Those of you with Be

NachT · 22 Mar 2007 at 21:27

I'm thinking of switching to Be "Unlimited", just wanted to ask a couple of things, if you know the answers!

Whats the monthly limit on the unlimited package? As in, at what point do you *hit* the fair usage policy in the face? With my old ISP ( also "unlimited" ) they had a fair usage policy, and when I got to around 8 - 10gig downloaded within' a month they would reduce my line speed by like, loades! :eek:

untill the next billing date.

And whats the pings like with Be, any good for gamers?

The upload speeds are lookin' very nice, for £25 a month it sounds great.

So what are the catches?

Selekt0r · 22 Mar 2007 at 23:17

I've been with Be for about 2 weeks, so may not be the most authoritative voice, however:

As far as I have been able to determine the FUP is unlikely to kick in until you are into the 100Gb+ per month territory - probably significantly more. Be don't publish a figure for the FUP, so it's difficult to be certain.

Pings are very good. I get 15ms to jolt or other UK servers. Pings of 30-35 to U.S. servers.

My phone line isn't brilliant, so I'm only getting 7Mbit down, but the 1.2Mbit upload is nice

The only downside for me has been that reliability is not 100% - I've had a 1hr unplanned outage last week, and the connection does drop and reconnect on occasion (and sometimes requires a router reboot to reconnect

). Also, there are some issues for some Be users that U.S. websites (particularly streaming media sites like youtube) are very slow. They have been OK for me though.

Overall I'm happy (for now anyway).

.Griff. · 23 Mar 2007 at 11:23

Example of my ping -

Target Name: opt38.multiplay.co.uk
IP: 85.236.101.34
Date/Time: 23/03/2007 11:22:44 to 23/03/2007 11:22:53

1 67 ms 67 ms 58 ms 67 ms 67 ms 65 ms 63 ms 56 ms 68 ms 58 ms dsldevice.config [192.168.1.254]
2 * N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A [-]
3 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms N/A 10 ms 9 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms linx-gw1.enta.net [195.66.226.151]
4 11 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 11 ms 11 ms 11 ms 10 ms gi4-3.enta-transit.as35028.net [84.45.252.122]
5 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms opt38.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.101.34]

Ping statistics for opt38.multiplay.co.uk
Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 10ms, Maximum = 10ms, Average = 10ms

iCe-BLaZeD · 23 Mar 2007 at 11:37

i was going to migrate to be if possible when be upgraded the exchange but now they removed the upgrade date from our exchange

Valo · 23 Mar 2007 at 12:03

I've been on Be Unlimited for two months and it's been superb. I've not had any downtime that I'm aware of and my speeds have been great too.

paul8811 · 23 Mar 2007 at 12:48

Been with them for 18 months & again very good, very limited downtime. I have never had a warning about the FUP & I pretty much have utorrent running about 40 hours a week.

Five_Star · 23 Mar 2007 at 13:00

Since joining before Christmas I've been really happy with Be* overall. Sure the router is poor (strange disconnection issues with xbox live) but can be replaced with the Netgear GT which is much better.

I've just checked my giganews transfers and I've been averaging 100GB per month there about, usually all overnight stuff. No letters or e-mails about my usage but I don't user p2p at all.

Some problems with my phone line mean I only connect at 12Mb/s even after an internal rewire and proper filtered faceplate, but even at these speeds its very good.

By far the best ADSL provider I've used for the money.

Fr0dders · 23 Mar 2007 at 13:13

NachT said:
Whats the monthly limit on the unlimited package? As in, at what point do you *hit* the fair usage policy in the face?

no download limits, the FUP only contains legal restrictions ( no child porn, dont DDOS web sites etc..) no download limits. BEthere is an LLU provider (make sure they are enabled at your exchange using www.samknows.com) they own the network from the exchange onwards, so nobody to charge them for bandwith. Your other ISP wont have been LLU, so was charged for how much bandwith they used by BT.

NachT said:
And whats the pings like with Be, any good for gamers?

Excellent. I get < 20ms pings quite often.

NachT said:
The upload speeds are lookin' very nice, for £25 a month it sounds great.

So what are the catches?

no e-mail and no webspace. Oh and they are an LLU Provider, so they have to have installed their equipment at your local exchange.

if you can live with that, thats it

hyper_piper45 · 23 Mar 2007 at 14:29

I can only really echo the comments above.

I have fairly high traffic and have never had any warnings.

Pings are good aswell.

axer · 23 Mar 2007 at 14:46

Selekt0r said:
Pings of 30-35 to U.S. servers

You sure this isn’t a typo? 30-35ms to the US (even the east coast) is pretty much impossible I'm afraid to say ;P

WotDa · 23 Mar 2007 at 14:50

axer said:
You sure this isn’t a typo? 30-35ms to the US (even the east coast) is pretty much impossible I'm afraid to say ;P

Pinging revision3.com [64.191.203.28] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 64.191.203.28: bytes=32 time=173ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.191.203.28: bytes=32 time=173ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.191.203.28: bytes=32 time=174ms TTL=242
Reply from 64.191.203.28: bytes=32 time=174ms TTL=242

Ping statistics for 64.191.203.28:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 173ms, Maximum = 174ms, Average = 173ms

.Griff. · 23 Mar 2007 at 15:20

Pinging US East Coast -

Target Name: colo.aleron.com
IP: 204.157.0.1
Date/Time: 23/03/2007 15:20:02 to 23/03/2007 15:20:11

1 14 ms 17 ms 19 ms 89 ms 17 ms 16 ms 16 ms 17 ms 18 ms 20 ms dsldevice.config [192.168.1.254]
2 * N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A [-]
3 10 ms N/A 10 ms 10 ms 10 ms N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A [195.50.118.61]
4 11 ms 17 ms 19 ms 19 ms 13 ms 22 ms 12 ms 10 ms 20 ms 16 ms ae-19-55.ebr1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.116.158]
5 18 ms 19 ms 19 ms 20 ms 24 ms 21 ms 20 ms 11 ms 21 ms 21 ms ae-1-100.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.132.118]
6 84 ms 88 ms 81 ms 82 ms 92 ms 81 ms 83 ms 88 ms 83 ms 84 ms ae-4.ebr1.NewYork1.Level3.net [4.69.132.109]
7 * N/A 92 ms N/A 92 ms N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A ae-3.ebr1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.132.89]
8 * N/A 89 ms 89 ms 250 ms 88 ms N/A N/A N/A N/A ae-11-51.car1.Washington1.Level3.net [4.68.121.18]
9 89 ms 88 ms 113 ms 88 ms N/A 88 ms 88 ms 88 ms 88 ms 89 ms t2-1.ar1.iad1.scnet.net [4.79.195.146]
10 * N/A 87 ms 87 ms N/A 86 ms N/A N/A N/A N/A unknown.scnet.net [216.246.36.137]
11 * 84 ms N/A N/A 85 ms 85 ms 85 ms 84 ms 86 ms 84 ms unknown.iad.scnet.net [66.225.244.194]
12 84 ms 86 ms N/A N/A N/A N/A 84 ms 84 ms 85 ms 85 ms colo.aleron.com [204.157.0.1]

Ping statistics for colo.aleron.com
Packets: Sent = 6, Received = 6, Lost = 0 (0.0%)
Round Trip Times: Minimum = 84ms, Maximum = 86ms, Average = 84ms

NachT · 23 Mar 2007 at 15:53

Thanks for all your helpings and comments on Be!

My exchange is being upgraded at the end of this month to allow Be.

One more little question, do many of you Be users use P2P / download with torrents? I've read about a guy who recieved an e-mail from Be because he was using P2P. I only download about 2 - 10 torrents a month, so i'm not realy a heavy user.

Whats the speeds like on P2P, any throttling or trafic shaping?

.Griff. · 23 Mar 2007 at 15:56

NachT said:
Thanks for all your helpings and comments on Be!

My exchange is being upgraded at the end of this month to allow Be.

One more little question, do many of you Be users use P2P / download with torrents? I've read about a guy who recieved an e-mail from Be because he was using P2P. I only download about 2 - 10 torrents a month, so i'm not realy a heavy user.

Whats the speeds like on P2P, any throttling or trafic shaping?

I've been downloading from a private BT tracker today at 1.7mbps but prefer Usenet personally. No traffic shaping and/or throttling on either.

As for this person receiving an email I think I know the one you're referring to. He didn't receive the email because he was using BT/P2P rather he'd downloaded a game and the developer/publisher contacted Be with his IP address.