The big ISP decision !

Hi all,

Since its now more likely the missing FTTC cab could be installed and active by the end of June, I'm trying to select an ISP. I've spent most of the last 8 years on unlimited ISPs and before that limits didn't really exist.

As BE aren't offering Fibre this year, I've whittled my choices down to a short list of 3. My usage is somewhere between 80 GB and 100 GB a month, so unfortunately that rules out Adsl24 and IDnet purely on price.

I've been reading in the various forums and see that both BTretail (Infinity) and PlusNet forums have people talking about congestion type effects. A friend of mine in the west country has just had PlusNet 80/20 installed, and he only gets about 1.5mbps on the tbb speedtester for example. Other speedtesters show a lot less. Latency is all over the place.

I'm not a gamer, but I use voip and other similar applications, and so consistency of latency is desirable. I don't use P2P. I therefore have ruled out Virgin Media, having used their service at a friends across town.

I'd appreciate any comments and any ideas I might have missed - but as I see it the choices are:

1) PlusNet Extra Fibre Broadband - approx £22/month - 18m contract.
- Upsides = Static IP option - Can use any PPPoE compatible ethernet router
- Downsides = Uses WBC - no 80/20 offering yet, and trial apparently full - 18 month contract

2) BT Infinity 2 - approx £26/month - 18m contract
- Upsides = 80/20 is available - Can use any PPPoE compatible ethernet router - mostly unlimited with P2P throttle
- Downsides = Uses WBC - 18month contract - speed issues for many users during April / May - dynamic IP only

3) Sky FTTC 80/20 - apparently £30/m - 12m contract
- Upsides = truly unlimited - not using WBC - only 12m contract
- Downsides = some speed issues (?) - forced to use Sky router (MER auth, not PPPoE) and no static IP option

As you can see the one I'd like to go for is PlusNet, for the static IP, and flexible router, but the lack of an 80/20 product, and the poor TBB and other speedtest results that a friend of mine gets is worrying me. Is there a congestion issue in the PN network or in WBC ? Similar "congestion" style issues showing up on BT Infinity customers on the new 80/20 product.

I really want to use a prosumer router (Draytek 2820 or similar, with VPN server features) which almost rules out Sky due to their stupid MER modified DHCP authentication protocol. (There is a Billion router that looked promising but has no VPN server support).

Appreciate other people's thoughts?

I've been with Plus Net since 2003, generally it's been a very good ride, had a couple of problems lately, but they've all been resolved.

I'm still on ADSL 2+ and have just done a TBB speedtest, and got this at peak time on a Friday night, so I think something may be amiss with your friends result.



As for their product range, there is usually a product refresh in April, however the general consensus is that this will happen at the end of May, one of my gripes was that there was no 40/10 product, however I'm pretty confident this will be available in the product refresh.

One advantage of PN is the free use between 12 midnight and 8am, I often make use of this for big downloads, and also backing up my server to the cloud.

Can't say I have any speed related issues, so perfectly happy with that. I will be staying with PN when our FTTC goes live, hopefully also June

I think by the time you can order fibre, Plus Net would have launched their 80/20 product.

There's also a Pro addon, for £5 a month which is supposed to improve some things http://www.plus.net/addons/pro/ (I have no idea how much difference it makes)

Hope that helps

What speed do you currently have via ADSL?

Plus.net's offering has various limits and so many services won't run at anywhere near 40Mbit. The things that do run at line speed are the things that don't really need it - browsing and email.

Sky's router isn't bad but doesn't seem to offer the advanced features you need. Could you set them up so your router handles everything including DHCP and the sky router isn't used other than for authentication? obviously this isn't ideal having 3 devices.

BT seem to be a good option, effectively unlimited since you aren't interested in P2P.

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

In reply to a post by Kr1s69:

What speed do you currently have via ADSL?

14megabit/sec pretty much constant for 4 years. As I'm in the south east (20miles from LHR) I've not suffered the major problems others have reported on the BE (and O2) network.

Plus.net's offering has various limits and so many services won't run at anywhere near 40Mbit. The things that do run at line speed are the things that don't really need it - browsing and email.

Ahh - good point, something that could really annoy me.

Sky's router isn't bad but doesn't seem to offer the advanced features you need. Could you set them up so your router handles everything including DHCP and the sky router isn't used other than for authentication? obviously this isn't ideal having 3 devices.

BT seem to be a good option, effectively unlimited since you aren't interested in P2P.

Yes, I'm coming to the conclusion Infinity might be the sensible option that answers 90% of the requirements.

Thanks.

Thanks

Looking at the table in my earlier post 14Mbit is faster than most of the limits on plus.net so strongly advise against that package. I think they do offer a faster service if you pay £5 more but this would make it more expensive than BT.

If you do switch to BT, checkout some of the comparison sites such as topcashback.co.uk. You might get a few quid for switching to them. At the minute it looks like its only £20 but it was £50 last time I checked.

Skys great for me

I have the £20 40mbps product with 2 mbps upload.

Pings are sometimes as low as 2ms.

Here's a typical speedtest [IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/1945696072.png[/IMG]

The router sky provide is great IMO. Better coverage than 5 previous routers, including the DG834N. Uptime over 1000 hours with no crashes.

Between plusnet and BT - it's a must for BT.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 11-May-12 22:13:40)

You can find out more about PN traffic shaping at the following two links

http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...
http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

PS. I'm on the Plus Net Extra package, and it is a little worrying to see that the Plusnet Extra Fibre could be potentiality slower than what I'm currently on, if I'm reading it correctly. But then again I don't think I've ever suffered the limits the chart infers.

One other benefit of PN is you get monthly cash back for all active referrals, so you could actually end up being paid for having broadband with them, if you refer enough people. http://portal.plus.net/support/tools/referrals/refer...

Edited by R0NSKI (Fri 11-May-12 22:32:26)

If I was in your position I'd be leaning towards Sky, even though its a bit more pricey.

Fortunately I've got Digital Region ISP's to choose from. I'm just waiting for some small changes to be made and I'll probably be off to Origin Broadband.

Can't fault BT infinity option 2.

Been on it since the start of February and before that I was with Aquiss for a year on their FTTC product and prior to that ADSL also with Aquiss.

Was paying a premium for Aquiss and apart from their excellent customer service I am afraid it wasn't really worth it. Their network was a lot more susceptible to slow downs at peak times than BT;s has been. Some of the speeds during peak hours on Aquiss were very very slow (like sub 1Mb) whereas on BT the slowest I have noticed since being on the 80/20 product is about 30Mb download speed.

Cant really fault their hardware either, I was on a Cisco E3000 with Aquiss but decided to give the HH3 a try when I swapped to BT and I have been very impressed with it.

Only downside with BT is no static IP.

Just checked my router, its fair to say my connection gets well used

Connection time: 23 days, 11:43:10
Data transmitted/received (GB): 58.521 / 498.769

I've been on Sky's 40/2 product for about 2 weeks now. As a TV, voice & ADSL broadband customer already, waiting for Sky was the natural/lazy choice for me.

No speed issues so far, although some people are reporting "half-speed" issues, the cause of which does not yet seem to be fully established (except maybe for those who have discovered they have aluminium wire between home and street cabinet).

I don't like the Sagemcom F@st2504n router that they supply (the firmware has been bodged to support FTTC which means one of the LAN ports has to be used for the WAN connection). I would prefer to have the option to easily use a router of my own choice.

I was an ADSL customer for 5 years prior to upgrading to FTTC and never had any problems requiring support, but I do worry about how good support will be for FTTC should a problem arise - it's still early days for Sky's FTTC service. I don't think there are that many people on it yet.

If Sky hadn't got their finger out and "launched" their FTTC product when they did, I was seriously thinking of taking my voice and broadband to Plus.Net as my plan B. Extra Fibre Broadband with maybe the Pro add-on. The 120GB monthly allowance comfortably fits my needs. I'm not bothered about 80/20 because apparently my max attainable is about 66Mbps. I think Plus.Net supply a reasonable router for £5 P&P if you take voice & broadband together but you can supply & use your own router. Support looks pretty good too from what I've seen of their community forum - it's good to see the staff interacting with the customers on the forum and sorting out issues. And of course the traffic management policy is very clearly stated. All in all, it looked like a good plan B for me. I will continue to keep it in mind in case things go pear shaped with the current arrangements!

I recommend BT Infinity option 2. If you really need a static IP then it's easy to swap to BT Business Infinity by dialling 152.

I think Plus.Net supply a reasonable router for £5 P&P if you take voice & broadband together but you can supply & use your own router.

Just for anyone else, you don't need to take voice to get the router. But I'm not impressed by its wireless and have gone back to my Buffalo.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Appreciate other people's thoughts?

There's also TalkTalk, Plus is unlimited.

I went with Zen and the service has been brilliant. No slow downs what so ever.

Costs £36 per month with a 100Gb cap.

Totally disagree about slow downs on aquiss. Been with them for well over a year and had no issues what so ever. Me personally I would recommend aquiss or another smaller isp as you pay for what you get. BT has the worse customer service going never mind p2p throttles ! I have also found that my ping is better than my mates who's on BT so if you game it makes a difference.

You pays your money you makes your own choice as to whats best.

This is my current ISP http://speedtest.net/result/1950853184.png
Their answer is to pay more for a business service.

In reply to a post by hareng:

This is my current ISP http://speedtest.net/result/1950853184.png
Their answer is to pay more for a business service.

Those speeds is ADSL/ADSL2+ rather than fibre - so very very distance dependent.

No its not, its FTTC 40/2 product.
Pings are way past 120 to 140

In reply to a post by hareng:

No its not, its FTTC 40/2 product.
Pings are way past 120 to 140

As Andrew/MrSaffron has posted in the news VDSL speeds degrade with distance down to ADSL/ADSL2+ type speeds as the line gets longer and longer. I suspect your line is long. Or a fault.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Totally disagree about slow downs on aquiss. Been with them for well over a year and had no issues what so ever. Me personally I would recommend aquiss or another smaller isp as you pay for what you get. BT has the worse customer service going never mind p2p throttles ! I have also found that my ping is better than my mates who's on BT so if you game it makes a difference.

Customer service, yes I agree that Aquiss are very good and if that's what you need then they are definitely a good choice, everything else though I strongly disagree with you and given that I was with Aquiss for 4 or 5 years (ADSL then FTTC) and have now been with BT for several months I think I am in a fairly good place to judge that, certainly better than an anonymous user who has a mate on BT.

I am by no means a fan of BT and hadn't used them as an ISP for 10 years before I moved back to them earlier this year, but since doing so I have been very pleased with everything ... except their customer service which can be very random.

I moved primarily due to wanting to save some money and also because of the slowdown issues. Being told that my download speed of less than 1 meg on FTTC was because Andy Murray was playing tennis in Australia and a lot of people were watching it on the next didn't fill me with confidence for how things would be with the Olympics and Euros later this year.

- Weekdays at dinnertime the Aquiss network was quite often very slow as well as at any other peak net times. The BT network seems to stand up to peak net times much better than the Aquiss/Entanet network did.

- Disconnects for short periods were very frequent. I never found out why but disconnects in the early hours of the morning for 5 or 10 mins were frequent. Was almost like something on their network was rebooting.

- Ping - My ping to most game servers and speedtest servers dropped even lower when I changed to BT.

- Price.

In reply to a post by Dilbert:

Being told that my download speed of less than 1 meg on FTTC was because Andy Murray was playing tennis in Australia and a lot of people were watching it on the next didn't fill me with confidence for how things would be with the Olympics and Euros later this year.

Hi Dilbert,

Being the person you spoke to the most (your web url highlights your account) , I can't say I fully agree with your statement, not 100%. I have dug out your old tickets and I can't find any reports of speeds this slow to us. The slowest I can find during the tennis was 8Mbps, which granted was low, but on the whole, your reported BT speedtest results were 18Mbps to 25Mbps in our busy periods (daytime).

At the time you joined we only had 15 to 20 FTTC customers. It was very early days and think we struggled to adapt to yours and other early adopters levels of monthly usage (on the whole we were dealing with about 25TB a month from the combined early adopters).

In terms of network improvements, things have moved on leaps. More and more customers join FTTx products and as such networks have been improved. We have customers who post here reporting speeds in the 70Mbps+ area. We have got FTTx quality to a level inline with our other product ranges.

As for disconnects at night and pings being higher, I can't find any mention from you about these previously. Any chance of a ticket reference (if you have chance) so I can ponder if we overlooked something.

I would say BT Retails busy period is evenings? (at a guess).

They cap VPN on nearly all of their packages. That is odd.

I am lucky enough to work at home nearly all the time and don't use bandwidth excessively for VPN, but do not want the speed capped.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by hareng:

No its not, its FTTC 40/2 product.
Pings are way past 120 to 140

As Andrew/MrSaffron has posted in the news VDSL speeds degrade with distance down to ADSL/ADSL2+ type speeds as the line gets longer and longer. I suspect your line is long. Or a fault.

Check this out last 13 months there.
http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=aa986b6d883d...
Plenty of sub 1/2meg in there takes BT 5 days to sort. Currently no faults but some where in the chain theres congestion.
Only two days left before migration, just hoping i havent made a massive mistake.

Only two days left before migration, just hoping i havent made a massive mistake.

Who are you going to?

i was using my ipad on that post im not a fly by poster

Personally i dont know how sky works but is there no way you can set their router into MODEM only mode like you can on the VM superhub(which i dont use) and use your own, it might be worth looking for SKY forums for any topics relating to this, or checking for local area issues before taking the product from any provider, i wish i had done this before taking my VM connection, as now i am stuck with them as i canceled my telephone line and BT have quited me £197 for reactivation of my old line as they would need to connection it through a new exchange for my area,,,,,,,

I know this point is irrelivant to your situation but Virgin Media are rubbish and if they are available(they do have a non cable product not always mentioned on exchange listings) AVOID like you would avoid a vat of boiling acid,

John

Have a read here: http://www.kitz.co.uk/isp/sky_connection.htm

I haven't tried it (I have BE* and will probably swap to BT Infinity 2 when FTTC is available in the next few weeks) but my neighbour has ...

In reply to a post by boxst:

I haven't tried it (I have BE* and will probably swap to BT Infinity 2 when FTTC is available in the next few weeks) but my neighbour has ...

Those tips work for Sky ADSL, but not Sky Fibre. Its all about "MER" - see http://wiki.ph-mb.com/wiki/MER

and quite a lot in the SkyUser.co.uk forum.

Hi Martin

Slowest speed for me on BT has so far been 25-30Mb, that was at peak time one evening, most of time it seems to test at near to full speed.

Slowest speed on Aquiss was less than 1Mb and that was reported to you on the 27th January via email to which you replied "At present there is a huge amount of network traffic as people are watching Andy Murrey play tennis online."

That plus the price difference was the tipping point for me as I anticipated some very busy periods of net use in the summer with the Olympics and Euros.

Sorry but I don't have any records of past tickets, I don't tend to store stuff like that.

Not interested in bad mouthing Aquiss and sorry if my previous post came across that way, I was with you guys for 4 or 5 years so you obviously must have been doing something right and as I said previously I think your support is second to no one.

Price was my biggest driver for moving, alongside a worry that the network would be very slow during peak usage this summer.

BT sorry to say

BT Infinity for Business?

It was a very close thing for me between BT and PN. Both scary!

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by boxst:

I haven't tried it (I have BE* and will probably swap to BT Infinity 2 when FTTC is available in the next few weeks) but my neighbour has ...

Those tips work for Sky ADSL, but not Sky Fibre. Its all about "MER" - see http://wiki.ph-mb.com/wiki/MER

and quite a lot in the SkyUser.co.uk forum.

Billion are planning to release beta firmware on Friday for their 7800N router that should work with Sky's version of MER on fibre.

Further down the line, they are planning "Sky 1483MER" firmware for their 8200N VDSL router.

Damn that's bad. Using the Birmingham server might be making it look worse than it is though, that server has never given me accurate results. Did you verify them by testing with other servers and real file transfers at the same time?

Here is a test from birmingham and coventry, I'm actually getting the coventry speeds and as you can see birmingham is way off.

http://speedtest.net/result/1954267990.png
http://speedtest.net/result/1954269883.png

My BT results since connection 19 months ago.
http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=dc29a79e0374...

Never had a prob with Brum my highest to date came from there.
I am physically closer to Brum but ISP is not.

I did notice last year different servers giving seemingly different speeds but equally could have been congestion or any other influencial factor.

In reply to a post by simon194:

Billion are planning to release beta firmware on Friday for their 7800N router that should work with Sky's version of MER on fibre.

Further down the line, they are planning "Sky 1483MER" firmware for their 8200N VDSL router.

That's both promising - I'll keep an eye on the Billion site - thanks. Might affect my decision.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I'll keep an eye on the Billion site

You'll probably need to keep an eye on the forums (here), new/beta software usually appears there long before the main support pages.

(you might need to register in order to download, I forget)

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I'll keep an eye on the Billion site

You'll probably need to keep an eye on the forums (here), new/beta software usually appears there long before the main support pages.

(you might need to register in order to download, I forget)

Promising stuff there - many thanks - (and yes, it seems I will have to register to download anything).

Sky.