Originally Posted by John Connor:
If I were within distance of my neighbours, no way I'd be using wireless. Too insecure.

But my wireless hot spot ends on my property, so someone would have to be physically trespassing to get into my network.

Agreed, but Wi-Fi is not the only wireless technology around.
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Meh, I'm using WPA for signal encryption and everything goes GPG encrypted to my wired DNS server that I built with Debian, then once it's on the wire it leaves the house.

See, using Linux has it's advantages!
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Originally Posted by tito:
Meh, I'm using WPA for signal encryption and everything goes GPG encrypted to my wired DNS server that I built with Debian, then once it's on the wire it leaves the house.

And that stops someone from highjacking your bandwidth and downloading kiddie porn how?

Originally Posted by tito:
See, using Linux has it's advantages!

'Coz it's not like it's four clicks to set up a VPN tunnel to the router from the Mac. :-)
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I'm not sure who the silly sausage is who doubt the 50Mb of Virgin. I already have 20mb and it works great for me. Its a fibre optic connection so there's no issues with distance. I get exactly what it says on the tin. 50Mb..... WOO HOOO. Porn at record speed.
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Originally Posted by ChrisV:
I'm not sure who the silly sausage is who doubt the 50Mb of Virgin. I already have 20mb and it works great for me. Its a fibre optic connection so there's no issues with distance. I get exactly what it says on the tin. 50Mb..... WOO HOOO. Porn at record speed.

No you don't. The acces network is but one element. You may have a 50Mbps connection, but as soon as it hits the backhaul network it will be contended heavily. As i said, a raw 1Mbps costs about £40/mth min (around £200/mth on BT Wholesale). So if you think your connection is being subsidised by Virgin media think again.

They get round it by making 50Mbps the maximum. You might get this if the network is empty and conditions favourable, but most of the time you will not be getting the full 50Mbps.

Also while fiber doesn't have the same distance issues of copper DSL, the capacity of the fiber is shared by all those connected to it. In this sense it different characteristics and can still get heavy loading at peak times which will further put pressure on the 50Mbps top line speed.

Contention is the only way to even loading and bandwidth costs in the core network. It generally works well but if you are paying next to nothing for a 50Mbps service, you can be in no doubt your connection does not have much priority. I suspect most of the time you will actually be getting down nearer 5Mbps in peak times and perhaps 20Mbps off-peak and possibly 50Mbps in the middle of the night.
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Not to mention usage caps. If that there 50 mbps can't download 9 Tb a month, it's not 50 mbps. :-)
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Originally Posted by John Connor:
Not to mention usage caps. If that there 50 mbps can't download 9 Tb a month, it's not 50 mbps. :-)

Very true.

You get what you pay for. If you are paying less for more than you can get elsewhere, the chances are something has to give along the way.
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I'm with NTL Broadband and my quality of reception has gone down again recently,videos are stop start and sound is lower than before.Could ships/boats masts have an impact on my line?Phonelines are perfect.
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Originally Posted by Hartlepool:
I'm with NTL Broadband and my quality of reception has gone down again recently,videos are stop start and sound is lower than before.Could ships/boats masts have an impact on my line?Phonelines are perfect.

Videos stopping and starting points to a bandwidth problem (i.e. your bandwidth is too low or your contention is too high).

However, this shouldn't affect sound volume. Basically, nothing should affect sound volume except (1) a problem with your computer or (2) the site you're looking at has re-encoded the video file.
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Originally Posted by John Connor:
And that stops someone from highjacking your bandwidth and downloading kiddie porn how?



'Coz it's not like it's four clicks to set up a VPN tunnel to the router from the Mac. :-)

WPA and a network access list do that.

Four clicks to build a DNS server capable of receiving and decoding GPG traffic? Wow. Tell me how and I'll buy a Mac.
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