Spoilt for choice?

I want to upgrade to fibre optic broadband, I dont live in a cabled area so its going to have to be fibre optic through my phoneline. So far Ive looked at BT, SKY, Plusnet and talk talk. Has anyone got fibre optic from any of these comapnies?? Any good?? I want an unlimited package with no caps. I m looking at the 80mb deal. I was going to go with BT but some people Ive spoken to tell me they throttle traffic. Is this true? What about Plusnet? I know they are owned by BT but Ive heard good things about them. As for SKY, Ive had a bad experience with them a few years back. Any help or advice with this will be very much appreciated

This might sound obvious, but have you actually checked what you can order where you are right now using the BT Wholesale checker? Obviously just because you can't get cable, doesn't mean you can get some kind of fibre, and in some places you can even get FTTP which is much faster.

In terms of FTTC:

Sky's FTTC packages are all properly unlimited but for up to 80Mb speeds Plusnet are better value while still unlimited, especially if you factor in the cashback they currently have on Quidco, the three months half price deal, and that you can pay your line rental up front and get a nice discount.

(I don't work for them and currently have ADSL with Sky, though I tend to think Plusnet are most people's best bet for FTTC)

In terms of FTTP: I'm mostly just aware of BT Retail offering it with 160 and 330Mb speeds, though Plusnet have certainly been trialling it.

I have fibre with BT and Sky.
My Sky connection 'feels' a fair bit faster but both are very good.
My BT connections gone off for a few hours. It's weird as it stays connected but websites just don't load. It's synced with an IP and everything... Then it just begins to work again. The modem shows no drop in connection and at BTs end it looks like it worked fine. It's done this a few times (never got to the bottom of it) and I have 7+ internet devices so it's 100% the connection. New modem and router didn't solve it.

My Sky is more reliable, never doing this kind of thing.

On BT if I start a torrent it will take a good few minutes to reach the 8 - 10Mb/s speeds.
On Sky it takes a good 10 - 30 seconds.

PlusNet whilst unlimited they have prioritisation. So say you begin a torrent and somebody starts to stream, I believe the torrent gets slowed down slightly.

I've also noticed PlusNet takes a while to reach full torrent speeds, probably muchlike BT.

I would personally choose PlusNet BT or Sky.
My order of choice: Sky, then BT then Plusnet.
In terms of pricing PlusNet is hard to beat for Fibre... Definitely do consider Skys 40Mbps package (it's half price for a while) as I honestly found barely any difference when I upgraded from 40 to 80Mbps, yes my speeds doubled but I had no real NEED for the extra speed.
Websites felt like they loaded at the same speed and even with over 7 users I couldn't tell any difference generally on day to day things like skype iplayer netflix and website loading...
Also via wireless I was maxxing around 40 - 50Mbps anyway so the 80Mbps wasn't getting used. This meant that unless I connected via a wire (which I do around once a year for like 5 mins) there wasn't much point.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 01-Sep-13 04:51:04)

I'm with Plusnet and have been for 10 years, I've also changed our connection over to them at work, both on FTTC.

Their traffic prioritisation is just that, if someone is streaming or using VOIP, gaming etc. then that is given priority over a torrent for instance, otherwise the torrent could swamp the connection and the gamer would suffer, and the video stream would start to buffer. This is done at both your connection level and the whole of PlusNet, all it means is the torrent may take a few minutes longer to download. In my view it's a win/win scenario.

As others have said, you need to check what's available, and if FTTC is available what the speed estimate is, you'll probably get more than the estimate as they estimate really low nowadays.

If you can get FTTP then you can still go with PN, but I believe you'll need get their ADSL service then apply to go on the FTTP trial, just ask the question on their forums and a staff member will reply.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I'm with Plusnet and have been for 10 years, I've also changed our connection over to them at work, both on FTTC.

Their traffic prioritisation is just that, if someone is streaming or using VOIP, gaming etc. then that is given priority over a torrent for instance, otherwise the torrent could swamp the connection and the gamer would suffer, and the video stream would start to buffer. This is done at both your connection level and the whole of PlusNet, all it means is the torrent may take a few minutes longer to download. In my view it's a win/win scenario.

As others have said, you need to check what's available, and if FTTC is available what the speed estimate is, you'll probably get more than the estimate as they estimate really low nowadays.

If you can get FTTP then you can still go with PN, but I believe you'll need get their ADSL service then apply to go on the FTTP trial, just ask the question on their forums and a staff member will reply.

I can get BT infinity, Plusnet and Talk Talk. The new cab over the road from my house has been active for over a week now. Bt and plusnet are offering me up to 76mb. For some reason, sky are saying theu can gibve me 4mb only. My neighbour has just gone plusnet and he loves it. As for p2p etc, I usually download last thing at night snyway. I do play on xbl a lot and use xbl fot gaming every day more or less. I also download games and demos off xbl snd they usually take forever to finish downloading but thats on a 4mb connection. Think its going to be BT or Plusnet as sky are telling me fibre is not available yet.

I got Fibre installed 2 weeks ago from Plusnet and can say i'm impressed most indeed.

Great price and I actually prefer traffic favouring gaming as I game a lot even with torrents in the background.

It's fast and great price.

Oh and Plusnet aren't owned by BT.

Lucky you having the cab just across the road

Bare in mind that PlusNet have UK support, whereas BT's is a foreign call centre.

Also with Plus Net you can get a referral discount, so could in theory if you refer enough people get your broadband for free, or they even end up paying you money. If you go with PN ask your neighbour for their referral code, which is their username.

It's possible Sky have not installed their link at the exchange yet. ISPs that use their own back haul like Sky & TalkTalk need to link the FTTC equipment to their own equipment and need to get a special link installed, sometimes they can be a bit slow getting this done.

In reply to a post by Damoxuk:

Oh and Plusnet aren't owned by BT.

Oh yes they are,they've owned PN for around 7 years. I was initially worried when I heard BT were buying them, but fortunately they seem to have left them to get on with things. Rumour has it that BT only bought PlusNet to get hold of the technology they use for traffic prioritisation.

Here's an article confirming it.

I stand corrected. So Plusnet are undercutting BT and offer better service? Ok fair enough.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

In reply to a post by Damoxuk:

Oh and Plusnet aren't owned by BT.

Oh yes they are,they've owned PN for around 7 years. I was initially worried when I heard BT were buying them, but fortunately they seem to have left them to get on with things. Rumour has it that BT only bought PlusNet to get hold of the technology they use for traffic prioritisation.

Here's an article confirming it.

Good read that. Think another reason for bt buying plusnet was to keep it out of skys hands, call me cynical if you want but Im with O2 for my home broadband and phone atm, Sky have now bought out O2 phone and broadband and Be. I had a bad experience with Sky once so they would be my last choice. Irs a long story but to cut it short I left aol to go on sky snd for 2 months I had no internet because they couldnt fix an issue they had in my exchange so I ended up with Orange which was ok, before going onto O2 whom I have been with for the last 5 yrs. My speed isnt the best at 3 to 4 mb and seeing as Sky have now bought them out anyway, its time to upgrade to fibre optic. On another mote which has annoyed me, I used to get cheap phone as I used to have an O2 mobile but since I cancelled my o2 contract, my bill shot up to nearly £40 a month.

Edited by deleted (Sun 01-Sep-13 09:54:23)

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

In reply to a post by Damoxuk:

Oh and Plusnet aren't owned by BT.

Oh yes they are,they've owned PN for around 7 years. I was initially worried when I heard BT were buying them, but fortunately they seem to have left them to get on with things. Rumour has it that BT only bought PlusNet to get hold of the technology they use for traffic prioritisation.

Here's an article confirming it.

Good read that. Think another reason for bt buying plusnet was to keep it out of skys hands, call me cynicsl if you but Im with O2 for my home briadband and phone atm, Sky have now bought out O2 phone and broadband and Be. I had a bad experience with Sky once so they would be my last choice. Irs a long story but to cut it short I left aol to go on sky snd for 2 months I had no internet because they couldnt fix an issue they had in my exchange so I ended up with Oramge which was ok, before going onto O2 whom I have been with for the last 5 yrs. My speed isnt the best at 3 to 4 mb and seeing as Sky have now bought them out anyway, its time to upgrade to fibre optic. On another mote which has annoyed me, I used to get cheap phone as I used to have an O2 mobile but since I cancelled my o2 contract, my bill shot up to nearly £40 a month.

People who don't know better go with BT because they think that is all that is available. People who investigate and find out what is really available will often go with PlusNet for the better price and get a better service. Win - win for BT.

I can say that out of all my past ISPs, Plusnet has been my best experience.

They offer excellent customer support/technical team. Plusnet have also provided me with excellent package speeds.

On request I asked for my IP profile to be switched up to the 80/20 and no questions asked just sorted it for me.

They offer Static IP for one off £5 plus other useful services

I believe PN are one of the cheapest (or the cheapest) fibre providers out there.

I have no real traffic management issues.. Full speed day/night both up and downstream.

I highly recommend Plusnet over the other 3 main providers mentioned in the op.

Hope this helps

Have a read of this to, I saw it posted on here the other day.

If you ring Sky they can give you 80Mbps. It's sold on the phone only. I have it though You need to ask for Sky fibre pro. It's £30 monthly so Plusnet is a big saving & I would advise it for you.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 01-Sep-13 13:02:23)

Have you checked their website recently ?

Yes you cannot get the Sky Fibre unlimited pro online still? Only the 40Mbps (38 advertised) variant online, 80Mbps (76 or whatever) via Phone.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 01-Sep-13 13:56:44)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Yes you cannot get the Sky Fibre unlimited pro online still? Only the 40Mbps (38 advertised) variant online, 80Mbps (76 or whatever) via Phone.

I think you need to look again, the 80Mbps Pro option has been on their website for a week or more now

And what the OP is saying is that Sky are not showing any FTTC available for him, so I reckon they haven't installed their link yet.

I think you need to look again, the 80Mbps Pro option has been on their website for a week or more now

Where? Please order it online for me and show me how?
All I see is the 38Mbps option online and 76Mbps requires a call
http://postimg.org/image/ed2vbp39d/ - that's on the main page http://www.sky.com/shop/broadband-talk/fibre-optic/

& when you go to order it doesn't show the faster option either
http://postimg.org/image/r46nqrkk3/

And what the OP is saying is that Sky are not showing any FTTC available for him, so I reckon they haven't installed their link yet.

The OP says

For some reason, sky are saying theu can gibve me 4mb only

I had interpreted that as 40Mbps (probably wrong). The links probably not in place.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 01-Sep-13 14:12:55)

Sorry my fault, hadn't noticed it said to phone, but at least they do advertise it now.

Well its sorted, Ive opted for Plusnet. I rang O2, my current provider, who have now sold the broadband and phone package to SKY, they told me I could get Sky fibre but when they did a check on their system, it came back as un confirmed. I asked for my mac code which they duly provided via email. They started to give me the "well if you stay with us" blag. "Can you provide me with Fibre Optic Broadband?" I asked. "Not at the minute". came the reply. If sky had been able to provide the fibre optic, I would have gone with sky. Plusnet won the day. Thanks for your replys guys, its been very much appreciated. Thank You>

When is your install date?

Out of interest when was the cabinet live?

Sky usually come along a week or two after the others. So say it goes live today, BT and PlusNet will install from today. TalkTalk & Sky usually take around 2 weeks longer.

So say it was made live today, you'd usually get Sky and TT in a couple of weeks.

My BT connections gone off for a few hours. It's weird as it stays connected but websites just don't load. It's synced with an IP and everything... Then it just begins to work again. The modem shows no drop in connection and at BTs end it looks like it worked fine. It's done this a few times (never got to the bottom of it) and I have 7+ internet devices so it's 100% the connection. New modem and router didn't solve it.

This was what my fault was at dusk hours, initially my fault did generate errors on the modem so seemed a sync issue. This of course got me also interleaved. But later on I started just losing connectivity with the sync and ppp staying connected just as you described, after a engineer visit the fault mysteriously went away.

I am responding because these sort of posts make people like me who are on BT dumb, after all why pay more for a worser service?

BT from the outside appear to have more capacity per end user (less visible signs of congestion), less weird issues like the long ppp timeouts and laggy IP shadow profiles and of course have BT sport.

Plusnet is better for sure on the uk support and static ip's but I wouldnt call it an all round improvement in every area.

What I am waiting for now is sky to get their static ip service up and running. I was sort of going to go to aaisp (but since connection is decent I Dont want to rock the boat so held off) for a static ip, native ipv6 and good support. But sky been a way to get off the BTw network is probably more tempting. I know if I join sky my latency to london will be halved.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 02-Sep-13 08:36:52)

It was wrong of me to suggest that all of BT's BB customers fit into the "don't know better" category. There are a number of benefits that BT provide that PlusNet do not. One that you did not mention was the BP Wifi. I was trying to suggest that BT benefit from having both brands because they tend to server different sectors of the market.

I see you have decided to go with PN now, but like you I have had problems in the past with Sky BB, back before fibre, BUT one of the things no one mentioned was that with Sky you HAVE to take their phone line service as well, which can cause problems if you want change again.

I have always maintained my phone line with BT, there are other ways to get cheaper calls, and the difference in the line rental costs is minimal.I wouldn't advise anyone to use Sky because of that.

yes they getting to a section of the market they couldnt touch before.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Sky usually come along a week or two after the others. So say it goes live today, BT and PlusNet will install from today. TalkTalk & Sky usually take around 2 weeks longer.

It usually depends how soon after the exchange went AO that the cabinet went live. The one I was originally connected to went live about 4 weeks after the exchange and I could order Sky fibre the day after BT Infinity was available.

Just had a call from SKY informing me that SKY Fibre is now available in my road. Ive already opted for plusnet but SKY are cheaper. Is SKY Fibre any good? OR should I stick with Plusnet? Im inclined to stick with the plusnet because of the bad experience I had with sky a few years back but I value any advice, experiences you guys may want to share. Once again, thanks in advance

I went to Sky fibre over 12 months ago. From day 1 it has been stuck at 37.6/8.6. No limits, no droppages, no buffering.

My ADSL with Sky was miserable - more to OR cabling than anything else, but since FTTC - brilliant!
.

Edited by deleted (Thu 05-Sep-13 17:44:37)

In reply to a post by TudorBlue:

Ive already opted for plusnet but SKY are cheaper. Is SKY Fibre any good? OR should I stick with Plusnet?

If you've already opted for Plusnet, aren't you on an 18-month contract? You would have to factor in the early termination charges (which don't amount to the full cost of the remaining period, but nevertheless need to be considered).

P.S. I have found Plusnet FTTC to be brilliant, personally, but others may beg to differ.

P.P.S. Looks like I went back to fast path again at 4am - see BQM!

Edited by kasg (Thu 05-Sep-13 18:50:08)

Yeah Im going to stick with Plusnet. Think my mind was already made up. As I said, Ive had a bad experience with SKY so its time to give Plusnet a go

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

When is your install date?

Sorry Ronksi, I missed this reply, think I had forgot to put me reading glasses on. The installation date is 19/09/2013. A couple more of my neighbours have upgraded to fibre optic. They have chosen BT Infinity. Looking forward to having my infinity installed next week.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Lucky you having the cab just across the road

Bare in mind that PlusNet have UK support, whereas BT's is a foreign call centre.

Also with Plus Net you can get a referral discount, so could in theory if you refer enough people get your broadband for free, or they even end up paying you money. If you go with PN ask your neighbour for their referral code, which is their username.

It's possible Sky have not installed their link at the exchange yet. ISPs that use their own back haul like Sky & TalkTalk need to link the FTTC equipment to their own equipment and need to get a special link installed, sometimes they can be a bit slow getting this done.

Why is this lucky? Im curious because I didnt think distance mattered as much with fibre Optic?? The cab is about 20 metres away from my house (give or take a couple of metres). As I said, my install date is 19th of sept. Kind of looking forward to it

Thank's to the misleading advertisments that IMO ASA should put a stop to you seem to think(from what you have posted here) it's Fibre optic to your home, FTTC is fibre to the road side cabinet only, the remainder is the very same copper cable that your phone and adsl are supplied on, hence the distance from the FTTC cab, and of course how many joints are in that cable and it's quality ect, so if you are 600mts from the cab you ain't gonna be able to get 80mbps

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 13-Sep-13 02:50:42)

As Tommy says, with FTTC there is still copper from the cab. The broadband signal on FTTC travels over copper from the FTTC cab to the PCP, from there it joins your original copper line to your house, so the total distance it travels is from the FTTC cab to PCP, then to your property.

I'm around 450 meters, but get only 42Mbps (was estimated 57), some at my distance are lucky and get 60 to70 Mbps, others further away get substantially less, once you reach around 1000 meters you could be as low as 20Mbps. Due to the higher frequencies used with VDSL they degrade quicker over distance compared to ADSL, there are also power masks which limit certain frequencies to restrict crosstalk. Cross talk will also affect longer lines more than shorter lines. When vectoring is brought in this should boost a lot of peoples speeds, and possibly extend the range, but that is some years off, and is only just being trialled by BT. Lines that are made of aluminium, or have many joins will also deteriorate faster and I doubt vectoring will help with these lines much.

The lucky few that live within 150 to 200 meters will most likely get full speeds, so you should get the full 80/20 sync speed, and see speed test results of around 78/18.

That said 42Mbps is still a good speed, and four times what I was getting.

Hope that makes things clear and your install goes well.

Just one thing, if the max IP profile is 77.44 So a max throughput of 73-74mbps could be achievable the upload would be 18 -19mbps
although from what i have read the max thoughput can depend on the hardware used, Both modem/router as well as if pppoe or pppoa is used due to the difference in overheads or was it MTU size as the max on PPPOE is less (1492 ) and i dare say max thoughput and if a customer is able to gwet that max speed 24/7 or not will be down to the ISP and BT or who ever is responsible for the link from exchange to ISP , because if that link gets congested then speeds will slow,

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 13-Sep-13 11:33:38)

I'm not sure on the exact speeds achievable with a 80/20 sync speed, but they will of course be less. And there will always be a bottle neck somewhere, I have an upload of around 8Mbps, but the highest I've ever seen on my cloud backup is around 3Mbps. Same with download, there will be a bottle neck somewhere, whether it's your link speed or a congested server you're downloading from.

upload speeds are much harder to max out due to buffer issues.

eg. outlook requires a key changing in the windows registry to get fast speeds uploading emails.

basically windows has a quite low default buffer size with each app able to use its own value if coded in, most apps either dont change it or set it optimised for lower speeds. some apps such as ftp clients allow you to set your own value. firefox allows it to be configured so if uploading to cloud via firefox that could help.

try in the registry editing this.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\AFD\Parameters
DefaultSendWindow to 524288 dword32
setting DynamicSendBufferDisable to 0 may also help (also dword32). Each of these changes requires a reboot to apply.

This doesnt work for everything as some apps hardset low buffers ignoring that value and it can also slow some things down.

running this in command prompt will show if send buffer autotuning is on or not.

netsh winsock show autotuning

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 13-Sep-13 14:22:33)

http://blog.thinkbroadband.com/2013/05/so-how-fast-a...

10% were getting 18.4 Mbps or more on Infinity 2

your speedtest doesnt have the buffering problem.

eg. I get 19mbit upload on your test, yet can only upload to BT cloud at 2.5mbps.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 13-Sep-13 15:17:36)

Commercial cloud services tend to have restricted upload speeds. From work I very rarely get more than 3Mbps upload to commercial cloud services yet I can upload at around 40-50Mbps to my own cloud server.

however I can get 20mbit to BT's cloud after some fiddling with the send buffer

Thanks for the advice Chrysalis, that registry key doesn't exist on my server, but Winsock autotuning is enabled.

I suspect the main limit on my upload is Crash Plans servers, and the fact they are in America, the ones I'm backing up to are in Atlanta and speedtest results to Atlanta only reach about 4Mbps.

ronski here is a result of some tests I did with a ftp client.

to one of my servers in america, latency 116ms

note default is just a 4k window size, below tests are single threaded.

with a 16k tcp window size approx 1mbit/sec upload throughput
with a 64k tcp window size approx 4mbit/sec upload throughput
with a 256k tcp window size approx 17mbit/sec upload throughput

my windows setting currently of 512k is probably overkill to EU servers unless heavily interleaved.

Looks interesting, so what exactly would I need to enter on my server to test this, I have around a 6Mbps upload speed.

add the 2 keys I gave you for windows client side.

modern linux is likely to already be preconfigured for large enough tcp windows, if you uploading to the server then its recieve window needs increasing on that if low. they are configured via sysctl and dont need downtime/reboot to apply its instant.

on my testing I left windows at 512k and adjusted the recv window on my bsd server since its far quicker than rebooting windows between each change, although my ftp client allows live adjustments also.

if not check net.ipv4.tcp_rmem and net.ipv4.tcp_wmem rmem is for recv (downstream) wmem is for send (upstream), linux has very good defaults tho and I dont think needs any adjustments, the 3rd figure is the limit.

bsd uses net.inet.tcp.sendspace for upstream and net.inet.tcp.recvspace for downstream, it also has autotuning configurables net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max which is overriden by net.inet.tcp.recvspace if smaller and net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max which gets overriden by net.inet.tcp.sendspace if smaller, and net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_auto/net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_auto to toggle the autotuning.