In reply to a post by xiphrex:

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

Take a look at Orly's list

Thanks, that list is very useful!

So really from what everyone is saying there is no BT-less FTTC at the moment.

So then the question is, would there be a point to going for example with Aquiss instead of BT Infinity in terms of network congestion?

The only thing I really care about is the latency, I would like it to be consistently good any time of the day. Next thing I care about is the speed as Im coming from 50mb virgin media which, in terms of speed, has been great. I just wish they would improve their network and solve all the latency issues they have!

There are no LLU FTTC providers yet (sadly).

So everything is on the same network? As in going with BT infinity or someone else at the moment there would be no difference in the quality of the connection or the connection's latency and stability?

At the moment BT is the clear favourite choice

Just haven't found any other ISPs offering close to the same deal.

Two parts
a) The actual FTTC connection from green cab to your home will be managed by BT Openreach. No option here though I believe they guarantee a 20Mbs minimum speed at all times (or line speed if lower). .
b) From the exchange through backbone/ISP -- lots of variations here. Whilst an ISP could use GEA (ethernet access from the openreach handover point) in practice I think all to-date are at least in part using the BT wholesale network - though of course not necessarily within pipes used by *BT retail*

I'm on BT Infinity and completely happy. Performance rarely slows and jitter is virtually 0. However 21CN routing means my latency is a little higher (21ms to bbc) than my O2 adsl service was - traffic getting seemingly routed southampton->birmingham->london

However my key criteria was for video streaming & d/load limitts. On infinity P2P is severely restricted in peak times. However even the 300GB limit is now gone and streaming always works great. I don't generally "game", though son does (xbox live) and has no complaints

Edited by planetf1 (Tue 26-Apr-11 00:06:58)

In reply to a post by planetf1:

However even the 300GB limit is now gone and streaming always works great.

I wonder how the other ISP's will be able to compete with BT on that...

In reply to a post by xiphrex:

So everything is on the same network? As in going with BT infinity or someone else at the moment there would be no difference in the quality of the connection or the connection's latency and stability?

Click the Live BQM in my sig to see my latency. Also:-

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.bbc.co.uk

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.66] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56
Reply from 212.58.244.66: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 212.58.244.66:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 13ms, Average = 13ms

C:\Users\Bob>ping www.jolt.co.uk

Pinging jolt.co.uk [84.234.17.86] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121
Reply from 84.234.17.86: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 84.234.17.86:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 14ms, Average = 13ms

However, I agree with the others it is hard to justify anything other than BT Infinity. In my case I just wanted FTTC for the sake of it, as my usage fits easily into the IDNet lowest package. That is competitive with BT Pricing for 10Mbps upload, particularly as I paid the year up front so got a free month. Static IP is standard.

I suggest you see if you can get some ping results from Infinity users.

Some results from Aquiss for you (Done just now)...

--- www.bbc.net.uk ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 11.885/12.137/12.309/0.099 ms

--- jolt.co.uk ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 20 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 12.818/13.650/21.130/1.746 ms

My Broadband Ping (Turned Modem off this morning hence the Red).

BT routing appears as if it can sometimes be a tad complex -- in my case I'm based nr Southampton but London bound traffic appears to go via Birmingham...

Pings are over Gig.E to HH3 then fttc/infinity STCFORD

bbc.co.uk - 21ms
jolt.co.uk - 21ms
www.sky.com - 20ms
thinkbroadband.com - 20ms

Here's example routing to the bbc

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.244.67]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms api.home [192.168.1.254]
2 10 ms 9 ms 8 ms 217.32.141.4
3 10 ms 9 ms 9 ms 217.32.140.222
4 15 ms 14 ms 14 ms 213.120.161.34
5 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms 217.41.222.26
6 14 ms 14 ms 17 ms 217.41.222.178
7 13 ms 13 ms 17 ms acc1-10GigE-0-1-0-5.bm.21cn-ipp.bt.net [109.159.248.90]
8 27 ms 23 ms 23 ms core1-te0-15-0-0.ealing.ukcore.bt.net [109.159.248.12]
9 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms core1-pos5-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [194.74.65.122]
10 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 194.74.65.42
11 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.238.153
12 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.239.62
13 22 ms 22 ms 22 ms 212.58.251.44
14 21 ms 21 ms 21 ms bbc-vip112.telhc.bbc.co.uk [212.58.244.67]

Trace complete.

Some of this may relate to the latency of my connection -- obviously with fttc there is no user/isp control on the interleaving settings for example. First hop looks to be around 9ms, rest is ISP.

That was me BTW! (hadn't logged in)

I have been on Infinity for 8 months and it works fine. The current ping to bbc.co.uk is 12ms same for jolt.co.uk and thinkbroadband.com. usually get 12 to 14ms for all main UK sites so BT backhaul works for me. I am in Basingstoke.

Infinity in general is fine unless you need to contact customer services which are not good. So far, touch wood, throw black cat over shoulder etc., my connection has been solid apart from a single exchange issue where the call centre were actually helpful. Other providers have better customer services but they all have to use Openreach if it requires an engineer to sort it. Its a case of you pays your money...

The OP faces a a dilemma I did not have in that he has already got a fast connection whilst I used to get around 1.5Mbs from Sky making FTTC a no brain decision.

I am surprised Virgin are as bad as he says as my daughter who does a lot of online gaming is a Virgin cable customer. Some BT users also moan about online gaming so maybe where you are is as important as the provider as some parts of each of their networks could be congested. If you give us some sites that cause problems happy to test the ping speed.