Time for a new ISP

robjf

robjf

robjf

Soldato
Joined
31 Oct 2003
Posts
4,577
Location
Derby, UK
After having been with Plus.net for many years ive finally decided that its time to change. At the moment ive been looking at Be's basic package for 13.50 a month. Any comments on their service, everything ive read so far has looked promising.

Is there anything i need to worry about with regard transferring or is it as simple as filling in the form on be's website?

Will our Linksys WAG54GS be suitable for the service? Any hidden charges etc?

Cheers guys :)
 
Be used to be excellent, now all they are good for is downloading IMO.

Quality of service on my line has been rubbish lately, high pings, lots of packet loss and all these 'network improvements' they have supposedly been implementing have done nothing to help me at any rate. If anything their new routes seem to be just as bad if not worse than the previous ones.

The only thing that is remotely as good as it used to be is the sheer throughput of the connection, I can happily max out my line at 2Mb/sec on torrents.

With regards to doing a transfer you will need a MAC code from your current provider, you then give this to whoever you sign up with and they will migrate you across.

Your current router says its ADSL2 compatible so it should be fine to keep using, Be/O2 also provide their own router but its best left in the box IMO.
 
wij said:
Be used to be excellent, now all they are good for is downloading IMO.

Quality of service on my line has been rubbish lately, high pings, lots of packet loss and all these 'network improvements' they have supposedly been implementing have done nothing to help me at any rate. If anything their new routes seem to be just as bad if not worse than the previous ones.

The only thing that is remotely as good as it used to be is the sheer throughput of the connection, I can happily max out my line at 2Mb/sec on torrents.

With regards to doing a transfer you will need a MAC code from your current provider, you then give this to whoever you sign up with and they will migrate you across.

Your current router says its ADSL2 compatible so it should be fine to keep using, Be/O2 also provide their own router but its best left in the box IMO.
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I don't know what's happened to your service, but I'm on be and my service is fine. Those network improvements can be turned off as far as I know, you've just got to request it from them with a webnote.

My service has been as solid as it's ever been. I get a solid 24.5Mb sync, good pings and no dropped packets or anything.

Be is the best ISP I've been with yet and the only thing that would tempt me away from them would be another ISP offering a significantly faster ADSL based service, and since 24Mb is the max until a new ADSL standard comes out, I'll be with them for some time to come.

I've been with be for almost 2 years now.
 
kylew said:
I don't know what's happened to your service, but I'm on be and my service is fine. Those network improvements can be turned off as far as I know, you've just got to request it from them with a webnote.
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What, like ask them to set up some specific routing just for me and kicking the people off my exchange that are overloading the capacity - I don't think they do that to be honest.

I've been with them for about 18 months now and it was all great until the O2 take over. I will point out though that a lot of the problems are area specific, some get them some don't though from reading through the Be* forums lately it seems to be more with problems than not and they are exceptionally slow at admitting there is a fault and fixing it.

But according to them a 50-80Ms ping to their own gateway is acceptable performance.

Come the end of January I will be going back to Entanet or if Zen are offing a 21CN based service by then I will sign up with them instead.
 
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I've got issues with Be too, download speeds fine, but latency in games is intolerable around 6-9pm and random times at weekends...

Probably due to the fact they are owned by o2 now, and their network is stretched...

What about cable?
 
wij said:
What, like ask them to set up some specific routing just for me and kicking the people off my exchange that are overloading the capacity - I don't think they do that to be honest.
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No, he just missed the point and thought you were talking about fastpath etc.


Anyway to add some balance my o2 connection provides 20ms UK pings and maxed download speeds any time of day or night.
 
I have fastpath and all that set up, should see the response times with it running interleaved! :)

But like I mentioned, some people say its great others are having a pathetic experience with them.

I would certainly give it a go though, because when it was good for me it was excellent, but personally I can't see my service improving in the near-distant future and 21CN activation on my exchange will be done by the end of Jan09.

It is also only a 3 month contract on Be* Unlimited (think its a 12 month on the really cheap service though), so you can jump ship easily if its not up to scratch, or if you think its going to stay good you could look at getting in on the friends&family O2 deal that is going round on here which I believe is a 12 or 18 month contract.

If it's no good then you'll have to pay £45 to leave unless you give 3 months notice and you will also probably have to pay whoever you reconnect with another £40 to get hooked up with BT's equipment again.
 
I am with O2 (basically Be) for £7.50 per month, love it. The connection speed isnt any better than with a standard ADSL provider even though it uses ADSL2 technology but downloading speed is amazing all the time. Can't fault it and miles more reliable than all my previous ISP's.
 
I was referring to the point at which O2 started offering their own brand of internet using the Be* LLU equipment.

Fairly sure that was a bit more recently than 18 months ago, or does time really go by that fast :)
 
Daegan said:
No, he just missed the point and thought you were talking about fastpath etc.


Anyway to add some balance my o2 connection provides 20ms UK pings and maxed download speeds any time of day or night.
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I wasn't actually talking about fast path. On the be site, there's options you can choose to 'optimise' your internet connection, outside of fastpath. There is 3 options, speed, gamer and normal. Nothing to do with fast path. The options are there because there are people who don't care about ping and such, but for those who do, they can change the options of their account.
 
kylew said:
I wasn't actually talking about fast path. On the be site, there's options you can choose to 'optimise' your internet connection, outside of fastpath. There is 3 options, speed, gamer and normal. Nothing to do with fast path. The options are there because there are people who don't care about ping and such, but for those who do, they can change the options of their account.
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Hence the "etc". Gaming mode is fastpath btw, speed and normal are about SNR margins.
 
wij said:
What, like ask them to set up some specific routing just for me and kicking the people off my exchange that are overloading the capacity - I don't think they do that to be honest.

I've been with them for about 18 months now and it was all great until the O2 take over. I will point out though that a lot of the problems are area specific, some get them some don't though from reading through the Be* forums lately it seems to be more with problems than not and they are exceptionally slow at admitting there is a fault and fixing it.

But according to them a 50-80Ms ping to their own gateway is acceptable performance.

Come the end of January I will be going back to Entanet or if Zen are offing a 21CN based service by then I will sign up with them instead.
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Ugh, I'm about to move from Enta to Be, but if my ping times are that bad then I'll be going right back as soon as I can.
 
Daegan said:
Hence the "etc". Gaming mode is fastpath btw, speed and normal are about SNR margins.
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Not from my experience it's not. I asked them to confirm, and changing any profile setting from gamer to speed to normal, they all turn fast path off.

I've tested this. Normally I get 24.5Mb but when I changed it to gamer mode, it went down to about 20. So I changed it to normal and speed, normal stayed the same, speed put me at about 20Mb. I contacted be about it, and they told me changing any profile setting turns fast path off. They reneabled it for me putting my speed back to 24.5Mb.
 
NuclearWinter said:
Ugh, I'm about to move from Enta to Be, but if my ping times are that bad then I'll be going right back as soon as I can.
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For ping, I run a dedicated server on my internet line for online games with friends, and generally most people get about 20m/s which I think is pretty good considering I can have up to 10 people on at a time.

Well it's good for me anyways. :p
 
I can't complain with O2 either. It's £7.50 a month (this price if you have an O2 phone) and I'm quite a distance from the exchange. It's ADSL2+ technology which is giving me about 5.5-6MB sustained download.

Had a problem just before christmas but it appears they were upgrading the exchange, so now it's 2MB faster than it was before.

Unlimited download too, so coming from a £20 a month 1MB fixed NDO package with 10gb limit it was quite a bargain.
 
wij said:
I was referring to the point at which O2 started offering their own brand of internet using the Be* LLU equipment.

Fairly sure that was a bit more recently than 18 months ago, or does time really go by that fast :)
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It was about 15 months ago. ;)

However in the year or so before that O2 invested significantly in improving Be's network, which would have benefitted you from the beginning of your contract. :)
 
Getting reviews of ISPs from the internet (and in particular a single forum) is absolutely pointless as everyone who sees it will have different experiences based on location, package and many other variables. Go with what looks good in your opinion and if it sucks, go for something else.
 
I'm on o2 (Be network) and get fast speeds and decent pings all the time. As has been said, it comes down to what area you're in - though Be do react to problem areas and order extra capacity as needed (this can take a little while to come through though of course).

Perhaps post the exchange you're on to see if anyone else has experience with that particular area/exchange?
 
At least the contract term with Be is short enough that if you have a problem you won't have too much hassle getting a MAC and getting away.
 
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