Thinking of moving broadband (AOL/TalkTalk to BT Infinity)

Hello,

My current broadband provider is AOL (aka TalkTalk) and it looks like my contract with them is up because they keep trying to get me to extend it with money off offers. We're a heavily connected household (even the TV connects to the WiFi) but the broadband speeds we're getting are quite low at around 3.6MBPS. So, I'm thinking of moving.

I've done a post code check with BT tonight and they indicate that Infinity is available for my post code/phone number. I like the sound of that.

So what do I need to do to get the ball rolling. I've done a quick Google and found that some say I must get a Mac code while others suggest otherwise. Accordingly, I'm confused.

BT Infinity is just the BT Retail Broadband name for their Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) product. Nearly every ISP in the country offers their own, including TalkTalk and Sky. (Sky and perhaps TT not in as many exchanges as everyone else).

I'm with Plusnet and perfectly happy, but the 250GB peak time allowance may not be enough for you.

I'm not sure what the TalkTalk fibre products are like in terms of allowance. BT Infinity and Sky Unlimited are both unlimited, though BT throttle P2P at times.

Whether or not you need a MAC depends on what your existing connection is, BT Wholesale based, partial LLU, or full LLU. As the BT Infinity checker recognises your number, you are almost certainly not on full LLU. So you will need a MAC.

A few confirmatory checks we can do are:

- who is your phone line rental with?
- does the BT Performance Tester run for you, and if so please post the contents of the two text boxes.
- can you find and post your router stats, See here for help.

With AOL, unlike TT, you are on Partial LLU, i.e the line is supplied by BTw, even if you pay line rental to AOL.

Therefore you need a MAC from AOL to give to BT when you order Infinity.

Thanks for responding.

Ok, the BT test doesn't work. In terms of stats from my router, here's a link to a screen shot of this:



http://internaut.smugmug.com/Other/2012-Bits-and-Bob...

Edited by deleted (Fri 07-Sep-12 21:52:03)

you should be able to recieve much higher than that even if your are on adsl MAX

i suspect your on LLU so like i say should be able to get much higher speeds already.

how is your router setup now? i.e is the router on the master phone socket or an extension ? how many sockets are the house? if more than 1 socket have they all got filters ?

In reply to a post by Internaut:

Ok, the BT test doesn't work.

It won't cuz you are on Partial LLU.

However you should be getting 14 Meg if you are the "up to 20 meg" package or 8 Meg if you are on the "up to 8 Meg" one.

Right .

As the others have picked up, you seem to be on partial LLU, (which the failure of the BT test indicates - which is why I asked you to try it), but with much lower downstream connection speed than would be expected from your attenuation.

You didn't say who your line rental is with? If it's AOL it doesn't tell us much. If BT or most others, it guarantees it is not full LLU. Only with full LLU would you not need a MAC.

However, there looks to be more than one factor preventing you getting the 15Mbps or more that a 31dB attenuation often reaches. Your noise margin is high, but nowhere near what it would be if you were not being restricted in some way or other. Is your package supposed to be "up to 8Mbps" by any chance?

Do you think you could power down the router for 10 minutes some time during daylight, then take the stats again immediately after you get reconnected? That should give us a bit more info, in particular the DSLAM setting for the target noise margin.

What's concerning me is that there may be some problem that could have a bad effect on FTTC if you go for it. Though in most cases the engineer installation procedure cures things.

Or of course, if you could get 15Mbps by an ADSL2+ upgrade or migration, you may be interested in that. Getting the current issues resolved could be a fair bit of hassle though.

In view of your earlier description of the usage in your household, FTTC would be your best option. Both BT and Sky, (if Sky FTTC is available), require you to have your line rental and calls with them. Most others aren't so fussy. You might find this page useful background reading.

I might not be around till Tuesday.

In reply to a post by Ianph:

you should be able to recieve much higher than that even if your are on adsl MAX

i suspect your on LLU so like i say should be able to get much higher speeds already.

how is your router setup now? i.e is the router on the master phone socket or an extension ? how many sockets are the house? if more than 1 socket have they all got filters ?

The positioning of the router is hardly optimal (there are meters of cable between the main BT socket and my bedroom, going up stairs, round various features of our slightly mad Victorian terraced house). My understanding is we should achieve approximately an additional 1MBPS given optimal placement (trying that has been on the great, rolling todo list for weeks). We're on an 8MBPS package but when it was sold to me, I was advised to expect a maximum around 5-6MPBS given the distance to the BT cabinet.

I do have a spare router, supplied by AOL, so I'll try that connected directly to the main BT socket over the weekend.

The rest: Now, we have extensions from the main BT socket to three places - the living room (currently unused, so no splitter), the hallway (DECT phone base station, connected to splitter) and of course my bedroom where the router is located (for purely hysterical reasons - that's where the old USB DSL modem was connected to a desktop PC). There is no power close to the main BT socket but we're in the process of sorting that out.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Right .

As the others have picked up, you seem to be on partial LLU, (which the failure of the BT test indicates - which is why I asked you to try it), but with much lower downstream connection speed than would be expected from your attenuation.

You didn't say who your line rental is with? If it's AOL it doesn't tell us much. If BT or most others, it guarantees it is not full LLU. Only with full LLU would you not need a MAC.

However, there looks to be more than one factor preventing you getting the 15Mbps or more that a 31dB attenuation often reaches. Your noise margin is high, but nowhere near what it would be if you were not being restricted in some way or other. Is your package supposed to be "up to 8Mbps" by any chance?

Do you think you could power down the router for 10 minutes some time during daylight, then take the stats again immediately after you get reconnected? That should give us a bit more info, in particular the DSLAM setting for the target noise margin.

What's concerning me is that there may be some problem that could have a bad effect on FTTC if you go for it. Though in most cases the engineer installation procedure cures things.

Or of course, if you could get 15Mbps by an ADSL2+ upgrade or migration, you may be interested in that. Getting the current issues resolved could be a fair bit of hassle though.

In view of your earlier description of the usage in your household, FTTC would be your best option. Both BT and Sky, (if Sky FTTC is available), require you to have your line rental and calls with them. Most others aren't so fussy. You might find this page useful background reading.

I might not be around till Tuesday.

Thanks all for you help tonight. I'll have a good look at the wiring around our house and try a router connected direct to the main BT socket and see what we get from that. In reply to RobertoS, we're on an 8MBPS package but our distance from the exchange means that 5-6 is the realistic maximum. Sorry to be a bit vague on the line rental - I need to check that.

we're on an 8MBPS package but our distance from the exchange means that 5-6 is the realistic maximum

Someone's having you on there, or there is a bit of misunderstanding. The absolute determinant of line length is the downstream attenuation.

There are two speeds. The connection speed and the real life throughput speed. On 31dB you should be getting a connection speed of over 8000kbps, not your 3676kbps. On 8000kbps you should get well over 6500kbps actual throughput.

I suspect your wiring as you have since described is a major reason for your lousy speeds.

If you move to an "up to 20Mbps+" product, on a decent line you should connect at over 15Mbps, and on a poor one at over 13Mbps. There are a few graphs and calculators around. I find this one a handy guide.

OP already on ADSL2+ not ADSL1. THats how AOL do their Up To 8 product. So moving to an Up To 20 wont change a thing until OP sorts wiring.

Edited by XRaySpeX (Sat 08-Sep-12 00:36:43)

[cough]
I know he is on ADSL2/2+, but he is capped. That could explain why the noise margin isn't sky-high. As it is, 6dB might achieve the 8Mbps once his wiring is sorted. Maybe I could have worded it better. My major point to him re that was the potential speed on ADSL2+ uncapped, versus going to FTTC.

I think it's more a case that he would be capped were he able to get a good speed, but he isn't so he ain't.

I was just pointing out that he won't get those sort of "bad" speeds on his bad line were he on an uncapped product.

I remember when I was capped to 8092 K on my 27 dB line the NM was held at 22 dB.

Have fun

Well here's a free bump for ya. So what's happened since? Well:

Firstly, connecting the router to the master socket didn't improve the speed reported by the broadband speed test, but it did make streaming services more reliable. So, for a few months I was happy enough with 3.5 to 4 Mbps.

Second, I got a cold call from BT three weeks ago. They offered me unlimited broadband and calls, plus BT Sport, for a small premium over what I was paying already. BT also told me that based on the speed I reported to them, they would expect to provide at least double that with their max 16mbps product. I took the bait....

Last Tuesday, the Home Hub 4 popped through the letterbox (I like that touch), and at 4PM the AOL service stopped. I plugged the Home Hub in (blue light in approx 2 minutes) connected up for the first time, and ran the broadband speed test. It reported 12.1 and has done so fairly consistently since then. Everything is faster now, and those streaming services that have always been a bit sub par for me (4OD and ITV spring to mind) have been (crossed fingers) flawless so far.