Switching ISP - will the speed change?

Just some background, I used to be on Sky's mid package but had no end of trouble with slow performance - mainly because I'm far away from the exchange (5km I think!!). I never got more than 512k connection. However one day after rebooting my router I got 2meg and it then degraded again. Sounds like the line was adapting to error rates etc.

Anyhoo after suffering from poor performance I switched to Metronet and I have had a rock solid 3mb download ever since.

So am I tempting fate by switching to say BT ? Will I be back in world of pain 512k??

cheers

I'm afraid that question is unanswerable. However a change from one BT retailer to another is purely a software change (in a database) so there is no need for your physical phone line to be disrupted.

OK - understand

In reply to a post by nightsoil:

Just some background, I used to be on Sky's mid package but had no end of trouble with slow performance - mainly because I'm far away from the exchange (5km I think!!). I never got more than 512k connection. However one day after rebooting my router I got 2meg and it then degraded again. Sounds like the line was adapting to error rates etc.

Anyhoo after suffering from poor performance I switched to Metronet and I have had a rock solid 3mb download ever since.

So am I tempting fate by switching to say BT ? Will I be back in world of pain 512k??

Switching to BT specifically shouldn't affect your connection speed, but it could severely affect your download speed!

The original change from 512kbps when it suddenly gave 2mbps connection sounds like they moved you from a fixed speed service that was all there was available initially to ADSL Max "up to 8Mbps". The line adapting fairly quickly downwards after that is normal on long lines.

If you can post your line stats we may be able to help improve the condition of connection at your end. See here for help finding them.

See this comparison of what others think. Metronet belongs to Plusnet (possibly Madasafish which in turn belongs to Plusnet), and they all belong to BT Retail.

Do you plug the modem/router directly into the master socket, or use either an extension socket or plug-in extension, or even both? What modem/router have you got?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by nightsoil:

Just some background, I used to be on Sky's mid package but had no end of trouble with slow performance - mainly because I'm far away from the exchange (5km I think!!). I never got more than 512k connection. However one day after rebooting my router I got 2meg and it then degraded again. Sounds like the line was adapting to error rates etc.

Anyhoo after suffering from poor performance I switched to Metronet and I have had a rock solid 3mb download ever since.

So am I tempting fate by switching to say BT ? Will I be back in world of pain 512k??

Switching to BT specifically shouldn't affect your connection speed, but it could severely affect your download speed!

The original change from 512kbps when it suddenly gave 2mbps connection sounds like they moved you from a fixed speed service that was all there was available initially to ADSL Max "up to 8Mbps". The line adapting fairly quickly downwards after that is normal on long lines.

If you can post your line stats we may be able to help improve the condition of connection at your end. See here for help finding them.

See this comparison of what others think. Metronet belongs to Plusnet (possibly Madasafish which in turn belongs to Plusnet), and they all belong to BT Retail.

Do you plug the modem/router directly into the master socket, or use either an extension socket or plug-in extension, or even both? What modem/router have you got?

I'll get you the settings later today when I am back at home. I do plug direct into the master socket with microfilter and I am using a Netgear rangemax - I'll have to get you the exact model number later also..

In the CLI probably

telnet 192.168.0.1
adslctl info --stats

Telnet connection refused but here's the stats from the Netgear DG834PN


Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 313317 503405 0 314 4621 38:54:57
LAN 10M/100M 8352168 4027518 0 311 89 1531:04:02
WLAN 11M/54M 11788419 12050132 0 607 658 1531:03:56

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 3776 kbps 448 kbps
Line Attenuation 52.0 db 29.0 db
Noise Margin 7.6 db 23.0 db