Switching from Aol, Possibly to BT, Need advice on the wireless

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Soldato
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Hey, ok we have had enough with the terribel service of AOL. I suggested BT because id like to have wireless. But i have my doubts. I cant find the specification of the BT home hub anywhere and therefore have no idea how fast it is, eg 54 mb/s .

Do any of you guys know? Is it really bad etc?


And is the achual internet connection of BT good and reliable?


Also, if i had to replace it. What would be good networking hardware for an xbox 360 and two pcs? (need pc network cards as well, dont worry about the xbox)

thanks.
 
it comes with wireless i see?

Is it any good? and what is the connection like?


I resently found out all these internet providers are a con.

It said in small print:

8megabits . So when they say 8meg they mean bits not bytes.

There is 8megabits to a byte. So in otherwords. 8Mb (megabits) = 1MB (megabyte broad band).

That is such a con!
 
You can go with any provider and use wireless - just buy/use your own kit instead of using the free stuff that's given. Nine times out of ten, the free kit's garbage anyway.

Bits versus bytes is hardly a con - networks have always used bits, and everyone uses the same units so you can compare between providers even if they used brainwaves per fortnight.
 
8igdave said:

There is 8megabits to a byte . So in otherwords. 8Mb (megabits) = 1MB (megabyte broad band).

That is such a con!
Click to expand...

:o

Overclockers sell a nice range of ADSL routers which are wireless. These can be used with any ADSL ISP. These will be of better quality than a lot of the free ones - especially the ones BT give you.

It is a g router which is also backwards compatible with a. G is 54Mb/s.
 
I know that they wont be the best. But you see i cant afford to buy a new wireless right now. Which is why i need an acceptable one to hook just 1 pc up for now. Later ill upgrade.

The reason i say its a con is because they advertise saying 8meg broadband. Besides, most people wont know the difference between Mb and MB, when there is a significant difference of 8million bits. Untill reading that i never relised you get bits and not bytes. neither did my friends. They dont achuly make it obious. You gota read the small print.
 
To be very blunt, your ignorance of industry standards does not make them a con. Network speeds have always been expressed in bits per second (probably because a transmitted character isn't always 8 bits) so for the broadband industry to do anything else would be ridiculous.
 
Snapshot said:
To be very blunt, your ignorance of industry standards does not make them a con. Network speeds have always been expressed in bits per second (probably because a transmitted character isn't always 8 bits) so for the broadband industry to do anything else would be ridiculous.
Click to expand...


ignorance which would most probably include the majority of the world who have broadband.

To me saying 8meg does not state Bits or Bytes and therefore is wrong. Why should you have to presume somthing without them giving any clue as to which they are other then that its to do with networking. Which how many people know about networks?

I dont have a network, why should i know anything about them? If i had a network, i wouldn't be asking the questions i did!
 
8igdave said:
ignorance which would most probably include the majority of the world who have broadband.

To me saying 8meg does not state Bits or Bytes and therefore is wrong. Why should you have to presume somthing without them giving any clue as to which they are other then that its to do with networking. Which how many people know about networks?

I dont have a network, why should i know anything about them? If i had a network, i wouldn't be asking the questions i did!
Click to expand...

It is not their fault you don't understand what it means.
 
Don't bother with BT.

I just left them because recently they have really gone downhill.
Since they changed their option 3 to "Unlimited", they have started using traffic managment. I am syncing at 8128kbps with an IP profile of 7150 - with BT I was lucky to get 200-300kbps on weekends, and weekdays after 4pm I was lucky to get over 500kbps. I couldn't even watch streaming videos on Youtube - their technical support kept blaming viruses, spyware, poor house wiring, etc - their support is laughable.
I moved ISP's 10 days ago and since moving now have rock solid speeds of 6900kbps +.
You can read reviews of BT here: http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php#

I wouldn't go near them ever again. IIRC, they have 18 month contracts too!

You would be much better off going with an ISP who have a fixed download cap, there are not many ISP's on ADSL that can provide true unlimited, unless you pay £70+. Those who claim to have unlimited usually use some kind of traffic managment.
I was only downloading 20-30GB on BT, but was being capped to less than 512K speeds.
Also go for an ISP with less than a 3 month contract, it will probably save you a hell of a lot of pain if you ever have problems.
Entanet resellers like ADSL24 or UKFSN get my vote - or if you don't need huge download caps, then Zen, IDNet and Newnet are all pretty good, but more expensive that Entanet resellers.
 
8igdave said:
ignorance which would most probably include the majority of the world who have broadband.

To me saying 8meg does not state Bits or Bytes and therefore is wrong. Why should you have to presume somthing without them giving any clue as to which they are other then that its to do with networking. Which how many people know about networks?

I dont have a network, why should i know anything about them? If i had a network, i wouldn't be asking the questions i did!
Click to expand...

It's always been this way. Back in the 56k modem days everyone knew they wouldn't get 56KB/sec download speeds. That's because the connection was 56 kilobits so even if you did get a full 56k connection (which was impossible) you'd only ever see 7KB/sec download speeds (56/8=7). I can't believe you've "only just found this out" but no, it's not a con. Internet connections and various other networking things (ie. 100mbit and gigabit networks) have always been measured in bits.

Blame the networking world in general. Years ago when 10mbit networks were standard, nobody whinged that they were actually only 1.25MB networks.
 
Zildjian said:
Don't bother with BT.

I just left them because recently they have really gone downhill.
Since they changed their option 3 to "Unlimited", they have started using traffic managment. I am syncing at 8128kbps with an IP profile of 7150 - with BT I was lucky to get 200-300kbps on weekends, and weekdays after 4pm I was lucky to get over 500kbps. I couldn't even watch streaming videos on Youtube - their technical support kept blaming viruses, spyware, poor house wiring, etc - their support is laughable.
I moved ISP's 10 days ago and since moving now have rock solid speeds of 6900kbps +.
You can read reviews of BT here: http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php#

I wouldn't go near them ever again. IIRC, they have 18 month contracts too!

You would be much better off going with an ISP who have a fixed download cap, there are not many ISP's on ADSL that can provide true unlimited, unless you pay £70+. Those who claim to have unlimited usually use some kind of traffic managment.
I was only downloading 20-30GB on BT, but was being capped to less than 512K speeds.
Also go for an ISP with less than a 3 month contract, it will probably save you a hell of a lot of pain if you ever have problems.
Entanet resellers like ADSL24 or UKFSN get my vote - or if you don't need huge download caps, then Zen, IDNet and Newnet are all pretty good, but more expensive that Entanet resellers.
Click to expand...



What ISP are you currently using now?
 
8igdave said:
What ISP are you currently using now?
Click to expand...

ADSL24 (an Entanet reseller) - there are quite a few ADSL24 users on these boards. The support is absolutely amazing. I sent an email asking Interleaving to be turned off, and had a reply within 15 minutes saying that they have contacting BT asking them to turn it off - within a few hours interleaving was turned off.
They are also very knowledgeable and actually know what they are talking about.
 
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