So over the lockdown we’ve been running into more and more issues with our tinternet.

Came to a head this weekend when Lily and I decided we’d stream a playthrough of Halo Reach ( both of us streaming) and it was just a slideshow. dropped frames everywhere. So we stopped after like 2 minutes and I ended up calling plusnet. We had 7 meg download and 1.5 meg up. Given you need about 5 meg up per person for streaming it was just useless, not to mention Rachel being in conference calls all the time.

Anyway. Engineer came out yesterday and the act of just looking at what must have been Schroedingers Fibre, doubled my download speed, but upload was stuck at 3.

Then he noticed my gear. When we moved in here the installer gave us a white BT openreach modem box to go with our router, which it turns out was a museum piece back 2 and a bit years ago. So he told me to change my kit. I dunno how, given my penchant for buying tech, but I’ve been running that old router for 12 years. It just worked so I never questioned whether it was the issue.

Cut to today, when my 30 quid TPLink router arrived and within 5 minutes ( even that was a mystery to me, just 5 minutes to set up? Madness) I was back online and with 50 meg down and 20 something up. I’ve been nerding out, speed testing all day and the download fluctuates ( was actually 80 down at one point) but the upload seems rocksolid around 20. Which, compared to the 1.5 to 3 I was subsisting with is just some kind of magic. Engineer said they’re going to be installing ridiculous speed tinternet round my way soon which would give me ten times what I’ve just got. I don’t know what i would do with that that but i want it. We were going to switch to Virgin, but given their troubles recently I think I’ll stay with Plusnet, admit that I should have binned my 12 year old router many years ago and marvel at modern technology.

🙂