Sky Broadband upgrade to Fibre

Hi
I got a letter from BT recently saying that infinity 2 was now available in my area. I have had a look on the website and it tells me that I could get a download speed upto 62mb. Checking what I can upgrade to with sky and they are saying I could get speeds upto 40mb; the highest sky package isn't available. I am confused as I thought the networks would offer the same speed and it was down to pricing. Any help understanding the differences would be appreciated.

Thanks

Do you know how far from the actual cabinet you are?

Sky is at liberty to not offer the faster package if they want.

Until you are connected no one can be sure what speeds you will see and even then speeds can vary over time.

Are you completely sure Sky don't offer you a higher speed too? Last I checked it was sold as "Sky Fibre Pro" though was a bit hard to find.

Thank you for this.
I would have thought that Sky would offer the best possible theoretical speed given the likely level of competition. The exchange is just over one mile away as the bird flies.

It doesn't matter how far away the exchange is, it's the distance to the cabinet you are connected to that matters.

In reply to a post by Phil1068:

I have had a look on the website and it tells me that I could get a download speed upto 62mb.

As MrSaffron says, nobody can be sure what you'll get until you get it, and the BT estimates are usually on the pessimistic side.

I'm on an 80/20 line (but with IDNet, not BT)- the estimate for my line is 54.8Mbps, I routinely get 65-67Mbps.


edit- I'm about 450 metres from the cabinet.

Edited by billford (Fri 23-Aug-13 22:30:37)

No when I log onto my account with Sky, I only get the slower upgrade option, BT offer the infinity 2 after hitting the test my available speed option

Sorry I haven't come across the cabinet term before. I don't know where it is

Weird, though the last time I ran the numbers, Plusnet were cheaper anyway .

Thanks for that tip. I hadn't consideredthem and their site is telling me that I could get 62mb. Same as BT and a lot higher than sky

They will both be taking it off the BT Wholesale checker at http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome . That should also tell you the number of the cabinet you are connected to so you might be able to find it. With an estimate of 62 it can't be too far away.

You have to phone Sky to order the 80/20 package, they don't offer it online.

In reply to a post by kasg:

They will both be taking it off the BT Wholesale checker at http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome . That should also tell you the number of the cabinet you are connected to so you might be able to find it. With an estimate of 62 it can't be too far away.

BTWholesale checker doesn't work for Sky Talk and Talk Talk lines.

That.

/thread

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by kasg:

They will both be taking it off the BT Wholesale checker at http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome . That should also tell you the number of the cabinet you are connected to so you might be able to find it. With an estimate of 62 it can't be too far away.

BTWholesale checker doesn't work for Sky Talk and Talk Talk lines.

The Address checker option does.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

BTWholesale checker doesn't work for Sky Talk and Talk Talk lines.

`
It wasn't totally obvious from OP that it was a Sky LLU line. If this is the case, presumably BT and Plusnet just use the address for the estimate.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by kasg:

They will both be taking it off the BT Wholesale checker at http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome . That should also tell you the number of the cabinet you are connected to so you might be able to find it. With an estimate of 62 it can't be too far away.

BTWholesale checker doesn't work for Sky Talk and Talk Talk lines.

The Address checker option does.

But its been said on this forum a lot that its inaccurate?

In reply to a post by kasg:

It wasn't totally obvious from OP that it was a Sky LLU line. If this is the case, presumably BT and Plusnet just use the address for the estimate.

I always assume sky broadband ADSL users are LLU as I gather its quite unusual now to not be on sky talk.

They have access to openreach data that isn't on the wholesale page for us end users. I believe the ISP is supposed to make the info available to its customers.

Edited by jchamier (Sat 24-Aug-13 11:19:53)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by jchamier:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

BTWholesale checker doesn't work for Sky Talk and Talk Talk lines.

The Address checker option does.

But its been said on this forum a lot that its inaccurate?

Maybe you're confusing it with the Postcode checker. The address checker seems accurate to me.

In reply to a post by simon194:

You have to phone Sky to order the 80/20 package, they don't offer it online.

Doesn't anybody read, (the correct), answer?

Sky do not advertise their "Pro" service.

Edited by deleted (Sat 24-Aug-13 12:06:01)

that used to be the case, but its on their web site now

www.sky.com/fibre

£30!!! Wow.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

£30!!! Wow.

I thought that Sky was supposed to be cheap, evidently not.

reasonably priced imo.

Call 08442 410 802 to check availability and speed

not quite as point and shoot as the slower one next to it.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

£30!!! Wow.

I paid £30 for it. It was better than BT at £26 and I've been extremely happy with it. No matter what BT say with their 'truly unlimited' there is no way I should be able to download 10 torrents and happily stream iPlayer. On Sky the torrent will max out the connection and iPlayer will buffer. On BT I download a torrent, it goes at full speed until I start iPlayer, it then conveniently slows the torrent down by 1 or 2 MB/s. Definitely doesn't feel like no traffic shaping or management to me.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

I paid £30 for it. It was better than BT at £26 and I've been extremely happy with it. No matter what BT say with their 'truly unlimited' there is no way I should be able to download 10 torrents and happily stream iPlayer. On Sky the torrent will max out the connection and iPlayer will buffer. On BT I download a torrent, it goes at full speed until I start iPlayer, it then conveniently slows the torrent down by 1 or 2 MB/s. Definitely doesn't feel like no traffic shaping or management to me.

I cannot make sense of this. Are you saying you actually want a torrent download to prevent you from using iPlayer?

It appears so. Madness

Sounds like BTs has better QOS than skys.

A lot of people unfortunately don't seem to understand the difference between QOS/traffic priority and throttling. What's the point in swamping a connection with a torrent, if other people in the house now can't access the internet, watch iplayer or voip etc.

I understand but when the connection is fat enough QoS simply stops been needed.

Sure if I download or upload something at a reasonable speed my pings go up, but things like streaming dont break like is been claimed on here. I can understand if its a 2mbit connection but not for 80mbit.

If a user eg. wants to game whilst torrenting its not exactly hard to police it themselves either.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

What's the point in swamping a connection with a torrent, if other people in the house now can't access the internet, watch iplayer or voip etc.

There's probably a psychological link between torrent users and people WCGAS about others in the house

Err, no, not at all. If you had a gigabit internet connection in an office and had someone doing a rsync of a TB of data, you'd quickly have all the VoIP lines break up. QoS might be less obviously needed on a fat pipe with low usage but doesn't make it not required.

Why do you think every Cisco router for high bandwidth applications have a very powerful QoS engine?!

Exactly. Probably saves them loads of money on support and pointless engineer visits because 'my broadband is slow' not realising they have someone in the house blasting the upload 24/7 on uTorrent.

because those routers arent typically used by people on a desktop in a house.

Those routers may have to handle much narrower pipes.

I have failed to deliberatly cause myself streaming issues with torrents. I couldnt do it even if I tried. But of course I do configure torrents properly, I dont set to allow 100s of connections.

I am also only talking about downloading not uploading. All my tests on torrents barely anyone connected to me as I was testing with torrents which were heavily loaded by seeders.

In reply to a post by kasg:

I cannot make sense of this. Are you saying you actually want a torrent download to prevent you from using iPlayer?

Exactly my reaction.

PlusNet has the same system as BT. In fact it was widely thought at the time that BT bought PlusNet entirely in order to gain access to their Ellacoya expertise.

As others have said, it isn't just iPlayer that needs protection, it's VOIP and gaming as well. This PN explanation is excellent. It applies on the individual line and across the PN network.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As others have said, it isn't just iPlayer that needs protection, it's VOIP and gaming as well.

And surely the person paying for the service can acquire and configure a QoS aware router (e.g. Draytek) to solve the problem at the asymetric end (e.g. 46 / 8 or even 8 / 0.25) - why do we need the ISP to do it?

ok so your theory is the fact I cant get streams to buffer is BT are using this same system silently?

even thats not needed, eg. if its upload saturation a problem then can cap in the utorrent client, which even the utorrent devs tell the user to do.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

As others have said, it isn't just iPlayer that needs protection, it's VOIP and gaming as well.

And surely the person paying for the service can acquire and configure a QoS aware router (e.g. Draytek) to solve the problem at the asymetric end (e.g. 46 / 8 or even 8 / 0.25) - why do we need the ISP to do it?

Because the average user will not have a clue, that is why we need the ISP to do it.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Because the average user will not have a clue, that is why we need the ISP to do it.

Can an ISP actually solve the problem at the home asymmetric end? I would guess its only a few homes with either adult children, or shared homes (e.g. students) where the upload is maxed out so often it breaks other protocols.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

ok so your theory is the fact I cant get streams to buffer is BT are using this same system silently?

BT claim no thottling or traffic management (since end of last year). So it would be interesting to see evidence.

You might find they don't define QoS as traffic management, and throttling is deliberate and of overall throughput so not an issue in this discussion.

? What if you have 3 users on the network all using uTorrent and various different applications (online cloud backup, etc). What do you set the cap to? Have a daily meeting to plan upstream usage in the house?

Quite easy to say that when you're one person, but if you've got a busy flat/household it's totally ridiculous to say that it should be down to the user...

I would say the household at that point is out of control

if its a situation where load's sharing the connection and you not got control of their machines. Then if its a low speed connection eg. sub 30mbit then QoS on the router to keep them under control, cap their lan ip's.

I dont even understand why people seed so heavily on home connections, if its the private torrent sites I am thinking off one can donate something small like 5 euros and you get so much upload credit and immunity you effectively dont need to upload/donate again for a year or so. If its legal torrents then there tends to be no peers leeching anyway and as such no form of control is needed.

Things like cloud services are very unlikely to cause issues as they not high threaded. BT's cloud service I cant even utilise 30% of my capacity. It has a single threaded upload with a low capped send buffer.

Do what I do with my kids, they each get 15/5 Mbps and I have the remaining 39/19 Mbps (well, not quite because the two VoIP connections get priority over everything else and the 2 Sky boxes share a guaranteed max 20Mbps between them).