Several months back my parents  had their Virgin Media line upgraded from a 2Mbps to a 10Mbps connection [...]]]> Last Friday I talked about a new breed of superfast broadband heading our way, however it would seem that in the current day many users still aren’t achieving anywhere near the maximum speeds promised by their ISPs.

Several months back my parents  had their Virgin Media line upgraded from a 2Mbps to a 10Mbps connection free of charge, due to the discontinuation of the older package.   This week my father mentioned that he hadn’t noticed a difference and so I performed a quick speed check which confirmed he was still on the old package; an issue resolved by a single phone call to Virgin.

I had a similar issue when Virgin upgraded me to 20Mbps without replacing my old, slow modem; once again a quick speed test provided me with the fodder to give them a call and get a new, faster broadband modem free of charge.

It is always important to check that you are receiving something that at least resembles what you’re paying for and fortunately a quick visit to www.speedtest.net will do just that.  Simply click on ‘begin test’ and within around thirty seconds you will be given the current download and upload speed achieved between your computer and the closest server – in our case, Maidenhead.

Please remember that the speed quoted by your ISP is most often a maximum obtainable speed and it would be completely reasonable to get something less.  This is especially true if you connect using ADSL via a convention phone line rather than via a fibre optic (Virgin Media) connection as the speed is heavily influenced from your distance to the closest exchange.

While this one factor cannot be helped, there are several routes you can take if your actual speed is completely disproportionate to that promised by your ISP:

-          Talk to them – In many instances your ISP will be able to run tests to ensure that your poor performance isn’t due to a fault such as excessive line noise.  I’ve seen customers have their connections increased in speed exponentially by simply reporting a fault and having an inherent problem removed; this work is paid for by the phone provider.  Even in a worst case scenario where the line speed cannot be increased, it is possible that you could get moved down to a cheaper package while suffering no loss in performance.

-          Update your router firmware – Most of us nowadays will connect to the Internet via a router which, if not doing its job properly, will result in slower download speeds.  Problems with a router can in many instances be rectified by updating it with the latest software via a free firmware update provided by the original manufacturer.  These updates are usually distributed free of charge online and serve as a way of the manufacturers improving the features, security and speed of their existing products as and when improvements are discovered.

-          Clean up your PC – Many cases of connection slowdown are caused by a needlessly large amount of software in the background either slowing down the computer itself or hogging a proportion of the Internet bandwidth.  Ensure that your Operating System is always kept clean and most importantly ensure that peer to peer file sharing programs (such as BitTorrent) aren’t set to run in the background as these will certainly slow your connection.

One of the biggest growth areas in the computing industry of late has been the proliferation of Voice over IP packages and the resulting popularity of them amongst Internet users. For those of you unsure exactly what this technology is all about, keep reading as I could be about to save you a fortune.

The Internet is handy as it allows us to carry data into other countries pretty much free of charge; you can instantly e-mail to a friend in America for example rather than writing a letter which would take days. This is fair enough but often e-mail just isn’t suitable for a number of reasons – Perhaps you want a more personal touch or if the call is of a business nature you may need to discuss ideas which would be a lengthy process over e-mail. Using Voice over IP software allows us to carry our voices across the Internet in order to call someone using similar software on their machine or even to call them on their regular home telephone.

Let’s say that you want to call a business colleague in France and you do this using a normal BT phone line. Looking at the BT website I believe that the standard daytime call rate is 17p per minute so a one hour phone call would cost you around £10 although this could obviously be cheaper if you were on one of their International calling plans. Using a free program called Skype (www.skype.com) you would be able to call this person completely free of charge if he were also using the software or alternatively if he doesn’t have access to a computer or the Internet you can call his normal phone number for just 1.1p per minute (66p for the whole hour compared with £10 on BT).

Getting set up is relatively hassle free; the download is a fairly small 6.4mb which will take no time at all to download on a broadband connection and it’s then just a case of signing up with a user name and password. If you only ever call other Skype users you never pay a penny for the service and the software also includes features such as Instant Messaging and file transfers. Only when you want to call regular phones are you required to deposit money into your account to fund the call and the rate is 1.1p for all the most popular destinations.

The software is easy to use and the call quality is generally good although not up to the quality of a regular landline phone call but when you consider the huge saving I’m sure this is something that many people will be able to cope with. You have the option to conference call and there are security protocols in place to ensure all calls you make are kept private.

Skype can be used on pretty much any Internet connection although the quality of your calls will be far superior if you are using broadband. With broadband prices now starting around the £15 a month level there really is no reason not to make the move as I would now only recommend dial up access for those who have the very lightest Internet usage.

Give it a go by heading to www.skype.com; the worst that can happen is that you don’t get along with the idea of Voice over IP but on the flipside you could potentially save yourself a fortune!

Way back at the beginning of February we looked at IRC (Internet Relay Chat) – A technology used for hosting chat rooms online. This was a very good system if you were curious of the Internet and wanted to learn how to meet new people online, however it was of [...]]]>

Way back at the beginning of February we looked at IRC (Internet Relay Chat) – A technology used for hosting chat rooms online. This was a very good system if you were curious of the Internet and wanted to learn how to meet new people online, however it was of very little use for keeping in contact with those that you had already acquainted as in these cases you would have found it very inconvenient in terms of knowing whether or not they were online. Therefore, in most cases you would have had to arrange to meet up somewhere in a particular on the system to chat. There have been alternatives available for sometime and I feel it was now about time that I reviewed my personal favourite, ICQ (Pronounced ‘I Seek You’)

Available completely free of charge from www.icq.com, this program is designed to sit in the background and let you know when one of your friends comes online; obviously this would become particularly useful for those with family or friends who are away from home for example. If you can imagine that you have a friend in New York, whenever he were to come online you would have the opportunity to chat to him for the price of a normal phone call to your Internet provider either using the keyboard to type in what you want to say or by speaking into a microphone on your computer. The program is easily installed and once you have decided your password and entered some simple registration information you are given a unique user ID to use. The program isn’t just available for Windows however, there is also support for Java enabled machines, Apple Macs and PalmPilots.

In addition to just being able to chat with one another, you are also able to send and receive files from whoever you are talking to just by dropping the file you wish to sent over their name on your screen and even if the person you want to contact isn’t online, you can still leave a message for them to look at when they do next log on to ICQ.

The idea may sound fairly good in theory, and in reality it works incredibly well – if you know 10 people for example with Internet access and they all have ICQ then whenever you want to discuss a problem or exchange a file you don’t have to e-mail them, instead chat with them in real time online. Another added benefit is that if there is only one phone line in your house and if you want to talk to someone and be on the Internet at the same time, ICQ is the perfect solution.

Personally, I find that one of the most useful features of the program is the ability to enter in the details of all people that you know with a mobile phone so that you can text message them from the main ICQ screen. Not only does this mean that it saves you time typing each message into your mobile but the message is sent from the program free of charge, and in addition, it also means that they can reply to your computer screen free of charge. All people that you send text messages are stored from the main ICQ toolbar

If you don’t happen to know anybody with Internet access, there are many areas on ICQ where you can search for users with similar interests to your own so that you can add them to your contact list and then talk to them online in the future. It is also possible to search via name and location so that you can track down any friends that you haven’t seen for a while, with over 105 million people registered with ICQ, it is likely that someone you know is already registered.

To conclude, ICQ is possibly one of the most useful programs that you could have for keeping in touch with friends and family via the Internet and since it is completely free of charge there is a good incentive to at least give the program a go to see how you like it.