Speedtest

I don't know about you folks but my download speeds nowadays are so sweet! Lightening fast! I was downloading a trial version of an Adobe product this morning and it felt kinda fast. I've not been unfamiliar with speeds above 1.5MB /sec in the past, and this for some time now. My subscription specifies downloads of about 20Mbits/s... but today it felt much faster. It wasn't even today, I'd say... it's been like this a few weeks now. I got a cable subscription in case you wondered. I did the well known speedtest with my Macbook Pro, talking wireless in 11g to the Airport Xtreme in the loft, with two concrete floors in between (if that played a role, that is). I got 2.5MB/s file downloads this morning and more than 2.8 yesterday evening (I was 1Gbit Ethernet wired to the router then). Look at all the captures posted here for yourselves, dudes. Trust me, I'm not making this up. Click on for sharper views! Forgot to mention. The shot on the left is captured during pinging with a London server. But I got even faster with Mälmo in Sweden and almost as fast with New York. Of course, it's Sunday morning over here... I'm like kinda speeding up on an empty F1 circuit with a Ferrari.

It's more intriguing to see what others in my own hometown are getting though. See the two comparison charts at the bottom, one for uploads and another for downloads. Downloads in cable are always much faster. Multiples, that is. That's how cable works. Otherwise, all cable operators would have filed for bankruptcy. Even those users with the same operator as mine, Telenet, are pretty lagging. I have the turbo monthly subscription version, I must admit, that costs me between 50 and 60 euro, for enjoying such speeds and also the rights to 60 gigabytes of downloads. And hundreds of free hotspots nationwide, when I am out of town.

Eat your heart out John C. Dvorak. As regular watcher of his Cranky Geeks, I often enjoy hearing him talk about the pathetic speeds he's enduring in California, of all places! He's moaning and screaming and hates it all! How sweet! I'm sitting down here in Oudenaarde, East Flanders, Belgium, that unless you are from the neighborhood  you couldn't tell where this darn place is on the map, and good ol' John enjoying the view of  Alcatraz from his balcony (I made that up, probably he's not) and gettin' fractions of what I, a 3rd world peasant, get over here. And he's paying much more than I do! Life is a bitch, innit?