Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like
$35/month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like
$85/month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for
some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the
promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 01-07-2025 01:00 am, bitrex wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like $35/
month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like $85/month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the
promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

I've had a 100Mbps connection for the past 6 years, shared by our two
sons' desktops and mine, two laptops and four phones. I occasionally ask
my sons if they want more speed. The answer's always no.

Download speed is usually 98-100 Mbps daytime, sometimes over 150 Mbps
late at night. Upload 95-110. Latency 25-32ms unloaded, 70-110 loaded.

I pay the current equivalent of USD9.70 per month including all taxes.
1Gbps is $55.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 30/06/2025 20:30, bitrex wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like
$35/month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like
$85/month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for
some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

That sounds excessively high by about 2x. In the UK I get around 500MB/s
for about £33/pcm after a bit of haggling. I used to have 150MB/s for £30/pcm. Korea is the place to be for truly hyperfast BB.

My tiny rural village is unusual in having full fibre to premises on
tap. Neighbouring ones have VDSL or rival microwave peer to peer links.

Give up on the landline entirely and you can have 1.6GB for £70/pcm

https://www.bt.com/broadband/deals

EE (aka Orange elsewhere) is now a part of BT (as is Plusnet - who are
even cheaper but more consumer than business orientated).

Haggle and you will do better than their first offer price.

--
Martin Brown

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 01-07-2025 01:41 am, Pimpom wrote:

On 01-07-2025 01:00 am, bitrex wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like $35/
month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like $85/
month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for
some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with
the promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

I've had a 100Mbps connection for the past 6 years, shared by our two
sons' desktops and mine, two laptops and four phones. I occasionally ask
my sons if they want more speed. The answer's always no.

Download speed is usually 98-100 Mbps daytime, sometimes over 150 Mbps
late at night. Upload 95-110. Latency 25-32ms unloaded, 70-110 loaded.

I pay the current equivalent of USD9.70 per month including all taxes.
1Gbps is $55.

Oh, and a free landline phone with unlimited calls and a settop box.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:30:45 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like
$35/month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like
$85/month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for
some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the >promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

We got cable TV and internet (and phone) as a package at home. We
signed up for 50+50 Mbits and they have several times upgraded at the
same price, I guess to be competitive. We're downloading now at close
to 1G, which is way more than we need.

At work we have a Monkey Brains microwave dish. Same story, we bought
50+50 and actually get 500M or so.

Does anyone need more than 200 Mbits? That's enough to watch a movie
or download most files.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like $35/month >> for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like $85/month (plus fees
and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for some shitty-ass service >> like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the promise of high-split getting
installed sometime circa 2032.

That sounds excessively high by about 2x. In the UK I get around 500MB/s for about £33/pcm after a bit of haggling. I used to have 150MB/s for £30/pcm. Korea is the place to be for truly hyperfast BB.

Different US markets have different "norms". I know folks who have had Gbe
at $20 for YEARS! (fiber to subscriber). Here, one can readily choose
between DSL, cable, microwave, etc. I can get higher bandwidth on my
phone than we have for home service.

But, there are also caveats with many providers. E.g., I can go
anywhere and "do" anything with my current provider. Others may throttle connections or block certain domains.

I DL about 20GB daily. EVERY day. Because the machine can do it without supervision (i.e., without MY involvement), why would I need anything
faster than that? So I could archive even MORE stuff?? I'm just
finishing 12TB of rainbow tables...

For us, reliability is important. We don't lose our service when
a contractor cuts the CATV feed up the block. Or, when the telco
technician jiggles OUR pairs while servicing someone else. Or,
when the power fails. etc.

[In power outages, I just keep doing what I'm doing and the
neighbors wonder why there are lights on...]

A movie is maybe 1-3Mbps of bandwidth (SD or HD720) -- assuming an elastic store. Ditto interactive audio/video. If you consider internet service as part of your ENTERTAINMENT budget, then you may be willing to replace those
1Mb streams with 50X so you can pleasure yourself with that 8K screen.

(Does the STORY change with the screens size or resolution?)

If your alternative for the MANDATORY "big screen experience" is a
movie theatre with $10 bags of popcorn, then spending that on a
high speed link may be a bargain.

Will ALL of the sources you want to access be able to keep the pipe full?
Will you feel cheated if you've paid for bandwidth that you're not able
to use, at the moment? How happy are you driving your Lamborghini
on city streets? :>

My tiny rural village is unusual in having full fibre to premises on tap. Neighbouring ones have VDSL or rival microwave peer to peer links.

Give up on the landline entirely and you can have 1.6GB for £70/pcm

https://www.bt.com/broadband/deals

EE (aka Orange elsewhere) is now a part of BT (as is Plusnet - who are even cheaper but more consumer than business orientated).

Haggle and you will do better than their first offer price.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/30/2025 8:35 PM, john larkin wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jun 2025 15:30:45 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like
$35/month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like
$85/month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100) for
some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable with the
promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

We got cable TV and internet (and phone) as a package at home. We
signed up for 50+50 Mbits and they have several times upgraded at the
same price, I guess to be competitive. We're downloading now at close
to 1G, which is way more than we need.

At work we have a Monkey Brains microwave dish. Same story, we bought
50+50 and actually get 500M or so.

Does anyone need more than 200 Mbits? That's enough to watch a movie
or download most files.

A WiFi 6 router on the 5 GHz band tops out at around 500-700 something
MBps in real world conditions. But I don't really have any applications
for that kind of download speed, either.

I would like faster up speed but it probably won't happen anytime soon,
my city's captive cable company is probably too busy trying to pay
lawsuits stemming from its employees murdering their customers:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Communications>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 6/30/2025 8:47 PM, bitrex wrote:

A WiFi 6 router on the 5 GHz band tops out at around 500-700 something MBps in
real world conditions. But I don't really have any applications for that kind of download speed, either.

When I upgrade media, I lament not having 10Gb interfaces on my
machines. It takes a long time to transfer two 4T drives onto
an 8T drive. Even with multiple interfaces. Repeat for a few
dozen 8T drives and you see a lot of time "wasted".

But, it's something you can just tell the machine to do and walk
away. People are foolish buying performance when elapsed time
isn't a true constraint.

I would like faster up speed but it probably won't happen anytime soon, my city's captive cable company is probably too busy trying to pay lawsuits stemming from its employees murdering their customers:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_Communications>

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 30/06/2025 21:46, Pimpom wrote:

On 01-07-2025 01:41 am, Pimpom wrote:

On 01-07-2025 01:00 am, bitrex wrote:

On 6/30/2025 10:01 AM, legg wrote:

Newcomer bundle - wasn't that something boffins wore around their
overhanging waist?

RL

I live in the US so it's standard to offer a come-on rate of like
$35/ month for six months or a year and then the rate jumps to like
$85/ month (plus fees and taxes taking it to the better part of $100)
for some shitty-ass service like 400 Mbps down, 5-10 MBps up cable
with the promise of high-split getting installed sometime circa 2032.

I've had a 100Mbps connection for the past 6 years, shared by our two
sons' desktops and mine, two laptops and four phones. I occasionally
ask my sons if they want more speed. The answer's always no.

Download speed is usually 98-100 Mbps daytime, sometimes over 150 Mbps
late at night. Upload 95-110. Latency 25-32ms unloaded, 70-110 loaded.

The guaranteed 100Mbps here generally is good for 150Mbps.

I pay the current equivalent of USD9.70 per month including all taxes.
1Gbps is $55.

Oh, and a free landline phone with unlimited calls and a settop box.

Your ping latency time seems rather high.
I get around 13ms @ 100Mbps and now 11ms @ 500Mbps on full fibre.
It was only as slow as 40-50ms in the old days on ADSL copper lines.

--
Martin Brown

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 7/1/2025 12:02 AM, Don Y wrote:

On 6/30/2025 8:47 PM, bitrex wrote:

A WiFi 6 router on the 5 GHz band tops out at around 500-700 something
MBps in real world conditions. But I don't really have any
applications for that kind of download speed, either.

When I upgrade media, I lament not having 10Gb interfaces on my
machines.  It takes a long time to transfer two 4T drives onto
an 8T drive.  Even with multiple interfaces.  Repeat for a few
dozen 8T drives and you see a lot of time "wasted".

But, it's something you can just tell the machine to do and walk
away.  People are foolish buying performance when elapsed time
isn't a true constraint.

Ya, for local networking between the lab PC, multimedia/AV editing PC,
and backup/file server they're on gigabit Ethernet. I'm thinking about
retiring the AV desktop which is currently in a hefty old-fashioned
tower case and getting a Mac Mini with the 10 gigabit Ethernet option,
and then just plug a 10 gigabit card into the server.

What's the point of having bulk storage on the AV machine anyway the
projects drive and backup drive(s) with parity can just live in there,
at 10 gigabit the audio and video files might as well be local for the relatively simple stuff I do.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)