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Hi everyone,
We're about 15 months into an 18 month Swish contract and are generally quite happy with the service, but Hey! are doing a big push in our area right now and their current deal is incredibly attractive. 900Mbps for less than the cost of 500Mbps with Swish, and the first 6 months for free would enable us to buy out the remaining few months of our Swish contract and be no worse off.
I'm just a bit wary of the deal being too good to be true and wondering if anyone has experience of both ISPs and can lend an opinion either way?
Cheers all!
Edit: Took the punt, I'll give them a trial run during the 14 day cancellation window and then decide whether to keep them, though they're not off to the best start... I chose an install date of the 31st, which was confirmed by the order confirmation page, then the order confirmation email has me booked for the 29th! Have got it logged with their support so hopefully better sailing from here...
Edited by Noiz (Mon 21-Oct-24 17:22:51)
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Without knowing the two prices (after the 6 months, it's hard to judge, but my feeling is the old adage - If it sounds too good to be true then it probably is. 
To try to help: how long is the Hey offer open for, or don't they say? Is Hey actually live yet on your street, and if not is there any certainty as to when it will be?
What is the Hey contract length and what options are Swish offering at the end of your eighteen months? Might they be open to negatiation given the presence of Hey?
We know that the organized workers of the country are our friends. As for the rest, they don’t matter a tinker’s cuss - Manny Shinwell
Connections: Pixel 9 on Three 4+ (LTE)/5G, Pixel 6a on EE in reserve. At home Three Mobile, with (Three)ZTE MC888 router giving 5G on a good day.
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Very good questions!
Currently we're paying £31/month for the 400Mbps Swish package (that they upgraded to 500Mbps after the first year), plus £5/month for a static IP. After the contract ends it'll go up to £40/month total, or we can take out a new contract at whatever deal price they're offering. Interestingly they have no deals on at the moment.
Hey! are doing 900Mbps for £26/ month over 24 months (plus £5/month for a static IP) with the first 6 months free. After that, at least at the current pricing, it'd go up to £48 total, or we could downgrade to the 400Mbps package for £38. The deal is good for another 2 days and yes they're available in my street.
I'm somewhat put off by their terrible name and early-2000's insurance company mascot, which gives them a bit of an amateurish vibe. But I suppose we could have both running during the 14 day termination window and just compare and contrast...
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Tricky, as implied by your OP. The catch is the 24-month contract at a high price.
I suggest giving Swish Sales, or Retentions if they have such a department as some Openreach providers do, and tell them you are thinking of jumping ship.
See if you can get a decent offer to stay with them.
Otherwise, do you still have a coin you could toss?
Good luck whatever you decide. Please let us know.
I'm currently waiting for brsk to get the fibre cables through Openreach ducting to our estate, which has all the Openreach telegraph poles carrying their kit now, and linked through. They've dug a hole dug at the corner with the main road of one of the two estate entry roads and another part way to the A6 where they've already seem to have planted a chamber
I ordered 500Mbps at £25pm on October 5, fixed for two years. Rang support the next week just to enquire on the expected go live of the main supply and it's expected for 30 November. They even have a referral scheme, £50 Amazon voucher for both the referrer and the new customer. No limit at the moment on how many I can refer!
We know that the organized workers of the country are our friends. As for the rest, they don’t matter a tinker’s cuss - Manny Shinwell
Connections: Pixel 9 on Three 4+ (LTE)/5G, Pixel 6a on EE in reserve. At home Three Mobile, with (Three)ZTE MC888 router giving 5G on a good day.
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I'm currently waiting for brsk to get the fibre cables through Openreach ducting to our estate, which has all the Openreach telegraph poles carrying their kit now, and linked through. They've dug a hole dug at the corner with the main road of one of the two estate entry roads and another part way to the A6 where they've already seem to have planted a chamber
Sounds like you're on your way at least. We had a similar install from Youfibre and it took around 6 months from first hole in the road to being able to order (and a bonus three weeks after that for them to turn the exchange on!). It was an interminable wait, but the service since then has been excellent and it was well worth the torture!
Interestingly, youfibre also offer a referral scheme (I guess all of the alnets do as it's cheap marketing), and I expected that 75% of my street (who only have access to relatively low-speed, end-of the-wire FTTC) would sign up. In fact, there was two who were installed on the first day and two have installed since then (both this week) out of some 60 houses. I'm genuinely astonished, but I won't be retiring soon on my referral income!
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There are reports that Hey have very limited peering. Maybe as little as 1 or 2 peers and may route a lot through Spain where they appear to be run from. This may or may not be a concern to you.
Better Times!
Edited by FibreBubble (Mon 21-Oct-24 20:51:11)
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Tricky, as implied by your OP. The catch is the 24-month contract at a high price.
I'm not sure if 18 months (after the first 6 free) at £26 per month is a "high price"?
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I agree. It was more the 24-month contract in principle I was finding unpleasant. Though it looks like a growing trend amongst many providers. It's just an aspect the OP needs to bear in mind. Two years is two years if you've bought a pup, whatever the price is.
In case that appears contrary to my order with brsk, due to recent improvements in my own finances I may retain the Three Home Broadband as backup or even lend it to a friend who currently manages with just a phone on Three unlimited everything. I don't need to worry about that long minimum term contract on brsk.
We know that the organized workers of the country are our friends. As for the rest, they don’t matter a tinker’s cuss - Manny Shinwell
Connections: Pixel 9 on Three 4+ (LTE)/5G, Pixel 6a on EE in reserve. At home Three Mobile, with (Three)ZTE MC888 router giving 5G on a good day.
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I have the 1Gb Hey! service. First contract was £35 PCM, when that expired I renewed....for £29 PCM!
Service was a bit sketchy at the start with a few outages, but since then it's been pretty solid. I'll be staying with them whilst the price is still so low.
Hey!Broadband 1Gb Fibre - Live BQM
Asus AC86U - Asuswrt Merlin
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Interestingly, youfibre also offer a referral scheme (I guess all of the alnets do as it's cheap marketing), and I expected that 75% of my street (who only have access to relatively low-speed, end-of the-wire FTTC) would sign up. In fact, there was two who were installed on the first day and two have installed since then (both this week) out of some 60 houses. I'm genuinely astonished, but I won't be retiring soon on my referral income!
The difference is that on here most of us are enthusiasts whereas for a lot of people as long as they can get their insta/facebook fix and stream BBC iPlayer without buffering they're happy.
I also know a few people who stick with BT though thick and thin because they have @btinternet.com email addresses they rely on and will lose them if they switch.
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Thanks, that's very promising. I'm all booked in for the 31st so we'll see how it goes!
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I had to look up what that is!
I imagine it would have the biggest impact on the number of hops between peered and un-peered networks and hence higher ping times? I don't know how many networks Swish peers with but doing a trace to thinkbroadband.com routes via Amsterdam and back to London.
I'll do some testing while I've got both ISPs installed I guess and see if there's any noticeable impact. Cheers for the heads up.
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I don't know how many networks Swish peers with but doing a trace to thinkbroadband.com routes via Amsterdam and back to London.
Interesting -- I hadn't noticed that before. My connection between Swish and Thinkbroadband also goes via Amsterdam:
traceroute to thinkbroadband.com (80.249.106.141), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.68.1 (192.168.68.1) 0.215 ms
2 31.22.13.2 (31.22.13.2) 26.348 ms
3 10.240.10.16 (10.240.10.16) 4.390 ms
4 10.240.10.251 (10.240.10.251) 4.875 ms
5 cust-141-195-128-178.jurassic-fibre.net (141.195.128.178) 4.980 ms
6 172.20.0.76 (172.20.0.76) 5.487 ms
7 172.20.0.87 (172.20.0.87) 5.049 ms
8 ldn-b3-link.ip.twelve99.net (213.248.98.36) 5.410 ms
9 ldn-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.120.74) 5.409 ms
10 adm-bb1-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.139.144) 12.598 ms
11 adm-b10-link.ip.twelve99.net (62.115.120.227) 11.245 ms
12 ae-23.a01.amstnl07.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.8.49) 14.386 ms
13 ae-2.r22.amstnl07.nl.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.2.92) 11.020 ms
14 ae-5.r22.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.1) 11.085 ms
15 ae-19.a03.londen12.uk.bb.gin.ntt.net (129.250.5.245) 11.392 ms
16 192.80.16.146 (192.80.16.146) 11.433 ms
17 te1-51-39.core-rs2.thw.ncuk.net (80.249.97.84) 12.104 ms
18 ip106-141.thw.ncuk.net (80.249.106.141) 11.202 ms
Looks like Swish and NCUK (the network that hosts Thinkbroadband) aren't peered, so the connection goes via Arelion (formerly known as Telia Carrier) and NTT. These are two "tier 1" transit networks. It's not clear why Arelion and NTT exchange the traffic in Amsterdam as they're both present in London (Arelion receive the traffic from Swish in Telehouse North and NTT hand the traffic off to NCUK in "londen12", not sure where that is) -- perhaps someone who knows more about network engineering than me could explain. I suspect this is a more general problem with networks using Arelion to reach NTT in London, and it's probably just temporary.
For comparison Swish peer with Cloudflare at LONAP so my connection is pretty direct (ignoring the relatively large number of hops within Swish's network):
traceroute to cloudflare.com (104.16.132.229), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.68.1 (192.168.68.1) 0.261 ms
2 31.22.13.2 (31.22.13.2) 3.668 ms
3 10.240.10.16 (10.240.10.16) 4.557 ms
4 10.240.10.251 (10.240.10.251) 4.997 ms
5 cust-141-195-128-178.jurassic-fibre.net (141.195.128.178) 5.112 ms
6 172.20.0.76 (172.20.0.76) 5.381 ms
7 172.20.0.87 (172.20.0.87) 4.992 ms
8 lonap.as13335.net (5.57.81.75) 7.150 ms
9 141.101.71.97 (141.101.71.97) 5.635 ms
10 104.16.132.229 (104.16.132.229) 5.429 ms
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JOI I thought I would do a tracert from my suppler Community Fibre and got a hell of a difference:
Tracing route to thinkbroadband.com [80.249.106.141]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms Community01267.communityfibre.co.uk [192.168.1.1]
2 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms 149.22.149.1
3 3 ms 3 ms 2 ms 94.177.139.39
4 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms xge-0-2-5.ar03.thn.lon.network.as201838.net [94.247.86.34]
5 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms lag-1.edge1.thn.lon.network.as201838.net [94.247.87.53]
6 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 185.59.125.153
7 4 ms 3 ms 3 ms te1-51-38.core-rs1.thw.ncuk.net [80.249.97.82]
8 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms te1-52-37.core-rs2.thw.ncuk.net [80.249.97.81]
9 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms ip106-141.thw.ncuk.net [80.249.106.141]
and to cloudflare:
Tracing route to cloudflare.com [2606:4700::6810:84e5]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 2a02:6b67:e3a1:9600:3223:3ff:fe9e:6fa9
2 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms 2a02:6b60:0:206::1
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 2 ms 1 ms 2 ms xge-0-2-5.ar03.thn.lon.network.as201838.net [2a02:6b60:0:1:1::34]
5 * * * Request timed out.
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 3 ms 2 ms 2 ms 2a02:6b60::2c
8 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 2400:cb00:21:200::56
9 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 2400:cb00:736:3::
10 3 ms 3 ms 3 ms 2606:4700::6810:84e5
weird that TB went via IPv4 and CF via IPv6
Bob
Community Fibre 1Gb symmetrical (FTTH) - Linksys Velop/EG8120L / VOIP via AAISP
Previous: via WRBRIX DialUp to CIX, BT Home Highway to CIX, ADSL to Nildram, SKY & Be*Unlimited, FTTC to BT, PN Unl Extra Fibre
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weird that TB went via IPv4 and CF via IPv6
Not at all weird: thinbroadband.com has no AAAA records.
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Not being a techy I had to look that up haha
Bob
Community Fibre 1Gb symmetrical (FTTH) - Linksys Velop/EG8120L / VOIP via AAISP
Previous: via WRBRIX DialUp to CIX, BT Home Highway to CIX, ADSL to Nildram, SKY & Be*Unlimited, FTTC to BT, PN Unl Extra Fibre
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If it makes a difference in selecting ISPs, SWISH do not support IPv6 or didn't at least.
I'm happy with them overall as service is reliable and I see no signs of contention.
The price has increased slightly from £39 to £42 for 900mbit which is at least locked for 24 mths.
I do pay £3 for a static IP too.
The peering via Amsterdam could explain why the latency to the BQM has jumped from <5ms to 10ms but GeforceNow is still 4ms.
OPNSense on Topton N100 - SWISH Fibre 900
NextDNS (subscription) - Unifi for Wifi
My Broadband PingEdited by smouty (Wed 23-Oct-24 09:57:47)
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If it makes a difference in selecting ISPs, SWISH do not support IPv6 or didn't at least.
I believe it's been "coming soon" for a while. Hey!BB don't support IPv6 either, although some of F&W's other ISP partners do.
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weird that TB went via IPv4 and CF via IPv6
Not at all weird: thinbroadband.com has no AAAA records.
www.thinkbroadband.com does.
This is due to how we set things up with Cloudflare but thanks for sharing. We'll try to fix that asap.
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The author of the above post is a thinkbroadband staff member. It may not constitute an official statement on behalf of thinkbroadband.
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And fixed
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The author of the above post is a thinkbroadband staff member. It may not constitute an official statement on behalf of thinkbroadband.
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And fixed
Nice one.
$ ping -6 www.thinkbroadband.com
PING www.thinkbroadband.com(2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d (2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d (2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d): icmp_seq=1 ttl=51 time=4.66 ms
64 bytes from 2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d (2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d): icmp_seq=2 ttl=51 time=4.79 ms
64 bytes from 2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d (2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d): icmp_seq=3 ttl=50 time=4.88 ms
^C
--- www.thinkbroadband.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.655/4.775/4.883/0.093 ms
$ ping -6 thinkbroadband.com
PING thinkbroadband.com(thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7): icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=7.88 ms
64 bytes from thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7): icmp_seq=2 ttl=47 time=7.88 ms
64 bytes from thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7): icmp_seq=3 ttl=47 time=7.90 ms
^C
--- thinkbroadband.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
Sadly my home internet doesn't have IPv6, because... Virgin Media (no other high speed available) but my servers have no such issues.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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$ ping -6 www.thinkbroadband.com
PING www.thinkbroadband.com(2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d (2606:4700:10::6814:ab4d)) 56 data bytes
$ ping -6 thinkbroadband.com
PING thinkbroadband.com(thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7)) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from thinkbroadband.com (2a02:68:1:1000::7): icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=7.88 ms
Just to note that thinkbroadband.com is hosted on our network, www.thinkbroadband.com is via Cloudflare. In case you troubleshooting BQM or similar
seb
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The author of the above post is a thinkbroadband staff member. It may not constitute an official statement on behalf of thinkbroadband.
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Just to note that thinkbroadband.com is hosted on our network, www.thinkbroadband.com is via Cloudflare. In case you troubleshooting BQM or similar
Useful to know. I'm assuming forums is also via Cloudflare?
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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Just to note that thinkbroadband.com is hosted on our network, www.thinkbroadband.com is via Cloudflare. In case you troubleshooting BQM or similar
Useful to know. I'm assuming forums is also via Cloudflare?
Yeah. labs doesn't right now - it will in future but we have some speed tests that run on there which we need to move off.
download.thinkbroadband.com is also on our network (as it's for performance testing)
seb
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The author of the above post is a thinkbroadband staff member. It may not constitute an official statement on behalf of thinkbroadband.
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Yeah. labs doesn't right now - it will in future but we have some speed tests that run on there which we need to move off.
download.thinkbroadband.com is also on our network (as it's for performance testing)
Thanks, cloudflare is impressive stuff.
24 years of broadband connectivity since 1999 trial - Live BQM
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TL;DR - Make sure you test everything you connect to that needs consistently reliable low latency before fully committing to the switch.
A bit late to the thread as I've not been on the site for a while, but I am currently looking into leaving HeyBroadband, or at a minimum relegating it to my backup connection. The raw bandwidth is very good for speed tests and downloading from distributed CDNs like Steam, Epic Games etc. I always get very good throughput, saturating the connection on big downloads with over 100Mb/s.
However, their lack of peering and poor routing (I think) is causing me latency problems with some services. The biggest issue for me is my work connection. I work from home and have been having very poor performance to my work Citrix connection for months. I thought it was something on the work end, or just a problem with the virtual machine. It presents as a slow machine in the virtual session, so the troubleshooting so far has been on the work end. It didn't occur to me that my connection would be the problem, as I always see very low latency and high bandwidth on speed tests, with around 900/900 consistently.
I have always kept my TalkTalk FTTC connection as a backup, as my work is quite critical. A week or so ago, I switched my home network to use the FTTC connection as a test & had no slowness with my work connection at all. It is noticeably and objectively more responsive on the "slower" 140/35 FTTC TalkTalk connection than on my 900/900 FTTP HeyBroadband connection. I also get consistently lower pings in games on the FTTC connection, which again shows an issue with the HeyBroadband connection, as you would certainly expect latency to be lower on FTTP.
Both connections go through the same OPNsense firewall, so I'm certain it's not a problem with my local network. If anything, I'd expect the FTTC connection to be worse as it still goes through 2 extra boxes (Openreach modem & TalkTalk router). The HeyBroadband connection is in bridge mode and goes directly from the ONT into my own firewall. I also asked them to move me off a CGNAT network, which they did with no issues, to their credit.
I'm having the "backup" TalkTalk connection upgraded to FTTP and will most likely make that my primary. It will actually be cheaper than the current FTTC connection for the first 12 months with the intro offer.
Edited by Kans (Tue 29-Oct-24 21:36:02)
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However, their lack of peering and poor routing (I think) is causing me latency problems with some services. The biggest issue for me is my work connection.
Have you run traceroute and/or MTR on both connections? Might be worth a look, see where the pinch points are.
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Have you run traceroute and/or MTR on both connections? Might be worth a look, see where the pinch points are.
Yes, their routing is all over the place and hops through Spain, France, Holland & even the US in some cases. It depends which of their subnets you end up on. Check out this thread for some of the issues I and others have had. I try to avoid rebooting my connection in case I end up on one of the subnets that is blocked by my bank and insurance company, as the range registered outside the UK.
CityFibre just finished laying the infrastructure in my road a month or so ago. I've been biding my time waiting for an alternative FTTP connection.
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Hmm. This sounds like it could be caused by CGNAT. Have you tried asking for a public IP address, to try and rule that out?
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I'm not on CGNAT, as I said in my post. I had them move me to a public IP so I could set up remote access to my home server/automations.
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I also asked them to move me off a CGNAT network, which they did with no issues, to their credit.
Very true, my apologies
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Very interesting indeed, thank you! My biggest concern has always been gaming pings but I also WFH every day so this is definitely something to test for.
Also had a browse of the other thread linked further down and the comments aren't very promising to say the least...
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Not to pile on the negativity but worth mentioning - As I've left my TalkTalk connection as the primary today for work, I have noticed that video on Zoom calls is much clearer. Zoom has always worked fine on HeyBroadband but I've had some compression on video. I'd always assumed it was just normal for Zoom because many of my calls have well over 50 participants. But having joined some calls today with the other connection, the incoming video is much clearer. Network stats in Zoom seem pretty comparable between the two but there's definitely a difference in video clarity.
I realise this sounds somewhat unlikely and maybe a little petty but it has genuinely surprised me that the two connections can be so different in performance on a like for like comparison. If I could share screenshots of the difference between them I would but obviously can't do that with work Zoom calls.
It just goes to show that you can't trust a speed test as an indicator of true real world performance. Don't get me wrong, the HeyBroadband connection has been very stable and has top notch bandwidth for big downloads but does seem to be let down by some routing & real world usage. I expect it's quite easy for an ISP to prioritise speed testing sites to make their connectivity appear superior.
For gaming, HeyBroadband has very good latency almost all the time. I suspect their routing to bigger providers like AWS & Azure where many gaming services are hosted is set up better than general traffic. For me, Rocket League is easiest one to use as an example, as you hit multiple different servers in a short period of time. I sometimes get a ping as low as 10ms but also as high as 40-45ms depending on the server (I'm guessing but I think they have some in the UK & others elsewhere in Europe). I've never really had any issues with high latency, except for a couple of periods of streetwide issues mentioned in the other thread. However, my TalkTalk connection does still get around 10% lower latency across the board, going as low as 8ms in Rocket League.
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Somewhat relieved to hear that gaming latency is OK, though I mostly play Deep Rock Galactic, which is P2P rather than server based.
Meanwhile I've spent the morning setting up the BQM that I had no idea was a thing, and I've opened a route between my office where they have a 10Gb dedicated line and the OpenSpeedtest server on my LAN so that I can compare things that way rather than relying on the easily prioritized Ookla test.
Tomorrow will be very interesting!
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Ugh well the install didn't happen in the end. The pole is condemned/defective and the guy insisted the whole thing needs to be replaced before he can do the install. I mentioned that the Swish installer used a cherry picker but he wasn't having it, so it's now re-booked for next week. Of course the pole won't have been changed in that time so I'm not sure what'll happen then...
On the one hand I'm mad at myself because I knew it was condemned but didn't think to mention it to them in advance, and I'd chosen today specifically so that it lined up a convenient end-of-the-month payment date. On the other hand it's giving me extra time to gather comparison stats from Swish.
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When my most recent fibre service was activated in Suffolk, my nearest pole was also "condemned" (actually just Cat D) and after probably 6 weeks of to-n-fro around the houses at Openreach, it was magically "un-condemmned"
...in other words they sent out a picker, rather than climb it.
To be fair that pole is probably older than me 🤣
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A D pole , is defective, it doesn’t necessarily mean dangerous or decayed, a condemned pole is not the same as a D pole ….a pole can have a D classification for several reasons, not just decay , but can’t be climbed by using a ladder ….if the D is for something other than decay , access by alternative means ( like a hoist or scaffolding ) is allowed.
If the Alt Net doesn’t have the wherewithal to arrange a hoist on the date of the installation should a D pole be encountered, or don’t survey in advance, that’s up to them…poles are periodically checked , and if decay is detected they enter a program of replacement, if this isn’t as quick as an Alt Net requires, they are at liberty to install their own infrastructure
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In our case Openreach were insistent (initially) that the pole definitely needed replacement - that was the directive from their surveyor. No other furniture could could installed on the pole.
We were told the pole was going to be replaced. It was in the queue waiting for the pole replacement team. It was 6-8 weeks later after much prodding and chasing that Openreach came back out again and decided that the first surveyor was wrong and it was fine and just a picker was needed.
No alty’s were involved here, it was pure Openreach infra (Ethernet rather than FTTP) They changed their mind and kept the pole. The pain of it was it took them 8 weeks of fumbling to decide. 😂
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The pain of it was it took them 8 weeks of fumbling to decide. 😂
To be fair, that's pretty much "next day" if you measure time using an Openreach calendar...
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Well, it's installed now. The guy had no record of me wanting to use my own router so there was a long delay and multiple phone calls to actually get connected, and then once I was connected they hadn't assigned the static IP that I ordered. Another 20 minutes on the phone to get that escalated and they're promising a call back within two days.
Not the best start so far but I am at least seeing the speedtest speeds as advertised, and it's 2 fewer hops to work's VPN gateway, and only 8 hops to thinkbroadband.com. No weird trips via Amsterdam or Spain...
Edit: Just got forcibly reconnected and I'm now on a static IP. Hops look much the same as before.
Edited by Noiz (Wed 06-Nov-24 15:43:45)
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Replying to my own post to say that we got the install done yesterday and so far so good:
- There was a hiccup with the static IP not being assigned but that was resolved in a few hours, with the IP being geolocated in the UK.
- In terms of hops to the few places I've tried, the routes have typically been shorter than Swish with a ms or 2 quicker pings at the destination. That said, more of the routers along the way either don't appear to reply to pings or heavily de-prioritize them.
- The speedtest from work to my own speedtest server has not given cause for concern. Not maximum theoretical rates but faster than Swish and I think there's some throttling going on at the work end.
- And the results from the TBB Quality Monitor are so far showing a drop in average ping times from 12ms on Swish to 5ms on Hey.
I haven't tested gaming yet and I'm curious how things will look over the weekend but I'm pleased with it so far.
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Probably my final post, but the weekend went fine. I did note that the reported ping time to Xbox Live services is averaging 68-73ms, which is a far cry from Swish's 13-15ms and will undoubtedly affect game streaming on the occasion that I use it.
I've raised a ticket but not expecting much in the way of a response. Whether it's worth cancelling the service over I'm thinking probably not seeing as the incumbent is almost twice the price.
But yeah, ultimately Hey appears to be "good enough" for the price and speed on offer. If you rely on super-low-pings you're probably better off looking elsewhere but otherwise it's doing the job.
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Probably my final post, but the weekend went fine. I did note that the reported ping time to Xbox Live services is averaging 68-73ms, which is a far cry from Swish's 13-15ms and will undoubtedly affect game streaming on the occasion that I use it.
I've raised a ticket but not expecting much in the way of a response. Whether it's worth cancelling the service over I'm thinking probably not seeing as the incumbent is almost twice the price.
But yeah, ultimately Hey appears to be "good enough" for the price and speed on offer. If you rely on super-low-pings you're probably better off looking elsewhere but otherwise it's doing the job.
Have you had a play with https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Latency, which measures latency to lots of different Azure regions at the same time - might give some clues? (Xbox Live is all hosted out of Azure, so in theory should use the closest region to you)
(For comparison, from t'North of England on Youfibre, I get 17ms to London, 19ms to Cardiff, 23ms to Netherlands, 25ms to Ireland and 94ms to US East)
Edited by daern (Mon 11-Nov-24 11:46:29)
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Ooo, that site's been really useful! Hey support replied to say that they see no issues between them and my ONT so therefore the issue must be with my router settings. I've used the site to compare the two connections, simply swapping the router uplink cable between the two ONTs, and have hopefully provided ample evidence that their routing to Azure is just plain bad.
Skipping to the end, Swish reports the fastest DCs as France, London and Cardiff, while Hey reports Spain(!), Italy(!) and France, with latency to the UK DCs being 2-7 higher than Swish.
I've basically said to let me know if this is likely to see any traction in the near term so that I can decide whether the otherwise very attractive price to throughput ratio is worth the trade off before my cancellation window expires.
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Skipping to the end, Swish reports the fastest DCs as France, London and Cardiff, while Hey reports Spain(!), Italy(!) and France, with latency to the UK DCs being 2-7 higher than Swish.
I've basically said to let me know if this is likely to see any traction in the near term so that I can decide whether the otherwise very attractive price to throughput ratio is worth the trade off before my cancellation window expires.
Ok, well that's just plain rubbish then. Supply them with the evidence from this and ask them to explain why it's quicker to get to Spain and Italy than to the UK for a UK ISP, and if they can't explain this, they don't deserve your business and you should walk away. Give them the tool and get them to use it themselves and report what latencies they're seeing on their core network.
Can you share your actual numbers here? Here are mine for the EU regions.
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Hey have very limited peering and appear to be run from Spain where a lot of their routing goes. The OP was warned of this previously and will need to trade off the price and performance themselves as I doubt Hey are going to change any time soon.
Better Times!
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I was indeed warned of it before, and is most of the reason I ever bothered to test! I can't imagine they'll do anything about it but I figured it's worth asking them at least, while I've got the option of ditching and going back to Swish.
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Please do let us know how you get on. My own highly unscientific observations suggest that Hey sales performance is better than most altnets so maybe the peering issues are something they can live with.
Incidentally, even the guys splicing the local network in my area were Spanish.
Better Times!
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I hadn't seen these Azure/AWS test sites before, so I ran some comparative tests on my connections. I have both HeyBroadband FTTP and TalkTalk FTTC at the moment. Both are running through the same firewall, so it's a relatively good comparative test. HB goes directly from ONT to the firewall, TalkTalk through an openreach modem, the TalkTalk router, then the firewall (so has extra hops/steps).
These tests are from https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Latency and https://www.cloudping.cloud/aws. The AWS version of the first one doesn't seem to work properly for me, it shows over 100ms to everything.
| Text | 1
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| HeyBroadband Azure
Spain Central (Madrid) 40 msSwitzerland North (Zurich) 45 ms
Italy North (Milan) 46 ms
HeyBroadband AWSParis eu-west-3 19.6
London eu-west-2 27.4Stockholm eu-north-1 40.4
Ireland eu-west-1 41.8Zürich eu-central-2 48.4 |
| Text | 1
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| TalkTalk Azure
UK South (London) 15 msUK West (Cardiff) 17 ms
France Central (Paris) 20 ms
TalkTalk AWSLondon eu-west-2 7.6
CloudFront CDN 9.6Paris eu-west-3 17.4
Ireland eu-west-1 19.4Frankfurt eu-central-1 22.6 |
This shows the considerable latency and routing difference between the two providers. I'm having TalkTalk FTTP installed on Monday (or at least that's the schedule), so I'll re-run these tests to see if there's much difference between their FTTC and FTTP products for latency.
Edited by Kans (Fri 15-Nov-24 10:06:10)
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This shows the considerable latency and routing difference between the two providers. I'm having TalkTalk FTTP installed on Monday (or at least that's the schedule), so I'll re-run these tests to see if there's much difference between their FTTC and FTTP products for latency.
When I had TalkTalk Biz FTTP I found the latency very good. Not quite as good as via a BT Wholesale based ISP, but only a ms or two different.
Customer service though was another matter. Good luck with them.
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Well, they seem to be taking my query seriously at least, and have escalated to "the tier 3 team" with the promise to extend my cancellation window until after they've replied. I'm still expecting the response to amount to "that's how it is, deal with it" but for a cheapo ISP I've been fairly impressed with their support handling overall.
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Will be interested to hear how you get on & if they commit to reducing latency or improving performance somehow.
Their bandwidth/throughput is very good, I've had the HB service for over 2 years and have almost never had any bandwidth issues. However, latency performance is far more important for me and if anything has been getting worse recently, to the point of it being noticeably slower on my work connection.
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I hadn't seen these Azure/AWS test sites before, so I ran some comparative tests on my connections. I have both HeyBroadband FTTP and TalkTalk FTTC at the moment. Both are running through the same firewall, so it's a relatively good comparative test. HB goes directly from ONT to the firewall, TalkTalk through an openreach modem, the TalkTalk router, then the firewall (so has extra hops/steps).
These tests are from https://www.azurespeed.com/Azure/Latency and https://www.cloudping.cloud/aws. The AWS version of the first one doesn't seem to work properly for me, it shows over 100ms to everything.
| Text | 1
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45
67
89
1011
| HeyBroadband Azure
Spain Central (Madrid) 40 msSwitzerland North (Zurich) 45 ms
Italy North (Milan) 46 ms
HeyBroadband AWSParis eu-west-3 19.6
London eu-west-2 27.4Stockholm eu-north-1 40.4
Ireland eu-west-1 41.8Zürich eu-central-2 48.4 |
| Text | 1
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| TalkTalk Azure
UK South (London) 15 msUK West (Cardiff) 17 ms
France Central (Paris) 20 ms
TalkTalk AWSLondon eu-west-2 7.6
CloudFront CDN 9.6Paris eu-west-3 17.4
Ireland eu-west-1 19.4Frankfurt eu-central-1 22.6 |
This shows the considerable latency and routing difference between the two providers. I'm having TalkTalk FTTP installed on Monday (or at least that's the schedule), so I'll re-run these tests to see if there's much difference between their FTTC and FTTP products for latency.
I had F&W install a few days ago and I'm currently with Hey!BB. I see similar weirdness.
It looks like the problem is that connections to Azure go via NEAR IP and Tata Communications, and Tata is routing the traffic via Frankfurt (for reasons which aren't entirely obvious to me). I discovered this by running an MTR to a RIPE Atlas probe hosted by Azure in London:
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. _gateway 0.0% 159 0.6 0.3 0.2 0.7 0.1
2. 193-28-11-2.fwnetworks.co.uk 0.0% 159 4.6 4.5 3.7 5.3 0.2
3. 172.16.245.0 47.2% 159 4.9 4.8 4.4 5.3 0.2
4. 194.35.42.8 95.6% 159 4.9 4.8 4.6 5.0 0.1
5. ix-xe-0-1-7-0.thar2.ld5-slough.as6453.net 0.0% 159 4.9 5.1 4.5 19.1 1.4
6. if-be-24-2.ecore1.ld5-slough.as6453.net 21.4% 159 21.8 21.6 21.0 22.5 0.3
7. if-bundle-36-2.qcore4.ldn-london.as6453.net 84.8% 159 22.1 21.7 21.2 22.6 0.4
8. 195.219.213.138 79.1% 159 22.3 22.1 21.5 23.0 0.4
9. if-bundle-13-2.qcore2.pye-paris.as6453.net 42.1% 159 21.6 22.0 20.8 23.7 0.5
10. if-bundle-2-2.qcore1.pye-paris.as6453.net 48.1% 159 21.3 21.5 20.7 23.9 0.5
11. if-bundle-22-2.qcore1.pvu-paris.as6453.net 79.1% 159 22.5 22.2 21.5 24.1 0.5
12. if-bundle-12-2.qcore2.pvu-paris.as6453.net 83.0% 159 21.7 21.9 21.3 22.7 0.4
13. if-bundle-56-2.qcore1.fr0-frankfurt.as6453.net 88.5% 158 22.3 22.0 21.2 22.6 0.4
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25. 20.117.70.193 3.9% 152 50.4 50.4 49.9 53.2 0.4
NEAR IP has an open peering policy and Microsoft has a selective peering policy (although the policy itself doesn't seem too bad -- minimum of 500MB [sic. ?] of traffic). They're both present on LINX LON1 and LONAP so hopefully they'll peer.
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They've just got back to me again, claiming to have had a "peering issue with one of their providers", which is now apparently resolved. They also said that they've been working on direct Azure peering, which is due to go live sometime in the next 2 weeks.
So far no change from my end in terms of fastest routes to Azure or overall ping times, but if the claim about direct peering is true then that should improve dramatically soon. I'll post back if/when I hear anything further.
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I had F&W install a few days ago and I'm currently with Hey!BB. I see similar weirdness.
It looks like the problem is that connections to Azure go via NEAR IP and Tata Communications, and Tata is routing the traffic via Frankfurt (for reasons which aren't entirely obvious to me). I discovered this by running an MTR to a RIPE Atlas probe hosted by Azure in London:
Seeing as this thread is titled Swish vs Hey!?, here's an mtr to the same probe via Swish:
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. gateway 0.0% 25 0.1 0.2 0.1 0.2 0.0
2. 31.xx.xx.x 0.0% 25 14.2 15.7 2.4 56.9 12.4
3. 10.240.10.16 0.0% 25 3.2 3.9 3.0 17.3 2.9
4. 10.240.10.251 0.0% 25 3.8 3.5 3.3 3.8 0.1
5. cust-141-195-128-178.jurassic-fibre.net 0.0% 25 3.6 3.7 3.5 3.9 0.1
6. 172.20.0.76 0.0% 25 4.0 4.0 3.5 4.5 0.2
7. 172.20.0.87 0.0% 25 3.7 3.8 3.5 4.2 0.2
8. 5.57.81.18 4.0% 25 127.5 83.5 6.1 139.6 53.0
9. ae21-0.icr04.lon24.ntwk.msn.net 0.0% 25 4.4 7.7 4.2 23.7 5.1
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22. 20.117.70.193 0.0% 24 4.8 4.8 4.7 5.0 0.1
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We're not talking about Swish much because they're boringly straightforward. Your trace shows that they peer with Microsoft at LONAP (hop 8), which is what I'd expect for any major ISP in the UK (I expect they also have a peering session at LINX for redundancy).
Sadly Swish seem to struggle with pricing and replying to emails -- I emailed sales@ to try and discuss my options now I've completed my minimum commitment but didn't get any reply. It's difficult to justify paying £50 per month when Hey!Broadband have a Black Friday sale at £21.50 per month!
Regarding Hey!Broadband and Microsoft... I now see my traffic going via LEAP IP (of course) and Arelion. There's still more latency then we would expect, but at least London is now "only" ~38ms away (and it's the lowest latency Azure region). Hopefully LEAP end up successfully establishing peering with Microsoft in London.
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Sadly Swish seem to struggle with pricing and replying to emails -- I emailed sales@ to try and discuss my options now I've completed my minimum commitment but didn't get any reply. It's difficult to justify paying £50 per month when Hey!Broadband have a Black Friday sale at £21.50 per month!
Just been through something similar. Have just renewed with Swish at £28/mo, but with considerable misgivings. My only other alternative for FTTP is Trooli, and their current offer was tempting, but it would mean more boxes and holes in the wall, and long term (when OR finally get here) I don't see myself staying with either Swish or Trooli. Swish's CS is pants these days, they hardly ever reply to emails, they don't follow up when they say they will, and finding someone on the phone who talks sense is increasingly hard. OTOH I've been with them 2 years now, their service has been good, so I rarely need to tangle with CS.
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Just been through something similar. Have just renewed with Swish at £28/mo, but with considerable misgivings. My only other alternative for FTTP is Trooli, and their current offer was tempting, but it would mean more boxes and holes in the wall, and long term (when OR finally get here) I don't see myself staying with either Swish or Trooli. Swish's CS is pants these days, they hardly ever reply to emails, they don't follow up when they say they will, and finding someone on the phone who talks sense is increasingly hard. OTOH I've been with them 2 years now, their service has been good, so I rarely need to tangle with CS.
Same, to be honest. I renewed onto the 900Mb package at £37/mo plus £3 static IP. Billing switchover went fine but my static IP disappeared. Took a week of daily calls, each with a promise from them of an update that never came and a continued insistence that it 'should' work and they couldn't see anything wrong. At one point I was told to call their NOC (which, I know now, is 24/7 except for when the engineer's on lunch) myself and sort it out directly. Still didn't help and the NOC guy was very confused as to why he was getting a call direct from a customer.
The way Swish does static IPs is by mapping the router's WAN MAC address to the IP, so if you change routers you lose your static IP and are back to CGNAT. However I hadn't changed anything. Eventually one of the agents read back to me the MAC they'd allocated my static IP to and it turned out someone must have manually prepended two extra hex digits to my router's WAN MAC address in their mapping table. Once I pointed this out to them they could finally fix it.
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The way Swish does static IPs is by mapping the router's WAN MAC address to the IP, so if you change routers you lose your static IP and are back to CGNAT.
Nearly all modern routers support MAC spoofing. I spoof the MAC of the Swish provided router that I have never used.
You can find the expected MAC on the devices tab of the Swish account page.
https://portal.swishfibre.com/Devices
OPNSense on Topton N100 - SWISH Fibre 900
NextDNS (subscription) - Unifi for Wifi
My Broadband Ping
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I agree with everything you've said here. Their service largely works as you'd expect, but what was a great deal when I first signed up to them is now quite expensive compared to other offerings and while they were quick on the ball to get a replacement sorted when my ONT died, your chances of engaging their email support is slim to none.
Hey, on the other hand, I've honestly been very impressed with. They have a live chat on their website, which is a bit hit and miss, but I raised this whole Xbox latency thing with them via email and for a query that I expected to go nowhere they've been fantastic. The same agent followed the case right up to their peering team and they've emailed today to say that the direct Azure peering has gone live, and I've confirmed that my Xbox pings have dropped from ~80ms to 14ms - the same as I got with Swish. Meanwhile, the Azurespeed website is now showing the two UK datacentres and France as the "closest", rather than Spain, Italy, and Germany.
I'd happily recommend them.
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Just noticed the latency to the BQM has dropped back to what it has always been until quite recently.
My Broadband Ping - 20241126
My latency to London Azure has also decreased to 24ms from approx. 35ms.
Fast.com browser test is 2ms (9ms loaded)
OPNSense on Topton N100 - SWISH Fibre 900
NextDNS (subscription) - Unifi for Wifi
My Broadband PingEdited by smouty (Tue 26-Nov-24 12:12:43)
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Just noticed the latency to the BQM has dropped back to what it has always been until quite recently.
Yeah, looks like APFN ( AS5482) now peers with Netconnex (Think Broadband's hosting provider) at LONAP. The traffic previously went via Arelion, who routed it via Amsterdam for reasons not entirely clear to me.
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. _gateway 0.0% 100 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.6 0.1
2. 31.22.13.2 0.0% 100 4.4 12.1 3.8 53.3 11.1
3. 10.240.10.16 0.0% 100 8.6 6.1 4.4 21.4 3.1
4. 10.240.10.251 0.0% 100 4.9 5.4 4.7 20.0 1.6
5. cust-141-195-128-178.jurassic-fibre.net 0.0% 100 5.3 5.9 4.9 18.2 2.4
6. 172.20.0.76 0.0% 100 5.7 5.6 5.0 6.1 0.3
7. 172.20.0.87 0.0% 100 5.8 5.7 5.2 8.9 0.4
8. lonap-gw1.thdo.ncuk.net 0.0% 100 5.1 5.5 4.7 22.1 2.1
9. ae11-11.edge-rt2.thdo.ncuk.net 0.0% 100 5.4 5.5 4.8 20.4 1.5
10. te1-51-36.core-rs3.thdo.ncuk.net 0.0% 100 5.4 5.6 5.2 7.5 0.3
11. po5-32.core-rs4.thdo.ncuk.net 0.0% 100 5.5 5.6 5.1 7.6 0.3
12. pingbox1.thinkbroadband.com 0.0% 100 5.3 5.3 4.9 6.5 0.2
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