Sky, Talk Talk or BT for FTTC?

Hi
Im moving to a FTTC area in the next few weeks and need to sort out a new provider. The house is around 320m from the cabinet. The Infinity checker gives a 57meg estimate but I think thats a little on the low side?

Which provider would be the best? I currently have a talktalk llu connection through a re-seller and am very happy with it so I am tempted to go with them, however I am also a sky tv customer so if they are equally as good then it might work out cheaper to go with them?

What do you recommend?

Thanks

Huw

Well I'd recommend Plusnet, but I'm possibly biased because I already have it. It depends on your requirements wrt speed, monthly allowance and traffic management (which has almost been eliminated on Plusnet now).

http://www.plus.net/fibre-broadband/

Already being a Sky customer might make a significant difference though.

Edited by kasg (Thu 20-Sep-12 14:11:11)

In reply to a post by kasg:

Well I'd recommend Plusnet, but I'm possibly biased because I already have it. It depends on your requirements wrt speed, monthly allowance and traffic management (which has almost been eliminated on Plusnet now).

http://www.plus.net/fibre-broadband/

There's nothing in that link that indicates traffic management has almost been eliminated.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

There's nothing in that link that indicates traffic management has almost been eliminated.

But it has, as has been posted several times on the Plusnet forum - there is a 2Mbps limit on P2P/Usenet and external FTP between 8-10pm and that is it.

Do you have a link to that information on the Plusnet site?

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

This all looks managed to me, rather than almost eliminated http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

This all looks managed to me, rather than almost eliminated http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/tr...

That page is out of date and has not been updated to reflect the current situation - I will raise that elsewhere.

Looks like sky might be out? Even though the area has FTTC and the exchange (luton -smlt)
has sky LLU it wont offer me the fibre option through the number checker.

Strictly speaking, it's the download speed capping at various times that has been scrapped on FTTC apart from the 8pm-10pm slot.

As I understand it, trafiic management in the form of time-critical prioritisation remains. e.g.VOIP and one or two other things.

My belief is that this is a benefit of the service, not a disadvantage. A few ms difference when browsing is unnoticeable, but the cumulative effect on the thousands using that every second can be dramatic on the relatively few that need the latency. In particular the Titanium, Gold, Silver etc. system is still in place, though whether or not the details on the website are up to date I don't know.

Given that the widespread belief when BT bought Plusnet was that it was to gain their Ellacoya expertise, I'd be very surprised if BT isn't running something similar.

Then of course, on fibre there is the Openreach traffic-within-user prioritisation system. Who knows which ISPs are or are not using that - completely dependent of course on whether BT Wholesale are.

I believe Plusnet kept their Ellacoyas.

Did I suggest otherwise?

In reply to a post by huwwatkins:

Which provider would be the best? I currently have a talktalk llu connection through a re-seller and am very happy with it so I am tempted to go with them, however I am also a sky tv customer so if they are equally as good then it might work out cheaper to go with them?

For true unlimited you can't beat Sky if they can supply your area (they failed with me). Otherwise I suggest BT Infinity if you're a pretty standard user and don't need anything special, but P2P protocols might be slowed down.

PlusNet and the other providers can add additional options such as Static IP address etc, which I would have liked, but I find the concept of traffic management abhorrent (coming from the lovely world of BE who sadly don't do FTTC).

I simply don't trust the traffic management products to identify my traffic correctly - for example the Java speed test on this site is a bespoke data stream wrapped in a specific port. I'd assume most traffic management products would fail to correctly identify it.

AAISP if you want a gold level of service and have the money for it, with IPv6 etc today.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by huwwatkins:

Which provider would be the best? I currently have a talktalk llu connection through a re-seller and am very happy with it so I am tempted to go with them, however I am also a sky tv customer so if they are equally as good then it might work out cheaper to go with them?

For true unlimited you can't beat Sky if they can supply your area (they failed with me). Otherwise I suggest BT Infinity if you're a pretty standard user and don't need anything special, but P2P protocols might be slowed down.

PlusNet and the other providers can add additional options such as Static IP address etc, which I would have liked, but I find the concept of traffic management abhorrent (coming from the lovely world of BE who sadly don't do FTTC).

I simply don't trust the traffic management products to identify my traffic correctly - for example the Java speed test on this site is a bespoke data stream wrapped in a specific port. I'd assume most traffic management products would fail to correctly identify it.

AAISP if you want a gold level of service and have the money for it, with IPv6 etc today.

Thanks - Im not sure if sky are serving this area, although seeing as the cabinet goes back to the central Luton exchange (42,000 lines!) you'd think they would.

I was always under the impression that talktalk's back haul was superior to BT wholesale?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Strictly speaking, it's the download speed capping at various times that has been scrapped on FTTC apart from the 8pm-10pm slot.

As I understand it, traffic management in the form of time-critical prioritisation remains. e.g.VOIP and one or two other things.

Yes, I was kind of aware of that when I posted and thought it might be picked up, but as you say, I can't see how any ISP could properly serve its users without some kind of traffic management to ensure that time-critical protocols had priority.

It's even built into the OR DLM. Note that this is within a connection's available bandwidth, however else that is constrained by any other factors, not between connections. Different types of traffic can be prioritised by the CP as being the last to have packets dropped when under excess load. IIRC there's a 3-point scale.

So say for example a line is going to have a packet dropped, it would be dropped from browsing rather than VOIP, given the appropriate settings for each.

Ring up as the online checker is somewhat buggy. It says I can't get fibre yet I'm using it right now.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Ring up as the online checker is somewhat buggy. It says I can't get fibre yet I'm using it right now.

That has always been the case on Sky, they only have one error message "you can't have it".

As you already have Sky you can't order another one.

Like most companies n this country they see their IT systems as a cost and they spend as little as possible on it.

The info on the page linked (http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/traffic_management.shtml) is nearly correct with the exception of the blue table. The different traffic priorities still exist but we've removed most of the rate limits, as can be seen here: http://www.plus.net/support/broadband/speed_guide/do...

In reply to a post by huwwatkins:

I find the concept of traffic management abhorrent (coming from the lovely world of BE who sadly don't do FTTC).

When be broadband comes out with FTTC then O2 will start it then hope anytime soon haha but its only worth a static ip if you have a ip cam or DVR ,/ Remote desktop connection, VPN etc

Edited by francisuk22 (Sun 30-Sep-12 16:40:22)

I thought I'd miss the static IP when I moved from Be to Infinity 2 but a DynDNS account works well and is a function in the HH3.

People who complain about traffic shaping are normally those that download a lot of P2P material. Without getting into the legalities of it, these are the people who should also be using a VPN anyway which has the benefit of bypassing any shaping and costs less tha £1/week.

I don't use it myself but have seen reports that Usenet is never filtered on BT but there is usually a cost involved in using these services.

Edited by smouty (Mon 01-Oct-12 13:36:38)