With this Sunday question, the editors would like to find out from you how you are connected to the Internet. How fast and reliable is your connection, what technology is used and how satisfied are you with the status quo?
Table of contents
- One year of Sunday Questions
- How is the community connected to the internet?
- How good is your bandwidth and latency?
- What is it about complain?
- Participation is expressly desired
- Overview of the last ten Sunday questions
One year of sunday questions
A year has passed since the editors asked you in the first post of the format whether you see the future of servers and PCs more in ARM or in the x86 architecture. In the meantime, at least 46 Sunday questions have appeared, but one topic that is actually obvious has not yet been considered: How fast is your internet connection? Although there was a debate at the end of April 2022 about the bandwidth available when you first visited the World Wide Web, a lot has probably happened since then for most ComputerBase readers. Today's Sunday question is intended to capture the status quo of your internet connection at home.
How is the community connected to the internet?
First of all, there is the question of which technology you use to be connected to the Internet at home. Today, Digital Subscriber Line, or DLS for short, is considered a classic, whereby the long-serving telephone network is used as the basis and generally no data transmission rates higher than 16 Mbit/s can be achieved downstream.
A more powerful variant is VDSL, which uses vectoring to reduce unwanted crosstalk from several adjacent copper lines to different landline subscribers. The central DSLAM, in which the signals of all participants for the fiber optic backbone of the communication networks are encoded into one signal or decoded into individual transmissions using the multiplex method, calculates in real time to what extent the simultaneous transmission of different signals on neighboring lines can cause undesired interference. The transmission symbols are then shifted in the opposite direction to the expected interference in the constellation diagram in the complex plane in quadrature amplitude modulation.
And with this sentence and at the latest when opening the stored Wikipedia article, it becomes clear: This is extremely complicated technology with sophisticated algorithms and a need for computing power that should not be underestimated – and all of this serves the sole purpose of breathing new life into old copper cables . With success: With supervectoring, i.e. VDSL2 in profile 35b, participants are enabled data transmission rates of 250 Mbit/s downstream and 50 Mbit/s upstream, provided the DLSAM is not too far away from their own home.
How are you connected to the internet at home?
- I have an ordinary DSL connection.
- I use VDSL (Vectoring or Super Vectoring).
- My Internet access is via (TV) cable.
- I am connected via fiber optics (FTTB or FTTH).
- I also use a 4G or 5G modem at home.
- Abstain (Show result)
Please log in to vote!
The fiber optic network allows even higher bandwidths, whereby signals are no longer transmitted using electricity, but instead optical fibers are used. The fiber optic cables allow a greater distance between the exchange and your home without transmission losses and also offer a high level of security against eavesdropping. However, the fact that fiber optic expansion, especially in Germany, is not progressing as quickly as politicians and end consumers would like has been the subject of numerous debates for years. All the more exciting is the question of how many users the technology will have by the end of 2022.
How good are your bandwidth and latency?
Ultimately, apart from optimized 5G connections, only fiber optic connections allow stable transmission rates of 1,000 Mbit/s or more to be achieved. So far, however, very few ComputerBase readers should be traveling that fast, right? When it comes to Internet speed, a general distinction must be made between downstream and upstream – i.e. the transmission rate that is achieved when downloading or uploading. The question below is how these speeds turn out for you on average. Outliers upwards or downwards are therefore not to be taken into account. If the values are not known, a standard speed test, such as that offered by numerous websites, will provide information.
What is the average downstream speed of your internet connection at home?
- 0 to 1 Mbps
- 2 to 5 Mbps
- 6 to 10 Mbps
- 11 to 20 Mbps
- 21 to 60 MBit/s
- 61 to 120 Mbps
- 121 to 200 Mbps
- 201 to 300 Mbps
- 301 to 600 Mbps
- 601 to 1,000 Mbps
- More than 1 Gbit/s
- Abstain (Show result)
Please log in to vote! How fast is your internet connection at home on average upstream?
- 0 to 1 Mbps
- 2 to 5 Mbps
- 6 to 10 Mbps
- 11 to 20 Mbps
- 21 to 60 Mbps
- 61 to 120 Mbps
- 121 to 200 Mbps
- 201 to 300 Mbps
- 301 to 600 Mbps
- 601 to 1000 Mbps
- More than 1 Gbps
- Abstain (Show result)
Please log in to vote!
Most such applications also provide a measure of latency; specifically at the packet cycle time. What is meant is the period of time that elapses between the sending of a packet to a host and the receipt of a response packet that is then immediately sent back. Since the diagnostic tool or the console command ping is often used to determine this value, the term is considered a synonym. If you want to test the latency of your own connection, you can simply type ping computerbase.de in the Windows command prompt – the packet turnaround time to the ComputerBase servers with a direct connection to the large Internet node DE-CIX in Frankfurt should be used as a basis for comparison in the following survey to serve. At the same time, no other applications should load the Internet line or router or computer.
What is your average latency (ping) to ComputerBase.de?
- 0 to 5ms
- 6 to 10ms
- 11 to 20 ms
- 21 to 30 ms
- 31 to 40 ms
- 41 to 50ms
- 51 to 70ms
- 71 to 100ms
- 101 to 150ms
- 150 to 200ms
- More than 200ms
- Abstain (show result)
What is there to complain about?
In addition to the transmission speed in the upstream and downstream and the packet turnaround time, there are a few other parameters that are relevant for smooth communication on the Internet. It is worth mentioning, for example, jitter, which is the fluctuation in latency, or packet loss, which in packet-based data transmission in computer networks informs about information that has been lost during data transmission – be it due to a damaged line, excessive interference or the drop in time -to-live value of an IP packet to 0. Do you have to deal with such problems at home? Or are you completely satisfied with the quality of your internet connection including its speed?
Are you satisfied with the status quo of your internet connection at home?
- Yes, I am completely satisfied.
- Well, on the whole I'm satisfied, but the situation isn't perfect.
- No, I am dissatisfied.
- Abstain (Show result)
Please log in to vote!
And if you are dissatisfied, why is that? Is it not possible to upgrade to a faster internet connection where you live, is the technology causing problems or is the WiFi coverage in your own home unsatisfactory?
What do you criticize about your internet connection at home?
- The downstream speed is too slow for me.
- The upstream speed is too slow for me.
- My latency (ping) is too high.
- I'm struggling with jitter.
- Packet loss makes my life difficult too often.
- My connection drops frequently.
- The WiFi coverage in my home leaves a lot to be desired.
- My tariff is too expensive for me.
- I am dissatisfied for other reasons (see comments).
- Abstain (Show result)
Please log in to vote!
Participation is expressly desired
The editors would be very happy to receive well-founded and detailed reasons for your decisions in the comments on the current Sunday question. If you have completely different favorites, please write it in the comments.
Readers who have not yet participated in the last Sunday questions are welcome to do so. In particular, there are still exciting discussions going on in the ComputerBase forum about the last surveys.
Overview of the last ten Sunday questions
- Do you still use SMS? And if so, how?
- How, when and where do you buy new games?
- What does the community think about ray tracing in games?
- Graphics settings, presets, Image output and peripherals
- Do you still rely on air or already on water?
- Would you like to read more about efficient or economical hardware?
- Is your pain limit for gaming PC reached?
- GTA I & II or rather San Andreas, Vice City & GTA V?
- What grades do you currently give AMD's AM5 platform?
- Is the power consumption of new hardware still up to date?
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