Talktalk rubbish - Plusnet decent?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:02

I am fed up with Talktalk ever since they have taken over my old onetel account. I am not a massive downloader/gamer and when I do download I use usenet instead of torrents. I don't think the throttling will be a big issue.

Looking for recommendations on plusnet to help sway me either way. Twitter is full of people complaining tonight about talktalk and their service is almost unusable. I'm in the sticks so 2Mb line is the most we can get. Is it worth the change?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:06

What was the problem?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:12

Well I can't get sky in my area so that isn't an option. 60GB is plenty for me. I wouldn't call download limit a show stopper though! In terms of quality of service was it fine?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:13

Broadband is flying again after midnight.

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 00:20

Anything should be better than TalkTalk - I think they get the reputation of being shocking.

Plusnet has local support right?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 10:17

I use SSL usenet. Can it be shaped too?

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 10:54

I have been looking at IDNET and they sound really good. Might switch the whole thing over for phone and b'band. Don't seem to get a free router or anything though.

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 14:09

I think I am going to go for IDNet.

Can anyone else except 'fluff' recommend them? He must be on commission for recommending them on here.

Edit: Actually i am put off by IDNETs tiered downloading whereby you have a peak allowance and an off peak allowance.

The max I can get is 2Mbps. Am I likely to see much of an improvement? Talktalk Onetel tell me they don't throttle but it's so slow during peak times.

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 15:45

Things like iPlayer and watching streams would use a fair chunk - that will all be done during peak times.

I work from home a fair bit and if downloading MSDN images I want them NOW. In saying that with a 2Mb connect it takes hours anyways. What download speeds should be normal for a 2Mb line?

I was speaking to Zen too and they sounded slightly more professional on the support side of things.

I would say there isn't too much difference really.

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 17:39

I talked to Talktalk Onetel earlier and they said they don't throttle usage but they really must do as it is impossible to use between 5 and midnight. I think there are maybe 2000 addresses served on this exchange. Is that a lot? They kept trying to suggest that it is slow because too many people are using it.

ringo747 · 22 Mar 2011 at 22:19

My internet seems to be fine tonight but some nights it is just unusable. I don't know what the story is.

ringo747 · 31 Mar 2011 at 11:41

Just an update on this. In the end I moved everything away from TT Onetel and moved the broadband to zen. Today was my activation date and I noticed on speedtest.net that my ISP was still onetel but noticed speed differences.

This is the end result. Could someone explain how it is possible? Zen mentioned that an engineer would maybe have been involved in the migration. Below are the stats:

OLD

NEW

So my connection speed is now 3392 compared to 2272 - why would this be? Is this a 3Mbps connection now? My download speeds are now a fair bit better so it's all good. Looking forward to using this new service.

ringo747 · 31 Mar 2011 at 14:13

OK, so does this mean I'm officially on a 3Mb connection now as opposed to the 2Mb previously?

ringo747 · 31 Mar 2011 at 22:10

fluff said:
Yes. You might be able to squeeze a little more downstream speed out of the line if you force the SNR to 6. You should be able to do it as you have a Netgear router.

http://www.kitz.co.uk/routers/dg834GT_targetsnr.htm

The article refers to the DG83G but it might work with other models of Netgear routers.

I've tried this but my connection speed now lowers. Is that expected?

ringo747 · 7 Apr 2011 at 19:25

ringo747 said:
NEW

So my connection speed is now 3392 compared to 2272 - why would this be? Is this a 3Mbps connection now? My download speeds are now a fair bit better so it's all good. Looking forward to using this new service.

For some reason my connection now only connects at 2080kbps so it's slower than it was before. How can this be? Router settings haven't changed at all.

ringo747 · 7 Apr 2011 at 22:02

Sparx said:
For a downstream line attenuation of 44db you should really be getting a few meg higher!

You should definately give the below a go and remove the bell wire on your phone socket then powercycle your router and check your stats again - trust me.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.html#235

I will give that a go. We are miles from the exchange. Is it likely to make that much difference?

ringo747 · 7 Apr 2011 at 22:20

Here is my latest stats from tonight - notice the connection speed is dropped lower again.

Edit: o and I've found out that we have a temporary line coming in from the outside which is connected to the same point as the old bell used to be. Once we get new cable in it will hopefully get better.

ringo747 · 8 Apr 2011 at 09:52

I will try to find out from the ISP. I have rebooted the router a few times as it was behaving funny.

ringo747 · 8 Jun 2011 at 18:34

I went with Zen in the end but I am finding the 50GB allowance to be tighter than I thought. IDNET is another well recommended one but their allowance is worse again.

Any other recommendations about who I could look at? Ideally not paying more than £25/month.