Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => The Knowledge => Ctrl-Alt-Del => Topic started by: clarion on 23 January, 2017, 09:04:05 pm
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We're moving house, so have the opportunity to move to a new supplier. Currently have it in with our gas & electric via Utility Warehouse, who have been reasonably priced. But the service we get isn't great, and wasn't previously under BT (so that might point to something hardware-related).
Anyway, if anyone has any hot tips, I'd be interested to hear...
Thanks
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I'd say the starting points are Plusnet (owned by BT but crucially do their own customer service) for cheap-and-servicable broadband, and A&A for spendy-but-excellent.
<blatant plug>let me know if you want a Plusnet referral code</blatant plug>
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Sign up to a cashback site like topcashback. See which providers are offering cashback deals.
Origin broadband are/were offering 12 months unlimited broadband and line rental for £170.
Topcashback were offering £35 cashback if you clicked through them.
No brainer.
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Likewise here.
I use A+A here in Aberdeen, but I've gone with PlusNet in the Edinburgh flat, where I can't justify the cost of A+A.
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
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Is Plusnet reliable?
And what are the advantages of A&A?
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
Branson gets my hackles up, but there does appear to be a cable TV connection, and we may buckle on that point :-[
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Is Plusnet reliable?
Yes.
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Advantages of A&A approximate to:
They try to do things properly, rather than compete on price. They aim never to have congestion on their network, and their prices tend to map directly to the wholesale costs of the products they're providing, rather than bundling things up in 'deals'.
They give customers as much direct access to their automated diagnostics and control systems as possible; you can run your own line tests.
Advanced diagnostics with pretty graphs mean you can tell the difference between, say, a line fault, something dodgy in BT's network or an upstream problem, rather than guessing.
IPv6, static IPs, various clever technical things you aren't likely to care about.
They're the first in line for sticking it to Theresa.
They have Shaun The BT Slayer, who will stop at nothing to kick our-favourite-telco into action over difficult line faults.
They're fully xkcd://806 (https://xkcd.com/806/) complaint, and are more than happy to communicate in whatever medium you prefer (SMS even, if necessary). If you say you've tested something, they'll believe you.
Lunar billing.
There's a cute cat on some of their documentation.
Disadvantages:
Cost
"Arnold who?"
They supply and support broadband (IP telephony, hosting, etc). They won't help fix your computer.
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I'd look on those price comparrison sites and see which as the best deal for you. I recently used uswitch.
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Thanks :)
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Lots of words that skimmed through and didn't read but then.....
There's a cute cat on some of their documentation.
Er pictures of said cat....Thank you
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Lots of words that skimmed through and didn't read but then.....
There's a cute cat on some of their documentation.
Er pictures of said cat....Thank you
https://support.aa.net.uk/Information_Pack
He also appears on https://order.aa.net.uk/simorder.cgi?sim=DATA
(They've revamped the websites/documentation several times, but regular customers always demand they keep the cat.)
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I just did a quidco cash back (£80 tracked, waiting supplier confirmation) and have a £150 BT reward card on its way for a broadband/voice package that is costing £6/month on a 12 month contract. Paid the homehub delivery and year's line rental up front - £215 I think - so if it all works out it'll be about under £60 for the year total cost. Obviously this means using BT. I decided to gamble cos I'm a cheapskate.
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And if you aren't already on quidco, say so because someone on here (self included but there's plenty of others I'm sure) will be able to give you a referral link. Currently there's a £20 bonus for making a referral once the recipient earns £5 cash back - the person sending the link can set how much if the £20 they keep and how much you get.
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
Branson gets my hackles up, but there does appear to be a cable TV connection, and we may buckle on that point :-[
Virgin are expensive for a broadband-only package, but if you want a cable TV bundle anyway they're not so bad.
However (I have been with Virgin ever since they were Nynex) there is a surprising high incidence of down time, especially in the mornings. They seem to be forever rolling out improvements to the infrastucture, and this invariably involves a bloke opening the cabinet just down the road and scratching his head a lot. (And since BT cable arrived, very often the bloke isn't even looking in the right cabinet.)
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They're fully xkcd://806 (https://xkcd.com/806/) complaint
I've decided I need a stuffed penguin doll. Not sure about the photo of the bearded dude though :-\.
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
Branson gets my hackles up, but there does appear to be a cable TV connection, and we may buckle on that point :-[
Virgin are expensive for a broadband-only package, but if you want a cable TV bundle anyway they're not so bad.
However (I have been with Virgin ever since they were Nynex) there is a surprising high incidence of down time, especially in the mornings. They seem to be forever rolling out improvements to the infrastucture, and this invariably involves a bloke opening the cabinet just down the road and scratching his head a lot. (And since BT cable arrived, very often the bloke isn't even looking in the right cabinet.)
Um, we have almost Zero downtime.
I suspect that this is region-dependent.
We are on virgin fibre to the cabinet and telephone bundle. No TV.
Not the cheapest deal, but cheap for the capacity we wanted/needed (very high demand household).
MrsC negotiated the deal and we got free installation (engineer said in disbelief "We don't do this free") and V cheap first 6 months. I think the sales person managed to sign us up without handing over their wages but only just. Don't deal with MrsC.
Crinkly's ISP bundle sounds cheaper.
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I just did a quidco cash back (£80 tracked, waiting supplier confirmation) and have a £150 BT reward card on its way for a broadband/voice package that is costing £6/month on a 12 month contract. Paid the homehub delivery and year's line rental up front - £215 I think - so if it all works out it'll be about under £60 for the year total cost. Obviously this means using BT. I decided to gamble cos I'm a cheapskate.
Got the deal the other day, same as you. But no quidco.
Don't forget to ask for the credit card.
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This is all very useful, thank you. :)
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Virgin are expensive for a broadband-only package, but if you want a cable TV bundle anyway they're not so bad.
However (I have been with Virgin ever since they were Nynex) there is a surprising high incidence of down time, especially in the mornings. They seem to be forever rolling out improvements to the infrastucture, and this invariably involves a bloke opening the cabinet just down the road and scratching his head a lot. (And since BT cable arrived, very often the bloke isn't even looking in the right cabinet.)
Um, we have almost Zero downtime.
I suspect that this is region-dependent.
I look after a server on a Virgin connection in Nottingham, and the connection seems acceptably stable. Discounting power failure and planned intervention (moving kit around, etc), I think there have been a couple of proper outages in the last 5 years or so related to area-wide faults, and one line-specific outage related to a bandwidth upgrade that was fixed with a call to support. Other than that, there's on average a wibble or two a month where it comes back up within a minute or so, which look like maintenance of local non-redundant kit or the router rebooting for some reason (perhaps a firmware upgrade or re-provisioning or something - the router is SEP).
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However (I have been with Virgin ever since they were Nynex) there is a surprising high incidence of down time,
Um, we have almost Zero downtime.
I look after a server on a Virgin connection in Nottingham, and the connection seems acceptably stable. Discounting power failure and planned intervention (moving kit around, etc), I think there have been a couple of proper outages in the last 5 years or so related to area-wide faults, and one line-specific outage related to a bandwidth upgrade that was fixed with a call to support. Other than that, there's on average a wibble or two a month where it comes back up within a minute or so, which look like maintenance of local non-redundant kit or the router rebooting for some reason (perhaps a firmware upgrade or re-provisioning or something - the router is SEP).
I would say, on average about 10 outages per year, of anything from 1 to 7 hours. They almost invariably kick in at or around 9am, and service is restored sometime after midday. Phoning support always results in an (automated) "yeah yeah we know about it bear with us" sort of message.
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
They also score highly on the consistently-twice-as-fast-as-the-best-anyone-else-can-do* rule in this street. And a lot faster if you want to pay for it.
*That's comparing the actual, routinely delivered download speed of their basic throttled-back package with the peak download speed offered by others.
PS. Idle curiosity led me to check, & the competition's speeded up a bit. BT (the owner of the other wire into the house) now offers up to 60% of what Virgin's delivering, & guarantees 40%. It's got better.
Note that the Plusnet website is much more sensible than BT's. It recognises that someone may not have a landline telephone number, & that even if not paying for a connection to the BT network may have a BT phone socket - i.e. what it'd use to provide a service.
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Also true, if throughput is important. IME it's a bit like bike weight: The exact importance depends on what you're using it for, more speed is nice to have if all else is equal, but mostly it's easily quantified using simple tools, which leads to a great deal of fuss being made about it by marketing to the exclusion of other important factors.
Personally, I'm happy with 10Mbit or so, as long as the latency is good enough for SSH and VOIP and there isn't evil packet loss. A bit more than 1Mbit upstream would be nice (but not nice enough to justify the cost of Annex M or FTTC, or the downgrade to Virgin). But then I'm not eg. a family of gamers (who also care about latency, but only after the umpty gigabytes of updates have downloaded).
(And then you get providers like BT retail obfuscating the matter by wittering on about the WiFi performance of their supplied router. Which is a bit like Brompton not supplying a pump on the titanium models.)
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We used to have a problem with often getting much less than the advertised speed - & this being noticeable, especially at peak usage times of day. There were a couple of spells of it building up, then dropping back sharply & the advertised rate returning. Local network upgrades, perhaps? A nice fat margin seemed like a good idea after that. Our current download speed hasn't budged since we got it, though. It's more than enough, but I'm not tempted to switch to something slower, just in case.
I ought to sort out some better diagnostics in case they're needed, though.
However (I have been with Virgin ever since they were Nynex) there is a surprising high incidence of down time,
Um, we have almost Zero downtime.
I look after a server on a Virgin connection in Nottingham, and the connection seems acceptably stable. Discounting power failure and planned intervention (moving kit around, etc), I think there have been a couple of proper outages in the last 5 years or so related to area-wide faults, and one line-specific outage related to a bandwidth upgrade that was fixed with a call to support. Other than that, there's on average a wibble or two a month where it comes back up within a minute or so, which look like maintenance of local non-redundant kit or the router rebooting for some reason (perhaps a firmware upgrade or re-provisioning or something - the router is SEP).
I would say, on average about 10 outages per year, of anything from 1 to 7 hours. They almost invariably kick in at or around 9am, and service is restored sometime after midday. Phoning support always results in an (automated) "yeah yeah we know about it bear with us" sort of message.
Odd. Must be a local problem, though I don't see why one area would be so affected.
IIRC we had one outage last year, & it came back just as I was thinking about phoning up. Less than an hour from when noticed. We're online a lot, what with my work coming from Japan & Mrs B liking to watch Japanese TV programmes, so we'd be likely to spot anything that wasn't in the early hours.
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I've been looking at prices recently, being out of contract now.
The 2 usual cheapest; Plusnet and Talk Talk, are not offering any good deals at the moment. Basic package of landline and unlimited broadband is around £22.50 per month for a 18 month contact. Phone calls are extra.
Note that Plusnet has a 'cessation' ie leaving fee of £30 even out of contract.
If web pages are slow to load, it's probably because there are a huge number of scripts, trackers, videos, cookies etc being loaded by the page, rather than your broadband speed.
Edit;Plusnet prices for basic package of landline and unlimited broadband-
£25.00 a month 12 month contract
£20.00 a month 18 month contract
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Note that Plusnet has a 'cessation' ie leaving fee of £30 even out of contract.
This reflects the BT Wholesale charge for ceasing a line. Any ISP that doesn't pass it on is recouping the money elsewhere. Migration (ie. switching to the same wholesale product from another ISP) should be free, though I vaguely recall that Pusnet like to charge the cease fee for that too?
If web pages are slow to load, it's probably because there are a huge number of scripts, trackers cookies being loaded by the page, rather than your broadband speed.
Slow page loading could be a symptom of all sorts of things. That's why you do diagnostics, rather than guessing.
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Pusnet definitely charged £30 for switching to Utility Warehouse. I don't know who runs Utility Warehouse's broadband.
They also charge the fee if you switch to cable.
The info's buried away at
About our charges
To find out about all our charges, please see our Price guide. We've also provided a summary here of how and when our charges normally apply:
Getting you up and running
To get your services up and running, some setup charges (such as installation or delivery charges) may apply. These will normally be called out in the "Upfront" section of your basket.
During your contract
For each of the services in your package, we'll charge you a regular monthly fee. In addition, for Plusnet Phone, call charges will also apply (see our Tariff guide).
If you don't want to pay by direct debit, a processing fee may apply, and if you miss a payment, we might also add failed payment charges for suspending your sevice and to cover our costs associated with the failed payment. Further information on what happens if you fail to pay is set out in our About Failed Payments guide.
If you leave
If you leave us, a cessation fee may be payable. In addition, if you leave within your minimum term, early termination charges may be payable. Further information can be found at link:Leaving Plusnet.
https://www.plus.net/help/my-account/#leaving-plusnet
then
https://www.plus.net/help/my-account/charges-for-removing-broadband/
Charges for removing broadband from your line
Help My account Leaving Plusnet Charges for removing broadband from your line
What is this charge?
It's a charge set by BT Wholesale (who supply our broadband network), to cover the cost of removing broadband from a phone line. It's sometimes called a cessation charge.
How much is it?
It's £30 for residential customers and £25 for business customers.
When would I have to pay it?
You'd only need to pay the charge if the broadband service is being taken off your phone line. Typical reasons for this are:
the phone line that your broadband's on has been cut off
you cancel your broadband account without switching to another provider
you switch to a provider who uses their own network (like a cable provider)
you move to a provider who uses their own equipment in your exchange (often called Local Loop Unbundling)
If any of these happen, you'll need to pay the charge, even if the minimum term of your contract is over.
The good news is, there's no charge if you move to another broadband service that also uses a BT line for its network.
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Slow page loading could be a symptom of all sorts of things. That's why you do diagnostics, rather than guessing.
Diagnostics?
It's just what I've noticed if I turn off javascript, pages load much faster,. Obviously it varies, eg there's not much difference on this site. This is using a 7 year old netbook!
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Slow page loading could be a symptom of all sorts of things. That's why you do diagnostics, rather than guessing.
Diagnostics?
Basic network stuff. Measure the throughput, the latency, the packet loss (to more than one location, in order to determine where a problem might lie). Is the DNS resolver correctly configured, and are the servers it's attempting to contact all responding? Are there multiple IP stacks where one isn't correctly configured, causing timeouts? Is a firewall misconfigured? Has path MTU discovery gone horribly wrong? Is something suffering from bufferbloat? That sort of thing.
Once you know that things are working properly at the TCP/IP level, you can look at application stuff. Or vice-versa. In the real world people tend to start with a top-down approach (load another website, try another browser, does it work from another computer, from a differnt network, etc) and switch to bottom-up if something odd is happening.
It's just what I've noticed if I turn off javascript, pages load much faster,. Obviously it varies, eg there's not much difference on this site. This is using a 7 year old netbook!
Well yes. Slow computers are more responsive if you give them less work to do. That's just a fact of life that doesn't really have anything to do with the network.
But assuming your computer is up to the task of loading and rendering modern bloaty web pages, and your network connection is able to deliver the bloat in a timely manner it *shouldn't* be slow, and random slowness is indicative of either something misbehaving in the browser, or a network or server problem.
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I've been looking at prices recently, being out of contract now.
The 2 usual cheapest; Plusnet and Talk Talk, are not offering any good deals at the moment. Basic package of landline and unlimited broadband is around £22.50 per month for a 18 month contact. Phone calls are extra.
Note that Plusnet has a 'cessation' ie leaving fee of £30 even out of contract.
If web pages are slow to load, it's probably because there are a huge number of scripts, trackers, videos, cookies etc being loaded by the page, rather than your broadband speed.
Edit;Plusnet prices for basic package of landline and unlimited broadband-
£25.00 a month 12 month contract
£20.00 a month 18 month contract
I just got my first bill. £6/month for unlimited broadband and inclusive weekend calls, 12 month contract with caller id free for 12 months. Didn't both paying extra for the answering service - I never remember to check the landline for messages. Line rental was £205 (I think) for the year upfront (saves a few quid over the year doing it that way). £9.99 delivery on the BT Homehub. £80 cashback has tracked at quidco, waiting for supplier confirmation, apparently expected to pay out in March sometime. BT have said they are sending me the £150 reward card. Changeover was painless, other than the hub not arriving until several hours after after the service has moved suppliers so we were internetless for about 4 hours.
I've been perfectly happy with the Plusnet basic package for several years but they couldn't come close to competing with the price.
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The obvious question is whether the new place is wired for Verging Media. They're not the best ISP, obviously (that's AAISP), but they score highly on the use-as-little-BT-as-possible rule.
Branson gets my hackles up, but there does appear to be a cable TV connection, and we may buckle on that point :-[
VM is owned by Liberty Global. So you don't need to worry about Branson.
Avoid TalkTalk.
PO Broadband is okay, but I suspect if I have a problem it will involve several series of calls/tests/engineer visits and it will never really get resolved, just like with TalkTalk.
I wouldn't describe the VM connection as bullet proof, but for a consumer broadband connection it's more than acceptable. Customer service has been reasonably good, with engineers visiting within 48 hours of me reporting a fault on all 2 occasions, both related to the initial install.
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Avoid TalkTalk.
Indeed. They're cheap; it shows.
PO Broadband is okay, but I suspect if I have a problem it will involve several series of calls/tests/engineer visits and it will never really get resolved, just like with TalkTalk.
For reference, if you've got a problem line like that, AAISP offer to take it over and if they don't succeed in fixing the fault within a month, they'll allow you to migrate away again for free.
http://aa.net.uk/broadband-trial.html
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You get a choice? I'm jealous!