Flexing

My broadband connection through Eclipse (link on the right), allows me to 'flex' the speed up temporarily. Although I know that my line is pretty poor I thought I'd perform a little experiment and given that an hour of flexing to 2Mbit is only 5p at the moment it will hardly break the bank!

I chose Speedtest.net to perform the tests and from there I used the Maidenhead and Dublin servers to test against.

The results were (download/upload):

• Standard speed to Maidenhead = 544kbps/528kbps
• Standard speed to Dublin = 619kbps/528kbps
• Flexed speed to Maidenhead = 692kbps/527kbps
• Flexed speed to Dublin = 652kbps/530kbps

My conclusion from this little test is that my line could handle a little more speed but it is hardly worth the effort (or money) realistically.

If I lived in an area with better lines, nearer to an exchange, this model would be great because you could just flex up when you need to download a big file. I wouldn't be surprised if some people could double their connection speed for that 5p! For me, unless BT get their arses into gear and sort out their infrastructure, I don't think that there is much point in me flexing again.