Nildram going down the pan?

NathanE

NathanE

NathanE

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Joined
21 Oct 2002
Posts
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Location
London & Singapore
I've been on Nildram since I first got broadband which was in 2001. Unfortunately it seems that Tiscali is about to ruin my service as the other day I got this e-mail:

Dear Customer
For the attention of the IT Department
We are currently upgrading our network so that we can offer you increased broadband speeds and new services in the future. During the upgrade a small proportion of customers may experience problems connecting; a simple change to hardware settings may rectify the issue. If you experience any connection issues please visit our Service Status pageor call 0871 230 9293.
Benefits of our new network upgrade:
-Enhanced service resilience
-Up to 16Mb speeds with ADSL2+ (dependant on your exchange)
-Exciting new product possibilities, e.g. Bundled voice services.
We would like to take this opportunity to reassure you that we are taking extreme care and are scheduling work to minimise any disruption to your broadband service.
As always we are dedicated to providing you with the best possible service and our excellent UK based customer support teams continue to be on hand and will assist you during this period should your need arise.
Yours faithfully,
Danny Sullivan
Customer Services Director
Nildram
Stoke Mandeville
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Reading on ADSLguide it looks like this means that my line has been scheduled to be converted from the BT backbone onto the Tiscali backbone.

This worries me.

I pay £30/pm for my Nildram service and in return I expect to not be put on a budget ISP's backbone :/

So I am thinking of moving ISP whilst the going is good.

Can anyone recommend an ISP which offers a similar package to what I currently have?:

- 8meg ADSL Max
- 50GB on peak cap
- unlimited off peak cap

Thanks
 
you should threaten leaving. I did and they offered me the same as above for 13.99 a month and a free modem w/ 12 month contract. I thought what the hell...
 
zobby said:
you should threaten leaving. I did and they offered me the same as above for 13.99 a month and a free modem w/ 12 month contract. I thought what the hell...
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Yeah but 13.99 is cheaper than the BT wholesale price for the line so they no doubt put you on Tiscali LLU :) How are you finding it now?

Morfik said:
Nildram have been going down the pan since Pipex acquired them years back.
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Not in my experience. So far things have been fine. Seriously.
 
Well I still get the same speeds as before so far - ie
the ping is usually a little lower and I usually get about 7500kbs - that was just a test now.

I thought is was a great offer - I was all for leaving but I cant find a deal any better than this. If they do move me i'm sure it can't be that bad.
 
My speeds have still been okay but i've now noticed anything i set to d/l at night causes my connection to crap out and not restart, i.e. the 12 til 8 bit that doesn't go towards your monthly cap total...
:mad:
 
Agreed with the above, also Eclipse might be worth a shot, I was with them before moving to a cable area and had great support when needed and great speeds (barring being managed during the day on NNTP access).
 
I'm with Nildram on 8Mbps (synchronised at 8Mbps). Around Christmas time I was able to download a file from the Logitech site at roughly 800KBps but now I'm getting about 450Mbps.

Test 1
Speed Test Results
Date 03/04/08 03:01:52
Speed Down 4165.24 Kbps ( 4.1 Mbps )
Speed Up 368.07 Kbps ( 0.4 Mbps )

Test 2
Last Result:
Download Speed: 4435 kbps (554.4 KB/sec ) Upload Speed: 375 kbps (46.9 KB/sec )

I intend phoning them later today...
 
I've been on Nildram for a fair few years now.
The service was excellent when I first moved to them.
It went a little downhill when all of the moaners who were leaching their connections found they were getting kicked off their ISPs and loads moved to Nildram because at the time they had extremely generous caps.

The service at this point went downhill - mainly due to the sheer number of users.
Thankfully this seemed to have the desired effect, after around 3-4 months of this loads of the moaners jumped ship again.

End result here is that I'm stilll sync. at the fastest possible speed for Max ADSL and I'm still extremely happy with the service.
Just because Pipex have taken over the name doesn't mean the service has got any worse.
 
FunkyT said:
I take it you haven't noticed a degradation in service since Pipex was taken over by Tiscali last year?
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I used to use Nildram before and after Pipex and it was great.

NathanE, if you can, I'd check out Sky - their unbundled service is absolutely fantastic. Obviously you need Sky and to be on one of their exchanges but I would highly recommend it if you can.

Otherwise, Plusnet is the only other ISP I can think of that will do unlimited off-peak.
 
Looked at Eclipse. Their packages seem very vague. They seem to state the performance using a 5 star rating. Presumably this refers to how highly the package is prioritised on their QoS system?

I also don't like the look of Eclipse's fair use policy. It says "unlimited" but then talks about all this traffic light system and how it estimates your usage and if they "think" you are using too much. At no point does it actually state what the hard limit is. I can't have an Internet connection where I don't know what it's real limits are.

They also have all this £20 money back crap. And free hardware. I don't want any of that. I'm not a joe average consumer. Don't patronise me please Eclipse.

I have used Plusnet before on a secondary line and they were awful.

I will take a look at Enta and their resellers next I guess.

I'm sure Sky are great but again they seem to be a very consumer facing ISP to me - not likely to offer to type of support I'm after. Also my exchange isn't covered by them.
 
Ukfsn look like a professional operation - at least in the sense that they dare to state their GB caps and use words like "static IP" in their front page material rather than other consumery ISP's that hide it all away in the smaller print.

Just I'm concerned about their size and whether they are going to be around for long given their prices seem incredibly cheap compared to everyone else. Their web site certainly doesn't inspire confidence. (Can you tell I've seen it all before? ;))
 
Oh, Eclipse look to have changed. I was paying £29.99 a month, gave me 50 GB peak and unlimited off-peak. Though I'm certain that I busted through 50GB peak a few times yet they never sent me an email about it. Possibly only for repeat offenders. Only thing I was shaped on was usenet downloads. SSL made it a bit quicker, but I was still "managed". HTTP downloads were full speed all the time.
 
UKFSN are just an Entanet reseller and as far as I know Entanet are quite well established. I used them (UKFSN) for months and their service was very good.

I am migrating myself on Tuesday from Virgin Media ADSL (oh dear...) to ADSL24 another Entanet reseller I have had very good experiences with in the past. I chose them over UKFSN because I prefer their website and customer control panel even though they are still an Entanet reseller.

aaazza
 
NathanE said:
Ukfsn look like a professional operation - at least in the sense that they dare to state their GB caps and use words like "static IP" in their front page material rather than other consumery ISP's that hide it all away in the smaller print.

Just I'm concerned about their size and whether they are going to be around for long given their prices seem incredibly cheap compared to everyone else. Their web site certainly doesn't inspire confidence. (Can you tell I've seen it all before? ;))
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ukfsn's prices are the same as most other enta resellers. most offer pretty much the same package for the same money. there are exceptions to that of course..... :p

most of the better enta resellers (like ukfsn) let enta do the billing. so you don't need to worry about ukfsn going belly up.

enta are a pretty big outfit. the chief operating officer and chief technical officer regularly post on thinkbroand's forums. also most of the resellers post there as well.

i don't know if you've read this.....

http://ukfsn.org/betterbroadband.html

long story short, manage their connections to prevent congestion when it gets busy. this typically means throughput will slow down after 10pm weekdays until 1-am. also the weekend slowdowns typical happen between 10am and midnight. sometimes speeds will drop as low as 2mb but it rarely stays that low for long. of course you can monitor their central status pages here....

http://noc.enta.net/?page_id=166

(how many other isps publicise this information?)

now whilst that doesn't sound particularly appealing, it's only raw download speeds that are affected. pings/latency/streaming/normal browsing is always fine 24/7.

some people love to slate enta for managing their network in this fashion but for the huge allowance you get, it really is the only choice if you're stuck with non-llu adsl.

i've been with ukfsn since last july and love it. everything just works. once you're aware of when the slowdowns are, you just plan your large downloads around it. like weekdays 1am-10pm you are pretty much guaranteed the max speed your line supports......
 
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NathanE said:
Do Entanet use LLU in any way shape or form?
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No. Although Samknows states they do, it is in fact their BT WBC interconnects which bring the connections from BT onto their network, like their current central's.

If UKFSN, or any other Entanet reseller goes down Enta will take over the connections and issue every user with a mac code which they can do what they please with.
 
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