broadband provider

I am currently with aol whom I find provide an eratic service.
My exchange has not been updated so am limited which service can obtain.
I have two BT lines to my home and if I do a speed test find that I get widely different download results [one on average is 40% slower].
It would appear my choice is limited to BT or O2 -who regarded as best?
Also why do I get such different line speeds?

Please can you tell us the exchange ?

Do you mean you use dialup at the moment? I can't imagine you have broadband on both lines.

Cheddington - use Broadband at the moment on one line. When do the availability check and speed check on both lines get the speed differences

I presume you mean ADSL - in which case you can go with virtually any ISP you like - BT provide the line, but that doesn't concern you, the ISP deals with BT and you deal with the ISP.
Check the users' opinions of their ISPs on this site to see who you're likely to be happy with.
As for the different line speeds, the checkers aren't perfect, and as you already have ADSL on one line that will affect the results. I have 2 lines, one has ADSL and gets the full 8Mb/s that ADSL-1 Max is capable of, if I check the other it says it will get about 6.5Mb/s - I have no idea whether this is true but if so it could be that I have a number of extensions on the second one, while the first has just one phone. House wiriing can affect the line quality that ADSL sees - and not for the better!

Cheers,
Howard

In reply to a post by dexta53:

Cheddington - use Broadband at the moment on one line. When do the availability check and speed check on both lines get the speed differences

Not a good exchange, as you say. But as HDRW says, you can actually get nearly all ISPs as they use BT Wholesale, and he is right about the speed estimates - they are often wildly wrong. So it's just a question of trying to work out which is best for you.

BT Retail Broadband is fairly poor except for people who don't know that things can vary - they are happy that they can use it at the same time as the phone, browse, and do email and shopping/banking. As you have found, AOL also are not top rate.

If you could post your line stats that tells us about your line far more accurately than the checkers. See here for help. The full results from a BT speed test are also important.

Unfortunately the O2 you can get is BT-based, not the LLU product, so far as I can see. If you put your phone number into the availability checker on o2, does it just offer your O2 Access? That is not recommended at the moment as it is frequently over-subscribed and suffers bad slow-downs and poor gaming latency. (And I'm an O2 fan!).

The factors to be looked at as well as your stats and the speed test are how much you download and upload if you have any idea of that, (general type of usage - P2P, FTP, BBC iPlayer and other TV catchups, and so on), and how much you want to spend.

You should be looking at IDNet, Zen, Newnet, AAISP and vivaciti Surfwise 75. (Not the vivaciti Family products which are Entanet based and a bit of a disaster area - that's why vivaciti are now offering Surfwise and an LLU product that you can't get).

These comparisons show what I mean. (As vivaciti are resellers there isn't an entry for them, but there are forums to get users' views about them if they look like they may be the one for you).

Thanks.
Dont use Broadband for gaming but do use to download films, music et and then for general surfing / mail etc. There are three of us using it regularly. The other consideration is I use a Netgear DG834N modem and want to keep. Stats as below

System Up Time 17:02:36
Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoE 2917915 2300383 0 28203 22778 17:02:01
LAN 10M/100M 37096 32398 0 402 109 17:02:29
WLAN 11M/54M/270M 2229756 2903277 0 23165 28783 17:02:21

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1952 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 59.0 db 31.5 db
Noise Margin 11.7 db 18.0 db

I would try the vivaciti Surfwise 75 then. It's a monthly contract so nothing to lose. Their web site is not brilliant but they have a good reputation.

The 834N should work fine.

That noise margin looks very high, but if you only read those stats just before you posted them it looks like you last connected just before 9pm last night.

That's a bad time to connect as background noise is high after dusk and all night till dawn. So your noise margin is set to it's default value and you get a low speed, then in the daytime the noise has fallen so the margin rises but the speed doesn't. You have to re-sync in daylight for best speed.

As it is I expect the IP Profile that would be shown by that BT speed test if you run it will be 1500kbps or lower, and it is that which determines your download speed, not the connection speed (in the short term). See this table and the explanations above and below it. It is important not to connect at night due to the "up to 5 days" lag for profile to rise but almost immediate drop.

Best time to read noise margin is immediately after connecting as that is when it is nearly at your "target" value.