About to travel back in time...

Conanius

Conanius

Conanius

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
12,891
So,

Moving house, new place doesn't look like it can get VM Fibre. For nearly 3 years I have lived in VM Cable areas, and been used to lovely fast speeds.

Where I'm moving to can also not get FTTC. Checks online suggest somewhere between 6 and 14 Mbps, and the street map 'plot your speed' maps suggest the same (several people in the same street seem to get 10+Mbps with companies like o2 and Plusnet).

I'm keen to get the absolute best speed I can, so I'm working out my shopping list

1 - Modem. I'm guessing any free one I get will be garbage. I have an Airport Extreme (Time Capsule) that I currently use and want to continue to use for my home network. As such, I just need a modem that has an ethernet port to connect to the wan port on my Airport Extreme. Is there anything specific that would be significantly better than anything else ?

2 - ADSL Phone Socket face plate cover. Back in the days that I used ADSL, having one of these seemed to make a decent difference. I've seen the BT master socket in the house, and its in a sensible location where I can easily swap this over. Is there a 'good' one, or are they all the same ?

3 - The ISP. Plusnet unlimited deal looks reasonable, and as long as I can sustain 10Mbps reliably I'd be happy. The fastest ISP in the street on the uswitch site is an O2 line, which is at 14.2Mbps Down. They are listed as an LLU provider (o2/Be) on Samknows, as is Sky (Easynet) and TalkTalk. I hear nothing but horror stories about TalkTalk, but Sky and O2/Be seem to get good write ups. Are any of these likely to be any better/worse than the others? I want genuine, unlmited, non shaped internet access, and I'm happy to pay a bit more to get it.
 
Up until early last week I'd been with BE since 2007, getting around 10mbps, and had been very happy with them. No apparent shaping or limits even with a large amount being pulled down each month.

Only reason I changed from them was to go to FTTC. Note though that they have been sold to Sky now so things may change in the future
 
You think you have it bad, I currently have 76mb down 18mb up and I'm moving to my gf's place that has 1mb down 30k up!
 
Same position, opted for plusnet in the end with £38 topcashback. Interested to know also if the faceplate change makes a decent improvement. Modern house so I'm guessing it won't be wired the old way with I think the bell wire.
 
For my first question, it looks like a DrayTek Vigor 120 is about as good as it gets for a standalone modem that can let my Airport Extreme (Time Capsule) do the business. Lots of reviews saying they have used it with Airport Extreme's or Time capsules and had flawless performance, an uplift of 1-2MBit in line performance, and a stable solution
 
Three will offer unlimited 4g this year at some point, maybe worth looking into that? Probably faster!
 
esK` said:
You think you have it bad, I currently have 76mb down 18mb up and I'm moving to my gf's place that has 1mb down 30k up!
Click to expand...

Yeah, no sympathy here if you can get 10Mbps, that's a fine speed! I recently moved from a flat down south where I was getting about 8Mbps, to rural Scotland where I was geting about 3.2Mbps, but inexplicably it's dropped to 2.4Mbps now and BT don't seem interested in finding out why. Very frustrating because downloading something just cripples the speeds now.

I was with O2 in my old place for 3 and a half years and they were superb, rarely had any downtime, speeds were always consistent with no traffic shaping or throttling and their provided router isn't totally terrible either; handled torrents etc far better than my current HomeHub seems to. Wireless was a bit poor on it though. You can get some decent cashback deals with them via www.topcashback.com too.

Of course, they've just been bought out by Sky so I've no idea if that will change the service you get.

On the flipside, my friend joined Plusnet a few weeks back and it's been a complete shambles. The activation was supposed to take 24 hours (as usual) but instead they managed to knock the ADSL out for about a fortnight. They finally activated it over a weekend but then it went off again and as far as I know, it's been off ever since (got to be nearly a month now). They've told him it's to do with some faulty equipment in the exchange that they're working on replacing, but they hadn't given him a timeframe and they were still charging him for the service and said they'd do a partial refund when he's back online.
 
Last time I was on adsl everyone had 512Kbit (advertised). Been managing on mobile broadband for years now but its gone down hill, was getting around 5Mbit with three but nothing like that the past few months, plus the ping is poor. This lets the new rig down and now that things like tv's also connect to internet it makes more sense to shift back to a land line service. Plusnet estimate 6Mbit at new property which doesn't seem too shabby but hopefully squeeze a but more out from adding a face plate filter. Anyways hopefully the ping will be reasonable so I can get into some gaming.
 
I'm going faceplate filtering, DG834GT and DGTeam firmware! I'm hoping to get at least 2mb from a 1mb line lol!
 
TheVoice said:
Yeah, no sympathy here if you can get 10Mbps, that's a fine speed! I recently moved from a flat down south where I was getting about 8Mbps, to rural Scotland where I was geting about 3.2Mbps, but inexplicably it's dropped to 2.4Mbps now and BT don't seem interested in finding out why. Very frustrating because downloading something just cripples the speeds now.
Click to expand...

last year i moved from having 100mb VM to mobile broadband with 3GB monthly limit, barely able to get 2G speeds
there wasn't even a phone line available to use.
sometimes it took 5 mins just to load google

luckily i've since moved again and back onto VM :)
 
Having done a little more research I'm going to opt for a vdsl faceplate filter as it will also suit fttc as well as being backward compatible for adsl.
 
BE is being bought by SKY so they'll be the same thing, I am with BE and I know they don't shape/throttle etc as god knows I would have hit a limit by now if they had one lol!
 
Ok to summarise:

- VM Cancelled, no cancellation fee
- Plusnet ordered - Current line at the new house is apparently in use with another account, so they have to do some kind of takeover of the line that takes... THREE WEEKS. Super sad face :(
- Draytek Vigor 120 ordered
- ADSL Faceplate to be ordered on Saturday after I inspect the BT Faceplate and check it all out.

Plusnet say connection speed will be between 6 and 13 Mbps, but recon it will probably end up being about 8. If I can get to 10 Mbps with stability I'll be happy :)
 
Same here, just hoping it gets set up ok, been a week so far. I'm assuming if the previous owners wanted to keep their number bt would port it over to the line at their new property rather than the line moving :rolleyes:
 
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The odd thing is, the house is empty, and has been for months as the current owners renovated it. It hasn't been lived in for a long time... Random to keep the line active !
 
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