Well I’ve just had the Bethere 24Mbps ADSL Internet service installed. So what’s the verdict? Well the setup was fairly faultless, plug in the box and go (it’s a Speedtouch modem router which is badged as the BeBox). Speeds? Well let’s just say it isn’t 24Mbps. In fact according to Numion and MySpeed I’m hitting around 6Mbps peak, which is around a T2 line speed. I’m running it via a Powerline rig from the incoming phone jack to my computer in an adjacent room. I tried a direct Ethernet connect to the router and there appeared to be no speed difference, but connecting via WiFi wireless LAN halved the speed!
So let me repeat that, we’re now at the stage where we can get T2 leased line speeds from a vanilla copper POTS line. Absolutely astonishing. I don’t know why I’m not getting anywhere near peak, I’ll get around to asking the Be guys soon, but it’s plenty fast enough so far. Uploads are also very impressive at around 1.16Mbps, which makes web serving from home suddenly quite a realistic prospect at £24.00 a month uncapped. How do those speeds translate for downloading etc? Well I just pulled down a 32 MB file in 24 seconds. It’s quick. Expect these speeds on a broadband line near you sometime soon then.
Test it without the powerline gizmo, right where the ADSL comes into your home. If you have a significant increase in speed, either the powerline thingamabob is the culprit or else you need to consider looking at a dedicated dsl home run. Did that in my own home, and not only did the DSL connection improve but also it improved the clarity of my telephone line. Each DSL filter you use in a normal setup will add the equivalent of 700 feet to your line. More info here and here.
TFTT, I have tried it at the incoming point and it is just ADSL on that line (I have another line for telephone). There’s no appreciable difference, so I’m assuming that I’m just too far from the telco head end to get more than 25% of the rated speed. Mind you according to BT –
“Estimates from BT?s telephone checker data suggest that 78 per cent of lines should support line rates of 4Mbit/s and above; 42per cent should support 6Mbit and above; 25 per cent support 6.5Mbit/s and above; and 93 per cent support 2Mbit/s and above.”
Source – BT Press Release
So, it doesn’t look as though many homes will support much more than 6.5Mbps does it?