IPTV may be coming to the US, but chances are you'll need to upgrade your bandwidth...if you can!

My city is currently putting in 100 Megabit fiber to every home.  http://www.utopianet.org/technology/speed.htm  See note at the bottom of the page. I think that would handle IPTV.

I'm an NA for an ISP, and I uncorked my modem temporarily to see how good it could do, I got 28Mbps out of it (standard speed is 8Mbps, theoretical on this particular modem is something like 36), but we don't need to worry about IPTV since we're a digital cable company anyway!
 
We have fiber to all of our nodes and some commerical customers with fiber to the premises or between sites up to gigabit speeds, doesn't matter if you have fiber to the home if the internet connection from isp to telco is slow, and I can tell you that ALL ISP's "overbook" their bandwidth even att , just gotta find one that's not too bad! And if/when IPTV takes off, that will really hurt performance as tv isn't used sparadically like internet access is; it'd be like EVERY user streaming video at the SAME time ALL the time. Cable networks can handle that, dsl could too, but telco to provider would cost too much to effectively do that, unless the big guys (sprint, mci, att) drop their circuit fees. Cable operates have an advantage here, they won't need as much bandwidth out since their tv is on the local network. At least thats my take on it, glad I don't deal with buying what's needed, I just need to let them know when it saturates!
 
thomaslompton: that's cool, it's very easy to up that fiber to gig or 10 gig down the road, they just need a few oc48's or bigger to the net!

how can one "uncork" ones modem and what does this mean? :?:

He means he uncapped his cable modem. When a cable modem initalises it requests info on its max speed up/down from the cable co. Its possible to load your own max speed into the modem and see how fast it will go.
 
Its illegal and most cable cos will cut off your net for doing it, (uncapped modems are easy to detect, *cloned* modems are not but thats harder to do...)  
 
But as he said hes the Network Admin for a cable ISP so he was allowed
 
EDIT: For the record, I'm in the UK and have DSL (no cable where I am) before someone accuses me of uncapping my modem

I used to work for a DSL provider, just had to go to the Telco CO and swap cards for my wire pair and my 1.5meg went to almost 10! Course ya needed an access badge to get into the CO......

UK internet is finally starting to improve, I have 10mb blueyonder. All we need now is more upload speed, I only have 384k so with 3 PCs in my house being used at once gaming can be difficult.

Upgraded this year to ADSL2+. The maximum speed is 20Mbit down and 1024 up, but I'm reaching about 15Mbit down and 1020 up. Not to bad for 30 EURO/month IMHO, although the supplied router is crap and needs a reboot often (Livebox).

Two words: Verizon FiOS

i live in calgary alberta, i'm with telus, and i hate my bloody internet.
max total dl rate was 200kbs. on utorrent with port forawarding enabled
 
 
hey i heard there's router that let you load a hacked firmware, like the d-link w54 before revision 5, it's linux based and with the hacked foirmware you enable really cool options. google it.

I wish I could get Fiber...I still gotta work out DSL from Bellsouth. I'm waiting for Verizon to find Kentucky, then I switching the moment they move in.
 
~Ibrahim~

what is IPTV
 
and i wish i could get fiber and all other nutrients without eating

Internet Protocol Television.  Basically the telephone companies and other dsl providers will be able to sell you TV service to compete with cable and satellite TV providers.
 
The large North American companies (Verizon, BellSouth, Bell Canada) are whating until they can deliver HDTV bandwidth (probably mid 2007) before they deploy the service.  In Europe and Asia providers are already deploying IPTV with standard definition TV and will upgrade to high definition in the next year or two.

I think that Hk has the equvilent of IPTV called broadband TV
it uses phone lines to carry the signal. I have to say that this title is misleading. It since my download speed is about 400Kb though i've managed to make it peak at 1.2Mb. i think a more accurate title would be "what's your Internet Connection speed"
mine happens to be somewhere between 3 and 6Mbs...I'm not to sure what cause netvigator (my provider) is really it comes to an accurate speed. also when the BBTV is on, it slows the download speed, and if i'm using the Dl at its compacity then it causes the TV to stutter

What's the highest for cable these days?