3 Quick SKY ISP Queries

Oxide™ · 24 Mar 2009 at 16:33

3 Quick SKY ISP Queries (with Update)

My current contract with freedom2surf expires early April.
I'm currently on their 16meg package for £20/month (7meg effective, 20:1 contention, no real fair usage policy that I have found). I have been with them for past 3 years and in that time I have had absolutely no problems, their customer support is good and they have never moaned about my usage, no throttling etc. however, I could potentially save £10/month by going to Sky's unlimited package.

Late last year I remember Sky as being a top pick (along with 02 if you had a mobile contract with them, which I dont), is this still the case?

I have recently heard that 02 is no longer a top pick because every tom dick and harry moved to them and their network bandwidth is now not sufficient for the capacity.

1: So is it worth moving to Sky or staying with F2S?

2: If I had to move to Sky, what would happen to my emails that go to my @f2s.com account? I have all my important emails sent to this account so will they be able to forward them onto another email address? or is that a question I should rather be asking F2S themselves?

3: Would there be any downtime between the swap if I acquired the MAC?

Appreciate any assistance.

edit: my exchange is North Cheam LSNCHM

Oxide™ · 24 Mar 2009 at 19:44

Thanks for clearing that up guys, much appreciated

Oxide™ · 25 Mar 2009 at 11:43

Mattus said:
Sky's been good for me - always max out my connection. Don't remember any downtime at all when we switched from BT - must have been so short I didn't notice.

The only downside is that Sky don't like you using a router other than their own. It can be done, but it requires using a password generator to find out your username and password, since Sky won't give it to you, and it's technically not allowed in your contract.

What is their router like? Is its wireless good (for the PS3). Is it totally locked down and, hence, unable to fiddle with any settings etc?

Oxide™ · 7 Apr 2009 at 11:06

Called F2S and I will need to purchase a domain for £3 a year to keep my pop3 email. I think I'll edit everything to point to my hotmail/gmail accounts so at least get that over and done with and then move to Sky Max (I already have TV + Talk with sky)

Can anyone please answer my above question regarding the Sky router?

also I read ping times are slow on Sky until you call their support to reduce this?

Just nervous about the move to Sky I guess as F2S has been really good to me for 4 years (I said to the guy when getting my MAC yesterday that its like breaking up with a girlfriend that you are fond of)

Oxide™ · 7 Apr 2009 at 14:58

^^ thanks for the reply. Yes I read you can hack the router to get the adsl logon information. I would ideally like to avoid this as I dont want to breach their T&C's (although many people do) but would have considered it if the router was totally pants. As long as the router is stable and the PS3 connects ok (it does atm using a cheapo Billion router locked in a cupboard under the phone in another room???*) then I will be happy with it.

*it still baffles me how I get over 90% signal with the thing :confused:

Oxide™ · 8 Apr 2009 at 14:00

OK I've just taken the plunge and ordered Sky Max for £10/month

*touchwood* it all goes through ok with no long term issues

Oxide™ · 22 Apr 2009 at 11:50

Oxy said:
How is sky going oxlde? I'm thinking of switching from adsl24, seems i'm paying £20 for the same internet as I could get with Sky or talktalk.

haha was just about to update this thread and saw that

Sky informed me that Monday the 20th would be the transfer date. The router (Sagem) arrived well in time, last week.

I literally got home from work on Monday, internet wasnt connecting, plugged in the sky router and the internet connected.

So I then set off to see if this router/connection was any good - went through all the options on the router and it has enough in there to keep me happy - all I did was change the SSID, PSK and the Wifi channel to 3 (because I know it works well at my place)

Only thing that the Sagem does not have is WPA2 wifi but im happy enough with WPA.

The Sagem also does not have a wireless antenna attached to it, but with it being in the closed cupboard under the phone and in another room with the door closed, the PS3 still gets 100% wireless signal

So thats the router and wireless taken care of.

Next I looked at the speed I connected at. On my previous ISP freedom 2 surf using their Billion router, the max I would connect at would be 6.5mbit.
Now on the Sky/Sagem combo I now connect at 8mbit so Im well pleased with that too. Now download at a sustained 850~kb/s

Only thing that has got worse is my ping times. To google, for example, before it was 15~ ms and now its 40~ ms. Although Im not too sure what difference this makes as browsing the internet is just as quick and I no longer play online games as much.

Its still early days with SkyBB but so far Im very happy *touchwood*
A better service for half the price.....get in!