Internet in a rural area

[remake20]

I live in a pretty rural area (about 8 miles south of the nearest town) and right now I'm getting a signal from an internet provider in my town, but because of the distance, it's not that fast. I was just wandering if you guys knew how to get a faster internet in the country. I've seen the commercials for things like HughsNet, but do they really work? Thanks in advance.

 

[Zelig]

Switch to cable.

 

[remake20]

I could, but I'd rather not.

 

[Cutlass]

Your 3 choices, so far as I know, are phone company, cable tv company, or satellite. You take what you can get from one of those. You can't speed it up unless the company offers a premium package with a guaranteed higher speed. Which of course will cost more, if available at all.

 

[remake20]

Your 3 choices, so far as I know, are phone company, cable tv company, or satellite. You take what you can get from one of those. You can't speed it up unless the company offers a premium package with a guaranteed higher speed. Which of course will cost more, if available at all.

Okay thanks.

 

[REgenerator_KZ]

You are luckier than me.
I live in the largest city in my country, an ex-capital with population of more than 1.7 millions.
The highest speed we can get in here are mere 256 kb/sec , which magically turns to approx 88kb/s as soon as you start downloading something.

 

[remake20]

You are luckier than me.
I live in the largest city in my country, an ex-capital with population of more than 1.7 millions.
The highest speed we can get in here are mere 256 kb/sec , which magically turns to approx 88kb/s as soon as you start downloading something.

That's better than me. Where do you live? I usually get between 40-880 kb/s.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Look at it this way, if you can get cable internet, it will be pretty much as fast as advertised. Those of us in the city are stuck on overpopulated nodes and take a severe hit during peak times.

Satellite has a high latency, which isnt much of a problem if you only browse. You wouldnt be able to play most multiplayer games though, as your ping will be abysmal. Web pages will also take longer to start loading.

I assume you have DSL now. With that, you're pretty much SOL. If it drops below an advertised minimum, you could get the company to either put in an amplifier or upgrade the phone lines, but if its above that threshold, there's nothing you can do.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Look at it this way, if you can get cable internet, it will be pretty much as fast as advertised. Those of us in the city are stuck on overpopulated nodes and take a severe hit during peak times.

I notice my internet speed drops quite a bit around 5-6 pm. I suppose this is because everyone coming home from work checks their emails.

 

[remake20]

Where we live, I can't get cable or DSL (which is not what I have, even though I'm a computer person I'm not quite sure what kind of internet we have). There is a limit on how far cable and phone companies can take their internet things, and we're out of every sing one.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

I notice my internet speed drops quite a bit around 5-6 pm. I suppose this is because everyone coming home from work checks their emails.

Its not a 'suppose', but a fact. Most cable providers overpopulate a node. So a node meant for 20 people may have 30 on it. This isnt a problem most of the time as long as not all 30 are on at the same time or no one is sucking down all the bandwidth. The thing is, exactly like you described, when people come home from work, they plop their butts in front of the tv or in front of the computer and suddenly most of the 30 people on the node are on at the same time. It ends up that each person is only getting 66% of their allocated bandwidth.

This is one of the reasons I hate cable internet. Its great when it works, and its got higher max speeds than DSL, but when it has problems, it has problems

Unfortunately cable or DSL is all I can get. Stupid monopolies.

 

[plarq]

You are luckier than me.
I live in the largest city in my country, an ex-capital with population of more than 1.7 millions.
The highest speed we can get in here are mere 256 kb/sec , which magically turns to approx 88kb/s as soon as you start downloading something.

Let me guess, Bolivia?

 

[REgenerator_KZ]

Nope.
My actual connection speed never've been higher than 56 kb/s, via ADSL modem. I changed to a what they call "Turbo Plus" yesterday. Nothing have changed so far.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Its not a 'suppose', but a fact. Most cable providers overpopulate a node. So a node meant for 20 people may have 30 on it. This isnt a problem most of the time as long as not all 30 are on at the same time or no one is sucking down all the bandwidth. The thing is, exactly like you described, when people come home from work, they plop their butts in front of the tv or in front of the computer and suddenly most of the 30 people on the node are on at the same time. It ends up that each person is only getting 66% of their allocated bandwidth.

Well, I'm not sure what kind of internet we have exactly. The Network thing in the Control Panel says LAN, but I'm sure that's because I'm behind a router.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If your modem has a coax cable going to it, you have cable internet. If you have a phone cable going to the modem, you have DSL.

Also, LAN means Local Area Network. How you'd confuse that for your internet connection, I dunno. Although I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Yeah, I knew LAN was local area network, that why I mentioned the router. I went to look and it said on the box "Cable Modem." I didn't know it was a modem.

 

[remake20]

Man, I'm a pretty techie guy, but when it comes to routers and modems, I'm lost.

 

[Maniacal]

Companys also advertise their speed in kiloBITS, whereas your downloads will be measured in kiloBYTES. IIRC bits are 8 times smaller than bytes so they can post bigger numbers. Bits is acronymed in lowercase and bytes use uppcasre (so Kb and KB respectively).

 

[Zelig]

Companys also advertise their speed in kiloBITS, whereas your downloads will be measured in kiloBYTES. IIRC bits are 8 times smaller than bytes so they can post bigger numbers. Bits is acronymed in lowercase and bytes use uppcasre (so Kb and KB respectively).

They don't do it for "big number" reasons, they do it because convention is for everything bandwidth related to be measured in bits.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

They don't do it for "big number" reasons, they do it because convention is for everything bandwidth related to be measured in bits.

While you are correct, you can't argue that it allows them to also advertise bigger numbers which is beneficial for them.