Talk Talk LLU broadband any good?

Talk Talk LLU broadband has been activated at my telephone exchange over the last two months and I'm unsure whether to move to them from a good Zen Internet service.

Everything with Zen Internet has been fine (apart from the odd speed dips but that's ADSL for you) but I've heard I may be able to get a slightly faster speed from an LLU connection and also, we've already got Talk Talk for line rental, so I'd be saving £10 a month on broadband.

Has anyone got any advice?

Thanks.

Will you post your line stats for viewing, use this http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.php

Mac

DownStream Connection Speed 4192 kbps
UpStream Connection Speed 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 45.0 db
Noise Margin 8.6 db


Thanks

Paul

The main reason that you might get slightly faster on LLU is that BT (and therefore anybody using BT's infrastructure) apply what is known as a line profile (also IP profile or BRAS profile - all mean the same thing essentially), the profile is rounded down to the nearest half megabit per second so at 4192Kbps sync you'll be on a profile of 3500Kpbs loosing you 17% throughput.

LLU operators don't use the line profiles so you get the full speed of the line

Potentially more use, though, is to figure out why your sync is rather low for the 45dB attenuation reported by the modem and whether you can do anything about it. Try repeating the measurement while connected using the test socket inside your master socket and see if things improve - the "normal" sync at 45dB should be 6-7Mbs

Edited by mr_bean (Sun 13-Nov-11 20:47:25)

The strange thing is that, whilst my Downstream Connection Speed has been 4192 kbps, my IP profile on the BT Speedtester site has actually been reported as 3000 kbps.

I'll see what I can do about connecting to the test socket and report back with my findings.

My router's only about 6ft from our phone socket on a micro-filter, though, so I'm not sure how much difference it'll make.

I reckon you could get another 2000kbps out of you're line with LLU.

That's exactly what someone on another forum said to me.

I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons of moving to Talk Talk LLU, though.

Yes, the faster speed and £10/month saving will be nice but will I suffer regular drop-outs/see my speed throttled in the evenings?

Also, there's the 12-month contract with Talk Talk, so not particularly easy to leave them if things start to go wrong.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

That's exactly what someone on another forum said to me.

I'm trying to weigh up the pros and cons of moving to Talk Talk LLU, though.

Yes, the faster speed and £10/month saving will be nice but will I suffer regular drop-outs/see my speed throttled in the evenings?

Also, there's the 12-month contract with Talk Talk, so not particularly easy to leave them if things start to go wrong.

2 Things why I would not even consider talk talk,
1, Full LLU only( They take over both phone and bb) and can /is a pain to switch back after,also can/does cost you,in one way or another, if you must go talk talk /opal, then consider doing so via a re-seller
2, their customer service/tech support, is pants via the telephone, and their sales staff are known liers, they will spin you a yarn everytime just to get you to sign up, (as that's how they get a good wage) commision from new buisness not truth

But the service it's self is similar to a few other Mass market isp's, offerings o2/sky spring to mind , the connection will be subject to their DLM so will probably rob you of some sync also the default profile will be interleaved, but have read reports that this can be changed to fastpath, (which in theory should give you a better sync rate)

Requests for this are made are via a cumbersum user forum, which isn't too mucxh of an issue unless you have no working bb connection or worse still voice service too at the end of the day, it's a mass market isp. no frills an all that, so if it works ok you will be fine, but if it don't your screwed basically,
Oh i nearly forgot their web censoring/spyware proxy, that follows you around the web in secret, plenty about that here and elsewhere on the interwebs, unless it's via p2p as that gets throttled, well what did you expect for so little money?

I wanted to go to Sky LLU (who have also recently been activated in our exchange) but mum wants to keep Talk Talk for the phone, due to the cheap call bundle she's on (which I can totally understand).

I know I sound desperate about my speed but I live in a small village of 4,000 people and BT Infinity and Virgin Cable are likely to be out of the question for another 5 or more years (Virgin Cable if ever).

My speed's only gone up by 2MB in the 5 and a half years of me having broadband!

Ahh - I've just noticed that Vivaciti LLU 100GB FUP (Fair Usage Policy) is available to me for £19.80/month inc VAT.

Would this be a less 'riskier' option for me (they say they offer high quality broadband on their web site)?

And it sounds like there'd be no worries about the Talk Talk phone line controlled by BT:

"No, for our LLU broadband, we use what is referred to as partial unbundled (SMPF is the technical term)
This means that the changes only effect your ADSL Broadband internet, and there are no changes to your phone line, or to the company you pay your phone bill to, that stays the same, the only exception to this is our Surfwise Complete package, this does include your phone line rental."