Model Boat Mayhem
Mess Deck: General Section => Chit-Chat => Topic started by: sinjon on November 22, 2010, 04:30:30 pm
-
I am with AOL but am thinking of changing. BT has been upgrading it's services locally and are now offering a good service.
However according to ' Which ' the overall performance is low.
ZEN 89%, O2 80% way way down is BT at 48% but how relevent are these figures ?
What I want to know are the warts not the gold plating.
Any BT users please.
Colin
-
Your connection speed is more likely to be determined by the physical connection to the exchange than by the ISP so if you do change you may not necessarily see much improvement - it does however depend on the indivdual circumstances. Presumably AOL also usae the BT line so they may also benefit from any upgrading of the cables.
-
I think the ISP does have a bearing. I am on BT and get a reasonable service - between 6 & 7 Mb/sec, my daughter is on the same exchange, a little nearer than me, on Talk Talk and gets about 5 with appalling reliability.
Barrie
-
Plugging your Wireless Router or your wired router into your house Master socket instead of an extension can up the speed by a Meg or two
depending on the state of your extension wiring
Just a thought
Ned
-
You can get several ISPs in the same street, fed via the same cable network, with widely differing performance. After the limitations imposed by cable length and type, you run into the contention ratio. If a lot of connections are using the same node at the exchange, its carrying capacity is reached, and everybody gets a slower performance. The exact same thing happens with optical networks. They perform great, then they become popular, then crowded, then they slow down. The capacity of the optic is, for practical purposes, infinite, but when it gets turned back into electronics, the physical bottleneck reappears.
The BT/talktalk comparison is probably very local, and just reflects the equipment provision by the two companies in that building, and might, or might not, be repeated anywhere, everywhere or nowhere else. Toss a coin in the air time. BT might give better service - they don't have anyone else to hide behind.
-
I suppose it also depends what is included in the term "bad service"... speed of connection being only one part, accuracy of the bill, times the broadband is not available, response to faults etc.
My BT bills never been wrong, never lost service, so I don't know about reaction times.
And they are putting fibre to cabinet accross the road, if I look out the window I see busy BT lads beavering away.....so maybe I'll be upto near 40megs in the new year :embarrassed: :D :} :-))
-
I am with TalkTalk which took over Tiscali which took over Lineone.
My speed varies at different parts of the day from 1 to 8 Mb/s.
When it gets even slower I complain and within 2 days the speed is restored but degrades over the next few weeks.
BT have just upgraded the lines and I live less than 1/2 mile from the exchange.
Bob
-
In Oz we dream <:( <:( <:( <:(
But the Government is building a National Broadband Network, fibre optic, which will lift our speeds to "world standard", hopefully O0 O0 O0 :-)) :-)) :-))
-
I am with AOL. Generally the service is available virtually all the time but the speed drops away dramatically between 3pm and 11pm which is almost certainly due to contention issues. We are also close to an Internet 'black spot' so I rather fear that changing ISP would not bring about much of an improvement and I would also have all the hassle entailed in changing my Email address which is actually quite a good one which I don't want to lose.
Colin
-
One of a few,
Thats how some people would describe me. Many years ago I started with NTL which became Virgin and to date have no complaints of any sort.
Maybe it helps to have a Virgin engineer on side. :D :D
Colin H.
-
It helps to be on cable I think!
No chance of that here.
Colin
-
Virgin here...ex Telewest.
We pay for 'up to 20Meg' and speed tests show we get 18Meg. If you have cable in your area I would definately recommend it. We are always on the 2nd highest speed. The highest at the mo is 50Meg. When that gets increased to ??? we should get a freebie upgrade to 50.
The phone package isn't bad either. :-))
Roy
-
I am on o2, very happy with it, and I get a discount as I am an o2 phone customer even though I am pay as you go :)
what impressed me was I signed up for the 20mb connection and when they did the line test it said the fastest I would get is 13mb so the said I should go for their 8mb connection, this saved me money again. Other ISPs did line check and said yep go with 20mb, so I would be paying for speed I wouldn't get. (for peoples info I pay with my discount £7.50 a month for 8mb and if I wanted to pay an extra £5 a month I could have a static ip) :)
-
Im with Talktalk which seems to have a lousy reputation - but just done 3 independant speed tests - all over 11 mbs
- it costs me about £20 a month - for this I get line rental, broadband and all calls free (including to continental Europe)
Max call length 1 hour - then hang up and re-dial or it starts to cost - have to remind SWMBO when she phones her
sisters. Only pay for calls to mobiles. They were an absolute pain when we first set up but since then only once
have we lost connection and apparently half the country did at the same time so no complaints. Yet.
Geoff
-
The 'Which' review covered more than just speed -
Ease of set up
Value for money
Customer Service
On- line Help
Telephone Help
Reliability of Connection
Connection speed
Each one rated on a five star system.
A company called ' Zen' got five stars on all but one, BT had two fours, two three's, and two two's.
Colin
-
I have to say this about BT (and this is one of the many reasons I will never use them as a isp)
I am a moderator on a car club forum, and in recent months some of our members have had problems signing in, this is because the server we use gets automatic updates of I.P's that are used for spam attacks. when we looked into it we discovered the tech people use http://www.spamhaus.org/index.lasso (http://www.spamhaus.org/index.lasso) to get the block lists from, what has this to do with BT? we discovered that a good 90% of blocked members were on BT, and that BT had given their I.P address in a block to spamhaus, BT in their usual helpfull way told those concerned it had nothing to do with them and the people that had blocked IP address needed to contact spamhaus themselves.
(Martin if you start to get emails about people not being able to log on to the site please let me know and I will get details from our tech people :-) )
add to this and their use of Phorm without telling customers. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556068/We-spied-36-000-customers-using-internet-admits-BT.html (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-556068/We-spied-36-000-customers-using-internet-admits-BT.html)
This is why id BT were the last IP running I would correspond by post or smoke signals.
-
"(Martin if you start to get emails about people not being able to log on to the site please let me know and I will get details from our tech people )"
Thanks LB. BTW: I use http://www.stopforumspam.com/ - might be worth giving them a try..... :-)
-
"(Martin if you start to get emails about people not being able to log on to the site please let me know and I will get details from our tech people )"
Thanks LB. BTW: I use http://www.stopforumspam.com/ - might be worth giving them a try..... :-)
thanks I will pass that on to those that have a clue what to do with it {-)
-
In Oz we dream <:( <:( <:( <:(
But the Government is building a National Broadband Network, fibre optic, which will lift our speeds to "world standard", hopefully O0 O0 O0 :-)) :-)) :-))
Didn't our 'leaders' say summat like that a few years back?
The UK Broadband Highway!
Ned
-
Out of curiosity
I am with o2 again with no problems
but when I did a line speed test I am getting 1.2mb/s
I am 2 miles away from the Exchange and some of the wiring is on telegraph poles or under water (because BT are worse than useless)
I take it that is not too bad given the problems {:-{ {:-{
-
Telephone wires have been hung off poles since the invention of the telephone, so that is unlikely to detract from performance. Undersea cables are, by their nature, under water, and they work quite well. Underground cables are generally designed to keep the wet stuff out, so poor drainage in a particular area shouldn't have much effect.
-
Underground cables are generally designed to keep the wet stuff out, so poor drainage in a particular area shouldn't have much effect.
Nothing is truly waterproof, there are just degrees of water resistance. We had to have all our local underground phone cables renewed a few years back because the ducts regularly flooded. They still flood so presamably it will all have to be done again at some time in the future.
The problem with slow internet connections is that there are so many links in the chain that it can be very difficult to pin down the main cause(s).
Colin
-
Ducts being full of water should be a problem to the user, only the poor engineer who has to pump them out to work on the cables.
Most cables are pressurised to keep the water out. If you want to know about cable pressurisation just ask.....
-
Shouldn't and aren't are two different words.... Leakage did cause some problems around here - pressure drop maybe?
Colin
-
Ducts being full of water should be a problem to the user, only the poor engineer who has to pump them out to work on the cables.
Most cables are pressurised to keep the water out. If you want to know about cable pressurisation just ask.....
And those that are not full of air trying to get out, on the principal that while the air is coming out, the water can't get in, are stuffed with water resistant grease to discourage water entry, then the individual wires are covered with a waterproof plastic insulation. Sort of belt, braces and bit of string on self supporting trousers. Thats not to say that some cheery soul on a JCB is going to be unable to work his way through the lot and shove the fickle ferret of fate up one of the legs of these metaphorical trousers..........
Colin-
Pressure drop due to a big hole that lets air out faster than it could be shoved in the other end (there are alarm systems monitoring this sort of thing, so the "system" would, in theory, and certainly in the past, have a man with big wellies shaking his head over it before the customers noticed). Cables in ducts can also be damaged by just being there - traffic vibration causes them to creep, or try to creep and put themselves under very considerable tension. I did once run into a Irish gentleman who had been cutting grass on a verge using something that looked like a monster strimmer. The machine had not only trimmed the grass, it had shot the metal trunking covering the cable running up the pole off the pole, strimmed the cable cowering within, and made a manful effort at the pole itself, which it probably thought of as a truly worthy grass stalk. I still remember his words "I've tried putting the ends back together, sorr."
-
And those that are not full of air trying to get out, on the principal that while the air is coming out, the water can't get in, are stuffed with water resistant grease to discourage water entry, then the individual wires are covered with a waterproof plastic insulation. Sort of belt, braces and bit of string on self supporting trousers. Thats not to say that some cheery soul on a JCB is going to be unable to work his way through the lot and shove the fickle ferret of fate up one of the legs of these metaphorical trousers..........
Colin-
Pressure drop due to a big hole that lets air out faster than it could be shoved in the other end (there are alarm systems monitoring this sort of thing, so the "system" would, in theory, and certainly in the past, have a man with big wellies shaking his head over it before the customers noticed). Cables in ducts can also be damaged by just being there - traffic vibration causes them to creep, or try to creep and put themselves under very considerable tension. I did once run into a Irish gentleman who had been cutting grass on a verge using something that looked like a monster strimmer. The machine had not only trimmed the grass, it had shot the metal trunking covering the cable running up the pole off the pole, strimmed the cable cowering within, and made a manful effort at the pole itself, which it probably thought of as a truly worthy grass stalk. I still remember his words "I've tried putting the ends back together, sorr."
If my memory serves me correctly similar cabling set up in OZ as we also had a PMG before they become privatised.
The trunk mains were copper cables encased in lead with cable joins in large pits with the joint elevated to prevent water ingress.
Plus Gas pressurisation and alarm monitoring as has been mentioned by "Fun time frankie" who may be a techie, I am not.
-
Shouldn't and aren't are two different words.... Leakage did cause some problems around here - pressure drop maybe?
Colin
OK it should read
Ducts being full of water SHOULDN'T be a problem to the user,
Sorry for the typo :embarrassed:
-
Any of you guys had any dealings with Sky Broadband?
I transferred to Sky Talk and broadband at the start of the month.
I had the line for Talk activated on the 15th but no sign of the Broadband
Every time I ring I am told it will take 72 hours to clear a tag from the line.
After 72 hours I ring again only to be told 'We have put the request through
and it will take 72 hours'
Seriously thinking of taking phone and broadband elsewhere but where?
Ned
-
Sky?
Take your money and run very quickly away from them!
My partner changed to them (to get away from dealing with BT following a very nasty series of events). What a mistake that was!
Sky will say anything but their prayers, the service is garbage and the pricing schemes are a figment of a very fertile imagination.
To check the prices (having viewed the tv adverts) I contacted them to see if I could achieve their claims. Dream on baby! They wanted about double what they claimed on the adverts.
The actual changeover from AOL to Sky was a nightmare, the new router they sent would connect according to the instructions. Much time and frustration was had from this activity.
In fairness to them, I eventually managed to speak to a human (yes, they do employ them!) and she was very good at her job. A shame that she seemed to be a single bright spot in the whole firm.
Overall, if they were the only ISP, I would resort to smoke signals and string and tin cans for my phone.
I'm not you may gather, a fan of Sky.
HTH