KC have kindly allowed the KUG to 'preview and review' their new Karoo RapidTime Surf250 service today (29th of March, 2004).

The following review will hopefully give you a good idea as to what to expect from the new Karoo RapidTime Surf250 service:

Overview

Details

Downloading

A number of sites have been tested for download speed. The following results have been seen:

If you were to download for an hour at 30kb/sec, you would have downloaded a total of 108MB.

Note: The old Karoo RapidTime services download at around 50kb/sec (180MB per hour).

Uploading

A number of sites have been tested for upload speed. The following results have been seen:

If you were to upload for an hour at 17kb/sec, you would have uploaded a total of 61MB.

Note: The old Karoo RapidTime services download at around 30kb/sec (108MB per hour).

Latency

A few trace-routes were performed on two different types of Karoo RapidTime Standard/Pro services, as well as on the new Karoo RapidTime Surf250 service. The results of these trace-routes can be viewed by clicking the relevant links below:

• Karoo RapidTime Standard/Pro - Fast Mode
• Karoo RapidTime Standard/Pro - Interleave Mode
• Karoo RapidTime Surf250

The following is an overview of some other timings that might be of interest:

Conclusion

After trialing the 1Mbit service previously, the 250kbit service did feel a touch slower, but if you are upgrading from dial-up, be prepared for the "whoa" effect, as you will see five times your dial-up speed!

At around 30-32kb/sec downstream, and 16-17kb/sec upstream, the transfer speeds are good and were consistent across all of the tests we performed. This probably makes this service the ideal balance of cost versus performance for those of you who enjoy browsing the more modern/flash web sites of the current times, whilst doing the occasional (or maybe even regular) downloading and/or uploading of files.

Now the latency is a little on the high side for the 250kbit service, weighing in about 10 to 15 milliseconds higher than the old Karoo RapidTime services, so for the gamers out there, this probably means the difference between life and death in your online games, so this service is probably not the one for you!

So, whether you are a dial-up user who likes the idea of a bit more speed, or a broadband user who feels their old Karoo RapidTime service is more than you need, then the decision to change to the 250kbit service, which comes with a more than ample download quota, should be one of the easiest decisions you'll ever need to make!

Pro's

• Always on connection, which allows you to use both the Internet and your phone.
• Only an extra £1 per month more than Karoo AnyTime, yet upto 5 times as fast!
• The Karoo news service can utilise the Internet service to its full potential.

Con's

• Higher latency than ISDN.
• The Karoo mail service will still perform like sticky goo.
• The "whoa" effect is not as good as on the 500kbit and 1mbit services.