Considering moving from ADSL to Fibre - advice?

Hi All,

just thought I would register & post as I had a letter yesterday from BT saying I could get BT infinity, and shockingly when I checked yes i am FINALLY able to get fibre, woo hoo!
Started investigating who to go with... Currently with Be internet, always been pleased with them as they do not port throttle or traffic manage, as I do download a lot - so having looked around I am probably going to opt for Plusnet Fibre Extra.

Reasons being,

the generous 250gb download limit (unlimited in off peak hours)
minimal traffic management
good value for money (20 quid a month)
static IP

I consider the last point to be a major selling point, as BT do not seem to offer static IP without paying an extra monthly cost, but I would like to have one as I find it very handy.

Currently I have just a bog standard netgear router in place, I was planning on using a watchguard firewall to replace this (I already have one, I bought it to tinker with as a possible replacement for the netgear), just plugging it into the BT modem supplied, rather than using the home hub. I currently have the router in the lounge (where the master socket is) and this feeds into a powerline adapter which goes back to my 'study' at the back of the house, where most of the computer equipment lives. I
think the powerlines are rated upto 200mb, although not sure how much of a bottleneck they are. So, I was considering having the master socket moved to the back room where all my computer equipment is, so that my server used for downloads etc can feed directly to the internet connection, rather than over the powerlines.

Questions really, I have seen various people saying the engineer will be able to relocate master socket etc, seems very much dependent on the engineer, and how many biscuits are supplied etc, but do they actually fit a new master socket? or just reconfigure existing extensions? As currently there is no sockets in the study, just the powerline adapter supplying my internets. If I am going to the trouble of having a high speed internet connection, I dont want it crippled by powerline adapters etc.
I think having the master socket located at the back of the house (where the study is) would make more sense, as I think the cable comes in from the back of the house, and is then routed via external cables round to the front - so if this is the case, I will be saving a few metres of cable if i get it routed in there.

Also does anyone have any pros / cons for plusnet fibre? I had a nose in the plusnet section just welcome any input

sorry for the super long waffle post

If the incoming cable is at the rear of the house then yes it is a sensible move. I will always advocate putting the modem as close to the point of entry as possible because houses are a major source or electronic noise and interference.

If it is not possible to relocate it then put the modem at the master and run Cat5e from modem to router which can be in your study.

In reply to a post by Mikeyboy01443:

Currently I have just a bog standard netgear router in place, I was planning on using a watchguard firewall to replace this (I already have one, I bought it to tinker with as a possible replacement for the netgear), just plugging it into the BT modem supplied, rather than using the home hub.

I gather you have a version of the Watchguard that incorporates a router and ethernet switch? If so it should be fine, if it has a WAN ethernet socket as well as the LAN ones.

Home Hub is a BT Retail product, by the way. Plusnet supply a Technicolor TG582N with LAN port 4 reconfigured as a WAN port.

Re the resiting, obviously from what you say the best solution would be the external supply being brought straight into your study at the back. Whether you could swing that with the engineer I have no real idea. I would have great doubts if it was one of the contractors, and even if it is a newbie engineer. An experienced fully qualified one might see it as easier than running an external Home Wiring Solution/Data extension cable all the way back to there. (Hmmm. Having said that, anyone Openreach send should be able to fit the latter, therefore should be able to do what you want. Though it would need rewiring from where the drop wire hits the house. I wouldn't bank on it).

Plusnet are fine for me, but I'm a very light user - under 10GB pm, and no P2P/torrenting. What is noticeable is the frequent appearance of the helpful reps in these and the PN Community forums.

I guess I'll just have to see what the engineer says when they turn up. just going to be a nightmare if they want to use a cat5 cable internally cos there is not really much in the way of places to put it, quite an open plan house, so much better if they can route it externally - which then seems pointless as it would be the cable from the back to the front, then rerouted from the front to the back! D'oh...

And yes sorry I said home hub, probably cos I was looking at infinity originally, but yeh i meant whatever device is supplied - I might try and put it to use as a WAP (if its wireless) as that was the only reason I had not started using the watchguard yet, couldn't be bothered messing round with moving all my firewall rules over to it etc... but good excuse to do it now

Yes the watchguard is an x10e I think, firebox edge - i think 6 ethernet ports, 2x WAN, 1x OPT and 3x LAN.

Thanks for the replies, it should be a massive difference to my current 4mb or whatever pittance I get now

I was with Aquiss for a year on their FTTC business product and one of the reasons I went with them originally (I was with them on ADSL before that) was because they supplied a static IP but I wouldn't let that be a major factor any more.

DYN DNS and other similar services are very cheap and easy to set up and in many cases give added functionality over what you get with a static IP.

i swapped from Aquiss to BT infinity almost a year ago and couldn't be happier, connection has so far been even more reliable than what I had with Aquiss and speeds and latency have been very good. I get 76Mbps down and 16Mbps up and even during peak hours it quite often tests at that same rate or very close to it. Just done a test now and it was 69.18Mbps down and 16.14Mbps up.

Quite a heavy user (about 700GB mixed upload and download in the last month) but on infinity option 2 its unlimited although they can traffic manage P2P during peak times, I cant really say I have really noticed it though.

Even impressed with the home hub BT provide, I have previously used quite a few different routers as I used to work in IT so I thought I may find the BT HH a bit restrictive for some things I wanted to do but whilst its very user friendly on the face of it you can aslo do pretty much most other things you would want if you dig a bit deeper into it. Much better Wifi coverage than the Cisco E3000 I was using before it too.

In reply to a post by Mikeyboy01443:

I guess I'll just have to see what the engineer says when they turn up. just going to be a nightmare if they want to use a cat5 cable internally cos there is not really much in the way of places to put it, quite an open plan house, so much better if they can route it externally - which then seems pointless as it would be the cable from the back to the front, then rerouted from the front to the back! D'oh...

Just make sure you tick the box for the extra wiring when you order. It's free, but you still need to ask.

Once ticked, it seems that the standard option is the internal 30m data extension kit, but I've seen mention of an external variant.

And, so long as the same box has been ticked (and transferred to the job sheet that the engineer works from), they seem to be happy enough to relocate the master if that's a better option. We've seen some route the master pair through the extension wiring too - but that seems to depend on the engineer.

congrats for getting fibre.
I think who has been used fibre broadband will never back to ADSL..