Which ISP and bonding options

Hey.

This is my exchange http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/LVWTW
It's market 2
This is my current speed test this morning http://www.speedtest.net/iphone/231731594.png

We currently have 2 lines with aaisp and using a dray trek router to load balence across them. We were on 6 units and updated to 10 unit but are still likely to keep going over and the usage cost is getting to much as it costs more on 20cn which is our only option.

We have always used a reasonable amount of data but with services like Netflix, iplayer, itv player, 4od, 5od, anytime+, iTunes/iCloud/iTunes match, crashplan+ on 5 computers and I use Hulu in the USA via a VPN we are using more and more data each month especially with them coming to more devices etc.

We're looking to change both lines to someone with more usage preferably unlimited if possible. and we are thinking depending on cost to change it to bonded line for the extra speed instead of load balenced.

Any recommendations for ISP and bonding the lines.
From reading around. Understand some ISPs do the bonding for you others you do it yourself with hardware(which hardware?) and yo can get separate bonding services.

Top and bottom I just need advice and suggestions on what to do as we need to do something soon at this rate of data.

I think between the 2 lines and the broadband were currently paying about £75-£85 not including over usage charges.

Edited by Robin1989 (Tue 27-Mar-12 13:31:06)

Have you checked that you cannot get Virgin Media at the address, e.g. keep one AA line for latency sensitive stuff and do the bulk downloads on the Virgin Media link.

Another option is go for BT Total Option 3 on a third line, and do similar.Thus freeing up capacity on the AAISP's for the most critical stuff.

Assuming you are getting the fastest you can from your lines then, no other DSL provider is likely to make things go faster.

I wish I could get virgin but unfortunatly I can't. I had virgin 50 when I was at university last year and they couldn't transfer the account to my home address.

I'll look at the bt.

My main thing I'm looking for is more useage. But I'm also looking at bonded lines to up the speed if possible. A one company solution would be preferred but if a separate service is needed for bonding I'm up for that.

I've been looking at plus net as they seem to have higher useage than aaisp. What they like? And anyone tried bonding there lines?

Hello

I am also looking into a similar thing.

Bonding you can go for BeThere - they take 2 lines and bond them together - its £65 a month plus your line rental. They are offering 3 months free at the minute.

Other option is to use http://uk.sharedband.com/ they will take any ADSL connections and bond them together using some clever custom router firmware.

Other companies like Eclipse I believe just resell the Sharedband service.

Be isn't available at the OP's exchange. See the link in the opening post.

I think MrSaffron's suggestion of "BT Unlimited" is best in the circumstances. (It isn't called Option 3 any more but he's a creature of habit ). You need to click the "Show more broadband" button on that page, under the package featured). Plusnet are OK, but not as technically clued up as AAISP if you have problems.

Most of your heavy usage appears to be streaming, which should be OK with their traffic management, with the option to add the Pro bolt-on if it turns out to be necessary now or in the future.

BT Business Unlimited might be worth a look as well? Note the prices are ex vat.

Sorry missed that.

Sharedband with two lines is probably a good option then.

Hate their current package names, and their product page far too confusing - if you are listening BT Retail

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

(It isn't called Option 3 any more but he's a creature of habit ).

It's still called Option 3 etc in their T&Cs so BT is addicted to same habit

If your usage is mostly out of office hours then you might consider Claranet's "Gamer" account. You don't state what level of usage you are at right now, but they offer a 10 GB "daytime" limit per month and then after hours, they seem not to count (though like many ISPs they have a Fair Usage Policy which covers them for someone trying to pull several hundred GB a month through the network) anything between 1800 and 0600.

You should be able to find the account via www.claranetsoho.co.uk (NB I am not [yet] a customer but the account is tempting to me). They used to have a similar "off peak" residential account costing similar which had to be paid for the whole year in advance. Their current accounts are paid monthly, and there's a one-off fee for a fixed IP if you want it to assist your connecting for Hulu. One possible time when the 10 GB limit might be worth remembering is that on a Bank Holiday Claranet treats it as a work day.

To limit daytime usage, it should be quite easy to link your Draytek to the Claranet router via a cheap 10/100 hub/switch and power that on a timer, so it will allow traffic off-peak when there's no cap, but keep daytime use to your first line. PlusNet with their 60 GB / month limit works well for me (though I download around double that overnight as I am a night own usually, and from 0000 to 0800 they don't count traffic so iPlayer downloads are scheduled for then (series link control within iPlayer desktop).

This is our usage for last few months. it is mainly between 6pm and 8am but there are some months when there is a lot more daytime usage. due to my sisters holidays in school and mine from university etc


Peak Time Other Times
Down Up Down Up
Mar 2012 19.5G 960M 58.1G 13.3G
Feb 2012 13.7G 1.20G 50.8G 13.6G
Jan 2012 3.49G 474M 32.4G 16.2G
Dec 2011 13.8G 3.17G 63.2G 24.9G


The high uploads are from the computers backing up online

How does BT's traffic management compare to Plusnets?

BT just say they will throttle P2P at busy times. Those times can vary, depending on "busy". The Olympics? Andy Murray?

Some users say they never have a problem, others say they have slowdowns every evening. I think it partly depends where you are, the load on your exchange for instance.

I've a feeling the BT Business one has something as well, but different. There's someone on here using it on a "residential" line and swears it is marvellous. With UK support not the normal Indian one.

Can you remind me of AAISP's "peak" and "off-peak" as the hours will be different on an ISP basis - for PlusNet they 'count' traffic as peak from 0800 to 0000 but do most traffic management (on FTP, peer-peer and download sites) from afternoon to 2300/0000.

Does AAISP count the uploads ? I thought they and Zen were only counting downloads.

Anyway, you have relatively low upload traffic in peak hours (I'm guessing 0700-1900) but is there really such a need for so much upload traffic anyway (I'm thinking you might only need to upload full music / video libraries once a fortnight and upload any changes on a daily basis, which would probably cut traffic significantly.

Most backup software I've seen allows for both 'full' and 'incremental' backups. Are you doing full backups every night ? If your "off peak" traffic could mostly be after midnight, then the PlusNet Extra account would cover you with 60 GB during 'working' hours (0800-0000) and if you could be sure 2/3 of your off-peak traffic was in the "uncounted" period of the day, you should still find a 60 GB limit wasn't difficult to fit.

Incidentally, while a customer has an option to buy additional traffic at 5 GB for 5 pounds, I think the policy is to reduce data throughput to 128 Kbps if a customer sets the monthly "extra quota spend limit" to zero pounds (mine is set to that, but I keep within the 60 GB limit most months, anyway, so have not hit the restriction anyway).

I've used PlusNet for a while now and even your peak month (December) is below my regular usage on the Extra account at around a tenner a month (reduced because of small referral benefit, reducing my cost).

I should have added - I think PlusNet pricing is higher only for Market 1, but there was some past discussion here or on PN about customers on Market 2 needing to request their charges be made lower (it was existing customers not seeing an automatic decrease feeling somewhat annoyed, IIRC). Should not apply to you as a new customer, but in case some other PN user on Extra is paying significantly more than myself and is on a Market 2 exchange, they might quibble at the low monthly fee I mentioned.

Re Market 2 and market 3 prices, the website (a week ago so maybe still) was showing a 3-tier system, M1, M2, M3. The pricing pages and so on are quite clear. There are now two prices, M1 and not M1, with the "not M1" = to M3 in the confused parts of the website.

As you say , anyone still paying M2 prices should get it sorted.

peak is 9am to 6pm monday to friday and i think it does include uploads


the system we use for backup is crash plan which does only upload changes - because of our upload speed were still in the initial backup phase of all the data but with one iMac with 1tb internal and multiple external, another with 2tb internal and two laptops with 160gb drives there is a lot of data from the years to upload. thats why we have it set to only upload between midnight and 8am now.

Ok so looking around i think what could be the best option would be to change one line to bt unlimited and the other link to plus net 60Gb and see how that fairs as hopefully mean if one goes down other line can take the slack. plus we shouldn't have any issues with usage then but will check bts fair usage policy first.

also share band is looking to be the best option for bonding unless anyone knows of any better options.

any other suggestions?


hopefully this will either mean cheeper internet or same cost for more usage for us.

Quick question do BT offer any just broadband unlimited or are they all bundled with calls as our calls are currently done as part of our sky package

All current BT Retail offerings require you to have a BT line rental and calling plan.

Plusnet have broadband only, phone line with anyone as long as it is WLR. (A "BT" line, not LLU). I believe you can have a WLR line from Sky. If your Sky line is in use for AAISP then that means it is WLR.

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 29-Mar-12 23:11:18)

Yeah we have one line with sky and the other with bt as sky said there system didn't allow two lines on one account. Looks like we will greed to go with bt on second line and plus net on first so that we can keep the sky talk unlimited. Unless I can get bt to do It without the call stuff and we get them on both lines.