A couple of Infinity questions

I'm thinking of getting Infinity when I move, after getting an estimated 10mbit on Bethere/o2, who I've been with for 4 years very happily without traffic shaping or slow downs. The infinity estimate is 35mbit, which is nice.

I just have one really large concern:
Traffic shaping. BT openly admit (fair enough for that) they restrict speeds on certain protocols like P2P, which isn't the biggest issue to be honest; I just am not sure I'm comfortable with any ISP that traffic shapes.
So: Has anyone actually noticed any slow down at peak, P2P or otherwise? Or can you generally max out the connection at any point?

A secondary question:
I saw a picture somewhere of a funky new BT faceplate because of the way the connection comes in. Does this mean you can only put the modem on the master socket? When they install infinity do you have the option of using it in any socket? My study is upstairs so want the modem and router etc in there to keep it out of the way.


Other than that, it seems most people in the other Infinity threads are quite happy with the service, and it'd certainly be nice having so much upload speed.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

Can't answer for p2p/torrents/etc. (don't use them) but for regular downloads and Usenet I have noticed the odd peak-time slow down.
It isn't much (maybe a 10-20% loss of speed) and doesn't usually last long (maybe half an hour, or so) before speeds go right back up to around 37Mbps, but it's not a particularly welcome sign (given our exchange has only been enabled for five weeks, there surely can't be local congestion already).

Hoping BT actually increase capacity as time goes on (as an 18 month contract is a long time).

For me; it's great (as I came from a 4.5Mbps ADSL2+ connection, so Infinity would have to be really useless to be slower than that).


As for the modem location; BT will install it on an extension (they can just make that socket the new master) but I don't think the engineer will want to push the signal round every socket in the house (so you can pick and choose the modem location at random).
They tend to want to fit a new master socket face-plate and that needs to be the single location of your modem.

Torrents are the only thing I've noticed that slows but I can still get a fairly decent speed out of it even at peak.

Usenet always runs max. Always.

My usual speeds on speedtest.net rarely fluctuate much from the average.

Can't answer for p2p/torrents/etc. (don't use them) but for regular downloads and Usenet I have noticed the odd peak-time slow down.
It isn't much (maybe a 10-20% loss of speed) and doesn't usually last long (maybe half an hour, or so) before speeds go right back up to around 37Mbps, but it's not a particularly welcome sign (given our exchange has only been enabled for five weeks, there surely can't be local congestion already).

Hoping BT actually increase capacity as time goes on (as an 18 month contract is a long time).

hold yer horses one would think your looking for a failure Remember the old days of ADSL and what the cost was back then, I`m getting huge amount more for the same money now and yes slowdowns were common place back then as well. I think some folks need to remember exactly what they are paying, leased lines don`t come cheap!!

Thanks for your replies.

I'm glad they can pick a socket to install, that's good news.

It's also the least of my worries at the minute. I can't convince BT to actually consider looking in to installing. The joys of having a new house.

The only address at my post code was the one house that already has a phone line.. the sales office, which obviously has been there for a while (brand new housing development) so they've had their phone a while.

Their phone number and address shows as being able to get 40mbit Infinity. I phoned BT yesterday and mentioned my address was missing, they said they would add it and I could try again in 24 hours.

This morning I tried again and it claims I could only get 6mbit regular broadband, no Infinity. All of the other addresses on the road have appeared too, they all show as no Infinity, apart from the sales office.

This, of course, means they won't even look in to the difference.. I was just told "it's likely you're on different exchanges" despite there only being one exchange for this small town. No idea how long I'll have to wait before they do a proper check to see if I can actually get it.

I would just order the phone line, which presumably would allow them to check easily if I could receive it or not, but then it costs a lot more to order the two separately. Rather annoying because I wanted to get this ordered before I moved in, since I work from home so an internet connection is kinda vital.

In reply to a post by lozzd:

Their phone number and address shows as being able to get 40mbit Infinity.

So did mine, post installation speed was barely 15mbit. Turns out the cable from cabinet to my home was aluminium rather than copper, severely limiting speed.

Find out if your cable run is copper or aluminium before committing

In reply to a post by TheMarf:

In reply to a post by lozzd:

Their phone number and address shows as being able to get 40mbit Infinity.

So did mine, post installation speed was barely 15mbit. Turns out the cable from cabinet to my home was aluminium rather than copper, severely limiting speed.

Find out if your cable run is copper or aluminium before committing

Ouch! Was that a new build estate? Aluminium is cheaper than copper?

No, my house is about 25 years old.

The engineer who attended to check out my issues said the ally cable must be quite old as the joiners used along the line were the old "blue bean" type. These also are detrimental to the VDSL signal.

He replaced a few of the blue beans and my speed has improved, I now get around 16mbit which is 2 megabytes per second actual throughput. I got myself a discount after all this as BT decided I had been missold the product.

So yes, moral of the story is check what kinda cable is there by askign BT before you sign up to avoid disapointment.

FYI 15mbit is the installation cut off, so if its below 15mbit when installed the engineer is supposed to check with you that this is ok and report that back to base. 12mbit is the bare minimum, so if its below that level they will not install.

Edited by deleted (Thu 22-Sep-11 09:16:24)

New build i.e. new now should not have Al

FTTC even with Al should be better than ADSL2+, since the line is still shorter

It is, I was getting 8-10mbit with ADSL2+, but still 16mbit is a damn sight lower than the 25-40mbit that I was quoted when I signed up.

unfortunatley the answer from bt retail and any other supplier would be we have no idea !

In reply to a post by geordiekris:

unfortunatley the answer from bt retail and any other supplier would be we have no idea !

Brilliant.

Well I can probably ask the builders what kind of cable they put in to the BT cabinet. But it seems as its a new build it should be fine.

Now, if I could convince them to *check* whether I can get infinity or not... Rather than just assuming I can't... Apparently someone at BT Business have put Openreach on the case..

In reply to a post by MrGrumpy:

hold yer horses one would think your looking for a failure Remember the old days of ADSL and what the cost was back then, I`m getting huge amount more for the same money now and yes slowdowns were common place back then as well. I think some folks need to remember exactly what they are paying, leased lines don`t come cheap!!

exactly well said
ive been with bt infinity for about 4 months now and the only problem i had was with a dodgy hh3 which was replaced within 3days
torrents are capped at certain times but any other protocol is perfect full speed 24/7
also you cant beat uploading maps to a cod server at 1m/s saves alot of time

In reply to a post by geordiekris:

unfortunatley the answer from bt retail and any other supplier would be we have no idea !

BT Wholesale/OpenReach do know. They have a database of all cable runs and this information is recorded

Push BT Retail sales to confirm the information with Wholesale!!!

In reply to a post by TheMarf:

In reply to a post by geordiekris:

unfortunatley the answer from bt retail and any other supplier would be we have no idea !

BT Wholesale/OpenReach do know. They have a database of all cable runs and this information is recorded

Push BT Retail sales to confirm the information with Wholesale!!!

Well, *do* they know? My house won't even be connected to the street cabinet yet, and from what I can tell from the small amount of information checking every address on the (new) road, houses that have phone lines show up as being able to get Infinity, and houses without show up as having significantly reduced ADSL2 bandwidth, and no Infinity.

I managed to attract the attention of a very attentive BT Business sales person via Twitter by accident, and they've been fairly helpful, but wholesale have already come back once and said it's just simply not available to me (yet available at 40mbps 5 houses down) so now I'm worried it's just simply too far away, and my Infinity dreams are gone.

You have me confused.

In 20 September post you say the Sales Office house had/has a line and shows as Infinity available, and that no other houses have lines. Now you say other houses that have lines show up OK for it too, but those without show bad news, including yours.

Surely there is nothing whatsoever to worry about. "My house won't even be connected to the street cabinet yet". So you will be seeing garbage just like the others.

Well I'm hoping I just see garbage since it's not connected. But I was hoping it was going to show it as available right away since ordering the BT and the phone line saves the ridiculous connection fee which I see has gone up since I last purchased a new BT line

The hilarity continues. My helpful contact came back saying BT Openreach had said because the house only just went into the database, were using the postcode to try and figure out what I could get. Because the postcode is also brand new, this was basically nothing. So good news, he checked on his database and yes I can get Infinity at blah blah mbps and all was good. This was last week, I phoned today to order and their system still shows no availability. At this point I'm getting extremely close to forfeiting the free connection charge and just ordering the line so I can get a reliable answer of whether Infinity is available or not.

As your contact has advised because its a new address and new postcode the openreach checker is not updated, so its waite untill it is updated then order or suck it and see time

The most annoying bit is, I would love to just order and gamble it. But as long as it's showing "not available" on their system, it's impossible to even place an order for them to see if it's possible once the phone line is installed.

So my choice is, wait, possibly forever (it's gone all quiet from BT now...) or just order the phone line and see if that updates the database, at which point I lose money from no free connection and cheaper calls bundle. not a massive deal, think I might just do that tomorrow.

if my memory serves me well and this may have changed since i left in march but the maximum time for the checker to reflect details is 52 days after day 52 their is an escalation process for the isp's to follow with Openreach.

I gave in and ordered the phone line. Now I have the pleasure of waiting until the 25th for an engineer to be available to hook that up before I'll know

Once the engineer arives in your premises and before he /she carries out any work ask the question they might know the answer if the answer is no cancel the eng then cancel the order. OFC this only applies if you see an actual eng as the prefit and prewire may have been carried out as its a new build and as such you may only need connecting at the cab/exchange and wont see an eng just a phone call telling you its all done.

But I still need a BT line either way to get ADSL2+ if I can't get Infinity, surely?

you need a "telephone line" however it does not have to be a BT Retail line may still be an Openreach installed lione but not a BT Retail line SKY and Post office do line installs alos think Orange may do as well and they may be cheaper to "install" then BT retail and may alos be cheaper line rental as well. Remember BT Retail is a Teleocoms provider and an ISP BT Openreach provide and maintain the network for all providers who wish to use the service on an equal acess