plusnet pro or zen ?

rippling

rippling

rippling

Soldato
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i want to move away from BT and go to a company with better latancey for gaming , out of Zen and plusnet pro the gamer one which would be best we have no fibre lines near us so 8 meg is best we can get?
 
Ah, two companies with different approaches to controlling traffic. Zen have no congestion on the interconnects with BT wholesale, and none on their core network. In theory, nothing on their network should reduce the performance you see.
Plusnet openly use traffic shaping. On Pro, gaming taffic is given a higher priority, though it may also still be rate limited. In theory this means gaming traffic should be treated better than other traffic types, but in a congestion situation, even some of this traffic may be chucked away. Plusnet publish the graphs of the network packet loss in their support section.

I work for one of the two companies, so I can't make an unbiased recommendation.
 
I had Plusnet pro, I liked it. I was gaming on a 360 though so priority traffic was ineffective due to one player always hosting the matches. Therefore I didn't see any perceivable advantage over other ISP's that don't prioritise gaming traffic.

Good visibility for stats though, they "feel" more honest than any of the other ISP's I've used over the years.
 
branddaly said:
Ah, two companies with different approaches to controlling traffic. Zen have no congestion on the interconnects with BT wholesale, and none on their core network. In theory, nothing on their network should reduce the performance you see.
Plusnet openly use traffic shaping. On Pro, gaming taffic is given a higher priority, though it may also still be rate limited. In theory this means gaming traffic should be treated better than other traffic types, but in a congestion situation, even some of this traffic may be chucked away. Plusnet publish the graphs of the network packet loss in their support section.

I work for one of the two companies, so I can't make an unbiased recommendation.
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i have been with zen in the past and downloads was always full whack but at the time there was a 80 gb download limit i think thats been upgraded to 100 now?
so i live in a small village just over 1000 people , so how does this work , if no one else at the exchange has zen does that mean there is no contention ratio ?
 
rippling said:
i have been with zen in the past and downloads was always full whack but at the time there was a 80 gb download limit i think thats been upgraded to 100 now?
so i live in a small village just over 1000 people , so how does this work , if no one else at the exchange has zen does that mean there is no contention ratio ?
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You could still be affected by contention ratios within BTs network. Nothing that can be done about that on a cheap DSL product, however BT being the main wholesaler are expected to have the scale that means that you aren't affected by them.
 
Hi there,

My opinion would obviously be biased but if you've any specific questions about our service then give me a nudge and I'll be happy to help.

Best regards,
 
I'm currently in the process of moving over from BT to Plusnet Pro, although the service hasn't yet been activated. But I'll report my experience and my perception of the differences between the two ISP's back here later.

The things that have attracted me to plusnet are obviously the pro add-on service, specifically in my case for gaming and VPN tunnelling, and the fact that they employ UK call centres. The impressive list of awards is also nice, but it remains for me to see if they actually live up to the hype.

I understand that plusnet are owned by BT, but that they are also independently run with their own management, support and infrastructure teams. I didn't ask whether they were LLU or BT wholesale at my exchange, but either way I'm hoping their service cant be any worse than BT's is.

So far though I've got to say that its been nice just being able to speak to people with British accents, and that their account management web portal is a also a step up from anything I've experienced with BT.
 
Wucked said:
I didn't ask whether they were LLU or BT wholesale at my exchange, but either way I'm hoping their service cant be any worse than BT's is.
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BT Wholesale. We provision circuits on IPStream Connect, WBMC (ADSL1/ADSL2+) and FTTC/FTTP Fibre (although the latter is only in trial stages).

Best regards,
 
I left Zen as my pings were 80 -100 on the up to 8 meg service.

Now with Xilo, same up to 8 meg service but pings are 25-30 )
 
bobpullen said:
BT Wholesale. We provision circuits on IPStream Connect, WBMC (ADSL1/ADSL2+) and FTTC/FTTP Fibre (although the latter is only in trial stages).
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Then I sincerely hope that you're better able to coax results from BT infrastructure support than I am, otherwise I've just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire :(
 
Wucked said:
Then I sincerely hope that you're better able to coax results from BT infrastructure support than I am, otherwise I've just jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire :(
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It's dependent on many factors...however if your exchange is near capacity or your line is quite poor I would say that moving from one ISP to another on BT's network shouldn't result in a better sync rate or download speed. Pings and traffic shaping however could result in a much better experience!
 
I'm on Zen and I have been for the past 6/7 years now and I get around 9/10ms pings on their ADSL2+ service. I noticed FTTC is starting to be installed down the road, so ill be upgrading to that shortly.

Its not cheap, but you pay for what you get. :)
 
3dcandy said:
It's dependent on many factors...however if your exchange is near capacity or your line is quite poor I would say that moving from one ISP to another on BT's network shouldn't result in a better sync rate or download speed. Pings and traffic shaping however could result in a much better experience!
Click to expand...

The exchange was recently upgraded, just before I got my circuit, although I'm not sure in what way. But when I first got the circuit a few months back they basically said that anything under 8Mb would be considered a fault. Well I've never achieved above 2Mb, despite numerous calls to to BT's call centres.

So initially I'm trying two things, obviously one is moving to plusnet, and the other is the purchase of a billion 7800n (switching from homehub v1). I'm under no illusions about a dramatic increase in bandwidth, all I get are lies on that front, but I'd be quite pleased with a lower and steadier ping. And if I'm really lucky then maybe the infrequent line drops will stop as well.
 
fluff said:
Did you do anything to find the source of the congestion?
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I gave Zen 6 months to sort my ping issues, they kept blaming exchange congestion, but i never had the problem with the ISP i was with before Zen(NewNet), so I just changed to Xilo and the problem was gone :).
 
I'm on Plusnet Pro, I have to say it's been great, pings are always low (<30) and I schedule downloads / updates to happen overnight so no issue with the download limits.

I had one problem where my phone (also with plusnet) was cut off at the BT exchange accidently, but I found the support to be excellent and they resolved the issue quickly.
 
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