i,ve got my MAC code and i'm off to.......??

Hi all
I have been a long serving customer with (originally) nildram who i found fine, TALK TALK ate them up and now i'm off( due to many many issues mainly xbox live just not working properly!!) So i've finally got my MAC code and i'm looking elsewhere. I would like around 50gb allowance and I currently can only recieve 8meg speeds, The main 3 contenders so far are idnet home plus, BE unlimited and zen active, if Zen would supply me a free modem (I could do with a new one really) I would happily pay the extra for what looks like an excellent service but 50 quid for a modem on top makes it a bit costly.
Thats literally all i want 8meg broadband with around 50gb allowance that actually provides what it asays it will oh and a wireless modem/router!!! any thoughts guys??

Tia

Have you checked you can actually get Be? If so, then that is a no-brainer as the others are still on BT Wholesale DLM.

If you can, then order online (after clearing cookies) through TopCashBack or Quidco, to get £40/£35 cash back in a while.

I suggest Idnet, excellent company and care for their customers. Zen also have a godd reputation. I believe BE have some problems at times according to their forum on here.

try o2. I've just renewed for a further 12 months - I've already had two years. Clued up and helpful techie people, all UK based. Nothing too much trouble. But, they do have to have put their equipment in your exchange - it's no good having a re-labelled BT product. Hope this helps. John

Ah
BE website doesnt work idnet it is then????

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

try o2. I've just renewed for a further 12 months - I've already had two years. Clued up and helpful techie people, all UK based. Nothing too much trouble. But, they do have to have put their equipment in your exchange - it's no good having a re-labelled BT product. Hope this helps. John

A renewed legacy package is a totally different kettle of fish from one of the new packages! Recommending the new ones has to be done with great care.

does idnet have a check ur usage facility on their web site??

What doesn't work?

Try this link.

You really ought to research a little more, you seem to want to jump without really inspecting where you will land .

In reply to a post by blacky:

does idnet have a check ur usage facility on their web site??

Yes, but not real-time. Updates daily, overnight it seems.

In reply to a post by blacky:

does idnet have a check ur usage facility on their web site??

Yes, there's a daily usage facility within your account area, and you can also set up an RSS feed to get the same information.

Updated at midnight.

I've just discovered that I can also download my usage stats for each month in a csv file, I wonder how long that's been there?

Broken down by day and peak/off peak, eg:

Date,Rate,Download,Upload
2011-01-01,FREE,0.75,0.06
2011-01-02,OFF PEAK,0.08,0.04
2011-01-02,PEAK,0.44,0.03
2011-01-03,OFF PEAK,0.01,0.0
2011-01-03,PEAK,0.69,0.04
2011-01-04,OFF PEAK,0.29,0.03
2011-01-04,PEAK,0.28,0.03
2011-01-05,OFF PEAK,0.18,0.02
2011-01-05,PEAK,0.77,0.12
.
.
.

Scope for some playing there

What's that first line Bill? "FREE".

New Year's Day.

Christmas and Boxing day were free as well, IDNet have done that for the last few years.

They used to have the whole Christmas week free, but a few people took excessive advantage of it and spoiled it for everyone else

With all due respect robertos I am researching now!! talk talk simply doesnt provide what I want, trying to find a new isp is almost impossible online as they all rate quite badly wherever you look cos theres always someone with a bad experience !! on BE website I have tried all week to check speed (you need to do this before you order) all I get is this service is currently unavailable and cant continue even if I wanted to!! idnet looks good to me nad i'm hankering for some xboxlive action!!!

That almost sounds as though Be isn't available at your exchange, or is fully taken up. Can you post a link to what samknows says about the exchange, as there may be other good options.

I agree IDNet is good, but no BT Wholesale ISP can really compete with a good LLU. Period .

LLU operator presence
What is this?
AOL: Not available
O2 / Be: Not available
C&W / Bulldog: Enabled
Edge Telecom: Not available
Entanet: Not available
Lumison: Not available
NewNet: Not available
Node4: Not available
Orange: Enabled as of 12/03/2010
Pipex: Not available
Sky / Easynet: Enabled as of 07/01/2008
Smallworld: Not available
TalkTalk (CPW): Enabled
Tiscali: Not available
Tiscali TV: Not available
WB Internet: Not available
Zen Internet: Not available

BT Wholesale informationADSL status: Enabled as of 30/07/2003
ADSL Max status: Enabled as of 31/03/2006
SDSL status: Not available
21CN WBC status: Not available
FTTC status: Not available

In reply to a post by blacky:

With all due respect robertos I am researching now!! talk talk simply doesnt provide what I want, trying to find a new isp is almost impossible online as they all rate quite badly wherever you look cos theres always someone with a bad experience !! on BE website I have tried all week to check speed (you need to do this before you order) all I get is this service is currently unavailable and cant continue even if I wanted to!! idnet looks good to me nad i'm hankering for some xboxlive action!!!

I got that the other day as well but I know my exchange wasn't enabled I was just hoping to find an idea of a date. Use samknows to find out if anybody has unbundled your exchange

I have literally just signed up with sky can't comment on them as I only just requested it. However at £7.50 a month and with 14days I can cancel within if I am not happpy with the connections speeds etc. We have normally a 10gb usage and I was struggling to find descent price from non LLU options. Somebody posted a link on my wanting to leave f2s thread. Which was looking like £12 a month for 10gb usage. IDnet caught me out initially as when I searched through this
site it was telling me I would have 12Gb download but I later twitted that only 2Gb could be peak I was so used to unlimited off peak with f2s I didn't realise some limit off peak.

Yep, Be isn't present at the exchange, so you can't have it anyway.

There are three LLU things you can look at, all available from both xilo/uno and vivaciti.

Xilo/uno - either of the Pro 16 packages. Note the more expensive one is ex vat. I forget the difference between the two, (I expect the expensive one is the prioritised Office product), but they are provided using the C & W wholesale products.

The vivaciti equivalent is the "LLU Unlimited (C & W)".

The second and third are not shown on xilo/uno website, you need to ring up for details. The equivalent vivaciti ones are Surfwise Variety and Surfwise Complete.

The difference between Variety and Complete is that Complete is full LLU, where the phone line goes as well, like TalkTalk LLU. Variety is partial LLU, which to me is far preferable.

Those run on TalkTalk Business Wholesale. Not subject to TalkTalk traffic management! Think of TT as being the BT Total Broadband using BT Wholesale, and the xilo/uno and vivaciti as being the IDNet style using TT Business Wholesale.

Hope that helps. As already agreed, I think, IDNet is one of the best on BT Wholesale, but LLU has to beat them if there is the slightest hint of instability on your line.

If you can find and post your line stats we could give you reliable speed estimates, and also see if there is a problem with your line even now. See here for help.

Can't thank you enough for this mate!! here are router stats, my speeds and stuff are fine (better then ever) I just cant get on x box live from time to time and now for over a week, but if I go to someone elses house it works with no probs thats why i need to leave talk talk (that and the attitude i got when i called them!!) sorry cant get the spaces right when i post!!!

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 454550 851263 0 343 1 4871 21:48:12
LAN 10M/100M 3634548 1864949 0 2752 401 91:10:46
WLAN 11M/54M 105326 92787 0 258 48 91:10:36


ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 8189 kbps 921 kbps
Line Attenuation 20 db 5.5 db
Noise Margin 17 db 5 db

The answer to that post is "Wow!"

You said at the start "currently can only recieve 8meg speeds". Uh uh!

On IDNet that is true, plus you would have a BT IP Profile of 7150kbps. For an explanation of what that means see this page. But you can't get the IDNet Home Plus package anyway as your exchange is not WBC enabled . You have to look at this range, which is less attractive. Note your upstream connection would be only half what it is now.

On my xilo/uno and vivaciti suggestions you should connect at between 18Mbps and 20Mbps and get over 80% of that as download speed. Plus upload at over 900kbps like now.

Which to go for I really don't know as I'm not a gamer so don't know what the pings on each would be like. For speeds I would go LLU purely because it is LLU similar to what you are on now.

Do you get disconnections/re-syncs happening a few times or more a week, or does the line hold for ever. If the former, then definitely LLU. If the latter, it doesn't matter as much. Background reading on my website about the BT DLM which IDNet has to use, and "What is LLU?" page. Looks like you had a disconnection less than 22 hours ago?

I forgot to say, NickJ's suggestion of Sky is worth checking out as well - I was meaning mine as alternatives to that.

Watch out for the LLU Broadband plus Sky line rental though. That is full LLU again. Broadband plus Sky Talk calls is fine.

thats it sorted mate i'm off to xilo pro16 home order placed and ready to go lets hope were trouble free from here on in £40 migration fee stings a bit though but at 14.99 a month if they are as good as the look i'll gain it back over the years..

Many thanks

£14.99?

£17.99 on the website?

Is it £14.99 + Vat?

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 19-Feb-11 23:38:34)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I forgot to say, NickJ's suggestion of Sky is worth checking out as well - I was meaning mine as alternatives to that.

Watch out for the LLU Broadband plus Sky line rental though. That is full LLU again. Broadband plus Sky Talk calls is fine.

what is the problem with this? I have had my line rental with them since Oct and just given instruction for broadband. Thanks.

In reply to a post by NickyJ:

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I forgot to say, NickJ's suggestion of Sky is worth checking out as well - I was meaning mine as alternatives to that.

Watch out for the LLU Broadband plus Sky line rental though. That is full LLU again. Broadband plus Sky Talk calls is fine.

what is the problem with this? I have had my line rental with them since Oct and just given instruction for broadband. Thanks.

As I said, if you have Sky LLU broadband and Sky line rental then they put you on to full LLU, just like TalkTalk do.

That is no problem in itself, but it means that your phone line no longer qualifies as a "BT line" for other ISPs. So if you ever want to migrate the broadband elsewhere you have to get the phone line moved back to another provider first then order the broadband afterwards.

This can mean a possible phone connection fee and a possible 1-2 weeks without any broadband.

Having said that, BT themselves seem to be able to do this seamlessly, and Sky seem to cooperate. There have been a couple of posters in the last few weeks where BT have taken over the line first, and Sky have let the LLU broadband continue until BT then migrate the user to Infinity.

From the user point of view that isn't too bad. Free move back, no loss of service, and Infinity is possibly the front runner for BT FTTC, though not the one I chose.

Many people however wouldn't want to go from Sky LLU broadband to BT phone and BT ADSLx broadband!

In theory the same sequence can be followed by any provider. I have yet so see an instance, but we see many where the bad scenario occurs.

(Edit - speeling mistake).

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 20-Feb-11 15:45:32)

In reply to a post by blacky:

Hi all
I have been a long serving customer with (originally) nildram who i found fine, TALK TALK ate them up and now i'm off( due to many many issues mainly xbox live just not working properly!!) So i've finally got my MAC code and i'm looking elsewhere. I would like around 50gb allowance and I currently can only recieve 8meg speeds, The main 3 contenders so far are idnet home plus, BE unlimited and zen active, if Zen would supply me a free modem (I could do with a new one really) I would happily pay the extra for what looks like an excellent service but 50 quid for a modem on top makes it a bit costly.
Thats literally all i want 8meg broadband with around 50gb allowance that actually provides what it asays it will oh and a wireless modem/router!!! any thoughts guys??

Tia

Hi, if you are after a low priced excellent router that works well with 360 Xbox Live, go for the BT Business Hub 2Wire 2700HGV wireless router, you get one from eBay.

http://support.2wire.com/?page=view&article=29&text=...

http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwardi...

ebay http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=m570&_nkw=...

You may find your XBox problems are nothing to do with your ISP but to do with your router.

When it works at another house it is using a different router as well as ISP.

Thanks Robertos, I will watch out for that.