Switching ISPS - Please help :o

Hi, I'm hoping you guys can help me here as I'm a bit uninformed of all this broadband lingo.

I've spent countless hours over the past week researching ISP's in my area and I really can't figure out which way to go. Seems everyone thinks every ISP is bad when I read reviews :/

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/NDHAS

It says im almost 2km away from the exchange but my ISP says over 3km so who knows.

My ISP btw is Utility Warehouse and from reading up it seems that means TalkTalk provide my broadband.

I get a terrible 3 to 4mb connection and my upload is around 1mb. I rang my ISP about this and they said I had line errors but offered no way to help other than "change your filters".

If I am to switch ISP's I need a phone bundle with it that includes atleast free weekend calls and I also need a decent usage limit, preferably unlimited as I download a fair amount monthly. Pretty much all I use my internet for is gaming/downloading/streaming.

According to SamKnows the best connection I can get on ADSL2+ is 6Mb which is unfortunately terrible but better than 3mb.

Any real help is apprecited, so far it doesnt matter if i research on O2/Sky/BT/Plusnet. Everyone seems to hate them all :/

If you need any more info that I've left out, just ask

SamKnows is just an estimate based on BT's unreliable database. Post your router stats and we will be able to tell you your expected actuals.

Depending on your usage, O2, Be and Sky are all acceptable.

I switched to Sky a few months ago. I am very happy with them. You can see from my signature, the speeds I was getting from my old ISP once they rebranded as Talk Talk Business, which was why I wouldn't go to them on the LLU hardware, especially as they were less than helpful when it came to complaining about the speed.

During the training period when I first joined Sky, I had a lot of noise from my old microfilters. I sorted that by replacing with the new ones sent. I phoned up sky to ask them to restart the training, and they increased my speed upto what is showing on my ticker. This speed is reliable all through the day.

Line attentuation - 33.5db (Downstream)
21.0db (Upstream)

Noise Margin - 9.5 db Downstream
11.5 db Upstream

Currently 2219kbps down stream and 1020kbps upstream

These stats are lower than I have seen on other occasions tho. My download is usually between 3 and 4mb. And my line attenuation last time I checked was 42

See what I mean by how unstable my conneciton seems to be.

P.S. I've read O2 have become terrible recently, and Sky i just seeem to read bad after terrible review :/.

Be are the best I've seen so far but they would require me to put a BT line back in which just increases my costs tenfold

Posting the full stats copy & paste basically from router to this forum, would give us a better idea of why your speed is so poor,
From your post it would appear that you are fully unbundled( you pay talktalk for both adsl & line rental/calls)

If this is correct then in order to switch to any other isp you first will need an active bt line which is no doubt what be* have told you, to do this the existing service will need canceling,best to give the required period of notice formally in witting via registered post,
Then you have to get your line back onto the bt systems, you can do this by

1, ringing bt retail, requesting a return to donor order, they i think charge for this, but i believe if you take out a calling plan they re connect for free,

or you can possibly do it via the post office or others who offer telephony services ,
but again they will charge as bt openreach charge them, this will also incur some downtime,

Also Full llu is not within the scope of the MAC code system

the only way to avoid any downtime would be to have a new line installed and cease the existing one,

Edited by tommy45 (Thu 26-May-11 16:23:29)

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

P.S. I've read O2 have become terrible recently, and Sky i just seeem to read bad after terrible review :/.

There are also quite a few of us on the Sky forum here who are quite happy. Which is more than could be said for Freedom 2 Surf when I left them

So excuse me for being a newb. Im trying to learn this stuff by simply reading endless google searches.

I thought LLU basically meant an ISP that doesnt use a BT line.

So to switch I just got to avoid ISP's that require BT phone line?

On samknows it says O2/Be is LLU.

Im obviously completely misunderstood here, I was hoping I could switch to a number of ISP's without this upto £150 fee of changing your line back.

If Sky are indeed decent, i.e. dont throttle massively (I download alot via rapidshare and do alot of gaming) then they wouldnt be bad as I already have Sky TV full package

Sorry just notice I wasnt logged in. Both those anonymous posts are mine fyi.

http://i52.tinypic.com/1zyk1e8.jpg

Modem Router info. which is linked to another router FYI

Again, any info/help on this issue is greatly appreciated.

Edited by deleted (Thu 26-May-11 19:28:46)

Re. LLU have a read here, the rest of the site is very informative and quite easy to follow.

Thanks for that link. Pretty informative.

So I'm pretty screwed either way it seems, unless Sky are full LLU? I didnt quite gather that part.

I really cant afford to shell out money for a new BT line right now. Wouldnt make a switch worth it from TalkTalk imo, considering it seems I can only get max 5-6Mbs according to samknows information (although an estimate It cant be far wrong).

It may be that you can improve your connection with some attention to your phone wiring- have you read this section on Bob's site?

Especially the Ring/Bell wire section, that's often a cause of problems.

Perhaps, I do have alot of line errors according to my ISP and previous experience.

Ill have a look a get back to you. TY

In reply to a post by Creepst4r:

Sorry just notice I wasnt logged in. Both those anonymous posts are mine fyi.

http://i52.tinypic.com/1zyk1e8.jpg

Modem Router info. which is linked to another router FYI

Again, any info/help on this issue is greatly appreciated.

Based on the above stats, if you are already on an upto 24mbit adsl2+ product with tt, then with the attenuation reported by the router you should easily sync higher than 5-6mbit in theory,
I can also see that the target snr is possibly set by tt dlm to 12db this is will be contributing to the low speeds, talktalk also can enable a fixed rate profile, which is they hard cap the sync,

I estimate that with a SNR of 6db you should get 12-14mbit ( interleaved) which i imagine will be the default rate adaptive profile, and could see a further increase if interleave was switched off, and the SNR lowered
As for you being able to switch from talk talk full llu to sky full llu , i have read that this is possible,( no technical reason why not ) but as with talktalk the support isn't the best, and the key to achieving this would be to speak to an adviser who was clued up
As the majority of them would not know, and probably would just say no or fob you off,
even if you were successful and things didn't pan out, you would still be in the same situation, You can avoid the connection fee of the £100+ by rtd with bt as long as you take a calling plan too, no connect charge or £30.00

So I should atleast be getting 5-6mbps and possibly 12-14 if I call TT and tell them to turn interleaving off and lower my SNR?

Im currently changing my modem and wiring it to my PC instead of my current powerLAN to see if that changes anything.

So to escape calling my ISP and sounding like an idiot reading techno lingo of his hand, what exactly do I need to ask them?

1) interleaving off
2) target SNR to 6db (btw what is TT dlm? talktalk download manager is my guess for that abbrievation)

Id rather try to see what I can truly achieve out of my line before I think about switchingt o Sky full LLU or BT for that matter.

TY again

I've just come to this thread, (and thanks to Alastair and Bill for the links to my site), and as others have said, you should be getting a much better connection than you are. The difference between the two is huge, so noise margin and interleaving I don't think are what we should be worrying about at this stage. Have a look at the Speed v Attenuation graph pointed to on my Useful links page.

Your attenuation should not be varying between 33.5 and 42dB either. It can change by 1dB perhaps between connections using a particular router, or possibly as much as 3dB by changing router, but 8.5dB is OTT.

Bill suggested you look at the Ring/Bell wire page in my Troubleshooting section. On that page is a picture of the most common sort of master socket, opened up. On the wall at the back is what is called the test socket.

You need to connect a working filter into that, and then connect a router to it using just a short ADSL cable that comes with routers. Post the stats when connected like that, and those should show whether the problem is at your end or outside your control. It is very important that you don't use a plug-in phone extension cable at any point between the test socket and the router for this test, even if it means some messing around.

When you are connected like that, as confirmation that you are on TT please can you run this speed test and post the link to the result. I think that will show the true ISP rather than WebTapestry, though I may be wrong.

Talking to support until we have that info isn't much use.

If/When you do move, you can get Sky LLU on either a line reverted to BT, or as has been suggested perhaps moved to Sky. The on-going costs won't be much different, but let's go into that in more detail after we have found out whether the connection problem is at your end.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for your post Robertos.

Ive been away from home for past few days so only just read this but yes I will try this ring/bell thing.

Im also thinking my modem may need changing as it gets extremely hot sometimes.

Anyhow Ill post back in 1-2 days with my results.

Ty again