BT Infinity & FTTx Discussion

Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
Posts
25,735
Trying to convince a clueless customer about this is a nightmare. I'm only getting 1MB/s! No, you're getting nearly 9MegaBITS. There's nothing wrong with your download speed and no I'm not sending an Engineer.
 
Associate
Joined
13 Jan 2004
Posts
1,190
My infinity 2 contract is ending soon, they are offering infinity 2 with line rental 24 month contract at £38.99. Is this a good deal or not?

I've just had a similar quote, I think I'll switch to plusnets 76Mb for £30 a month for 12 months.
I can't fault the BT service I've had but they don't seem to be competitive with their deals at the minute
 
Soldato
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15 Aug 2005
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22,976
Location
Glasgow
Not sure why (or if there's any way to tell?) but my HH5 rebooted the other day and my sync rate has jumped from about 43Mbps to 80Mbps! I switched from Infinity 1 to Infinity 2 about a month ago but I was never getting the top end of Infinity 1 speeds either (although my upload speed increased after the switch), so I assume they've done something with the infrastructure? I always assumed it was the wiring in my building limiting the speed.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Mar 2003
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12,450
Location
Chatteris
How soon after an exchange goes live do "other" ISP's start offering fiber services?
I've been keeping an eye on my brother-in-law's over-filled exchange where currently they get ADSL only and at around 1mb during busy times.
The exchange has been on "connecting" for the past 3 months, at midnight the exchange went to "accepting orders". I happened to be up and about and I started running his details through the various checkers. All were coming back with a negative, except for BT's own checkers which confirmed he was able to order fiber (with an expected speed of 76-80 which was nice).
He is currently with Sky for ADSL - he called them this morning, no, he couldn't order Fiber, wasn't yet available.

I kind of went overboard with warnings - I mean if for any reason he missed his chance he'd end up on a waiting list and god only knows how much longer he'd end up waiting. So he is speaking with BT. Is it the whole Openreach/BT thing at the moment? The reason BT are accepting orders but nobody else is? Is there a natural delay as the information filters down? And is it just possible that only BT are going to offer services here at the beginning?
 
Caporegime
Joined
17 Jul 2010
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25,735
It depends. Most ISP's should be able to order but I have seen some small, rural exchanges where only BT offer services due to exchange size and no other provider offers services. Give it a couple of days and try again.
 

maj

maj

Soldato
Joined
19 Jul 2010
Posts
2,600
Location
Durham
After having never used a VPN, I decided to give PIA a try after hearing good things about it. Location is set to East coast USA but ran speedtest on my nearest location in the UK.



Downloaded speed pretty much the same as it was before. Upload slightly less but not too concerned.

Same again but on USA servers:



Overall pretty happy.
 

APM

APM

Associate
Joined
9 Nov 2011
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1,460
Location
Wales
After having never used a VPN, I decided to give PIA a try after hearing good things about it. Location is set to East coast USA but ran speedtest on my nearest location in the UK.



Downloaded speed pretty much the same as it was before. Upload slightly less but not too concerned.

Same again but on USA servers:



Overall pretty happy.

Very nice.
 

TJM

TJM

Associate
Joined
10 Jun 2007
Posts
2,378
Not sure why (or if there's any way to tell?) but my HH5 rebooted the other day and my sync rate has jumped from about 43Mbps to 80Mbps! I switched from Infinity 1 to Infinity 2 about a month ago but I was never getting the top end of Infinity 1 speeds either (although my upload speed increased after the switch), so I assume they've done something with the infrastructure? I always assumed it was the wiring in my building limiting the speed.
It's possible that Openreach moved you to a new and closer cabinet or that a substandard part of your connection to the cabinet was replaced because someone else complained about the speeds. What was your predicted speed on BT's checker?
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Aug 2005
Posts
22,976
Location
Glasgow
It's possible that Openreach moved you to a new and closer cabinet or that a substandard part of your connection to the cabinet was replaced because someone else complained about the speeds. What was your predicted speed on BT's checker?

When I switched to Infinity 2, they said on the phone my minimum speed should be 60Mbps. I'd been intending to give them a call about it (the only reason I switched to Infinity 2 was because it worked out to be the best deal) but they've seemingly saved me the job. :)
 
Man of Honour
Joined
20 Sep 2006
Posts
34,028
but are they as good? im worried about traffic shaping (bittorrent) and transfer limits, peak time bottle necks etc?
I wouldn't go with TalkTalk but PlusNet will be no different than BT. Sure they have traffic management but they are open with their policy and 99% of users wouldn't even notice it. I'd actually rate PNs customer service above BT.
 
Soldato
Joined
15 Jun 2005
Posts
2,751
Location
Edinburgh
but are they as good? im worried about traffic shaping (bittorrent) and transfer limits, peak time bottle necks etc?
Plusnet do "traffic prioritisation" with downloads having the lowest priority. I've read mixed reports about this; some have no problems whilst others reported slowdowns. Ultimately I guess it depends on local contention. But this did put me off slightly.

TalkTalk do not do any traffic shaping on fibre. I've been with them before for standard ADSL and never had any problems. However I haven't had fibre from them before.

The price difference between the two is only a couple of quid per month; partly because Plusnet charge extra for caller ID (if that is important to you).
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
4,655
Location
The Darkside
Got the Home Hub 6 a month ago and have had nothing but trouble. Problems assigning IP addresses to mobile devices and random line dropping. Even the bloody printer has problems.

What router do you guys use and can you recommend a router that supports VPN to use on Infinity?
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
3,348
Location
Bromley
im getting solid download and upload speeds 52 d 10 u ive had it 2 months and already had 3 routers......

they just seem to completely stop working for several hours at a time. The lights go out completely on the router and even a reboot wont help. Connections over the wired lan seem to make it crap out even more......

Using wifi seems in this instance seems far more reliable for some reason.

I had sky before and tbh i only had 10 d 1 u but the whole experiance was better with bt inifity the browsing most of the time is dire with waits of many seconds for some websites...

I also have a problem with some adult sites where i like to have the old gamble or play bingo.............they just act like they are dead when they are not.

im going to try a few dns servers later today and see if that makes any odds. Unless some technical gurus here have a clue.

EDIt just tried it going through my ssh tunnel to my dedibox in france and browsing is much better with sites almost instant and none blocked etc but download speeds are obviously less around 22 d and 2 up:(

edit 2 changed dns settings through windows network settings and its just as slow:(
 
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Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
3,348
Location
Bromley
definitely BTS dns servers causing trip ups.............and router crashes at least for me...

Turned off dhcp and assigned ip's manually and using googles dns and stable for 3 days........and im now on wired lan....with dhcp enabled and using wired lan before it would crap out with in 1 hour.....

also of course sites are now loading instantly.

now need to ring them and find some one with half a brain
 
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