Will changing to a business ISP make any difference?

Hi

I've been using Utility Warehouse's Broadcall Unlimited for years and, as it goes, it's OK.

We're on a rural exchange and work from home http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/ESPCD

I'm just wondering, is there any realistic chance of getting significant improvements over the existing provider by moving to a different business ISP?

Or is it a case of just waiting until BT upgrades the exchange? (That will be a long time coming).

Would really welcome any thoughts or advice.

Cheers

Ralph

What sort of "significant improvements" are you hoping for?

More Reliable Service? - probably worth moving.
Faster Connection? - probaby not worth moving.

Hi

Ideally better upstream and downstream quality during office hours.

During the day we can barely use IP telephony such as Vonage or Skype. Surfing and email are adequate but we can't do without a good enough connection for IP calls.

Typically it's only one call at a time but if we are doing any uploading or downloading at all bye bye IP call - the sound deteriorates and we can't always hear the caller (or vice versa).

I'm wondering if we're basically stuck or would another business-oriented ISP be able to give us, not necessarily a faster connection so much as a quality of line performance that means we get the bandwidth the line is capable of actually supporting. e.g. we get about 5.6Mbps downstream and a theoretical 500Kbps up. However the reality is much lower than what the line is capable of.

Would a business ISP make a difference?

Cheers

Ralph

Using budget internet providers on an exchange that doesn't support LLU, you are pretty much expected to have a poor throttled connection.

There are a few providers that may be better for your requirements i.e. ADLS24, XILO, TitanADSL or Zen

In reply to a post by CutieCakes:

There are a few providers that may be better for your requirements i.e. ADLS24, XILO, TitanADSL or Zen

Do you have any specific experience of these resellers, oh and the ISP ??

Not many options at your exchange.

I would try Zen.

I 2nd that, service from Zen is spot on for me.

A change in ISP may help if you're getting poor speed results all the time, run some speed tests at different times and let us have the results

Typically it's only one call at a time but if we are doing any uploading or downloading at all bye bye IP call - the sound deteriorates and we can't always hear the caller (or vice versa).

A router with QoS would help here as you could reserve enough bandwidth for the IP call so other uses don't cause issues - something like a Draytek Vigor would be easy enough to configure and cheap enough.

You might be suffering from exchange congestion.

http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/?exchange=Pencai...

If you move to a proper business-grade ISP then you should get a bigger bite of the pie, as it were.

Things to look out for: You only have BT Wholesale at your exchange and BTW offer their resellers 2 choices - standard and elevated services. This used to be called 50:1 and 20:1 contention, but BT measure things somewhat differently now...

Some ISPs will sell you a "Business grade" connection to mean that they give you more data, NOT move you to the elevated services. This is something to look out for. On your exchange, moving to elevated services will take your upstream from a max of 488Kb/sec to 832Kb/sec. Make sure you look out for a package that will give you the higher upstream or it's not on the elevated services!

Other things should be different too - the ISPs connection to the BTW network - hopefully it's "fatter" and also hopfeully the ISPs internal network is un-contended too - and they have better connectivity to the main peering points and so on.

So moving to a good business-grade ISP should give you more throughput, however it's unlikely to give you a higher speed as that's limited by the kit in the exchange (and distance) The trade-off is that decent ISPs usually have a well-defined data usage cap/allowance rather than some wooly fair-use policy, or acceptable use policy. They are also a bit more expensive and only you can tell if the additional cost is worthwhile. But do note that most of them only lock you in for one month at a time, so changing is relatively easy. (Remember to get a MAC)

Then it's just down to picking one that you think is good (read the reviews) and worth the additional money. I'm on a rural excange using an Entanet package (I'm an entanet reseller), and in-general I appear to get a much better level of service than my neighbours who're all on the cheap and cheerful packages from Sky, BT, TalkTalk, UW and so on... (At least that's going from the comments I get when they visit me and use my broadband)

I think the main niche ISPs have been mentioned in the thread - The usual suspects - Goscombe, An Entanet reseller on their busines packages, Zen, ADSL24, Xilo, etc. The "ultimate" is AAISP, but that comes a a price, however their service is (AIUI) 2nd to none.

As for your telephony - you need a decent router than can do QoS - however I'm not at all sure if they can recognise Skype, but I have had good results with the Billion 7800N router and SIP VoIP. I used to use Drayteks have have found them to be very hit and miss as of late with NAT issues on long-term sessions requiting a reboot.

Gordon