Looking for a new ISP

d3moliti0n

d3moliti0n

d3moliti0n

Associate
Joined
11 Aug 2007
Posts
1,666
Hi

We are currently on Sky Broadband, the 10MB package (we also have Sky TV and the phone is on Sky aswell). We are cancelling Sky TV soon I think and we also want to change the phone back to BT and cancel the broadband and get a new ISP.

We want an ISP that is reliable, with fast download speeds (at the moment we are only getting like 520KB/s max download speed, we want something more along the lines of 1MB/s or more). We also want a decent monthly usage, over 10GB, unlimited if possible. The max we want to spend per month is £20. Can you recommend anything?

Also, just a bit of extra info, we don't live very far away from the local exchange, less than a mile away I would imagine.

Thanks for your help.
 
According to that website we can get every single LLU package available from every ISP. But looking at BE I think we will definitely be going with them as they seem to offer the best value for money.

I have one question though. Basically I think the cabling on the estate where I live is getting on a bit now, I'm pretty sure they haven't upgraded it at any point in the last 5 years either, so I assume it will be old copper cabling. Can I still get fast download speeds upto and over 1MB through this cabling? As the max I have ever experienced on my current connection is 520KB/s. And we used to be with Tiscali on an unlimited package a couple of years back and the max I remember getting then on downloads was around 700KB/s.

So will I be able to get around 1-2MB/s with BE via the cabling in this area? Or else it's quite pointless going for a 24MB internet package.

Thanks for your help.
 
The age of the BT LL cabling has very little bearing on the speed. Virtually all the BT network is based on copper from the exchange to your property. With any ADSL2+ provider such as Be you will get very similar speeds to Sky.
 
Assuming your 10mb Sky service is ADSL2+ you won't see any difference in speeds moving to Be. Posting some line stats from your router would settle it though.
 
Ok, here are the stats for my router at the moment:

Port Status TxPkts RxPkts Collisions Tx B/s Rx B/s Up Time
WAN PPPoA 27874 33543 0 1595 8183 00:54:26
LAN 10M/100M 34179 28576 0 8201 1769 00:55:47
WLAN 11M/54M 273 0 0 16 0 00:56:17

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5019 kbps 604 kbps
Line Attenuation 44 db 12.5 db
Noise Margin 12 db 16 db
Click to expand...

Sorry about the fact that they seem all over the place, I've tried editing them into the correct places several times but they don't seem to want to move. Hopefully you can decipher the correct details from it.

I don't really have a clue what any of it means so I don't know whether those stats are good or bad for a connection stated as 'Up to 10MB'. As I said, I currently get download speeds of about 520KB/s max and I want to try and get them up to 1-2MB/s by moving net provider and I'm looking at BE as a possible new ISP.

You will now have to let me know if you think it's a worthwhile move or not.

Thanks for your help.
 
There's another piece of information you need, whether you're currently on ADSL or ADSL2+. If it's up to 10Mbps it should be ADSL2+ but nothing's guaranteed.

It's the bottom set of numbers you're interested in. You're connected at ~5Mbps so 520KB/s is about right but you could squeeze a bit more speed with the potential for reduced stability. The odds of you getting 16Mbps/2MB/s are slim.
 
You ask Sky to reset your target SNR margin back to the default 6dB by tweaking their DLM or whatever it is they do.
 
I went from Nildram to Be and its like a different world ! i,m getting faster download speed and more megs too
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom