Changinge to Zen Fibre What Router ? 2 options

Randall8686 said:
OMG that just made it worse reading some of the comments, People complaining that Playstation network downloads are put into bronze category etc !!

Think im liking the Zen truly unlimited approach, I would kick myself if I signed up for 18 months and found anything throttled. My BT infinity does not seem to throttle anything currently
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The fact you have to pay £5 extra per month to disable plusnet's traffic 'prioritisation' speaks volumes.
 
As with all things in life, Its cheap for a reason. Now if those reasons don't bother you then 100% you are the winner. However traffic shaping / restricting me is certainly nothing I want. Personally Im happy to pay a little extra for the best in this occasion.
 
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Again from everything I've read, PlusNet traffic management (at least for normal operation 99% of time) is related to your own traffic. Would people really want P2P having the same priority as games / VOIP.

I'm totally independent, just a regular PlusNet customer, but my experience and everything about their traffic management makes common sense.
 
Randall8686 said:
that is the main reason but they are only £5 a month more than plus net when the 9 months ends, Plus the fact they want a £50 install fee. It makes the difference not a great deal.
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Plusnet don't charge install fees if you're moving your existing line to them, and the fibre activation fee is absolutely nothing if you take a phone service with them.
 
Randall8686 said:
The fact is, I don't want them making decisions over my traffic. its up to me if I want to implement QOS
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If you look at Plusnet traffic rules they make perfect sense, again for 99% of time it's only for your traffic. Last night I was playing Battlefield while P2P client was running, whats not to like.

That aside all IPS's have traffic management, consider the following.

Say there is a major world disaster, lets say a terrorist has exploded a small nuclear dirty bomb in the center of London.

Network capacity is now damaged. There is a high demand from internet news feeds for information, also abnormal communications trying to contact people.

This is exactly what happened after 9/11, resulting in global slow internet.

In the above situation would you really expect P2P or HD video streaming given the same priority as VOIP or VPN. It would be irresponsible not to manage the above.

BTW Don't want to get in any argument as fully understand people hate traffic management, however the traffic management PlusNet implement all appears common sense to me. :)
 
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My friend went with Plusnet last year September in a student house of 6, and they have not noticed any slow downs at all (and a couple of them loves to torrent). Didn't even realise Plusnet has some form of traffic management because of this.

Only major downside was the router, it's good enough but is pretty basic, but seeing as you're planning to replace it then it won't matter to you.

+1 to the Asus.
 
A bit if an extreme situation regarding a bomb lol. Tbh if a nuclear bomb goes off in London ****** to my internet lol.

I'm assured by a surprisingly helpful response from zen they have no traffic shaping at all. Leaving any qos totally up to me.

I have gone for the asus and now battling an early termination with BT as they replaced my home hub a year ago saying I have a contract till November. Then when they finally gave me my code to leave they had no idea why I wanted to leave as they did not understand a static ip. Telling my my router I.p will always be 192.168.1.254 lmao
 
Randall8686 said:
The fact is, I don't want them making decisions over my traffic. its up to me if I want to implement QOS
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For an uninformed user it is also a blessing that they may not be aware of.

Normal ISP no traffic priority on 80/20 fibre

Imagine 2 adults parents and 3 teenagers.

Parents go and try to watch something on netflix.... buffers calls up plus.net ...argh argh whiny whiny why is it happening...

turns out 2 teens were downloading torrents and the third with game downloading on xbox live.

Now plus.net 80/20

Parents go to watch netflix streams in lovely 1080p (or 4k with HEVC tv)

2 of the teenagers are downloading torrents not noticing any slowdowns and same with the 3rd on xbox live.

....No phone call to complain about something is wrong with the internet connection.

2 happy parents and 3 teens and no wasting a call.
 
Oh i can see the advantage for some situations but tech users should have the option to disable this at no cost. If indeed it is even disabled. Just ordered theh asus router too :-D new toy on route
 
Randall8686 said:
A bit if an extreme situation regarding a bomb lol. Tbh if a nuclear bomb goes off in London ****** to my internet lol.

I'm assured by a surprisingly helpful response from zen they have no traffic shaping at all. Leaving any qos totally up to me.

I have gone for the asus and now battling an early termination with BT as they replaced my home hub a year ago saying I have a contract till November.
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I'd be more surprised if you didn't get a helpful response from Zen. If that does ever occur, please feel free to pm me and I'll help. Yes there is no traffic shaping, and there is no indication of a change of philosophy which could lead to us planning to do so.

I have the Asus, it seems to be a solid router. Stability and speed on both the 2.4ghz and 5ghz frequencies is very good (and far better than the Fritzbox it replaces). Its able to handle the full bandwidth of my connection (76mbps, the fritzbox topped out at 50mbps). I've not got any ac devices connected so I can't comment on the ac speeds yet. (Wife wants a Mac Book, so I was partly future proofing).
Only issue I've had is with port-forwarding, where its just not working for RDP. I've not had the chance to sit down and figure out what the problem is there. It might be a firmware bug (I've seen mentions of an issue with port forwarding when NAT acceleration is enabled), or it might be something odd with my set up (I probably changed the internal ports in use at some point and can't remember). I'll probably switch to the Merlin firmware this bank holiday and see if it sorts it.
 
BT can also offer static IP. you just need to speak to the Business teams. Different part of the overall business.
Also with some of the smaller BUsiness static IP providers, some Tech support hours are limited and not 24hours and some also pass on "engineer costs" to the end user. so there are a lot of variables to look into. Also the contract terms a lot "business" providers try and sneekkily try get you onto 3-5 year contracts or auto renewing yearly contracts
 
branddaly said:
I'd be more surprised if you didn't get a helpful response from Zen. If that does ever occur, please feel free to pm me and I'll help. Yes there is no traffic shaping, and there is no indication of a change of philosophy which could lead to us planning to do so. /QUOTE]

Cheers mate, i assume you work for zen, im pretty much sold i think. The cost is a lot more that other suppliers but i think its worth it. I still have a couple of months to run on BT and undecided if im going to pay to get out early.

RDP is something im going to be using so hope
It works lol,

If you do work for zen can u confirm to me @ what point my connection leaves the BT network for yours ?
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says Zen is in my basingstoke exchange :)

RDP will only be opened when needed however i need remote access when away some times. The machine im opening is not vital to me (just a HP Proliant) and one that nothing is stored on
 
Better to setup a VPN connection. There's a fair chance the Asus router you were considering getting will act as an endpoint (with or without custom firmware).
 
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