Three strikes and your out - strike three.
I do a lot of work from home (mainly because I can, but also because I get so much more done when I'm not in the office - there's just too many distractions in there).
My connection to the Internet was 3Mb/s synchronous. I really use the 3Mb/s upload as much as the download (I do a lot of work with large files - usually virtual machines). Copying one VHD could take a couple of hours, and would occasionally fail - but even so, that was quicker than driving into the office.
Following along in the spirit of "he who asks..", I inquired if it would be possible to get a faster Internet connection.
Last night I got home to my new 4Mb/s Internet connection. Eager to see if an extra megabit per second would make any difference, I started to run a few tests.
My results were awful. Both my download and upload speeds were fluctuating madly between 1 and 3 megabits per second (no where near 4).
My "complaining seems to work" mentality had be telephoning the support line of my Internet provider. "This is Dave Northey from Microsoft, and I'm not happy".
To cut a long story short (and to get to the punch-line a bit quicker), I had them run all sorts of tests on my line. They then had me run one from my end: unplug your router and download a large file onto your PC whilst it it directly connected to the line.
"Who's unplugged the Internet? We were playing Halo3".
Lesson learned: Do your homework before complaining!
My 4Mb/s Internet connection is brilliant - especially brilliant for playing xbox games online!
Dave.
