Author Topic: Your internet BB speed ? (Read 123976 times)

Jaded · « **Reply #600 on:** 12 July, 2017, 08:59:33 am »

If there are enough houses around without coverage, have a look at setting up community broadband

citoyen · « **Reply #601 on:** 22 October, 2017, 03:43:05 pm »

We switched ISP from BT to Vodafone last week. My wife is on a Vodafone mobile phone contract and they offered her a good deal, also promising that we would get slightly faster internet than we were getting with BT.

Our connection with BT wasn't great but it was at least useable - it only occurred to me after the event that I should have done a speed test before we were disconnected for reference, but looking back over the thread, I posted a speed test result of 21.15mb/s on 3rd September 2014, although Vodafone claim BT were only giving us a maximum of 17mb/s.

Our internet is now barely useable. Upload speeds are ridiculously slow, which is a real problem because I'm now working from home full time and need to be able to share large files with my colleagues. And when I'm uploading stuff, it clogs the upstream connection to the point that I can't even send email.

After numerous calls to Vodafone, we've finally got them to stop suggesting it's a problem with our internal WiFi network (nothing has changed inside the house except swapping from the BT to the Vodafone router) and they have promised they will "investigate". If I open the router interface in my browser, it claims that we're getting ~21mb/s, though this is demonstrably a lie (according to a speed test conducted using a computer connected directly to the router by ethernet with all other data-hungry hardware in the house powered off).

There is some potential good news on the horizon though. Our problem historically is that the green cabinet we're connected to is about a mile away, and the exchange is over six miles away. They installed FTTC a few years ago but we're still on copper for that last mile. However, while out walking the dog this morning, we noticed that a brand-new green cabinet had been installed less than 200m from our house, and it appears to be connected to the line that serves our house. This is potentially very exciting news indeed.....

Now it's just a case of finding out how we can take advantage of this new fibrous goodness.........

Jim400 · « **Reply #602 on:** 26 October, 2017, 03:43:44 pm »

Cheating as it's not my BB speed, but inspired by the "Which cloud service? Pro's and cons" thread:

Playing around with the Mother-ship's new MS Azure subscription, this is an instance of Ubuntu running on a virtual server 'somewhere' in 'UK South'.

It's actually fairly shocking just how fast the internet can be if you're not constrained to a soggy piece of string (like we are on site) and certainly changes things, why bother downloading data to do something with.

citoyen · « **Reply #603 on:** 26 October, 2017, 04:04:36 pm »

citoyen · « **Reply #604 on:** 26 October, 2017, 04:07:11 pm »

After less than two weeks with Vodafone, we're sacking them off. They're a total shambles. And when you're having problems, as we are, they make it impossible to speak to someone who actually knows what they're talking about. So frustrating.

We're jumping back over to Sky. Fingers crossed they're a bit more competent (first impressions from speaking to their customer services are favourable).

hellymedic · « **Reply #605 on:** 05 November, 2017, 12:31:53 pm »

Greetings from the Metropole Hotel, Llandrindod Wells.

Giraffe says 'F***!'

Welsh notspot?

Not!

Kim · « **Reply #606 on:** 05 November, 2017, 04:13:25 pm »

Cor! Bet the mobile's still in GPRS-land, thobut.

Wombat · « **Reply #607 on:** 05 November, 2017, 09:43:40 pm »

There have been drastic improvements in middle Welshland of late. I am currently getting 4G in Caersws, whereas I barely got a signal before, and inLlanbfair Caereinion, where you had to stand on a particular area about a metre square to be able to make a call, we're getting 4G most of the time. We can even get 3G where our new home allegedly is (if we ever get there...)

Basil · « **Reply #608 on:** 05 November, 2017, 10:50:37 pm »

Really good 4g here in Llandysul.
As long as you are EE or Vodafone.
O2, 0g.

So how come all of our visitors are on O2?
Tough. Serves them right.

Poly Hive · « **Reply #609 on:** 14 November, 2017, 03:44:00 pm »

We have had very good customer service with Sky. The problem in the end was a loose wire in the BT wall box and our BT experience was bloody shockingly bad.

One tech turned up at dusk and sucked his teeth, complained about being called down from Edinburgh, cited H&S and buggered off with obviously no intention of doing anything but turning up!

Sky though I have to be honest and say the lady at the call center went several extra miles considering us to be her special customers and apologizing for taking three days off but told us she would keep an eye on it from home! Truly!!

Cable has been strung and two techs I chatted to a week ago said probably by mid summer we will be FTTH so at least there is light at the end of the rather dim 5meg tunnel.

PH

citoyen · « **Reply #610 on:** 15 November, 2017, 10:46:14 am »

Quote from: citoyen on 22 October, 2017, 03:43:05 pm

There is some potential good news on the horizon though. Our problem historically is that the green cabinet we're connected to is about a mile away, and the exchange is over six miles away. They installed FTTC a few years ago but we're still on copper for that last mile. However, while out walking the dog this morning, we noticed that a brand-new green cabinet had been installed less than 200m from our house, and it appears to be connected to the line that serves our house. This is potentially very exciting news indeed.....

Now it's just a case of finding out how we can take advantage of this new fibrous goodness.........

The plot thickens. There are Men At Work today, continuing work on wiring up the new cabinet. They say it won't be up and running for another couple of weeks, but the good news is that we could potentially take advantage. The only potential stumbling block is that each provider only has a certain number of slots in the cabinet, so it's a case of getting onto Sky and making sure they bagsy one of those slots for us.

Fingers crossed...

Tbh, my download speed since we switched back to Sky seems to be just about sufficient for my needs - back to the same level it was with BT. What I really need is to get our upload speed boosted - it remains as shockingly bad as it has always been.

Bledlow · « **Reply #611 on:** 06 December, 2017, 02:25:50 pm »

Virgin have just bumped me up. E-mail arrived & I immediately ran a test. They promised up to 100 meg & delivered 116.8, according to speedtest.net. Upload's not exactly in the same league, though: just over 6.

Kim · « **Reply #612 on:** 12 December, 2017, 07:14:43 pm »

Just in case anyone was wondering how their line compares to ADSL over literal wet string:
http://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html

Mrs Pingu · « **Reply #613 on:** 24 December, 2017, 09:55:38 pm »

Quote from: Mrs Pingu on 28 December, 2010, 10:36:14 pm

Something to do with the horrible crackling noises I can hear when I pick up the phone, perhaps?

FFS, 0.71 download, 2100ms ping. Why does our BB always croak at Christmas?

hellymedic · « **Reply #614 on:** 02 January, 2018, 11:50:25 pm »

Greetings from Premier Inn, Christchurch West.

I could buy faster broadband but won't.

thing1 · « **Reply #615 on:** 28 February, 2018, 03:28:16 pm »

2 months into my Virgin Media contract, it's finally started serving the kind of speeds it promised all along. Maybe a day of sub-zero temps suits it better.

Beardy · « **Reply #616 on:** 28 February, 2018, 03:35:58 pm »

We'd all have fibre to the premises by now if Maggie hadn't decided to stop BT from rolling it out.

citoyen · « **Reply #617 on:** 25 April, 2018, 11:36:06 am »

We had a Sky engineer round yesterday to investigate ongoing problems with our internet connection - it keeps dropping out for no obvious reason. He replaced the router and booked an Openreach engineer to come today to check the line.

Openreach engineer checked the line and found no faults. He reckoned our download speed is actually 'better than expected' considering how far we are from the cabinet (just over a mile). This accords with my experience - we were told to expect 17Mb but can get 20Mb on a good day. No one can explain why our upload speed is so poor though - never better than 0.5-0.6Mb, when we should be getting at least 1Mb, if not closer to 5Mb. Best guess is that it has been capped at the exchange by the automated software that manages these things - I understand the principle that it limits your broadband signal for stability, but 0.5Mb is extremely poor.

The Openreach engineer also tried to investigate the new cabinet that has been installed about 200m from our home to see if it is online yet. He couldn't even open it! But a call to the control centre managed to ascertain that it is not yet online. No indication of when it will be operational - it was installed before Christmas, so god knows what they are waiting for.

Oh well, we've been waiting for a decent internet connection for so long that another few months won't make much difference. Very frustrating though.

Connection seems to be stable today at least - I'd normally expect to have lost the connection a couple of times by now, which suggests the old router may well have been faulty. That's some kind of progress, I guess.

slope · « **Reply #618 on:** 28 June, 2018, 04:30:24 pm »

Hurrah! After failing to turn up on Monday, several ridiculous long complicated phone calls with BT call staff, Openreach arrived today for an appointment which was rescheduled for tomorrow! FTTP now comes all the way up the remote narrow Gwynant valley in Snowdonia and up the dead end of my stony track, as of this afternoon

EDIT: Should say I chose the cheapest/slowest FTTP 50Mps £36/month package based on cost and thinking anything better than 1.3Mbps MAX was going to enhance my life? $:-\$

hellymedic · « **Reply #619 on:** 28 June, 2018, 04:53:36 pm »

Enjoy! Speeds may creep up a bit over the next couple of days.

Looks comparable to my corner of Outer Londonton.

Ham · « **Reply #620 on:** 02 July, 2018, 02:44:19 pm »

I've just cut DOWN my speed, as part of a deal that saves me £250 / year. Now, I only get 110mb down and 17 up.

I can live with that

Kim · « **Reply #621 on:** 03 July, 2018, 01:49:31 pm »

After student moving chaos at the weekend (I'm sure they didn't used to *all* move in on the same day, the driving was appalling), and a couple of line drops in the last 24 hours, it appears our bonus summer megabit has arrived.

ian · « **Reply #622 on:** 03 July, 2018, 01:59:45 pm »

Apparently BT are offering fibre direct to the remote command centre. On the basis that Virgin offer me non-existent cable every two days, I'm not entirely convinced that's true, but there's is a shiny cabinet at the bottom of the road that at present delivers Infinity 2 at about 70Mb/s.

That said, I honestly can't think what I need more Mb/s for. I must be getting old.

hellymedic · « **Reply #623 on:** 03 July, 2018, 02:11:04 pm »

You need faster broadband because modern websites are bloated and it's getting more difficult to prevent images and videos etc loading automatically.

I STILL don't need pictures of bananas when ordering my groceries. 'Banana' has had meaning to me for 55 years.

Kim · « **Reply #624 on:** 03 July, 2018, 02:28:25 pm »

Quote from: hellymedic on 03 July, 2018, 02:11:04 pm

You need faster broadband because modern websites are bloated and it's getting more difficult to prevent images and videos etc loading automatically.

I STILL don't need pictures of bananas when ordering my groceries. 'Banana' has had meaning to me for 55 years.

It's not the picture of the banananas that's the problem (that is, at least, useful to some people), it's all the dubious javascript and advertising bloat. (I'm also a bit of a curmudgeon about the trend to apply TLS to everything. I understand the reasoning, but it means you can't usefully cache web content the way you used to.)

Anyway, that's a red herring. Once you've got enough downstream for n video streams, the main reason people are likely to need faster broadband is because the upstream speeds are stingy on most technologies, and they're wanting to do something upload-intensive (eg. cloud storage, offsite backups, publishing media). Or because they're using some latency-sensitive application and a faster link usually improves that.

Our nightly backup often takes an hour or two at ADSL2+ upload speeds. It'd soon become unworkable if we were doing stuff with photographs or video on a regular basis.

Author Topic: Your internet BB speed ? (Read 123976 times)

ian