I mentioned previously that I’m switching from Demon Internet to Be Unlimited. Speed claims are great, but it is really the unlimited aspect I am going for. With more folk on my network and me playing with new toys, there will be a risk in the future that I would hit Demon Internet’s Fair Usage Policy limit again and I can’t be bothered network shaping.

Anyway, in the last few days I have been monitoring the stats on my Demon connection so that I can get a comparison after the switch. I’ve been given Tuesday 20th May as the activation date, though not a time so that will prove interesting. Firstly for fun, I include a result from Speedtest – an online speed checker. I’m more interested in the change, rather than the actual figure. I try a few servers as the nominal nearest isn’t alway what I get the best result from. The first result is against the Maidenhead server, which gives the best ping.

The second is from the Paris Server, which gives a better download but longer ping.

And finally some of the stats on my line with Demon Internet:

ADSL Link	Downstream	Upstream
Connection Speed	6624 kbps	448 kbps
Line Attenuation	42.0 db	22.0 db
Noise Margin	6.9 db	22.0 db

From what I read on forums the Line Attenuation makes a difference to the potential speeds in DSL implementations, what I found interesting is that the distance to exchange using an online calculator puts me at around 3km from it in cabling terms, which makes a lot of sense. The BT Exchange is between our and the next villages, and we have a tributory of the river Almond between those too, which will dictate the routing somewhat.