How to find your closest exchange?

Soldato
Joined
12 Jun 2005
Posts
6,359
Location
St Albans
Is there a website that will let me find my local internet/telephone exchange? I'm just interested to see where it is. Thanks for any help :)
 
Samknows will give you almost all the information you could want. Use the availability checker and it'll tell you what exchange you're on under the ADSL section. You'll also be able to see what LLU providers your exchange has to offer, etc.
 
Phemo said:
Samknows will give you almost all the information you could want. Use the availability checker and it'll tell you what exchange you're on under the ADSL section. You'll also be able to see what LLU providers your exchange has to offer, etc.

I'm with Telewest cable :(. That's a great site though. My nearest exchange is around 2 miles away. Is that a lot and will that affect internet speed a lot?
 
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Oh right, your cable UBR. You can work that out by looking at your Internet IP's hostname. If you're not sure how to find it, go to Gemal.dk Browserspy then choose IP Information. Your hostname will contain a name that will help identify where it is. Or do an nslookup on your IP address.

For example, I'm on NTL and my hostname ends winn.cable.ntl.com meaning my UBR is in Winnersh.

When I had Blueyonder my hostname was something like chap.blueyonder.co.uk which is Chapel Hill in Bristol.

Not sure how to find out anything more specific than that for cable though.
 
Phemo said:
Oh right, your cable UBR. You can work that out by looking at your Internet IP's hostname. If you're not sure how to find it, go to Gemal.dk Browserspy then choose IP Information. Your hostname will contain a name that will help identify where it is.

For example, I'm on NTL and my hostname ends winn.cable.ntl.com meaning my UBR is in Winnersh.

When I had Blueyonder my hostname was something like chap.blueyonder.co.uk which is Chapel Hill in Bristol.

Not sure how to find out anything more specific than that for cable though.

Found it: 82-44-147-226.cable.ubr01.haye.blueyonder.co.uk. So I'm connected to an exchange in Hayes? But that's further away then the exchange in Uxbridge (which is 2 miles away) which states support for Telewest cable internet :-S. Hmm?
 
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NTL don't use the exchange that is your local telephone exchange. It's an entirely different network mate.
 
OK thanks for the help guys. Does that website allow me to check my download/upload speed? I'm using a 4Mb connection and I want to see how much of that I'm actually getting :) . Thanks for the help, I'm a n00b with all this internet connection stuff
 
The checker on Samknows will show rough cable availability for that area but the BT exchanges have nothing to do with any Telewest/NTL equipment. Your BT phone exchange will be in Uxbridge but the UBR (cable equivalent basically) is in Hayes. :)

There's loads of speed testers out there. ADSL Guide has one and if you want a quick and simple one, Giganews has one too but make sure the Traceroute it does is complete before running the test.
 
Wow 233meters away, just went for a walk and I found it :)

Very happy man, hopefully will get a good speed once I get TALKTALK
(Dont ask - cuts bills by half ;) )

Over the main road and there it says "BT" :)
 
Lost-Prophet said:
well technically I'm Telewest but NTL and Telewest have merged together now so I assume what works with Telewest works with NTL now?

Yea, it should be a good reflection of your throughput.
 
Mikol said:
You're on NTL you say? I find this is the most accurate for us NTL guys:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/speedtest.html

I got:

1st 128K took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec
2nd 128k took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec
3rd 128k took 265ms = 494611 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4115 Kbits/sec
4th 128k took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec

These results appear to be rather fast: maybe this page was in the browser cache (which it wasn't). Are these results good for a 4mb line?

Phemo said:
There's loads of speed testers out there. ADSL Guide has one and if you want a quick and simple one, Giganews has one too but make sure the Traceroute it does is complete before running the test.

WITH ADSL guide I got:
Downstream: 3,841.9Kbps
Upstream: 337.3Kbps
 
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Brilliant! Happy man now. Just scrolled up on ADSL guide and I'm getting 3.8Mbps (out of 4Mb) and 0.3Mbps upstream. Thanks for helping out a n00b :p
 
sjohal2006 said:
Wow 233meters away, just went for a walk and I found it :)

Very happy man, hopefully will get a good speed once I get TALKTALK

It might be 233m in a straight line (assuming you got the length from Samknows), but that's not necessarily indicative of how long your "line" is.
 
Lost-Prophet said:
I got:

1st 128K took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec
2nd 128k took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec
3rd 128k took 265ms = 494611 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4115 Kbits/sec
4th 128k took 266ms = 492752 Bytes/Sec = Approx 4100 kbits/sec

These results appear to be rather fast: maybe this page was in the browser cache (which it wasn't). Are these results good for a 4mb line

Yep, those are about right. If you want to run it again, do so, but then when it's loaded pres CTRL+F5. It will then refresh the page without loading from the cache and give accurate results.
 
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