The sys admin's daily grind – Speedometer

Speeding in the Sticks

Article from Issue 153/2013
Author(s):

Thanks to LTE, state-of-the-art Internet technology has now made its way into Charly's quiet home. Accustomed to the sorrows of low surf speeds, our columnist prefers to make his own measurements.

I live in the sparsely populated lower left, lower Rhine area of Germany, or as a good friend once put it, "out in the sticks." Tranquility offers many advantages: Peace and quiet and a green environment, and parents do not need to choose their children's schools based on the quality of the drugs trafficked there.

But I have to admit, there are also some disadvantages: Public transport and a choice of Internet providers are things we have heard about but not actually experienced. If a port becomes available on the regional distributor, Deutsche Telekom graciously assigns a "DSL light" connection with a downstream rate of "up to" 384Kbps. This is the speed to which the Telekom shareholders are looking to slow down all DSL connections at some point, if customers do not sign up for video on demand from the same source.

As an alternative, you could try Internet via satellite, which might be floating somewhere up in the heavens but offers latencies straight from hell. About six months ago – we are so lucky – a mobile phone company introduced 800MHz LTE with a downstream rate of 21Mbps. Although the latencies are still not what gamers need, for my fellow hinterland dwellers, this radio link is like traveling at warp factor 8. My fingers were wet with sweat when I signed the contract.

[...]

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