Which ISP next?

Psymonkee · 23 Apr 2006 at 23:45

Migrated away from F9 a couple of months back and eventually ended up with Eclipse - woo and yay I thought - No more annoying problems.

Except thats not true

Absolutely dire speeds at random times (day and night) are making my father and I rather infuriated...(slow as in: 17.7MB in 30 mins from a nildram server :/)

Since we are on a monthly contract we are now looking to get out ASAP - It's really that bad

Who do you guys reccomend? Don't really want to pay more than the 29.99 Eclipse are already taking if at all possible and ADSLMax would be preferable

tolien · 24 Apr 2006 at 00:05

Are you sure it's Eclipse though?
BT Speedtest would be a good idea before you start migrating around.

80 kilobits a second is a pretty serious fault, and I'd have imagined there'd be more complaining than you if it was an Eclipse issue.
Stats (attenuation/SNR margin/sync rate) might be useful, as well as some indication of any errors (if your kit gives them) - as well as the time period over which they've accrued (if any).
Trying different hardware might also be useful.

I'd be inclined to try raising it as a fault (since it is one) before racing to shuffle off to another ISP (especially since there's a pretty good chance it won't fix anything).

FrankJH · 24 Apr 2006 at 08:20

What deal are you on with Eclipse mate, I have just moved to them when I moved house and they seem reasonable ( I am paying around £24 for a 6.5 - 8mb d/l and 500k upload adsl max deal) and i wasnt impressed at all with my original 1mb deal with speeds being prety awful but going analyse my spped over the next week on my new connection ( it was put in place on saturday) but it seems on first impression to be a lot faster and nearer its potential if you get my drift

Psymonkee · 24 Apr 2006 at 10:12

I'll have some more stats in a bit when I return from getting my car MOT'd but having done some tests on the BT SPeedtest last night I am somewhat concerned.

Off the top of my head (I have pics as well so I shall pot those later) the results were:

~400kbps
~80kbps
~394kbps

Rather slow :/

tolien · 24 Apr 2006 at 11:02

So migrating wouldn't do squat (unless Eclipse won't do anything about those speeds, and they should).

Psymonkee · 24 Apr 2006 at 11:43

Currently they won't as I have just had the re-grade to 8mb and they refuse to log any line faults for 10 days :/

tolien · 24 Apr 2006 at 11:48

Neither will any other ISP though

Psymonkee · 24 Apr 2006 at 13:47

Shhhh

Your ruining my bad mood

Just gonna hoover out the car and then get some router stats for you to check over too

Third Opinion · 24 Apr 2006 at 22:07

I have been with Eclipse for 3 years and have only one problem that turned out to be my Router.

Eclipse Technical support is excellent IMO so I wouldn't be too quick to dump them. Give them a chance as they are very efficient once they have established the fault is their end.

Psymonkee · 24 Apr 2006 at 23:11

router stats:

(Netgear DG834GT)

done 6 speed tests since last night:

405kbps
87kbps
394kbps
1361kbps
1755kbps
1119kbps

However even though they got better web browsing and dowloads are still completely goosed :/

gr1mey · 24 Apr 2006 at 23:27

Nildram?

oh and btw Psy HLCCL for the win

tolien · 24 Apr 2006 at 23:38

Noise margin isn't great. Any error counters (with the time they're measured over preferably)?

As some kind of troubleshooting step, it might be useful to plot download speed from a known good source (eg http://fuller.zen.co.uk) versus SNR margin (as well as versus time). BT will certainly want a collection of speedtests run at various times (most probably including early hours of the morning).

On the other hand, it might all clear up by the 10 days is gone.

Psymonkee · 24 Apr 2006 at 23:49

It has only just reconnected at 7MB as well. Previously I had this:

Can the Noise Margin be influenced in any way by me? Or is it all up to the router?

tolien · 25 Apr 2006 at 00:10

Not really.
The modem (at both ends) will agree on the highest sync rate that'll leave you with the target SNR margin (by default 6dB, but has been observed to be higher). Some modems can be made to fiddle with the reported SNR margin so you get a higher (or lower) sync rate.