Moved from O2 to Orange

Have been with Orange a few days now. I moved from the O2 LLU product.

The switchover went very smoothly and took just over a week after I obtained the MAC from O2 - that was the most difficult part. An O2 advisor gave me the wrong MAC after promising and failing to email me the correct one. Eventually managed to get the correct code by phoning and waiting for ages while the code was obtained.

It was with trepidation I checked the speed of my new connection. I was surprised to find it was slightly higher than I got with O2, and now is substantially better. This morning I got 15.3 mbps download and 0.90 mbps upload and a ping of 23 ms. With O2 I was getting between 11 and 13.5 with a ping of 35ms. O2s upload was always very slightly higher - consistently 1.03 mbps. I appreciate this all might change after the training period, but as long as I get upwards of 11.5 mbps I'm happy.

I am using my own router - flashed with routertech firmware and I have set it to dynamically select from several DNS servers depending on which is quickest at any moment in time - these include OpenDNS, DNS Advantage and BT. I ran a utility on my Mac to find the fastest DNS servers to use for the initial selection.

So far I am a very happy Orange customer!

Good! In the main Orange WBC ADSL2+ is working out well, with good speeds and no reports of contention or throttling, altho' it took me 3 months and a written formal complaint to get speeds as good as my previous LLU.

What are your router stats?

Modem Stats

For those interested in the Routertech firmware it really does transform your router and has loads of options to tweak. I bought a cheap Pluscom AWR-7200 router (currently around £12 + shipping on eBay) and flashed it with the routertech.com firmware. So much better than the stock orange or O2 routers.

In reply to a post by scgf:

Modem Stats

Hi Phillip, after the 10 day training period your upstream speed will increase to 1100 Kbps and your ping will decrease.

You have strange modem stats; I prefer how my 2Wire 2700HGV router gives them.

View Broadband Link Details
DSL Connection Details
DSL Line (Wire Pair): Line 1 (inner pair)
Protocol: G.DMT2+ Annex A
Downstream Rate: 11301 kbps
Upstream Rate: 1152 kbps
Channel: Fast
Current Noise Margin: 9.1 dB (Downstream), 6.5 dB (Upstream)
Current Attenuation: 31.4 dB (Downstream), 15.9 dB (Upstream)
Current Output Power: 20.7 dBm (Downstream), 12.1 dBm (Upstream)
DSLAM Vendor Information: Country: {0xB5} Vendor: {IFTN} Specific: {0xBE71}

http://www.speedtest.net/result/1421334081.png

http://www.pingtest.net/result/44867535.png

I wasn't convinced that OP's actual Syncs were shown. It talks about "Max Attainable Rates"; some routers use this term to mean the fastest it calculates line could hold, but not what it is doing at the moment.

Perhaps a BT Speedtester would confirm?

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sun 07-Aug-11 12:34:42)

This is the information I got from the BT Speed Test link you gave me:

Download speed achieved during the test was - 14707 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 4000-21000 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :18033 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 1075 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 15909 Kbps

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 873 Kbps
Additional Information:
Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 1075 Kbps

Your experience is pretty similar to my experience of moving from Sky LLU to Orange.

Can anyone explain how we get much faster speeds on Orange's supposedly [censored] BT network?

Anyway, personally I'm one very happy orange customer receiving great speeds and unlimited downloading at an almost unbelievably low price!

My explanation would be threefold:

1. It is not BT's (supposedly censored) 20CN IPStream network.
2. It bears no relation to BT (Retail) Broadband packages and does not have their stringent DLM.
3. The IP Profile is continuous (@ about 88% of Sync) not step-wise.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Mon 08-Aug-11 14:34:02)

On (b) are you suggesting that BT Wholesale runs two different DLM systems (Dynamic line management) for BT Retail and Orange, which one is used by other customers of BT Wholesale services.

The continuous IP Profile, I thought that was only on Fujitsu based WBC hardware, which is NOT the whole WBC network.