IDNet FTTC - Any good and which package?

Hi Everyone,

I'm with Be Unlimited at the moment but as they do not do FTTC presently I am looking at all the options of all the providers. I do some business from home as well as the usual home surfing and BBC iPlayer Downloads, Linux, Updates etc. With ADSL+2 Be can only just cope, 5Mb/1Mb on a 4.2Km Line so FTTC is a no brainer. I am 200M from my enabled Cab so looking at the best provider (Low Contention, Low Latency, No throttling, etc).

How does IDNet compare?

Thanks for your feedback

Simon

I've been on Home Starter Fibre since 18 Feb. Around 600m from the cabinet.

Not lost sync once. IP Profile solid at 38717/10000.

Latency, watch my live BQM link in my sig over the next few days, or give me a couple of sites to ping. I'm on the Stepping Hill exchange.

Note that the peak/off-peak times apply at the weekend as well as in the week. Uploads are not counted.

There is a bit of congestion for a while after midnight when the heavier downloaders start up - you can see the packet loss and latency rise on my BQM. Download speed at those times can fall a bit. Hard to say how much, as I had some bad ones that I have discovered were my wireless link from downstairs playing up, but still got 6Mbps-8Mbps. When I got the same during the day I went and checked wired and got over 35Mbps!

Generally speeds are 32Mbps-36.5Mbps. I don't do many speed tests on this allowance - the BT one uses about 160MB and the tbb one up to 90MB!

Next time I'm awake soon after midnight I'll run a test from near the router so 130Mbps wireless. Wired may be difficult but perhaps.

I believe if the congestion started to spread to important times then capacity would be added.

Thanks Roberto,

Yes, I've just signed up for the BQM Myself to check my current Be connection. Anyway if you could ping say the bbc.co.uk website and also the DNS 4.2.2.1 that could be very useful. I'm also thinking IDNet HomeSuperPro with the Traffic Priority Option. Bit expensive but I'm willing to pay up to 50 quid a month if I get a decent service.

Cheers

LOL re the cost. Seeing as I have a normal usage of 7-8GB .... It was bad enough jumping to this as on O2 unlimited circa 6Mbps connection I was paying £5, about to rise to £9.50 or something. Nice looking package though!

Don't forget if and when you leave Be to kill the BQM, otherwise the next poor blighter to get that address will wonder what is going on - especially if they don't frequent this place.

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

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 212.58.224.138:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 12ms, Average = 12ms

C:\Users\Bob>ping 4.2.2.1

Pinging 4.2.2.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=247
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=247
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=247
Reply from 4.2.2.1: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=247

Ping statistics for 4.2.2.1:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 13ms, Average = 12ms

Ok Good stuff Roberto,

Thanks for the Ping Stats. 12ms would suit me down to the ground, very good. Be has been having a few latency problems lately for some reason, not too much of a headache at the moment at my end but not sure why.

Yes, thanks for reminding me about the BQM, I'm finding it quite useful actually.

I'll give Be a few more months then if no statement I'll jump in the summer.

Cheers

Hey there, Im on Be also, signed up to IDnet today (went live today WOOHOO). Anyway what is BQM?

In reply to a post by Snake:

Anyway what is BQM?

Tbb's Broadband Quality Meter. Details here:

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping

Thanks

Both Bill and I have links to our live ones in our sigs. So any time you can click them and see the current position on our connections.

So we aren't being selective about what you see.

Nearly all serious latency spikes in mine are me doing speed tests. The smaller ones are tbb speed test which single threads 50-90MB, and the very high ones are BT speed tests which hit around 160GB and use 16 threads. Not surprising that latency suffers!

Your Graph looks a lot better than mine, I seem to be getting an average of 4 to 5 percent packet loss with minimum Latency of 20ms with Be. Roll on the summer when I'll end my Be contract and [censored] ADSL technology on a 4km Line.



Cheers