Posted by Garion on 2013-10-27 12:40:41

Fyi plus net is the same company as BT. They are allowed to charge less for their product because the are a smaller company than BT and have a smaller market share. BT are actually forced to charge more for the exact same product by Ofcom. This is to stop them gaining a monopoly over the market. All WiFi vouchers are a rip off.

That said plus net do have better customer service, all their staff are based in the UK.

Posted by harvestmouse on 2013-10-27 14:46:21

I think generally there are good deals in the UK now. All the companies are worried with free BT sports!

Posted by DrDeath on 2013-10-27 15:05:59

Just to add some providers seem to cause constant crashing. I played Prez the other day and he had a dozen disconnects, he said it was because of BT. I'm on Virgin and have had 1-2 in ~200 games... Might be useful to know if other coaches see similar performance by these?

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-27 19:55:43

Dr Death to clarify for you - There are only two Broadband providers in the UK. Openreach and Virgin. These are the only two broadband networks available period.

Virgin have their own Fibre Optic broadband which is excellent. However the bad side of Virgin is they throttle Peer to Peer downloads, and they also restrict your download speed at peak times, which is 17:00 - 23:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00 - 22:00 weekends iirc.

All other service providers BT, Talk Talk, Plus Net, Sky, Aol, Tiscaly etc... all pay Openreach for their Broadband. So they all use the same network. So if you have bad internet connection with one of them then you have bad internet with all of them as they all use the same Openreach lines. To confuse matters, Virgin have started selling copper broadband over Openreach's network as well. So if you go with Virgin make sure you are buying their product over their own network and not Openreach's.

The positives to Openreach's Network is they do not restrict speed at any times (they stopped doing this late last year), they also do not restrict Peer to Peer downloads (again stopping last year).

Now, Prez feel free to contact me if you are having problems with your BT broadband and I will see if I can sort it out for you. BT copper broadband and Fibre broadband now (which they get through Openreach like everyone else). The copper broadband is obviously a lot less reliable. So if people are looking at broadband and need reliability etc.. get Fibre bb from one of the service providers that uses Openreach's network like BT, plusnet etc...

the other problem prez might be having is wireless dropping connection rather than the actual broadband dropping. So that needs to be cleared up really.

I hope this helps people. :)

Posted by B_SIDE on 2013-10-28 00:18:33

BT? So the largest internet provider in the UK has Break Tackle?

Posted by keggiemckill on 2013-10-28 01:51:59

"they also restrict your download speed at peak times, which is 17:00 - 23:00 Monday to Friday and 09:00 - 22:00 weekends iirc."

Peak times/ large customer usage throttle down the speeds on any piece of internet highway. They say they throttle it down, because everyone trying to use anything at the same time will be slow. We line up in society and take turns to keep this flowing smoothly. There is no visual line to stand in on the internet so everyone keeps clicking and it becomes bogged down. What you really need to look at is what the company bandwidth capability is, and how many Carriers they have. Its important to know this because Modems share and allocate to paths on the Return Carriersto ones that are lower Signal to noise (less usuage.)
Here in Vancouver, Canada we run out to 42 Mhz. 4 Internet Carriers.We are about to up grade this to an 80 MHz, and maybe a 100 Mhz. That creates the space for more Carriers. We plan to use up to 12-16 in the next five years, upgrading from the 4 we use now. In some places there are 250 MB down load speeds. Dubai I believe runs out to a 250 Mhz system. Who knows how many carriers they use at the moment.

Fibre Optics are only a the vehicle of transmission . They run faster because there are not converting the signals to another means, aka Coax, they are only capable of faster speeds because they are bypassing conventual transportation problems. Coax or copper do actually works just as good, but there can be many issues. Coax also combines everything in the field, and then in almost all areas still convert to Fibre. Copper is also more susceptible to area problems than Fibre, because of the way things are delivered. Copper still goes onto Fibre. They call it Fibre but it always has a copper feed into it somewhere. The Head ends use Coax between devises. Ethernet cables are copper.

Basically Wifi and Broad band are actually using the same type of system. The only real difference is how you hook your computer up to it and the path it takes. Highway compared to back roads so sort of thing. I work in CATV here in Canada. I perhaps explained more than you cared to know and not as clear as I wanted it to be. :)

Posted by pythrr on 2013-10-28 03:41:35

i blame BT for all my losses

Posted by pythrr on 2013-10-28 03:43:07

hey keggie - does all the above mean that my Shaw wifi will become less shit in the future? :)

Posted by keggiemckill on 2013-10-28 06:18:03

yes pythrr, that is exactly what it means. Rebuild is coming in the next couple months. Still better than Telus. :)

Posted by pythrr on 2013-10-28 07:35:42

yay!

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-28 09:40:08

'Peak times/ large customer usage throttle down the speeds on any piece of internet highway. They say they throttle it down, because everyone trying to use anything at the same time will be slow.'

This is not true on Openreach's network in the UK keggie. I'm not saying it cannot happen because it does, but if it does occur on their network it is declared a fault and network capacity is increased in that area usually within a week. Openreach have spent millions in the last couple of years increasing their capacity to meet demand. Which you elude to when talking about carriers. The point is this sort of network shaping should no longer happen on Openreach's network, and when it does it is rectified within a week or two.

There is a big difference between this and Virgins network where they pro-actively reduce your download speed from say 30 meg to 2 meg so their network can cope with the traffic. Virgin are not investing in their network anymore while openreach are. Also throttling P2P usage used to be something Openreach and Virign both used to do, but because Openreach are constantly pro actively increasing capacity they allow it to go ahead now without throttling it.

Posted by xnoelx on 2013-10-28 10:36:40

I'm on Virgin, and I've never noticed any problem with the throttling thing, because I tend to stream rather than download. On the other hand, over the last 6 weeks or so, my service has gone down at least 4 times. Sometimes for as little as an hour, but the last and longest was for about 16 hours. That is a very localised thing though, and I have friends who live within a couple of miles and have had no problems.

So I guess my point is that whoever you're with, there are a lot of factors that can affect your service. Just go for the cheapest one.

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-28 13:32:47

I use virgin because I cannot get Fibre over Openreachs network where I live. Virgin are fine unless you download Peer to Peer a lot, then you are screwed.

don't just go with the cheapest though, there are loads of factors that you should look at first.

Posted by keggiemckill on 2013-10-29 05:31:05

"Throttle down" is counter productive, and I cant believe a Company would do this. Its bad practice, and missleads the customers.
We have had many issues with Saturated Nodes. Which give the false effect of a Throttle. When the SNR is high (or low depending on who you talk too,) due to either poor signal or Saturation they need to be divided/ expanded.. I guess I should read up on the Virgin network. Im in the know on the industry, but not some of the Companies and their systems.Thanks for the info Garion.

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-29 09:33:31

Yup its really bad that they do this, most customers are unaware too. If I was to guess- I believe virgin will basically just let their own network fall to pieces over the next 5 years while they wait for openreach to finish rolling out fibre broadband across the whole of the UK at a huge cost and then just pay openreach to use their network rather than maintaining their own.

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-29 09:49:08

Oh I almost forgot Hull have their own phone and bb provider completely separate to the rest of the country. I think it is called 'KC' IIRC. Their network is meant to be awful. Loads of aluminum cable etc. However last I heard they were planning to roll out their own fibre product.

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-29 10:07:22

here is virgins official statement on traffic management though I dont think they really cover the extent of how much they enforce this - http://help.virginmedia.com/system/selfservice.controller?CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&ARTICLE_ID=3103&CURRENT_CMD=SEARCH&CONFIGURATION=1001&PARTITION_ID=1&USERTYPE=1&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTY=us&VM_CUSTOMER_TYPE=Cable

Posted by keggiemckill on 2013-10-29 14:41:14

(How does traffic management apply to me?
If you are one of our customers using broadband for emailing, browsing, gaming and listening to music it’s highly unlikely that traffic management will apply to you. You will only ever be traffic managed if you’ve been uploading or downloading a very large amount of data during peak times, and reached the limit set for your broadband tier.)

This states that only Down load Abusers get Throttled and not the everyday customer. That means that if you get labelled they slow you down at peak times, to not slow down the average Customer. My company does not do this, but they could. The people who end up being abusers are the people who down load Movies or TV shows instead of getting Cable. We have many customers who have figured this out and are only Internet service. It is very typical now a days to find this. If we have someone who over downloads, we call them and try to upsale their package, or tell them we could bill them differently.
There recently was a law passed in Canada, that is similar to Cell Phone Data. If a Customer goes over their allocated Data limit, then potentially we could start billing just for the extra Data used. We would rather contact them an either get them on a more convenient package or ask them to "tone" it down a bit. No company uses this feature yet. They all have it in place though.

Thanks for that info Garion! :)

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-29 16:14:34

As someone who works in this field I believe that they do not just restrict 'heavy users' at peak times (possibly not on purpose mind). Their network is increasingly becoming unable to handle the amount of data that it carries. They may only pro actively restrict heavy users but contention on the SVLAN is such that any end users connected to that SVLAN suffer at peak times. Even their TV service struggles at peak times, with menus taking a long time to load etc... (basically any part that requires BB usage).

Also 'downloading very large amounts of data' is very ambiguous and different people would consider different amounts a lot. I know I am not a very heavy user, but even things like You Tube tend to buffer a lot more than they should at peak times, also having checked my throughput speed (currently 30 meg) I can tell you it does decrease substantially at peak times which is should not unless SVLAN is overloaded or they are throttling me.

Some quick google searches will find many people complaining of the same. it doesnt really bother me because I use the internet at off peak times mostly and even at peak times I am usually on playing fumbbl :P

Posted by Garion on 2013-10-29 19:56:18

So.. as proof. I have tested my speed again at a peak time and it is essentially half of what it was at off peak, I was getting 30 meg throughput off peak (which is what I pay for) and now I am getting 14 meg. I am doing nothing other than browsing today and had IRC open as well.

On Openreach's network this would not happen.