
To (mis)quote Boston:
I woke up this morning and the sun was gone
Turned on my computer to start my day
I lost myself in a familiar bloody annoying feeling
I checked my ADSL connection speed and was both horrified and annoyed
The above is this morning's Speedtest result for our "blazingly fast" ADSL connection. It is about the same as the other times I have checked it (in other words, pathetic). The time of day or night doesn't seem to make the slightest difference.
Now, we have a GoLarge account with a certain large monopolistic telecommunications provider that shall remain nameless for the moment (though easily identifiable).
We are supposed to be getting the fastest possible connection downstream, and 128kbps upstream. I've stuck with our current plan, as it is uncapped.
If anyone has seen my other posts, we live about 4km from our exchange. I have also checked speeds for family and friends in other locations in Auckland, and they are considerably faster than ours. I don't know how far they are from their respective exchanges.
Our service seems to be getting slower with time. I imagine that lots of people in our neighbourhood have broadband too - there are certainly an increasing number of wireless connections observable if you look for them (all locked unfortunately).
What I want to know is, is this standard for unfortunate people who happen to live a fair distance from their exchange in an area where lots of people have broadband? Are we just going to have to live with it until more infrastructure comes online?
Or is it my poor choice of ISP plans that is the major hampering factor? I've heard that GoLarge is shaped, but I thought that only applied to bittorrents.
Another ISP's sales rep has sworn black-and-blue to me that we will get faster speeds if we switch to them. Should I believe him?
I'm feeling quite negative about the whole thing at present, as you can probably tell from the tone of this posting!
Advice would be appreciated,
Cheers!