Reliable Broadband ISP in Sneckie??

[SMEE]

Pipex is my current internet provider. The Package I am on is ?29.99 per month for Broadband (up to 8Mb but actually lucky to get 2Mb!), all landline calls and line rental.

Problem is, the connection speeds have always been all over the place and am getting p1ssed off with it. At the mo, its reading as less than half a meg. My Year is up with Pipex in Feb, so am looking for good reliable ISP, preferably a deal that comes close to what i already have if possible. Does anyone monitior their connection speeds......if so...waht speeds are you getting in the sneck area?

[Scarlet Pimple]

Can't speak for Inverness but  I read on the BBC Ticker link  that the U.K. Government is apparently getting restlesss with the claims about high speeds made by British ISP's which apparently are falling far short of  these upper limits on average.

Here in Vancouver, Canada, I get about 4000  but the claim made by our local providers  is often 7000.

I am on cable .

[tm4tj]

The speed depends on the cables serving your area smee.  The closer you are to the telephone exchange the higher your speed will be.  BT have spent a lot of investment upgrading cables to cope better with broadband, ie putting in cables with larger conductors, using 0.6mm or 0.9 conductors rather than 0.3 or 0.4 which sufficed for the older speech systems.  The less resistance in your telephone line, the higher the speed of the BB connection.  With a lot of new sites springing up on the outskirts of Inverness, BT upgraded the cables to cope with the BB revolution of the last few years.

Therefore, the speed will vary dependant on where you stay.

[SMEE]

I had a BT engineer test the speed and he sed I have 5 Meg coming into my house. What I dont understand is, if what he said is true, why is my usual speed around 2 meg. My wirless router detects just under 5 Meg also, so where is near 3 meg going?? This weekend my speed has dropped to as low as 350kps at times :017:

[CaleyD]

SMEE, can you provide more details of your broadband setup?

It's my experience, having set up broadband for many people, that the issues are more often a result of how they have everything set up as opposed to a poor provider.

How many things do you have attached to your line (phones, faxes, Sky etc)?

How is everything filtered and how many filters?

How far is your router/modem from the master box (length of cable)?

What kind of cable is being used (BT Extension leads, Cat 5/e Cable etc)?

I recently rewired all the telecoms stuff in my house - everything after masterbox as it is illegal to mess with what comes before it - and I now have my broadband filtered right at the source with no need for further filters etc throughout the house.  It's not that expensive to do and if your half way confident with a screw drive and a pair of pliers you could probably do it yourself.

I had been happy with my connection previously but as we were adding another PC and the Xbox to the connection I wanted to make sure we were squeezing everything we could from the line.

[SMEE]

I have two phones attatched, both of which are filtered. The main phone point is free

I have 3 phone points in the house....and the speeds are the same regardless of what point am connected to (including directly into main box) even with all other points disconnected from phones.

[CaleyD]

Fault finding connections issues with any provider can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but I would say it's worth doing in order to narrow it down to your provider before you think about shifting.  The last thing you want to do is sign up with someone else and discover the problems persist.

Your distance from the exchange and the quality of the line between you and the exchange is the first thing to look at as it will establish your maximum.  You've already had this checked by a BT Engineer who has told you 5 Mb.  Providing the BT cabling is not from the ark I would say you must be about 3.5 to 4km from the exchange (as the cable runs, not the crow flies).

Your modem/router will probably show that 5Mb as your down(stream) connection speed regardless of where in the house you plug in the modem/router.  This speed is a theoretical maximum and it would be very rare for you to achieve it.

The more important things you need to compare between the socket you use for your modem just now and the master socket are the Line Attenuation and Noise Margin (Signal to Noise Ratio/SNR) figures.

Line Attenuation on the Master Socket should be lower than anywhere else in the house.

Noise Margin/SNR on the Master Socket should be higher than anywhere else in the house.

If my assumptions on your distance from the exchange are right then I would expect an Attenuation figure of around 45-50.  If it's lower then great, if it's higher then your either further away from the exchange than I assumed or your on some old wiring between you and the exchange...neither you can do anything about yourself.

The Noise Margin is a difficult one, but as a rule of thumb in getting a stable connection then 6db is comfortable and anything above that is a bonus.

If all these things check out then it's probably fair to say that the problem is with your provider.  I would try testing the master socket and other sockets at at least 3 different times during the day before jumping to any conclusions...unless of course you see any large immediate discrepancies between the master socket and other socket/s.

[SMEE]

Well..wat a night av had wi internet probs. I decided to update the frimware on my router. BAD MOVE! Couldnt get back online no matter what i tried. So I phoned Netgear so called "tech help" near 3 hrs on phone and they coulndt get me going again. So.......i thought......sod it...managed to get online with my etherenet cable and went and "upgraded" router firmware BACK to previous version. A wee bit of playing wi settings, and BOBS YER UNCLE! Am hacked off bigtime....and makes you wonder if they just wanna keep you on the phone for bucks rather than suggest doing what I did to fix it :020:

[SMEE]

Oh....and i missed Ross Kemp in Afghanistan :008:

[Guest rytenuff]

Have a look here: http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html

Zen Internet comes out very well . (which is why I use it natch )

[+The_Sponge]

I'm with Plusnet, not had any problems (been with them a couple of years now) & currently getting around 5mb on my 'up to 8mb' connection.

[Guest SPECKY]

Well..wat a night av had wi internet probs. I decided to update the frimware on my router. BAD MOVE! Couldnt get back online no matter what i tried. So I phoned Netgear so called "tech help" near 3 hrs on phone and they coulndt get me going again. So.......i thought......sod it...managed to get online with my etherenet cable and went and "upgraded" router firmware BACK to previous version. A wee bit of playing wi settings, and BOBS YER UNCLE! Am hacked off bigtime....and makes you wonder if they just wanna keep you on the phone for bucks rather than suggest doing what I did to fix it

.

[Jay_7]

Really depends on what Exchange your on. As far as I'm aware, both Culloden and MacDhui (sp?) exchanges have an Orange LLU in them. This means that orange and BT themselves are currently providing the best performing broadband to the surrounding areas.

I was with Eclipse Internets Evolution broadband offering and the performance was excellent and even better, it was totally un-throttled; I was constantly getting connection speeds at exactly 4.4MBps. For ?15.99 per month I found this to be excellent value for money.

The sooner the Highland Fibre Optic rollout begins the better!