Connected

“Penallt/cabinet connected customers
The main project work is now complete and we are conducting the final equipment testing with the microwave and within the cabinet. These tests have been straightforward and the microwave point to point connection has been providing very high speeds and good stability.”

Thus began last week’s update from Spectrum Internet and it signalled the end of the village project to improve broadband speeds which started some 16 months ago in November 2011. The village has been surveyed seemingly countless times, roads and gardens have been dug up, a cabinet has been installed and a microwave link to Monmouth, bouncing off The Kymin has now been set up. All this to bring Monmouth’s high speed broadband a few kilometres closer to the village!

But the work has paid off and today, one day earlier than promised, one of the “community champions”, David May, received his new router and was connected to Spectrum’s high speed broadband at the same time. And it all worked! Within a few seconds of firing up the router, web pages were being downloaded at speeds never before seen in the village. These peaked at the absurdly high rate of 23 Mbps for a brief instant, far more than was anticipated, but this is expected to stabilise at a more realistic value in a few days time – the system needs to adjust itself it seems.

David’s latest test results are shown below.

Other Penallt residents in the scheme will be connected over the next couple of weeks and many already have a date scheduled for this. The place will never be the same again now, at least as far as the interweb is concerned.

5th March 2013 (updated 11th March)