Broadband Disaster

My Internet has been absolutely crap the last couple of days. iPlayer keeps bombing out, web pages take ages to load or time out. Naturally I start wondering if Sky is to blame! Maybe it's the heat. Anyone else having trouble?
 
I've cooled down my router and given it a power cycle (I know that's not usually a good idea), but things are little better. The streamer download file is growing at fluctuating rates, sometimes sub-200kbps.
 
I recently switched to Xilo, their O2 LLU offering, which presumably now also uses the Sky infrastructure. Having initially promised "up to 6Mb" and consistently delivered about 5MB, for the last couple of weeks it's been giving 6.75 MB. Compared with Demon that's about twice the speed for a bit over half the price.
But it's too hot to spend much time in front of a screen. Maybe that's why it's faster - less contention.
 
Black Hole said:
My Internet has been absolutely crap the last couple of days. iPlayer keeps bombing out, web pages take ages to load or time out. Naturally I start wondering if Sky is to blame! Maybe it's the heat. Anyone else having trouble?
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I downloaded 50Gb (sic.) of video yesterday from YouTube, after several failed attempts to get the same stuff from iTunes.
 
I grabbed the "Speedtest HD" app for iPad, and it appears to be a crock of sh*t. Each time I run it, the figure comes out at 1.89 or thereabouts, and yet my Internet is obviously running much faster this morning than it has been the last couple of days.

My preferred measurement is to fire up iPlayer on the Humax and play something, and use the WebIF media browser to monitor the download (the figure appears at the bottom of the page). When I have tried grabbing stuff the last couple of days, the figure has been fluctuating around 1Mbps and below, this morning the interface is much more responsive, the playback doesn't stutter, and WebIF reports a steady 2Mbps (which is still down on what I have had in the past).
 
I'd rather be boiled in oil than give a penny to Rupert Murdoch.

I was a BT ADSL and broadband customer for over 20 years, but after moving into my present home in 2000 the service has been awful. Years of slow speed and disconnections, resetting that damn BT homehub every few days, many callouts, and the joys of repeating the same conversation over and over and over again to their call centre in India. I'm in an urban street only a mile away from the nearest BT exchange. Finally, on a weekend when my son and his wife were here and the connection failed when he needed to do some work, I had enough and jumped ship to Virgin eighteen months ago.

I'm paying about £43.00/month for broadband, TV (the base package but with a Tivo) and phone. I signed up for the 10Gb/s broadband and was upgraded to 30Gb/s for free a few months ago. Service is rock-solid (touch wood) and the broadband speed rarely drops below 30Gb/s even at peak periods. The Virgin hub handles multiple devices wirelessly and via ethernet without a hiccup - Windows XP and 7, Apple, Android (phone, tablet and TV stick), Raspberry Pi and the Hummy. I wouldn't go near BT with a bargepole now.
 
selectortone said:
I was a BT ADSL and broadband customer for over 20 years
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You should have got a decent ISP. Somehow I doubt your "20 year" claim as well, seeing as ADSL and broadband hasn't been in existence that long.
Years of slow speed and disconnections, resetting that damn BT homehub every few days, many callouts, and the joys of repeating the same conversation over and over and over again to their call centre in India. I'm in an urban street only a mile away from the nearest BT exchange.
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You almost certainly have a cable fault then. It's easy enough to spot by interpreting the figures on any decent router (i.e. not the one in a straightjacket supplied by the BT).
I signed up for the 10Gb/s broadband and was upgraded to 30Gb/s for free a few months ago.
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I rather think you're exaggerating somewhat.
The Virgin hub handles multiple devices wirelessly and via ethernet without a hiccup - Windows XP and 7, Apple, Android (phone, tablet and TV stick), Raspberry Pi and the Hummy.
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So does any other piece of kit. This is normal.
I wouldn't go near BT with a bargepole now.
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Nobody with any sense would. They are total control freaks and rip-off merchants.
 
prpr said:
You should have got a decent ISP. Somehow I doubt your "20 year" claim as well, seeing as ADSL and broadband hasn't been in existence that long.

You almost certainly have a cable fault then. It's easy enough to spot by interpreting the figures on any decent router (i.e. not the one in a straightjacket supplied by the BT).
I rather think you're exaggerating somewhat.
So does any other piece of kit. This is normal.
Nobody with any sense would. They are total control freaks and rip-off merchants.
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OK, let's take these one by one:

I was a BT ADSL and broadband customer for over 20 years

You should have got a decent ISP. Somehow I doubt your "20 year" claim as well, seeing as ADSL and broadband hasn't been in existence that long.

I had a BT Box in my home office, provided by my employer that provided some kind of digital connection that was a lot faster than dailup. I'm pretty sure it was some forerunner of consumer ADSL. This was in the mid 1990s.

Years of slow speed and disconnections, resetting that damn BT homehub every few days, many callouts, and the joys of repeating the same conversation over and over and over again to their call centre in India. I'm in an urban street only a mile away from the nearest BT exchange.

You almost certainly have a cable fault then. It's easy enough to spot by interpreting the figures on any decent router (i.e. not the one in a straightjacket supplied by the BT).

Here's what was done by BT over the course of 9 years of faults:

- replace home hub twice

- replace wiring from house connection to ADSL box and then homehub

- replace cable from House to telephone pole in road

- switch connection in cable junction box at top of road to another pair

- switch connection at exchange to another pair

- plus other interminable faffs that ultimately produded no improvement.

I signed up for the 10Gb/s broadband and was upgraded to 30Gb/s for free a few months ago.

I rather think you're exaggerating somewhat.

Sorry, senior moment. I obviously meant Mb/s. I signed up for 10Mb/s broadband which was the starter package 18 months ago. This is my current broadband speed:

speedtest290813.jpg


The Virgin hub handles multiple devices wirelessly and via ethernet without a hiccup - Windows XP and 7, Apple, Android (phone, tablet and TV stick), Raspberry Pi and the Hummy.

So does any other piece of kit. This is normal.

The BT homehub struggles.

I wouldn't go near BT with a bargepole now.

Nobody with any sense would. They are total control freaks and rip-off merchants

Couldn't agree more.
 
selectortone said:
I had a BT Box in my home office, provided by my employer that provided some kind of digital connection that was a lot faster than dailup. I'm pretty sure it was some forerunner of consumer ADSL. This was in the mid 1990s.
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It wouldn't have been ADSL in in the mid 90's, BT were offering DWS (Digital Widband Services = 2Mb/S link) and TPON to businesses and possibly the home if you were prepared to pay but not ADSL
 
Ezra Pound said:
It wouldn't have been ADSL in in the mid 90's, BT were offering DWS (Digital Widband Services = 2Mb/S link) and TPON to businesses and possibly the home if you were prepared to pay but not ADSL
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I called an ex-colleague with a better memory than me: it was ISDN2 and it was the late 90s not mid 90s as my faulty memory seemed to recall.

Anyway, enough nit-picking - my basic premise was:

BT=bad, Virgin=good, Sky=spawn of the devil.:)
 
gomezz said:
Virgin are useless.
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Sorry - that's a daft generalisation. Like every provider, Virgin are great for some users and horrendous for others. I've had years of totally reliable broadband provision by Virgin at a speed roughly 30x that offered by any other provider in my locality.

It's true that a few miles from here Virgin users are tearing their hair because of poor service, caused by trying to cram too many users on to an inadequate network. Virgin are compromised by their offshore customer service, the quality of their 'engineers' and their misguided decision to foist crippled, poor-quality routers on their customers. So far, none of that has impacted me personally and most Virgin customers have few, if any, problems - fortunately, as dealing with Virgin CS is (allegedly) mind-numbingly frustrating.
 
Well, I work for BT and my ISP is Virgin Media. I think that says it all.

I've been with VM since 2002. Very pleased with their service and broadband speed. Started at 2M, then upgraded to 10. Very recently I called to say I wanted to leave (cough) and got a free upgrade to 60M. We don't have TV just BB and phone.
 
gomezz said:
Not as daft as the other generalisations others have been making.
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So what proportion of the population actually have access to Virgin's fast service? Anyone?

Sorry, your home isn't in a Virgin Media area

We've checked your postcode and unfortunately we can't bring you any Virgin Broadband, TV or home phone services.
 
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