Weak Internet & Options to Increase Speed

[mansr]

9 hours ago, esldude said:

I may have it wrong.  I thought Ajit was for it.  Trump/DOJ were fighting it in court, and lost. 

Ajit Pai is for anything that's bad for consumers.

[mansr]

2 hours ago, PAR said:

I can't add anything to this thread in regard to ISPs and who is best etc. as I am not in the USA and this is all very USA centric.

 

However, and returning to the opening remarks , what speed is required to use a streaming service?

 

Just anecdotally, and I have pointed this out on another thread somewhere, last year I was staying with a friend who lives out in the fenlands on the edges of Norfolk, Cambridge and Lincolnshire in the East of England virtually next to The Wash. One major infrastructure issue over here is the poor internet connections available ( if at all) to people living out in the sticks. My friend gets a 7Mb only service. However I was able to use my phone (connected to his LAN via wifi) to stream Qobuz @ 24/96 successfully. Maybe I could have even played 24/192 but 24/96 is the limit for my portable AQ Dragonfly DAC.

Internet speeds in the UK are abysmal. The best I can get in central Southampton is ADSL2 at about 16 Mbps. My phone gets 150-200 Mbps over 4G.

 

2 hours ago, PAR said:

So, how slow does  the connection need to be to fail to stream?

As esldude said, reliability is often what kills streaming before speed as such does.  A 100 Mbps connection that drops for one second every minute would seem fast for web browsing and such, but streaming media could easily suffer. It depends on the local buffer size and how quickly lost packets are noticed and retransmitted. A slow but reliable connection will probably work better.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, PAR said:

 Can you not get fibre to cabinet? I have this from Zen ( maybe one of if not the best of the ISPs over here) and I get a guaranteed 70Mb/s but it sometimes runs a bit faster ( I'm getting 76Mb/s as I write) . I rarely suffer drop outs/glitches. It might be worth checking your address with their online availability app.

I check it from time to time. The only option for anything faster is to get a new FTTP line installed, and I'm not going to pay for that.

 

3 minutes ago, PAR said:

There are  a couple of other audio enthusiasts that I know on another forum who live in Southampton ( for all I  know you may be one of them using a different moniker !) and I could ask what they can get.

Not me.

[mansr]

41 minutes ago, esldude said:

I still don't get 5G.  5G offers these high speeds, but you'll need access points in high density, and those access points will need fiber connections. So 5G is going to serve rural areas, and other underserved areas?

5G is actually a collection of different radio modes optimised for various densities and ranges. Rural areas would be served by low-density long-range modes.

[mansr]

3 hours ago, esldude said:

Yes, I knew 5G is as much a newer improved network protocol as the multi-ghz links that get most of the attention.  But you aren't getting gigabit speeds at those ranges on lower frequencies I don't think.

No, probably not.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, esldude said:

Finally a little realism about 5G away from urban areas. 

 

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/08/verizon-5g-speeds-on-low-spectrum-bands-will-be-more-like-good-4g/

Good 4G is still pretty good. Apart from the latency and the drop-outs.

[mansr]

26 minutes ago, esldude said:

Over-promise, under-deliver, and most of all over charge for it all.

That's how it works in the land of the free, and it won't change as long as Pai is at the FCC.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, esldude said:

As much as I despise Pai, it wasn't really any different before he was there.  Pai has a complete lack of shame for being a shill for the industry when he supposed to be a regulator.  But the results aren't new or different. 

Sure, replacing Pai is no guarantee for change, but it is a prerequisite.