Things I Never Knew about ADSL BroadBand (until BSNL did this to me)
We have a Broadband connection since 2005, same year when BSNL introduced BroadBand internet in my city. I used to categorize broadband as per bandwidth and speed offered till this incident happened.
I do not call myself a tech guru because even I am learning with you and and use Blogsolute to share what I learn. This article contributes to the same category.
Recently, I applied for an upgrade to 10MBbs plan and billing started very next month. Please mind my words, just the billing of upgrade plan started. Actual upgrade didn’t happen. Yes, I was continuing to receive merely 4Mbps as per previous plan.
After visiting their office, they said there might be technical issue temporarily or the distance of your home might be too far from the telephone exchange causing speed loss.
Why I wasn’t getting 8 Mbps even after paying for it?
Answers given by them weren’t satisfactory so I started searching about it online when I came to know about types of ADSL connections. My broadband connection was using ADSL or ADSL1 line which is brought via telephone’s copper wire. Maximum limit of this line is 8Mbps but due to quality of cabling, it could yield just 4mbps at max.
None of the ISP in India offer classification of plans according to lines but I landed on this site when I realized about the cost and quality difference.
Even ADSL connection have certain Types
- ADSL/ADSL1 which I currently have coming through copper cable with maximum of 4mbps connection.
- ADSL2 which offers upto 12 MBps connection. Also comes via copper cable but requires high end infrastructure on both ends.
- ADSL2+ doubles the speed offered by ADSL2 i.e. 24 Mbps.
Refer the comparison to know more about the difference.
Why is Upload Speed less than Download
Before answering, let me tell you what does ADSL mean. It is an abbreviated form for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. Asymmetric means download speed cannot be same as upload. For home users who generally consume data and do not send much, ADSL is perfect. For business owners who send data to servers, SSDL (symmetric Digital subscriber line) is suitable.
Why Skype Video delayed even on 4 Mbps Connection
Skype video calling requires downloading and uploading at the same time. As I mentioned in above answer, download isn’t equal to upload speed, person on other side might face problem with your video.
Also, it highly depends on ping of connection. This signifies how fast your request is sent – processed – and received back. This again depends upon the distance of cable coming to your home. Understand and test broadband connection.
What I Settled down with?
Current service provider was in no way going to upgrade their infrastructure to ADSL2 or ADSL2+ for a single customer so I switched my ISP. I chose cable modem connection which uses Fiber optics and offers 8MBps with less than a ping of 45 milliseconds. Yes, that’s the beauty of Fiber optics where distance doesn’t hurt much at the customer’s end.
I would have never come to know about this issue or simply I would have never took efforts to research about it. This bad incident made me a wise customer who can at least argue next time internet service provider says something.
What broadband connection are you using? Let me know in comments if you have any doubts. I will certainly help you out.
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