I like speed, and from a young age always have had. Not all my friends were into the buzz you get from speed though. They never experienced the highs it can induce. The feeling of increased confidence, the excitement…
Since we moved to Portugal, getting a good supply has been a problem, despite Portugal being ranked 31st in the world. ‘Her Outdoors’ is not perturbed by our present level of supply, but I have been having serious withdrawal symptoms. The problem here might be because there are not enough dealers/providers, so there isn’t the pressure to provide a good, reliable service?
Some people might think I’m talking about amphetamines, but my reference to earlier days was about the highs I’ve had from doing a ‘ton’ on powerful motorbikes (not in Portugal of course!), from downhill skiing, even from sailing in a gale force 7. Actually I’ve done them all in the last 10 years. What I’m referring to in this post is to megabytes per second (mb per sec), a measurement of download/upload internet speed. It’s the thing that helps me save time, allowing me more of it to waste, usually reading some of the diatribe on Facebook or the like.
Recently though, I’ve been uploading a lot of videos to my Youtube channel. Now videos are large files, so you need a decent upload speed. Certainly you need more than the paltry max 0.6 mb per sec we had with MEO, one of only three major internet service providers (ISP) in Portugal, along with Vodafone and NOS. As they are large files I tend to set them to upload overnight when internet traffic is lighter, so speed should be better.
Sometimes though, I’d get up in the morning and the files would still be uploading. Consequently, I found myself forever checking the connection speed (using Ookla’s Speediest). Please forgive me for all the numbers, but some useful points to consider here:
- According to MEO … “ADSL Internet service offers 24 Mbit/s downstream and 1 Mbit/s for upstream without traffic limitation, nationally or internationally.”
- When our connection was newly installed we were getting less than 2mb although I clocked 5.5mb whilst the engineer was setting up.
- After complaining about slow connection we were getting around 3.8mb
- After more complaining, we were getting around 5.6mb and in fact it touched 10mb, but that was when we had the engineer working on the connection.
- Recently, the maximum download we have been getting was around 4.6mb, but often it has been down to less than 1mb.
Sorry MEO but we have had enough of this poor service and are cancelling our 2 year contract. Instead, we are trying out a new 4g router connection. 4G is the fourth generation of wireless mobile telecommunications technology, which basically works the same as a phone signal. .
Time will tell in terms of the reliability of this new connection but the early signs are good, with a maximum of 34mb and an average of around 18-20mb download. Upload speeds have also hugely increased, reaching a maximum of around 20mb. So now it’s not so necessary to be constantly monitoring connection speeds. Except, I like speed and so am now monitoring just how fast it can be.
So much for the slower paced Portuguese lifestyle!
ps. Must book that skiing trip…
