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One of BT's infamous 'Adam and Jane' adverts has been banned, with the Advertising Standards Agency upholding claims that it was likely to mislead customers about the speed of its 'up to' 20Mbps service.

BT's advert showed 'Jane' instantly loading a website and looking through images, while an estate agent was apologising to 'Adam' for the slowness of his connection.

"BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day even at peak times," intoned a voiceover.

17 complaints – including ones from ISPs Virgin Media and Sky were made to the ASA, and despite BT's defence that its 20 meg service was faster than the old one, they were upheld.

"Likely to mislead"

"Because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT's new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mbps service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead," said the ASA.

Of course, a more effective way to stop people being misled would be to ban the use of 'up to speeds' with ISPs forced to advertise packages by average speed and not potential top speeds that are rarely, if ever, hit.

Ofcom's recent look at the actual speeds showed that BT was among those whose average broadband speed was significantly lower than the 'up to' speed that the service is advertised as.

On BT's 'up to 20Mbps' service the average speed is less than half, with Ofcom's average suggesting a speed of around 6.1 to 7.6 Mbps.

Demon Internet has launched a special 'gamers broadband package' that will prioritise traffic to games servers.

With controversy over the Google Verizon 'net neutrality' still raging, Demon Internet has offered a new package that puts gamers first.

Demon Internet head Matt Cantwell told the Daily Telegraph: "We know how important a good broadband connection is to the gaming community, and we are excited to be launching this product which has been designed to meet the specific needs of gamers.

Better gaming

"At Demon we appreciate that a better connection allows better gaming, and are confident that gamers will see the benefits that this service offers them."

The package is priced at £22 a month, with a 12 month contract and £30 a month, but some industry insiders have already asked if it's a gimmick rather than a particularly attractive package.

"There are already many things that customers can do to improve ping times on ADSL such as changing their line profile from InterLeaved to FastPath," said one anonymous industry source.

Video fail?

"However, prioritising gaming traffic at expense of other traffic could mean that customers with this kind of service may find things like video suffer as a result," they added.

Interestingly Virgin Media's tech guru Kevin Baughan talked to TechRadar about the potential for prioritising gaming traffic earlier in the summer, although its fibre optic network already gives the ISP a latency advantage.

"At the end of the day, on our architecture we can accelerate bits of the traffic if we need to or if we want to so you could prioritise this to make sure that the latency is absolutely superb," he said.

So, it remain to be seen if the improvement from prioritising gaming traffic will bring anything other than minor improvements, with the distance from the server still a major factor in ping.

But, should this offer tangible benefits it will certainly prove popular with gamers who have grown frustrated with their online performance.

Corporate networks always have proxy servers, while on home networks they're often an overlooked form of defence. But maybe they shouldn't be.

A local proxy server can help to improve the throughput of your broadband connection, restore order to a troubled network and add another line of defence against malware infections.

What are proxies?

'Proxy' means substitute. To the computers on the local network, a proxy server is a substitute for connecting directly to the web. There are several different types of proxy server. For example, a web proxy server keeps copies of recently accessed web pages on your hard disk.

When you access a page, the proxy serves the cached version if it's up to date. This is faster than downloading static files from the site. All internal computers must use the local web proxy server for it to be effective.

In the settings for your web browser, there's a page to point it at a proxy server rather than the network's default gateway. This gateway is usually a router or the computer attached to your broadband modem. Some proxy servers also block content, especially on corporate networks.

You may be tempted to disable the proxy settings in your browser to view sites your boss would rather you didn't during work hours. However, to ensure that everyone on the network uses the proxy to access the internet, system administrators block all access to the internet at their firewall, except traffic coming from or going to the proxy. So to access anything outside the local network, you must use the proxy.

Forcing everyone to use the proxy gives system administrators great control over what their users can access. The same principle can be used at home by parents and those simply keen to bolster security.

If you find unexpected access attempts in a firewall's log file from inside a proxy-protected network, they're probably coming from malware that doesn't know how to test for a local proxy and has tried to go directly online.

Installing FreeProxy

FreeProxy (or FreeProxy Internet Suite) is a free Windows-based proxy server that can provide web caching for faster access and is able to block banned web domains. It works on Windows 7 and should ideally run on its own computer. The app is available for free from here.

Once downloaded, unzip the file and double-click on the setup application. When the installation wizard appears, click 'Next' to accept the licence agreement, the default the destination folder and Start menu folder, then click 'Install'. When the release notes pop up, click 'Next', then 'Finish'. Click Start and select 'FreeProxy Control Centre'.

Let's begin by configuring and testing FreeProxy for basic use. Open a command line and enter ipconfig. Press [Enter] and one or more blocks of information will appear.

Find the one about the server's Ethernet connection (usually the first one that appears) and note the IP addresses of the default gateway and DNS server. First, we need to stop relying on DHCP to provide IP addresses on demand and use a fixed address instead. This is so other computers on the network can find the proxy server via its address.

In Windows 7 or Vista, open the Control Panel and click 'Network and Internet | Network and Sharing Centre'. In Windows 7, click 'Change Adaptor Settings' in the left-hand pane and double-click the 'Local Area Connection'.

In Vista, click on 'Manage network connections' and double-click on the 'Local Area Connection'.

In XP's Control Panel, double-click 'Network Connections' and then doubleclick the 'Local Area Connection'. Click 'Properties' and a window will appear showing the underlying configuration. Double-click the entry in the protocol list called 'Internet Protocol Version 4 (TVP/Ipv4)'. In XP this is just called 'Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)'.

Another subwindow will appear, giving details on how the computer gets its IP address. Click the radio button marked 'Use the following IP address'. Your default internet gateway (your router) will usually have the address 192.168.0.1, so enter a different number in the fourth position (192.168.0.2, for example).

If you're not sure if this address is already in use, open a command line and enter ping 192.168.0.2. If the command hangs and then returns a set of timeouts, the address isn't in use. Next, enter a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 and the IP address of your default gateway in the appropriate input boxes.

Select the 'Use the following DNS server addresses' radio button and enter the IP address of the DNS server you noted down earlier. This is probably the same device as the default gateway. Click 'OK' and dismiss the parent windows.

Now we need to make a web browser use the proxy server to access the internet. On a different networked machine, open Internet Explorer 8 and click 'Tools | Internet Options'. Click 'LAN settings' in the Connections tab.

In the subwindow, select the tickbox labelled 'Use a proxy server for your LAN'. Enter the address 192.168.0.2 and change the port number to 8080. Now click 'OK' and dismiss the parent window, then try to surf to a page. The proxy isn't running, so the browser will eventually time out.

In the FreeProxy Control Centre, click the 'Start/Stop' button and a window will appear. To start the proxy server, click the 'Start' button in the Console Mode pane at the bottom.

Windows Firewall may pop up to tell you that it's blocked the program. Ensure that the option to allow FreeProxy to communicate on your home network is selected and click 'Allow Access'. Refresh the page in the browser by pressing [F5]. It should now load properly.

Blocking websites

Proxy servers are often used to block content, and FreeProxy does this admirably via ban lists. Click 'Ban Lists' on the FreeProxy Control Centre and the Ban List Manager will appear. Click 'New'.

Ban lists are split into several categories. Click 'Add' to add a category and a window will appear. Enter a name like Do Not Access. You can define an action the proxy must take when a user tries to access one of the URLs in the category, such as redirecting the user to an external URL or showing a custom error page. Select the 'Standard Response' option and click 'Done'.

To add a URL or IP address to the category, click 'Manage Category Details'. Click 'Add URL/IP' and enter the destination in the input box. If you're entering a URL, omit the 'http://www' prefix.

When you've finished, press 'Done'. Confirm that you want to save your changes and enter a filename for the ban list. So that FreeProxy understands the type of traffic to ban (in this case HTTP), double-click the default Proxy entry on the main pane of the user interface. Select your LAN card in the dropdown Local Binding list and then press 'Permissions'. A subwindow will appear.

Click 'Add Resource' , change the type to 'Ban List URL of IP address' and press 'Done' on each subwindow to dismiss it.

On the main interface, click 'Options', then click the 'Activate the Ban List?' tickbox and select the ban list using the file browser below it. Restart the proxy server and try surfing to a banned site. The browser should load nothing, but allow you to surf elsewhere.

Creating error pages

To link an error page you've made to a category in your ban list, open the list again, click the relevant category and change the redirect response to 'Error Page'.

Click the folder icon and select the error page. Click 'Open' to select it and 'Done' to finish. Click 'Done' in the Ban List window and agree to save the list if required. Click 'Done' and restart the proxy.

Now try to access the banned web page. Your custom error page should appear.

To log the domains and IP addresses that any person or program tries to access from your network, click 'Options'. Click 'Log access data' and the relevant options will become active. Enter a path and filename for the log file and leave the report content on 'Forbidden'. This means you'll only record attempts to access banned content.

Select 'Show full URL' to record the full path to the banned page. Click 'Done', try surfing to a banned URL and inspect the content of the log file.

Virgin Media believe that there is a crunch point coming for superfast broadband, where consumers will begin to notice that their internet connection is not supporting their digital life at home.

According to Virgin Media's executive director of broadband Jon James, the roll out of increasing numbers of 'up to 20Mbps' services by many companies is not seeing a significant rise in the average internet speeds to the home, and many people will be disappointed with the service they get.

James believes that the average of around 3.8Mbps to homes is now being pushed by people's use of streaming video over applications like the BBC iPlayer and other internet services.

Confusion among customers

"There is still confusion among confusion, enthusiastically supported by our competitors about what actual speeds people get," said James, in a briefing.

"I think there is a point coming, and I think it's starting to happen, where the average DSL speed of 3.8 or 3.9 Mbps that as you get into the world of people watching streaming video in real quality - whether that is HD or just SD but blown up onto a bigger screen - people are getting to the stage where, even on a very normal kind of usage, you seen contention…with real degradation of service."

James believes that what he calls a crunch point is quickly arriving, and that Virgin Media's cable network, rather than the DSL used by many of its competitors, is uniquely placed to give people speeds close to what is advertised.

Crunch point coming

"There is a bit of a crunch point coming where people believe they have fast broadband but DSL speeds haven't moved on," added James.

"They will experience it explicitly – where it crashes – or more likely they will just be getting a video experience as bad as it was a year or two years ago.

"We think consumer awareness is beginning to grow rapidly, because we are genuinely seeing in our research a comfort with linking the broadband to the TV and a comfort with using video over PC.

"We're not suggesting it's completely mainstream or the number one question in sales but there has been a step change."

Responses

However, Michael Phillips of Broadbandchoices.co.uk believes that Virgin Media's competitors are not standing still

"There's no doubt that consumers are increasingly using bandwidth-hungry applications such as streaming TV but key to the user experience is how many computers are using to the same internet connection at the same time," Philips told TechRadar.

"In today's multi-PC/wireless hub homes this has a real drain on performance and products like Virgin Media's 50Mb broadband service are ideal for this.

"Virgin Media's cable network clearly has technical advantages in terms of absolute speed, but let's not forget that it only covers part of the country.

"The rest of us will be dependent of further strides in DSL technology such as ADSL2 and BT's Infinity product. And Virgin Media's competitors aren't standing still - BT is currently investing billions in its own fibre network.

"As providers offer ever-faster broadband packages, this will fuel ever-hungrier applications from content providers so it's a vicious circle. There will always be a demand for faster services."

A survey from one a British broadband comparison sites has suggested that sales of mobile broadband have crashed in the past year.

According to Broadband Expert, the number of people signing up for mobile broadband has more than halved in year on year figures – with suggestions that the quality of the service is to blame.

"Mobile broadband experienced phenomenal growth in the UK as consumers expected all the benefits of a home broadband connection whilst on the move," said Broadband Expert's commercial director Rob Webber.

"Sadly the technology has not lived up to the hype; we receive a huge amount of feedback from customers complaining of inconsistent or non-existent connections and speeds comparable to dial-up or worse."

Less search, less sign-up

Broadband Expert's figures show the number of sign ups dropping from 3,000 in May 2009 to 1,300 in May 2010, and cite Hitwise data that shows searches for the term 'mobile broadband' have halved

However, TechRadar understands that this pattern is not being seen by some networks who have suggested that sales are static rather than declining.

Webber insists that LTE – also known as 4G – could well provide fresh impetus for mobile broadband, but is frustrated by the slow roll out of networks.

"We're already seeing companies rolling out LTE networks in the US and Europe," he added, "but the UK is still 12-18 months away from this.

"LTE should boost mobile broadband speeds massively, with downloads speeds of over 100mbps achieved in testing; so it could outperform and even replace home broadband in the future.

"However, the UK needs to work faster to adopt the new technology required to reinstate consumer' faith in the mobile broadband service and help sales recover to their former level."

Of course, a number of other factors could be responsible, and it seems likely that networks will disagree with Broadband Expert's reasoning, so we'll update you with reactions.

People accused of illegal filesharing will be have access to a 'robust and effective appeals mechanism' according to Ofcom.

The communications watchdog has been tasked in the controversial Digital Economy Act with ensuring that ISPs crack down on people who illegally propagate copyrighted files.

It's an unpopular measure with the ISPs, who fear that they will be harshly judged for being the instigators of action against their own customers, but Ofcom has now laid out its obligations under the new Act.

People accused by copyright holders must be contacted by their ISP, but it is up to the copyright holders to launch legal action and they will be expected to provide a Court Order to get the personal information of the accused.

Notification and challenges

"Qualifying ISPs will be required to notify subscribers of allegations made by copyright owners that their account has been used for unlawful file sharing and to maintain a list of the subscribers who receive multiple unchallenged notifications," explains Ofcom.

"Subscribers must be provided with sufficient information in any notification such that they can challenge the basis under which the notification has been sent. They must also have access to a robust and effective appeals mechanism.

"Subscribers on those lists may have their details passed to relevant copyright owners who may pursue legal action, though any such transfer of personal information will require a Court Order.

"Any processing of subscriber data must be in compliance with the relevant data protection laws."

Code of conduct

Ofcom is still considering letting the ISPs themselves draft the code of conduct, with a deadline of 8 months to come up with an agreement.

"Our first task will be to establish the feasibility of an industry drafted code," explains Ofcom.

"Such a code would need to have the support of a sufficiently wide range of stakeholders for it to be credible and would need to be submitted to Ofcom within a period of time which would allow Ofcom to satisfy the deadline for implementation.

"Failing this, Ofcom will move quickly to draft an appropriate code on which we will seek input from all stakeholders."

Wired, wireless you name it: USB-based solutions through to powerline options, there's a networking solution for everyone available. In this article we'll look at just how fast Gigabit LAN can get, whether you can stream HD movies over powerline gear and just what difference a Wireless-N connection could make to your existng network. It's time to discover whether you should upgrade...

Maybe you're running an ageing Wireless-G network or perhaps you've got Gigabit onboard, but are wondering if it's worth investing in a new switch or router to take full advantage of it? Perhaps you're eyeing up powerline as an alternative but don't know how well it'll perform? Or perhaps you're wondering if Wireless-N is right for you? What are the options for those planning on extending, upgrading or building a network?

Wired networks are still the world's favourite method of communicating between PCs . Ethernet networks have been around for decades, they're robust, reliable, easy to work with, standardised, extendable, cheap and fast. Those are all words we like.

It's so ubiquitous that every motherboard produced will have a port integrated on it, this from a industry that attempts to shave every penny from production costs. The same goes for laptops, so when your standard shipped products offer it effectively for free it's something you have to consider. Particularly when 30m cables costs as little as £7 and that's long enough to reach any corner of most houses.

The beauty of Ethernet is that it's fast and reliable, largely as it has been around for so long. All equipment should be at least 100BaseT compliant, the older and slower 10BaseT was supersede by 'Fast Ethernet' in the mid-1990s. The even faster Gigabit 1000BaseT standard has been widely integrated as standard since 2004 with it being an option since the early 2000s.

In speed terms theoretically a 100BaseT network offers 12.5MB/s of bandwidth, take into account TCP and the Ethernet protocol requirements and in practice file transfers tend to hover around 11MB/s.

Gigabit offers the potential of 125MB/s transfers, though the real-world performance can fall far short of this for a number of reasons, but if you're the sort who likes to throw large files around then any reduction in transfer times is a good thing. We say far short, as the largest bottleneck will be the hard drives.

For our testing this will be an irrelevance, but in the real world this can limit the potential maximum to 20, 40 or at best around 60MB/s for fast up-to-date drives. Our test circumvents this issue and tests the raw throughput, in this instance of the Sitecom 300N-XR. We were pleased with the 101MB/s peaks and average transfer of 95MB/s with an average CPU usage of 36 per cent.

The final issue if you want to rollout Gigabit in your home is that you have to have an end-to-end solution. It's no good connecting your Gigabit laptop to a 100BaseT router and than that to your Gigabit capable home server. There's little to no options for infrastructure upgrades at the moment, it seems all ADSL/Cable routers still only offer 100BaseT ports.

You either need to invest in a Gigabit switch – five-port ones can be picked up for around £30 such as the Netgear GS605 – or opt for a suitable wireless router that happens to sport a Gigabit router, such as the Sitecom 300N-XR Gigabit Wireless router for around £90.

One final mysterious area we want to clear up is the type of cables you need to use to enjoy Gigabit speeds. Simply put: even CAT5 will work as well as CAT5e or even CAT6. Technically yes, CAT5e and CAT6 are superior but generally the extra expense isn't necessary even over long runs.

Just to test this out we re-ran our Gigabit tests with some 15-year-old CAT5 cables that we had lying around. There wasn't a jot of difference to the performance, well, perhaps there was a 5MB/s drop in the minimum recorded speed but the average remained the same.

There's no arguing that Gigabit is fast, very fast. But wiring your house up with CAT5e wire isn't the most spouse-friendly activity or indeed house-friendly activity. You can drop cables under floorboards and behind the skirting, but you are going to need Ethernet faceplates at some point or end up tacking them to walls, for a less desirable finish.

Powerline adaptors seductively promise both the solid reliability of a wired network, combined with the cable-minimising side effect of using your home's existing power sockets as network ports.

It's a clever trick; the mains power in your home works on a 50Hz sinusoidal wave. Powerline adaptors 'imprint' on this low-frequency wave an ultra-high frequency signal in the high MHz range, this is carried around the home piggybacking the standard 50Hz power signal. As it passes through the other connected powerline adaptors it can be decoded and the networking data extracted. How high you make the modulated carrier frequency determines how much data you can transmit.

As with wireless networking powerline adaptors started off slow – around 14Mbps – but have slowly progressed in speed from 85Mbps to 200Mbps and even supposedly 1Gbps from the latest Belkin devices.

WHY ADD MORE WIRES: Powerline networking piggybacks on your existing electrical network so you dont have to lay extra cable

They offer a blindingly convenient solution, you can have your ADSL router wherever you need it plugged into its power socket, then right beside it a powerline network adaptor with corresponding network cable. Cut to the living room where another powerline adaptor is found, again with a network cable connected to your media PC. If need be a third connects to a server and a fourth to the gaming rig upstairs.

As PCs need to be near power sockets anyway, you're guaranteed to only need a short network cable to seal the deal.

So what's the downside? All of that extra modulation/demodulation, plus riding on the back of the mains signal introduces additional latency. At which point every gamer just did a nice vampire-seeing-a-cross impression. Let's not overreact, in testing we were seeing latencies of around 4 to 6ms, that's at worst less than 10 per cent of your total typical latency.

Potentially more annoyingly would be if powerline networks were affected by mains interference. Appliances can create spikes on the mains when switched on and off, plus devices such as washing machines and hair dryers can create high-frequency interference.

High-speed HomePlus AV adaptors such as the Devolo, are designed to plug into the wall socket and then any extensions plugged into it. This helps eliminate interference, as it can be filtered out. Additionally frequency hopping technology helps reduce interference effects.

There's also the issue of security, potentially anyone within the same building and even in the direct vicinity could receive the network information. Again this is catered for in the form of 128-bit AES encryption. The Devolo adaptors provide software that enables you to issue a password to each connected adaptor from a single location, though you'll need the security code – similar to a MAC – for each adaptor plugged in.

A more annoying issue is future compatibility. Currently the HomePlug Powerline Alliance maintains the HomePlug standard that's most widely used. An alternative international standard is due to rollout in 2010 called G.hn. It's an idealistically-pure standard, devised to carry network signals over any existing home wiring be it power, telephone or coaxial.

In a way it's a non-issue as it's not out at the time of writing, but it just means if anything new and shiny does appear it won't work with your existing HomePlug adaptors, but being a happy and understanding lot they should all coexist together.

Let's face it, wires are for losers. All the cool kids are down Starbucks with their Macs updating their MySpace pages, while slurping a decaf fat-free mocha choca latté with extra sprinkles, just to make sure you had to wait in line for as long as possible. Little does the loafing wireless user know, but making that connection is a vast array of complex protocols and signaling technology.

If you look into the 802.11 standard it's a hideous mish-mash of compromises, that if anything has only just been sorted out with the ratification Wireless-N. Why do we say that?

Take 802.11a, this ran at 5GHz and used a modulation system called OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing). The preferred frequency range is 5GHz, but back in 1997 this was only available in the US and Japan. The compromise was that the rest of the world used 2.4GHz for 802.11b.

WI-FI ROUTER: Switching to 5GHz band can mean you can transmit twice as much data each time

The problem is this is a horribly noisy band competing with microwaves, DEC phones, Bluetooth and military 'airborne devices'. So it had to use a less-efficient modulation system, one called CCK (Complimentary Code Keying) for 2Mbps and 1Mbps speed and DSSS for 5.5Mbps and 11Mbps speeds.

802.11g upped speeds to 54Mbps by using the OFDM system, but this slaughters the maximum usable distance offering no improvements over 'B'.

To muddy the water even more a raft of manufacturers jumped on the 'turbo G' bandwagon. This makeshift standard used a number of techniques to improve the speed and distance of communication over standard 'G'.

The first from Atheros dubbed 'Super-G' and RangeMAX used channel-bonding. As the name suggests this makes use of two channels to broadcast data, doubling throughput to 108Mbps, but at the expense of potentially interfering with other wireless devices. Broadcom released a competing standard with a claimed throughput of 125Mbps that used a combination of aggressive compression and frame-bursting to boost bandwidth over a single channel.

The final crowning glory was the introduction of MIMO. At its simplest MIMO uses multiple data or spatial streams to transmit more data in one go and with better reliability via multiple antennas.

With the ridiculously elongated ratification process of 'N' the industry released its own MIMO-G options, then Pre-N kit, then Draft-1 N, Draft-2 N and now the dual-band capable 2.4/5GHz 'N' products. Thankfully, Draft-2 products are highly mature and the speed they're capable of is impressive.

WIRELESS GADGETS: You might have some trouble connecting this up with Ethernet cable so you might want to consider going wireless

The idealistic 300Mbps throughput is entirely fantastical – devised only in a laboratory – but we did record peaks as high as 17MB/s in a same room scenario and average transfers of 14MB/s are entirely possible. For day-to-day performance expect around the 8-10MB/s mark.

What you plan to do with your new connection plays a massive part in which to opt for. If for whatever reason you want to throw around a lot of heavy-duty file transfers nothing can touch Gigabit for its speed. The downside is you have to have hardwired CAT5 or CAT6 cabling in place between every machine. If you can meet that criteria then welcome to 100MB/s transfer city, it's a lovely place to stay.

More likely is that you're going to opt for the powerline or wireless solutions. With both of these you're going to want to keep bandwidth requirements at the back of your mind. But just how much do you need?

The short answer for most applications is not that much. Take 'super-fast' 20Mbps broadband; that's a mere 2.5MB/s, which every powerline adaptor can handle the full-load of without breaking into a sweat.

Equally for online gaming demands are very low; for instance, World of Warcraft uses a miniscule 2KB/s while the more demanding Call of Duty 4 averages around 75KB/s peaking to 150KB/s. A bigger issue with online play is latency, but even here the addition of a 4 to 6ms delay isn't too awful in the grand scheme of things.

The biggest strain on a wireless or powerline connection is the streaming of media around the home. We can discount audio, even high bitrate audio at around 320Kbps is only going to consume 40KB/s. The big issue is video; not only does the connection need plenty of bandwidth for the stream, but it also has to be reliable and have enough overhead to absorb any drop outs.

At the low-end a good SD DivX runs at about 1,200Kbps, which is no more than 150KB/s, again no problem. Move up to a good quality 720p HD stream with DTS audio though, and this can be 6,000Kbps, around 750KB/s. Jump to 1080p with DTS and it's more along the lines of 9,000Kbps or 1.1MB/s. At the far high-end you could stream a raw Blu-ay rip running at 36,000Kbps, which will consume around 4.5MB/s.

At this point we're starting to hit the limits of powerline technology and 802.11n under certain circumstances. Even at this extreme end all the solutions on test are up to the job, if that's the only stream on the network.

Considering the price drops in both powerline and wireless kit it's possible to upgrade your existing network for about £100 to handle such uses. Of course, a Gigabit network will handle multiple HD streams, if you can get your better half to agree to a little wire play.

With crushing inevitability, the House of Lords did nothing to stop the deeply flawed Digital Economy Bill yesterday - and that means a badly written and potentially disastrous new law is nearly on the statute books. We have just two weeks to stop it - and stop it we must.

Between now and the election, the Government will do its very best to push the Digital Economy Bill through Parliament. It's now in a period called the wash-up, where backroom negotiations will tweak the Bill in order to keep various vested interests happy.

In essence, that means all kinds of scary stuff could be added to the Bill without any real scrutiny. Even if nothing's added, though, it's going to be a terrible, terrible thing for the internet in the UK.

Why is it bad?

This isn't about file sharing or fighting for your right to download dodgy MP3s. It's about much more than that.

It's about stopping a law that could bring libel-style censorship to UK ISPs, forcing them to block the next YouTube on copyright owners' say-so - with no penalties for organisations making misguided or malicious accusations. It's not hard to imagine politically awkward sites such as Wikileaks ending up on the blocklist too.

It's about stopping a law that would make cafes and libraries responsible for their users' activities, bringing an end to open Wi-Fi.

It's about stopping a law so badly written that it could shut down an entire mobile phone network for a dodgy 3G download.

It's about stopping a law that enables anyone to rip off photographers by removing image data and claiming they couldn't find out who took the photo.

It's about stopping a law that penalises the law-abiding majority - by upping ISP costs and therefore everyone's broadband bills - for the actions of a tiny minority.

It's about heeding the concerns of crazed anti-copyright hippies such as the Metropolitan Police, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency and MI5.

Creative industries dominate argument

More than anything, it's about democracy. Despite the Digital Britain consultation arguing that beheading for Beyoncé downloaders wasn't a brilliant idea, the Digital Economy Bill has become dominated by a vocal minority, the so-called creative industries, with other equally important voices marginalised or ignored completely. The more biased the Bill becomes, the more determined the Government appears to rush it onto the statute books.

As far as the copyright industries are concerned, the whole thing's a done deal: in a leaked email obtained by Boing Boing, BPI Director of Public Affairs Richard Mollet points out that the Bill will probably go through while everybody's attention is elsewhere. "Come the week of Second Reading (29th March) the main political focus is likely to be on the Finance Bill," he writes, "the Budget having been announced on the 24th".

That will definitely be the case if we don't do something about it. This is a bad Bill and it's going to become bad law - but there's still time to stop it.

Ironically the same proximity to the election that's helping rush this Bill onto the statute books can also help destroy it, because when a hung parliament is a distinct possibility every single vote matters. Why not make it abundantly clear to your MP that this is a vote loser?

Virgin Media has announced that it is trialing the use of telegraph poles to deliver superfast 50Mbps broadband, with the village of Woolhampton serving as the test-bed for the technology.

The trial will see the Berkshire Village offered the chance to get ultrafast broadband, as well as a Virgin Media cable television – with the trial starting this month and running until September.

Virgin Media has already announced that it is looking to extend the reach of its fibre-optic network, and believes that using telegraph poles could extend the reach to another million homes.

Aerial deployment

Neil Berkett, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Media, said: "This unique trial will allow us to understand the possibilities of aerial deployment and may provide an exciting new way to extend next generation broadband services.

"With everything from BBC iPlayer to YouTube increasingly demanding reliable ultrafast broadband speeds, we're keen to ensure that all communities, in towns, cities and villages right across the UK, stand to benefit."

Virgin Media's network is currently available to 12.6 million homes, and the company is benefiting from the broadband speed benefits of a fibre-optic infrastructure.

"Virgin Media believes that using overhead poles as well as underground ducts could, in some cases, significantly improve the viability of delivering next generation digital services to rural communities and continues to explore a range of innovative solutions that could allow it to further increase coverage," added Virgin Media.

BT's Chief Executive Ian Livingstone has once more highlighted the company's investment in the UK's fibre optic networks, as the company posted its quarterly results.

With revenue down by 4 per cent, but costs and debt also falling, BT predicted that it would be posting earnings (before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of course) of £5.7 billion for the year.

But it is the fibre optic roll out that BT seems to be most focused on at the moment, with Livingstone picking out the infrastructure in his response to the report.

Progress

"These results show that we are making progress," said Livingstone.

"There is still a lot more to be done but our commitment to improved customer service and cost transformation is starting to deliver results and freeing up resources to invest in our future.

"In particular, we are one of Europe's largest investors in super-fast fibre-based broadband and this will bring huge benefits to our customers and the UK."

BT has suggested that other internet service providers will be allowed access to its underground ducts to lay their own fibre-optic cable, heading off any potential complaints by a conservative government.

The opposition party, the Conservatives, had suggested that BT should be forced to open up its network of ducts to other ISPs, but Chief Executive Ian Livingstone insists that access had already been discussed with watchdog Ofcom.

Willing to provide access

"We told Ofcom last year we're willing to provide open access to our ducts... and we are working with them on how to achieve it," said Livingstone.

"Although it's unlikely to be the silver bullet to get fibre to every home, open access to all ducts, not just ours, might help BT and others extend coverage and so we would like to see a future government support such a move."

Use of the ducts would help cut the costs of rivals who currently have to either make their own excavations to lay cable – a crucial part of a next-generation infrastructure.

A project by the North West Development Agency will provide Manchester with a synchronous 100Mbps fibre optic network – and could serve to show how important a decent infrastructure could be to the UK.

The publicly funded £1m project will serve 1,000 homes and 500 businesses, and will offer an insight into how future networks will operate.

"It will allow home working, telemedicine, video calling and net-based services on TV," explained Chris Smedley, Chief Executive of Geo, the company appointed to build the network.

Upload

The real headline grabber is the speed of uploads – with even Virgin Media's excellent 50Mbps service not offering anything like a synchronous upload speed that will offer uploads as fast as downloads.

Virgin Media is testing a 200Mbps service at the current time, although Shaun Fenson, an advisor to the Manchester Digital Agency, rather curiously told the BBC that neither this nor BT's super-fast fibre optic offering constituted "true next generation services".

"The hope is that networks such as this will successfully spread. BT will lay fibre in some places and communities in others," said Fenson.

"The job then is to make sure that all the networks are interoperable."

It's not hard to see how a fibre-optic infrastructure is critical to the UK's industry, so this kind of project can only help bring about the next generation of connectivity – especially with the news that Britain is only 26th in global average broadband speeds.

Movies, music and pictures, anywhere in your house, on any PC, at any time.

Are you a gamer? Do you want to pit your wits against your pals in the ultimate low latency digital arena?

Are you an inveterate worrier who frets constantly about the safety and integrity of your data?

All these wants and needs can be answered with a network. In this article, we'll demystify networking, explore essential theories and recommend the best kit around.

Once you've read it you'll be fully equipped to build the fastest, most secure and sweetly configured network possible. So, read on and get ready to network!

Networking fundamentals

The backbone of any network is the equipment linking all the computers and other networked devices together. As we're going to build a network styled to run in a home, our network backbone can be a hub, a switch or a even a full-blown router.

Grander corporate-grade networks may involve the use of backbones, but these tend to need an infrastructure that ties different locations together, and would be overkill for our purposes.

A hub, sometimes called a repeater, is arguably the most basic form of networking hardware available. Its job is simply to listen for traffic on any port and re-transmit this traffic on all the others, so that every computer plugged into the hub instantly knows what the others have said.

Hubs are fine for networks consisting of just a few computers where routing to different subnets isn't going to be needed (as it would be on a big corporate network, for example). However, the blind retransmission of packets on all lines can lead to congestion.

To try to overcome this, many hubs can tell when another computer is transmitting data so that the system doesn't get clogged with unnecessary collisions.

Stepping up

More sophisticated, secure and certainly more efficient than a hub is a network switch. Unlike a hub, a switch has some built-in intelligence. It operates somewhat like a phone exchange, routing traffic to just the destination line it's meant for.

To do this, it reads the destination address on each packet and routes it to the corresponding machine only. Unlike a hub, this means that the casual electronic eavesdropper will see only the packets meant for his machine. The exception is broadcast traffic, such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) lease requests (which go to all ports) and multicast traffic designed to go to several destinations simultaneously.

The traffic flowing over a network may involve the use of several different protocols, but ultimately each is transmitted as streams of TCP/IP packets. Each packet gives the source and destination IP addresses, a unique number that enables the destination to reconstruct the stream of data without error, and a whole lot more besides.

Each data packet received causes the computer to respond with a receipt packet. If the sender doesn't receive this in good time, it knows it must resend the data packet. Because of this, TCP/IP is a very reliable system.

DHCP matters

One very important and convenient protocol that runs over TCP/IP is the aforementioned DHCP. When a PC joins a network by booting up, it sends out a request for any listening DHCP servers to contact it. Your internet gateway (which will probably be a broadband router or hub, but might also be a computer with an attached broadband modem) will respond with an offer of a temporary IP address and various other pieces of information about how to get to the internet from the local network.

Traditionally, IP addresses given out by the DHCP server on home networks have the format '192.168. 0.x', but they could have other numbers (each with a maximum value of 254). Once it receives an IP address from the DHCP server, the booting computer can begin sending and receiving traffic.

The booting computer only uses the offered IP address for the short period of time specified by the gateway. This is why IP addresses tend to change every time you reboot. Given this situation, what should you do if you want to communicate with a server that's on another network, or even somewhere out on the internet itself?

Routing traffic to other networks is done using a machine called a default gateway. Basically, any traffic that's destined for another network is picked up by this machine and transmitted on a second network card. In the case of a home network, the default gateway is the computer or router that's connected to the broadband connection.

Network switches also know about the default gateway machine and transmit all non-local traffic to it, enabling you to communicate with other servers.

Suppose you're using a single Windows computer linked directly to your broadband modem and want to give a second computer access to the internet. You can simply upgrade to a dedicated broadband router. However, it's cheaper to plug both computers into use a low-cost network hub and then activate Windows' Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) functionality on the internet-connected machine.

When you originally installed your broadband modem drivers, the machine may have had ICS configured. To check this, open the Control Panel and doubleclick 'Network Connections'. The broadband connection entry should have the word 'Shared' next to it if ICS is configured.

If so, this machine will automatically work as the network's DHCP server. Now boot up the new computer, open a browser and you should be able to visit a website.

If ICS isn't configured, double-click on the broadband connection in the Network Connections window. Click the 'Properties' button in the resulting window and select the Advanced tab. Click the tickbox marked 'Allow other network users to connect through this computer's internet connection'. Press 'OK', and reboot your new machine to ensure it picks up its network details properly.

Sharing files

Sharing files and folders on a private Windows network is simple, and thanks to Samba – which is installed by default in distros such as Ubuntu – you can also see them in Linux.

To share a folder, you first need to turn on file sharing. From Computer, open the Tools menu and choose 'Folder Options...'. Click on the View tab and scroll to the bottom of the list of tickboxes. Ensure that the box marked 'Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended)' is ticked, then click 'OK' to continue.

To share a folder, simply right-click it and select 'Sharing and Security'. A window will pop up. On the Sharing tab, click the tickbox next to 'Share this folder on the network' and enter a name. If you want others on the local network to be able to change files, also ensure that the 'Allow network users to change my files' box is ticked. Click 'OK' and news of the new share should propagate to the other machines.

Vista should find the computer and its share, but in XP you can add a new network place from the Start menu by following the Add New Network Place wizard and browsing to the local workgroup (usually called 'WORKGROUP') for the new share.

Sharing printers

If you have several computers, why not share your printer so that anyone on your network can use it?

To do this, log in as an administrator on the computer that has the printer attached. Access the Control Panel and select 'Printers and Faxes'. On the subsequent window, right-click on the printer and select 'Sharing...'. In the Sharing tab of the Printer Properties window that appears, click the 'Share this printer' radio button and give it a name.

To connect to the printer from another computer, open its Control Panel and select 'Printers and Faxes'. In the subsequent window, select 'Add Printer' from the File menu. The Add Printer wizard will appear. Click 'Next', select the networked printer option, click 'Next' again, select 'Browse for a printer' and press 'Next' once again.

Browse your network and select the printer. Press 'Next' again and 'Yes' on the subsequent pop-up that warns of drivers carrying viruses. Windows will now install the driver for your printer, after which you should be able to use it just as if it were local to your machine.

You can spend serious money on setting up a dedicated home media network. The logical thing to do is place all your media files on one server. Here's what you need to consider for the best performance.

First, max out the RAM. Lack of memory to buffer each stream can become a bottleneck, so install as much memory as the server's sockets will allow. Next, buy a dedicated second disk drive to store your files. You'll get better performance if you do this because the primary disk's read/write heads have to service the operating system as well, while a second disk drive can dedicate itself to just serving media.

If you plan to delete media after a while and recycle its disk space, you'll need to de-fragment the drives regularly. If you plan to simply expand your collection, you need a disk controller card that can handle more hard disks than usual. A SATA RAID hard disk controller will enable you to add more disks and have fault tolerance built-in. Prices start at under £100, but the more capacity you need, the higher the price will be.

In which we serve

If you know your server will be used heavily, it's a good idea to consider installing a second processor (if your motherboard will take one) or a multicore CPU. This makes it very difficult to overburden the machine with processing duties, meaning that you could be ripping your CDs and DVDs to disk and transcoding them into other formats while others in the house are simultaneously watching or listening to other files.

If you want your server to live in the lounge, there are two further points to consider. The first is where you're going to site it (which will determine the length of the video cable you'll need to buy). You also need to think about noise. Ideally the server needs to be silent, especially if you have an intelligent fan system that 'blows' at times of peak CPU usage.

Invest in a silent CPU fan, which you can get for around £30. Depending on your power supply, you may also need to replace that with a silent model. Again, prices begin at around £30. Once you're happy with your hardware specification, perform a clean installation of the operating system. A good option here, especially if you decide to use a RAID array, is to use Windows Server 2008.

If you've opted to start small with a single-disk system, Windows XP will be fine. You can clear extra disk space by going to Control Panel, selecting 'Add or Remove Programs' and heading to 'Add/Remove Windows Components'. Remove everything you don't really need, such as games and Outlook Express.

Format wars

If your household has a range of hardware, you'll have to use a media format they can all play. Some Linux distributions still don't have some codecs because of licensing issues, for example. Survey all your devices, and transcode your media into the highest quality format they all use.

If you need several terabytes of storage and have a large enough budget, you could invest in a network-attached storage device. These have the dual advantage of having shedloads of disk space coupled with the advantage of RAID fault tolerance. Behind the scenes, these are actually computers with operating systems and hardware optimised for file sharing, leaving them free to simply serve files.

As you'd expect, they also carry a hefty price tag, but if you're serious about media and have a large DVD and video collection, they'll enable you to store files without having to resort to 'lossy' compression.

Gaming relies on speed. If you're playing with others over the internet then you'll need all the bandwidth your broadband connection can provide. You may be paying for a 8Mbps connection, but research suggests you'll often be getting less than that, which makes it imperative that you make every bit count.

There's also the problem of ISPs throttling traffic at peak times. If you're into gaming online, it will pay dividends to check your ISP's throttling policy. If it's holding you back, consider changing provider.

The router supplied by your ISP should cope with your full broadband capacity (should it become available), but it pays to ensure that other applications aren't unnecessarily hogging the connection. You'll also need to think about how much traffic you're sending as well as receiving.

Your connection's upload speed is far lower than the download speed (typically 1/8th the capacity), and with each received packet requiring a receipt sending by return, the more upload capacity you can free up, the better.

Clear the decks

To clear as much room for download bandwidth as possible, stop all applications that could conceivably be using your connection. This includes your torrent client, your email client, computer-based VoIP services and instant messaging.

Streaming services that use P2P technology to deliver content should also be switched off . Closing these programs also frees up CPU and RAM. If your broadband router supports it (you'll have to look in the manual to find out), enable Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritise data sent from the port used by your game. The game's manual will tell you the port number. QoS ensures that at times of high traffic the router will buffer lower priority traffic while allowing higher priority traffic to pass unimpeded.

If the routers connected to the game's server farm are similarly enabled, you should get fewer latency problems.

Party on

Local LAN-based games offer very low latency compared to online games, hence the attraction of LAN parties. It's worth making sure that the games machines can all plug into a dedicated 100Mb hub. Many people incorrectly believe that you need a powerful LAN switch for gaming, but this isn't so.

Obviously you'll need as many ports as there are players, so if people plan to bring their own machines, either buy an extra hub or have someone else bring one. To chain them together, you simply plug a cable from one port into the other hub's special 'link' port.

On the subject of people bringing their own machines, always make sure you have one or two spare fourway mains extension leads handy. Remember also that some laptops may have come from households with wireless-only LANs. In gaming terms, this makes them second-class citizens: Wi-Fi is convenient but it's also relatively inefficient.

With its low throughput, Bluetooth connections are also useless for a hectic fragging session. Along with the beer and nibbles, it makes sense to have a few extra LAN cables available so that Wi-Fi laptop users can use these.

Finally, lets address security. You may be tempted to use your home network as the backbone of your party network. However, we'd recommend keeping your party network and your personal network physically separate. We've all got personal files, folders and information that we don't want guests peeking and poking around while they wait to be respawned.

Broadband routers such as BT's very popular Home Hub are great for users who just want to plug and go, but you can do more. For example, you may have a more highly specified router already and just want to use BT's hardware as a broadband modem.

If you want to try this, connect one of the Home Hub's Ethernet ports to the main port on your router. Next, disable Wi-Fi on the Home Hub by logging in as admin, navigating to 'Configuration | Wireless', and unticking 'Interface Enabled'.

Turn off DHCP on the Home Hub by going to 'Advanced | Configuration | IP Addresses' and unticking 'Use DHCP Server'. Finally, enable DHCP on your other router and plug the LAN into this.

Add USB storage

It's possible to attach a hard disk or memory stick to one of the Home Hub's USB ports. However, anything more than a memory stick needs to be externally powered. Attach the device to the Home Hub, then right click on My Computer and select 'Map Network Drive'.

Choose a drive letter and enter a URL of \\192.168. 1.253\bt_7g. If you're using version 2.0 of Home Hub, change this to \\BTHUB\Disk_a1. If this fails to map the drive, remove the above and replace it with a URL of \\192.168.1.253\Disk_a1.

Add a printer

The Home Hub also allows you to add a network printer easily, but as there's only one IP address available to the USB ports (192.168.1.253), you'll have to choose between that and any USB storage.

To add a printer, first dig out the driver disk for it and connect the printer to the Home Hub. Back on your Windows computer, start the Add New Printer wizard. Select 'Add a local printer' and untick the option to auto-detect it. Click 'Next' and select the lower radio button to create a new port.

Select 'Standard TCP/IP' from the dropdown list. Now, click 'Next' and the TCP/IP Printer wizard will start up. Click 'Next', then enter the IP address 192.168.1.253 and give it a more meaningful name. Click 'Next' again, select the 'Custom' button and click 'Settings'.

In the resulting window, select the 'LPR' radio button and ensure that you untick 'LPR Byte Counting Enabled'. Finally, enter a Queue Name of LPT1, click 'OK', click 'Next' on the TCP/IP Printer wizard and hit 'Finish'.

On the original Add Printer wizard, either select your printer from the list or insert the printer driver CD and click 'Have Disk'. Click 'Next', enter your printer's name and select whether you want it to be the default. Click 'Next' and select whether you want others on the network to be able to share the printer.

Finally, print a test page to make sure it all works. You can improve the throughput of your broadband router's wireless connection by selecting a different Wi-Fi channel. There are 13 to choose from, but most wireless hubs default to 1. This can cause bandwidth-eating collisions when two neighbouring networks are on the same channel.

British Telecom had anticipated completing its superfast broadband network by March 2013, but is now spending an extra £1.5 billion in order to have the work complete in time for the 2012 Olympics.

The company has been trialling the network and now plans to have it in place by June 2012, one month ahead of the Olympic Games in London.

The new network will offer download speeds of about 40 megabits per second, about 10 times the current rate. However, the high-speed network will only reach about 40 per cent of UK homes by that point.

Will there be a government subsidy?

BT chief executive Ian Livingston has voiced concern about whether there will be a future government subsidy to allow further expansion of the network.

Currently, the proposed £6 a year fixed-line levy the government, which would raise £175 m a year, would be used to for an increased network.

However, the Conservatives have said they might scrap that tax if they win next year's general election.

Mr. Livingston told the Financial Times: "We need our politicians to decide how much of a priority fibre broadband is. BT is the only company currently planning to invest large sums in this area but we can only go so far with our shareholders' money."

LLC has announced today that its revolutionary wireless technology has been granted specification, offering up Full HD without wires in the home.

The specification for WHDI (Wireless Home Digital Interface) means that devices that take up the technology will be able to pipe 1080p/60Hz HD with Deep Color at a distance of 100 feet and through walls.

Wireless HD

According to LLC, this is the best type of HD wireless technology of its kind, making it easier than ever before to connect up a wireless HD network with a number of different devices, including PCs and laptops, and mobile computing devices, to wireless TVs.

"WHDI is the only solution that meets consumers' expectation and demand for a high-quality, multi-room HD wireless solution," notes Leslie Chard, president of WHDI LLC.

"WHDI further enables two of the strongest trends in the A/V universe: the proliferation of HD content sources (now including the PC and mobile devices) and the increasing number of inexpensive, high quality displays placed throughout the home."

TechRadar is expecting CES 2010 to be the year that wireless HD is announced for the mainstream, so expect more on making your home wire-free in the next few weeks.