What ISP is fastest / lowest latency - as I have to leave Hyperoptic

jeff83nz

jeff83nz

jeff83nz

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Moving, and leaving two of the best things I have ever lived with, a pool and Hyperoptic internet.

New place has no Hyperoptic, no Virgin, only Openreach denominated options, up to infinity 2 etc.

So my question is, is there any difference between the ISP's selling BT's wares, and if so, which is best. Don't care about their hardward as will be running PfSense for the router. So it literally is there one with better speeds / latency, and if so, which. Looking at simple BT and Zen at the moment.
 
No, not really. The difference will be customer service. There are a few to avoid though, Origin springs to mind.

I’m on PlusNet and I’m more than happy. Sky were good too as were Zen. PlusNet is far cheaper though.
 
As above you won't notice much different with all ISPs based on Openreach's network, especially if you're using your own gear.

Might be a good idea to avoid Sky though as they're pretty aggressive in trying to get you to use their Sky hub. You need to extract the details from the Sky hub, and then ensure the router you're using supports MER.
 
Customer service is good with BT if you take the plus option. If you don't mind paying over the odds a bit BT Fibre plus is probably a good choice.
 
Customer service, price, included equipment and bundled extras (TV, mobiles etc,) are your main differentiators otherwise it is much of a muchness as it is all on Openreach’s infrastructure. I don’t think one ISP will gain you significantly better latency than another on VDSL. Personally I go for the cheapest that doesn’t have atrocious customer service so Plusnet. Like you I use pfSense (plus UAPs) so don’t care about the included router and I have all the TV/mobile/films etc. I want from other sources. If I valued customer service above price I’d go Zen.

I wouldn’t go near BT retail based on my prior experience of **** poor customer service and Vodafone I left as I was with them at a time when I had to use their router and so was double NATd and the price reduction for being a pre-existing mobile customer came to an end too.
 
People are correct in what they say that you will get the same sync speed regardless of which provider you go with, but there are some outfits that cannot manage their actual network properly, don't have the capacity of others, don't have CDN or peering etc.

There's an advantage that comes with taking services from people like BT, TalkTalk, Sky etc. and that is that their networks have tons of capacity in, and people like Netflix and the BBC will be putting their content servers into their networks, rather than you having to go out over the Internet to get your videos. The downside of this is that the support can often be found lacking.

I have been with BT Infinity for probably seven years now and I've never had a single problem. I've also never had anything come up that required me to contact their support, so haven't had exposure to the main complaint people seem to have with them.
 
Also remember that your router / modem can effect ping times.

I use a Draytek 2860n that is a combined modem/router, and this gave about a 2ms reduction on ping compared to the separate Plusnet router / Open reach modem. In the Draytek I do also have something called Hardware Acceleration enabled that priorities frequent traffic, so good for example games traffic that it sees regular bursts of traffic.

Plusnet do now use a combined router / modem and presume being combined will offer similar latency to my Draytek.
 
I'm sure that's what "Hardware Acceleration" on a Draytek device is supposed to do. However as the standard troubleshooting procedure for anything Draytek router related is:
1. Have you disabled hardware acceleration?
I wouldn't personally be convinced it's making that much of a difference.
2ms difference it "tolerance" and not really indicative of the hardware making any difference.
 
Sparx said:
Just go with Plusnet - if you via Top Cashback you'll get £85 as well.
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Well Plusnet is out, three week install wait. The idea of going without internet for three weeks is literally not worth thinking about. It is my crutch to sanity (sad lives and all).

Sky looks a good deal. But I cannot use my own kit with them can I?
 
Hmm, I thought Plusnet were cheap, £32.99 for 66MB is expensive imo.

I pay less for 100MB from VM, sure I had to go through retentions to get just broadband but still.
 
ChrisD. said:
The waiting times are down to Openreach, so all providers would be the same.
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Sky can do in a week, BT can do quickly too. Just Plusnet, so it appears there is more to this.

It is just acitvating the phone line outside the buildng, and I have seen different trucks doing this, so I imagine different providers have their own contractors?
 
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