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Filed under: Personal | Tags: Internet (4), Tech (188) | June 7th, 2005
This is Real Broadband
Care of VVD Communications, the cool company with a bad website, I now have a synchronous 10mbps connection in my apartment. The first thing I did was go to a bandwidth testing site, as seen above. I was using Comcast before which was pretty snappy, but this is a whole new way to experience the internet. This is even faster than the connection I get at work.
This will definitely mean I’ll be able to run a lot more things from home, the upload bandwidth is about 10x what I had before, which means it’ll be much faster to upload pictures, serve files, stream music from home, and all the other stuff you should be able to do in a hyperconnected world. (Maybe I’ll even catch up on photos now.) They were also able to light up all the ethernet panels in my place so now doing some of the multimedia things I wanted to do around the house should be much easier. (Wireless was really too slow.) Best of all, the whole thing is only $35 a month and there was no setup.
I’m still going to have Comcast for a few months until my contract runs out, what I’m wondering now is if there’s a way to have the router balance the internet traffic between the two connections. I’m using a WRT54GS which I’ve loaded up with alternative Linux-based firmware before with good success. I wonder if that sort of balancing would be possible?
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Matt Mullenweg is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web. 
]V[orlock Zernebock | June 7th, 2005 @ 11:47 pm |
Hey dude! Where are you from? In my country (Spain) the speed limit it’s in 4mbps Asynchronous ADSL. Sometimes I think we’re a third world country in relation with our internet connections
Congrats!!
Roy Schestowitz | June 8th, 2005 @ 12:07 am |
That’s the point where you ought to SSH your home machine (from work) and centralise your filestore on the home machine only. Your maximum bandwidth is only contrained by your ability to get X-forwarding working smoothly.
Mark | June 8th, 2005 @ 12:26 am |
How much Matt? I’m interested to see just how far ahead cost-wise you are from us (UK).
Currently I’m on the mid-upper end of Broadband connections in the UK. A 2Mb down / 256k up service, that costs (reasonable for this country) £30~ a month, approximately $55.
Kitta | June 8th, 2005 @ 12:27 am |
Matt, can I come live with you? I can cook and clean, anything for that kind of speed! ;o)
Oyvind | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:11 am |
True loadbalancing (as in one tcp session loadbalanced over both links) across two ISP’s is far from trivial, but you can do some tricks locally since you probably NAT one or both of the connections. One approach is to route some IP ranges or port numbers to Comcast as the translated address will be the source, and use VDD for rest/default.
Implementation depend on the capabilites in the router ofcourse. I do not know if the Linksys can do policy routing, any IOS based Cisco box should be fine. I have a stack of old Cisco’s lying around, could send you one if you want to become a Cisco hacker
Mathias Bynens | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:34 am |
w00t!
robin | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:53 am |
Matt, you lucky boy…! Though if I decide to move to live in Hong Kong for a while I could get one of those lovely new 1GB connections… nuh nuh.
How about that then huh Kitta?
Oh wait, I have a girlfriend.
Chris J. Davis | June 8th, 2005 @ 3:29 am |
Hmmmm,
I know that most providers say this somewhere, but methinks these guys will actually be watching. So are you getting the residential or business account?
David | June 8th, 2005 @ 4:01 am |
That’s pretty sweet. I have 3mb down/768 up here in Canada thanks to Rogers. I’d love to have a 10mb connection, but in Ottawa the highest we have is 5mb, though the small town of Kingston has 10mb…
Indranil | June 8th, 2005 @ 4:15 am |
Dude!
I say, dude!
Can we be friends?
Matt | June 8th, 2005 @ 5:01 am |
It’s $35 a month or $300 a year.
Geren | June 8th, 2005 @ 5:13 am |
Cavalier Telephone is offering that kind of speed in the Mid-Atlantic region. We were considering to switch to them from Comcast, but went with the slightly slower Verizon instead. We’ve been having repeated problems with Comcast — the connection just goes away. We opted for Verizon because of their plans to offer their FiOS system in our area in the next year or so, and their plans to try to offer fiber-based broadband video in addition to internet and phone — all with a fiber connection right up to the house.
Martin | June 8th, 2005 @ 5:23 am |
I’m currently on a 40Mb line…yup 40. Best part, it’s dirt cheap!!
Cheers from Tokyo!
Martin | June 8th, 2005 @ 5:27 am |
Just to make it a bit worse – 350-500Mb is the norm now, that’s why 40Mb line cost right next to nothing.
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Brent O'Connor | June 8th, 2005 @ 6:19 am |
Thanks rub it in! I have to live with 1.5mb at home and 5.8mb down and 3.0 mb up at work. The problem with a good connection though is that you are still limited by the connection of other servers on the internet. You can only download as fast as they can upload.
Adam Michela | June 8th, 2005 @ 6:42 am |
I’d kill for something like that in my neighborhood.
I’m still waiting, patiently, for Verizon FiOS (which was finally announced in my area last month)!
tyler | June 8th, 2005 @ 6:50 am |
Wow! Killer! 10/10. Can’t beat that from an ISP. I’m getting 10/1 soon from Mediacom. 10Mbit down 1Mbit up.
That’s much better than my current 5Mbit down 256kbps up. Congrats on the fat pipe Matt!
Roy Schestowitz | June 8th, 2005 @ 7:03 am |
Some mentioned gigabit connections, but the hardware cannot handle that much. I am running on a 100Mbit/sec wire, but the most I can ever get (effective speed) is around 50Mbit and the machine is coughing blood.
Rob Mientjes | June 8th, 2005 @ 7:05 am |
Craphouses! We pay almost €50 per month for 3MBit down and 786kBit up! Since the Netherlands don’t do DSL, we’re stuck with ADSL anyway, so you’re twice as lucky.
Anthony | June 8th, 2005 @ 7:08 am |
Which bandwidth site did you use to test your connection Matt?
Matt | June 8th, 2005 @ 7:08 am |
DSLreports.com
Geof F. Morris | June 8th, 2005 @ 7:27 am |
Well, now if this doesn’t throw me into a depression … :sigh:
Man, I live in a city that can put two men on the freaking moon. Why can’t I get a kickin’ connection like this?
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Matt DeGeorge | June 8th, 2005 @ 8:08 am |
Robert X Cringely at pbs.org used 3 Linksys routers to combine 3 separate wireless networks into one so I know it can be done
Mr. Dew | June 8th, 2005 @ 8:30 am |
Singapore is still stuck at 3500 kbps for dedicated access… And not forgetting the fact that it’s rather expensive too compared to other countries.
Mark Payne | June 8th, 2005 @ 8:39 am |
Man, that might send me into depression! I am back hanging out with my parents for the summer to be with my grandpa that has cancer. I *just* got them switched onto DSL because I told them that I couldn’t live with anything less. I’m gonna have to research and see if they have anything like that for cheap back home in Chicago!
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Matt Robin | June 8th, 2005 @ 9:27 am |
Matt – that’s about three times my speed, for half the price! My broadband is one of the fastest types for residents in the UK…and it costs about £35 per month (about $60-$70!)
Lucky you…I’m sure you’ll take full advantage of this extra speed as soon as you can!
(I still know people in the UK who use ‘dial-up’ across 56k modems….the poor bastards!)
Matt Robin | June 8th, 2005 @ 9:34 am |
I’m actually very grateful for what I’ve got right now as it is twice as fast as what I was using a few months ago…and with no price increase at all!
Your new connection sounds fantastic Matt, but my envy is limited by geography and modest gratitude (both happy coincidences of fate).
Mark Payne: Wait, hang-on, you’re saying you don’t think you couldn’t live with anything less that DSL…and your Grandpa is dying with cancer? Tell me if I’m wrong: but isn’t your Grandpa dying with cancer about 100 times more important than how fast your PC can connect to the Net? # wide-eyed in surprise #
Alex | June 8th, 2005 @ 10:14 am |
You work for CNET Networks? Man I’m impressed. I wish I had that job.
Dante | June 8th, 2005 @ 10:29 am |
w00t indeed.
Hey Matt, I’m sometimes near 3rd and Folsom after school; think I could come over some day and try that out?
Jeff Wheeler | June 8th, 2005 @ 12:45 pm |
On their site they say they have 45 mbps for condos and apartments.
I just drooled in jealousy. I so need to convince my parents to switch our ISP.
nikkiana | June 8th, 2005 @ 12:55 pm |
I’m jealous. (Like you haven’t heard that one before).
Jordan Moore | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:16 pm |
Sadly, I’m still using dial-up. The cable company wanted $13,000 to drop me a line from 1/5 mile away, and the phone company wants to re-wire the phone lines in the house before installing DSL. Any suggestions?
Tom | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:18 pm |
Sick
Matt Robin | June 8th, 2005 @ 2:59 pm |
Jordan (Moore): Re-wire the phone lines for DSL? If you’re on dial-up and you are a serious web user, then the choice is clearly an obvious one….do it! Re-wire the whole block if you have to!!
You won’t need to re-wire a whole building though…you will need the incoming line to be tested by the phone company engineers…and if they suggest you need one new line installing, then that’s what you need to do. But you only need that to reach to just inside your house – from there, set up a wireless network and…’hey, look – no wires anywhere else!’ Saving you $$$.
Robert Accettura | June 8th, 2005 @ 3:44 pm |
That totally rocks dud. Consider yourself really lucky.
I’d be blown away to get 5Mbps up/down.
Steve | June 8th, 2005 @ 6:19 pm |
That’s incredible speedwise. Pricewise, at $35, I’m frickin amazed.
David Russell | June 9th, 2005 @ 2:43 am |
In the UK the fastest we can get is 8Mbps. Except it’s asynchronous (meaing the fastest way to upload a site is to print it out and put it on the back of a mule), and you have to live in a flat above the telephone exchange
Dean | June 9th, 2005 @ 4:40 am |
Oh boy, I wish. Majority of Australia gets up to 1.5Mb/256kb for upload/download — but some more remote areas are still dial-up only. Entry level ADSL currently being marketed is 256/64kb connections. We pay $50 to $90 AUD for 1.5/256 (depending on data limits). 512/512 synch is more expensive.
Some cable broadband gets better results, although a lot of it is throttled nowadays and suffers the same data restrictions as ADSL.
There’s new “ADSL2″ here with up to 8Mb/1.5Mb, but extremely limited availability.
I feel like I’m living in the dark ages reading these posts. My 1.5Mb/256kb connection seems positively dreadful (AUD$80/month with 20Gb data limit is low end of the deals). Sigh.
Vitor | June 9th, 2005 @ 12:28 pm |
In Portugal you can have 16Mb adsl (16384kbps/512kbps) but it costs you $80 a month.
Nice to know that we are faster than Uk
and Spain
p.s. I wanna live in Tokyo!
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uber | June 9th, 2005 @ 12:53 pm |
We can get 8mbps here in the UK, yes, but only through LLU services at the moment. British Telecom are being really slow about rolling out ADSL2 and ADSL2+
I’m sitting here on a 512kbps ADSL line (256kbps up) and paying £24/month (~$45/month) for the privilege. And I see people complaining about their 1-4mbps lines? I think you need someone like me to put things into perspective! Oh well, atleast I can get 11ms pings to London. How are the pings on these new umfangled wireless services?
Matt Robin | June 9th, 2005 @ 5:17 pm |
David Russell and Uber: Tell me about it!
We’re screwed-over in the UK! I’m with BT, and on a 2.2 mbps DSL line (Uber: I’m paying £35 per month for this).
Guys – 10 mbps services ARE available in the UK – but only on business lines and not the residential ones (= £100s!)
Joe | June 9th, 2005 @ 6:09 pm |
Nice. That upload is great.
I get about the same download speed ( usually as bit faster ) but I get nowhere near that upload.. probably around a ninth of that. I pay about the same as you.. $35/mo is pretty cheap for a 10mbit
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JalanSutera | June 10th, 2005 @ 4:13 am |
well, are you the PR Manager of VVD Communications?
Matt | June 10th, 2005 @ 8:51 am |
Haha not yet. “Will work for bandwidth.”
Jeremy Shields | June 10th, 2005 @ 4:49 pm |
absolutely amazing connection.
I only have 3 MBPS down, and 1 MBPS up. =/
Hans | June 11th, 2005 @ 9:30 am |
10MBps? Whaaaaaat?!
I thought the 512kb line I’m using right now was fast… And I’m paying $45 per month for it!
Damn you, SBC!
Marco | June 12th, 2005 @ 3:56 pm |
“I now have a synchronous 10mbps connection in my apartment.”
No you don’t
What you mean is, you have a /symmetric/ 10mbps connection.
Aankhen | June 13th, 2005 @ 10:32 am |
I pay $25 a month for 128 Kbps up, 128 Kbps down (DSL)… anyone wanna sponsor my imminent move to Hong Kong?
useless | June 14th, 2005 @ 10:27 am |
Jeez, where do I sign up???? I thought I was doing great at 4096/512…. wait, first I need to move. Let me start packing.
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dieKrahe | June 19th, 2005 @ 1:26 am |
All I could think of when I went to VVD Communications website, is why is a company using a picture from O’Hare Int’l Airport here in Chicago on their front page, when they are based in and do business exclusively in California.
I seem to focus on the weirdest of things … oh well.
Joel Burslem | June 21st, 2005 @ 8:30 pm |
Here in South Korea, I sit on 100mbps line and I pay roughly $40 US a month. This is pretty much standard in every home. You can even walk in off the street to anyone of the hundreds of PC bangs (”rooms”) are fire up connections even faster. These run about $1/hr.
Som Bis | June 25th, 2005 @ 1:33 am |
Awesome dude let me know when you peak up at 1Gb/s
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Charles | June 21st, 2006 @ 10:31 pm |
Matt,
We upgraded your connectin last month to 45 Mbps. Try another test, you will be happy…
Charles