Infinity opionins a few months on?

I'm currently on Be getting a healthy 18mbps and have been looking at switching to infinity for a few months. The capping was putting me off but I believe that has now gone but they still have traffic shaping. What falls under traffic shaping? I never use P2P/torrents but do use FTP, direct downloads and newsgroups and wouldn't be happy if these were being slowed down! Also, a light on-line gamer - no issue with pings etc?

You'll find BT block access to Newzbin2. This is just for starters, soon a lot more sites will be blocked by BT imo.

I can see them throttling USENET in the future.

Currently only p2p is throttled and while newzbin will be blocked by BT at some point is isn't yet. Pointless really as it can be bypassed easily.

Edit: I get around 11/12ms pings to bbc.co.uk, ymmv of course.

Edited by TheHorseman (Sun 31-Jul-11 14:10:19)

I get full speeds 24/7, never notice a slow down... i'm in northern ireland and my ping is a rock solid 25ms to bbc.co.uk - this is around 6-10ms quicker than ipstream pings

If they ever do throttle newsgroups a lot of people will leave

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

You'll find BT block access to Newzbin2. This is just for starters, soon a lot more sites will be blocked by BT imo.

BT have said they'll only block sites when they have a court order compelling them to. They didn't block it voluntarily it was either that or be held in contempt of court.

In reply to a post by BuckleZ:

I get full speeds 24/7, never notice a slow down... i'm in northern ireland and my ping is a rock solid 25ms to bbc.co.uk - this is around 6-10ms quicker than ipstream pings

If they ever do throttle newsgroups a lot of people will leave

With 18 month contracts, you might struggle to leave without a significant financial penalty..

If they start throttling usenet then its a change in their contract, therefore I will not be paying no penalties

If BT are forced to block a number of sites what about other ISP's using BT's infrastructure?

Are BT going to force the ISP's as they are using the BT line etc? Or is it BT as a company being forced to block the sites and others will follow suit?

The thing is they just say "high speed service" in the contract, along with an "estimate" of how fast things will go.

Ergo: the contract does not guarantee you any specific throughput at all. Nor does it define "high speed", thus leaving that open for debate if you tried to leave. I'd bet they'd define "high speed" as 2mbit or so, anything else you manage to get is just lucky for you.

...so I guess you'd end up paying the termination fee after all Note please that I can't guarantee this, it's just speculation having read the contract through!

..actually going on from there, the Fibre t&cs explain they'll provide a high speed service in paragraph 1a, with a link to http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/13725... , explaining how to improve your speed. From that link, you may follow to their broadband usage policy explaining how non time-critical services such as P2P (note that they only state "such as" and not "only") will be managed by them as/when required.

...so yeah, you signed up for a product which can be throttled at the descretion of BT.

My guess would be that it would be limited at present to those ISP's using the BT wholesale platform whilst alao using the Cleanfeed system. I dont think all of BT wholesales broadband customers (ISP's) use it, though I think they have to have some sort of filtering system in place.

In reply to a post by rendez2k:

I'm currently on Be getting a healthy 18mbps and have been looking at switching to infinity for a few months. The capping was putting me off but I believe that has now gone but they still have traffic shaping. What falls under traffic shaping? I never use P2P/torrents but do use FTP, direct downloads and newsgroups and wouldn't be happy if these were being slowed down! Also, a light on-line gamer - no issue with pings etc?

I'm in the same boat as you. 16-18mb on Be for 4 years. Very pleased with their service, however, I feel I'm being left behind. I've avoided the likes of BT, Sky, Orange etc and kept to Zen, Clara, Plusnet and Be over the years. However, I've bitten the bullet and will be having my BT Infinity fibre connection installed on Thusday 4th. I'll update this thread with my impressions.
(I am a usenet user, and I'm rather hoping that BT don't start throttling in the future, but who knows, I certainly wont be trying to download the whole internet just because it's quick, but sadly, there are those who do).

Great - exactly the same as me. Please let me know how it goes! How long has it taken from sign up to get an install date?

27th July - MAC code from Be, then ordered the new service. This was in the evening. The BT site generates an install date when ordering. In my case it is Thursday 4th August, so pretty quick.

Hmmm?
It seems not to have been applied to me, being as I am, a BT Infinity customer. I recently joined, and have been quite able to access content via NewzBin - the non-copyright stuff, of course.

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 12:58 PM
Subject: Welcome to Newzbin!


> Dear lelboy,
>
> This is an automated email sent from Newzbin.com, please DO NOT
> reply unless specified otherwise as it will NOT be received/read.
>
>
> IMPORTANT: Your LOGIN DETAILS are at the bottom of this email!
>
>
> Welcome to Newzbin.com - The Ultimate in Usenet Indexing! If you
> are new to the concept of Usenet and/or Newzbin, then we STRONGLY
> suggest that you read this entire email before using the site, in
> particular, before paying for a premium account.
>
> A description of Newzbin follows:
>
> "Newzbin is a service that is dedicated to indexing the ever-
> changing contents of Usenet, also known as Newsgroups. The
> reason why we do this is to remove the hassle of crawling
> through the thousands of newsgroups and millions of headers to
> find what you're looking for, whether that be obscure music, tv
> shows, games or movies. Think of it as a TV guide, but we're a
> guide that applies to Usenet."
>
> Now that you know what Newzbin is, it may be wise to (at least)
> read our "Basics" documentation page to find out what Newzbin
> does, and does not, do. The URL for the Basics documentation is:
>
> Hmmm?
It seems not to have been applied to me, being as I am, a BT Infinity customer. I recently joined, and have been quite able to access content via NewzBin - the non-copyright stuff, of course.

----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 12:58 PM
Subject: Welcome to Newzbin!


> Dear lelboy,
>
> This is an automated email sent from Newzbin.com, please DO NOT
> reply unless specified otherwise as it will NOT be received/read.
>
>
> IMPORTANT: Your LOGIN DETAILS are at the bottom of this email!
>
>
> Welcome to Newzbin.com - The Ultimate in Usenet Indexing! If you
> are new to the concept of Usenet and/or Newzbin, then we STRONGLY
> suggest that you read this entire email before using the site, in
> particular, before paying for a premium account.
>
> A description of Newzbin follows:
>
> "Newzbin is a service that is dedicated to indexing the ever-
> changing contents of Usenet, also known as Newsgroups. The
> reason why we do this is to remove the hassle of crawling
> through the thousands of newsgroups and millions of headers to
> find what you're looking for, whether that be obscure music, tv
> shows, games or movies. Think of it as a TV guide, but we're a
> guide that applies to Usenet."
>
> Now that you know what Newzbin is, it may be wise to (at least)
> read our "Basics" documentation page to find out what Newzbin
> does, and does not, do. The URL for the Basics documentation is:
>
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Newzbin:Basics
>
> In particular, please take note that we DO NOT offer the downloads
> of any files that are shown on our site. We index (list) all of
> the contents of the public resource, Usenet - Repeat: We DO NOT
> provide download services for these files.
>
> Hopefully after reading the Basics page you will be more familiar
> with what Newzbin does and does not do - There is one thing that
> we must mention before proceeding. Newzbin operates a premium
> account policy, whereby for a small charge (1 GBP) per month, a
> user is able to access extremely useful "premium services". For
> a list of what a normal registered user (you) and what a premium
> user can do, have a look at the following URL:
>
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Newzbin:Feature_Overview
>
> Before letting you go your way into learning the ins and outs of
> Usenet, we thought we should mention NZBs here. An NZB is a file
> that you download that contains the IDs of files on Usenet. If
> you import this NZB into a supported newsreader it will auto-
> matically go and find those files for you - Therefore, no headers
> to download, no time to wait, no hassle.
>
> This constrasts to the "old" method of obtaining files from any
> newsgroup on Usenet. You would need to subscribe to a particular
> newsgroup, download it's headers (a list of subjects saying what
> a particular message/file is,) find the files you're looking for,
> then manually setting them for download. This is a process that
> would normally take hours to perform.
>
> So, why Newzbin for NZBs? Newzbin is THE creator of NZB files,
> we are the ones that designed the format/specification. If you
> open up any NZB file, you will find a reference to the spec that
> is located on our site. Therefore, who better to obtain NZBs
> from other than the originator of the format?
>
> Finally, some links to help out:
>
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Usenet:Tutorials
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Usenet:ISP_Providers
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Usenet:Premium_Providers
> http://docs.newzbin.com/Newzbin:NZB_Guide
>
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> ______________________________________________
> Thank you for using Newzbin.com, the Ultimate in Usenet Indexing.
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>
>

Is it truly unlimited now apart from the torrent traffic shaping? I looked at my Bebox stats and I estimated I could download up-to 1tb a month (realistically less though) by the look of it.

yeap fully unlimited, only P2P i notice a slow down with, but its only at peak times, so its easy enough to just download P2P out of peak times

So, I've done it. Install date is next Tuesday. Signing up was a minor annoyance as the site crashed. Had to call them twice to get the order sorted. Not a good start!

Anyway, they sent me a BT-yahoo email account. I assume this won't work until I get the broadband going?

You won't regret it, Ive had a faultless 2 weeks so far, not lost connection once..

Connection time: 18 days, 13:31:13

And never seen any slowdowns...

Faultless service.. Peak time speedtest (just now):

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1412455448.png

I'm estimated at 33.9Mb download and 7.0Mb upload. Are those estimates normally accurate?

They always underestimate in my experience.

This is me now (and on wireless..... it's a little better when on my wired conection).

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1412578079.png

I lost internet for 3 minutes a couple of weeks ago, it hasn't dropped other than that since I started some two months ago......

I was estimated 36mb and 6.8mb

I get the full Sync

Is there anyway to see what the closest cabinet is?

Not that I know of. I asked the engineer when he installed infinity as it could have been any one of three for all I knew

In reply to a post by rendez2k:

So, I've done it. Install date is next Tuesday. Signing up was a minor annoyance as the site crashed. Had to call them twice to get the order sorted. Not a good start!

Anyway, they sent me a BT-yahoo email account. I assume this won't work until I get the broadband going?

Try logging onto the account at: http://uk.mail.yahoo.com If you have the address it should already work.

(You won't necessarily be connected to the closest one.)

You can go for a walk/drive round your neighborhood and find the cabinets and then use Gmap-pedometer to guess the line distance.

It is the ISP arm of BT that has been given this court order, not openreach. BT's ISP arm has the same relationship with or (officially at any rate) as other ISP's, so an order to them does not BT/or and the other ISPs who resell chunks of the infrastructure.

That is not to say other ISPs are not next in line for a similar court order, of course, but none have been given one yet.

If this might be a significant issue for you, look for an ISP that has taken a consistent stance against such censorship in the past (AAISP are the only ones that spring to mind, they are one of the few that don't take part in the IWF scheme, but there will no doubt be others if you look around).

There are alternatives of course: rent a VPS somewhere for a few $/month and use a VPN to route traffic through there. There is little your ISP can do to filter that (though if you ISP throttles P2P your VPN may be hit to as they can't easily tell the difference between encrypted P2P traffic and encrypted VPN traffic).

Hi, Well, I've been with Infinity for three months now, and only had two "slow/disconnected" periods of 10/12 hours at a time - when BT were doing remedial work (all fine by 6am next day). They advised me 29/6 and I typically get 34/8 - my max was 38.98 down & 8.4 up. Very happy with the service, but BT "customer care" leaves a bit to be desired at times!

In reply to a post by rendez2k:

I'm estimated at 33.9Mb download and 7.0Mb upload. Are those estimates normally accurate?

You're lucky. My estimate is only 29 / 6. I'm hoping that it turns out to be faster rather than slower once it's installed.

In reply to a post by lelboy:

BT "customer care"

Can you use those words in the same sentence?

Touche'... What could I have been thinking?
Oh yes, I remember, it was the four years of good service from o2 "customer care" that was in my mind! I only left them because BT couldn't fix a 6 month-long, ongoing fault.
It was with reservations that I went to BT again. As I said, the actual BB is super, but admin errors right from the start.
1) Not actioning the £120.00 I paid up from for line rental..
2) Not putting me on "ex-directoy" as requested - nuisance calls, which BT conceded were from a previous line-holder's contacts - necessitated them providing me with a 2nd phone line within two weeks.
3) Seventeen - I kid you not - calls to get these issues sorted.
Yep, you certainly are right - it was unforgivable to use customer care in the same sentence as BT!
Cheers, Les.

Should be installed today at 1pm.. Hopefully the Engineer has me in his diary.

Engineer is at home with the wife. ( rang to ask if he could come early )

I explained everything to the wife last night, just in case he turned up early. Naturally her eyes glazed over and she failed to actually take note of my instructions. Hence I am now rushing home.

All done.

Luckily I had an engineer installed ADSL line and socket, so he just tapped into that for my Infinity connection.

Showing as 37 / 8 on speedtest.net

Looking good

then come around november time you should see your download speed increase to around 75 megs down and i think the upload seed will be 15 megs

Seen my first 'issue' last night, around 2 or 3am i lost all webpage access, Hub showing stil connected and no drops but could not get any webpages, just got page cannot be displayed, also speeds were very irratic, ran a speedtest after the issue and the needle was flying everywhere....... also pings seems to have shot up 5 or 6ms at the time too

Nice! What was your predicted speed during signup?

Are they upping the speed in Nov then for everyone? I wasn't sure if the copper part of the line from the box to home could handle that kind of speed!

for people on bt infinity they should be a increase

Edited by deleted (Thu 04-Aug-11 17:54:37)

In reply to a post by rendez2k:

Nice! What was your predicted speed during signup?

It was 29 / 6 .

Which I would have been quite happy with, but obviously 37 is better

I don't know whether this is likely to go down during the settling in period though.

Keep us updated. Mine is due Tuesday. Heard some horror stories so hope it all goes well!

Delighted here. Switched in Jan 2011, a few weeks after ordering opened.

Moved from 3.5-4/1 up to 34/8 . Rarely slows down. Very reliable - only noticed one drop. Don't really use P2P so not noticed throttling issues.

Brilliant for multiple concurrent HD video streams and no bw limit concerns...

Glad you got it done. Your figures are just as mine were originally ie 38.89/8.3 - they offered 29/6. After three months the figures have slowed a little - a very little - and typically I get between 30 - 34 down & 8.3 up most of the time. Hope yours works out as good. Cheers, Les.

In reply to a post by Johnct:

for people on bt infinity they should be a increase

where is the info on this??

its ok found it

It's fine for everything you're doing.

Seems to have settled at 37 down and 7 up. So very happy.

Hi, Pretty much the same as mine. I'm a little lower than you on download, and a little higher on upload. The only problems I've had was loss of service - twice - for a few hours each time, whilst BT were doing maintenance, but as they said, "normal service was resumed" @ 6am.
Hope it stays the same for you as it has for me. Cheers, Les.

Not had a problem with my Infinity connection since I had it installed in all honesty. My pings are pretty good (averaging 18 - 20ms), downloads always max out (depending on the ability of the download source of course) & FTP uploads and downloads do as they are supposed to - full speed.