it.

[Big]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Ab_Fab @ April 09 2003,20:58)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">One other access technique missed is mobile phone. I frequently use my Ericsson P800 using the Opera browser to catch-up on the latest threads.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Indeed. When traveling I use a Treo 600, a &quot;smart phone&quot; running the Palm OS. Data speed is in the dial-up range which is what I voted. The biggest problem is that the site is not very PDA-friendly with too many icons and text blocks; the simple skin setting helps only a little. I can run the Blazer browser to display the full webpage width but that is cumbersome. Keeps me current, though.

At home I am on cable modem with the Safari browser. It cooks.

[daniel]

Dial-up, but under 56kbps.

[SpudRacer]

Barry,

We had DSL while in California, but now that we moved out to stickville in NC, we decided to go with DirectWay satellite service. &nbsp;It is very comparible to our DSL service in CA, except uploading large files seems to take a little longer. &nbsp;It is a far cry faster than dialup, and I feel nothing but empathy for those still under the leash of dial-up. &nbsp;I cannot afford to waste that much time anymore, life is way too valuable...

Tom

[MD-Daddy]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (barrysharp @ April 09 2003,07:53)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">I have an ISDN connection: 64/128 kbps.
So what should i vote ? &nbsp; &nbsp;http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif [/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>

Hmmmm --[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Wow, if this should ever switch to American political choices we are in for it&#33; &nbsp; http://xc70.com/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif &nbsp; Us or Them?

[MD-Daddy]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (Ab_Fab @ April 09 2003,20:58)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">...Ericsson P800 using the Opera browser...[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Now THATS a geek. &nbsp;I bow in homage to you Sir&#33; &nbsp;Awesome&#33;