ADSL Upgrade - 8 Mb Connect...

I have been so busy recently I missed the introduction of a new ADSL product that connects you at up to 8 Mb/s downstream and up to 448 kb/s upstream depending upon noise levels. Before this I have been on a standard 1 Mb/s connection with a 256 kb/s upstream so it is quite an upgrade.

It is actually a little cheaper too, but this upgrade does come at a price. My transfer used to be unlimited, they had just introduced a cap of 100 GB, and the new service I am on is capped at 20 GB a month... It seems in the last ten months I haven't used more than 11 GB so I should be OK with the new limit.

It does mean I will have to keep an eye on it, especially when using torrents and stuff. It seems that this is the way the UK broadband scene is moving now. I can upgrade to a package with 50 GB of transfer but that is another £10 a month. I still have 1 TB of transfer a month on my server too which I never get anywhere near at present - I will have to start trying harder!

Currently it is synced at 5792 kbps downstream and 448 kbps upstream. The highest sustained rates I have achieved are 248 KB/s downstream and 44 KB/s upstream. This is with Zen Internet who I have been using for over three years now I think on their Zen 8000 Active service. Not bad in my opinion although I would love one of those funky new ADSL2 connections.

I recently purchased a ZyXEL 660HW-T1 wireless ADSL router that came with a free USB wireless adapter too. The router supports ADSL2 but best of all it supports SNMP properly, unlike my old DrayTek Vigor 2600 that they never fixed. That can be my backup router now. With help I even got the wireless adapter working, although it may not get up to full speed. Need to test further on the weekend.