Out with the old and in with the less old

Tomorrow my telco/ISP will upgrade our network at home from ADSL to ADSL2+. To many people living in the civilised world this would seem laughable, ADSL2+ is now an antique standard and the world has very much moved on to proper fibre solutions to the doorstep. This is not the case in rural Britain, no matter how middle class you are, no matter how many home workers you may have, it's too low density and not enough IPTV subscriptions to make it worth while to BT or Virgin to connect you with anything modern.

ADSL2+ is the best we are going to get and so I have to put up with it. Because the local exchanged has been upgraded to 21CN and unbundeled my data cap has doubled, my monthly line rental has dropped and I can get up to 24.0 Mbit/s of through put (though I expect about a third of that if I'm lucky). It's quite magic how prices drop and the service improves when BT isn't the monopoly provider...

At the bottom (switched off) is my very old Solwise ADSL router. It has done well but recently it's been quite unstable and the line speed I can get has been terrible. On top (switched on) is a less old Netgear ADSL2+ router that a friend gave me when he changed ISP and the new ISP gave him a newer router.

I just hope that after tomorrows upgrade everything is better than the feeble state it has been off late...