Internet Speed

[Andy G]

Hi Guys

Does anyone else suffer from a sh*t internet service>?

Since moving out of the big smoke, its actually not been to bad (BT broadband) and off late its been so poor it been dropping Skype calls, something I do quite a lot for work.

Any clever ways of improving it? There has to be some tech alternative to this BT option.

[Dominic]

For years I suffered circa 1MB BB coming through the BT exchange at home. In the past year, Virgin installed cable to our street, so now have circa 30MB B/B which is great. Only downside is the outstandingly awful customer service whenever there is an issue - including them taking 6 months to re-lay the tarmac they dug up on the pavement outside my house.

Enjoying 100MB B/B in my new office - which is way more than I need!

[renmure]

Ours is always crap.
Think we are about a mile or more from the exchange box thingy and connected by wires which run through woods. Internet signal comes and goes with the weather. When it is wet and very windy there isn't any. Always an eye opener to see how fast it is supposed to run when I am in civilisation.

[ClarkyBoy]

Mine has been very poor of late (BT also)

its a real PITA!

[CubanGav]

If its been ok and went downhill there is a problem. Line or internal wiring and equipment set up, usually. If you want I can check the circuit performance at the exchange. Reset the speed profile if needed.

samknows.com will show you alternative suppliers out of your exchange and if you can get fibre or cable service.

Other than that - it's either 3/4G if it's available, or a satellite set up.

Gav.

[H8OAG]

If its been ok and went downhill there is a problem. Line or internal wiring and equipment set up, usually. If you want I can check the circuit performance at the exchange. Reset the speed profile if needed.

samknows.com will show you alternative suppliers out of your exchange and if you can get fibre or cable service.

Other than that - it's either 3/4G if it's available, or a satellite set up.

Gav.

Andy

You need Cuban Gav to organise an engineer to bunch the pairs from the cabinet to your DP (don't ask!!)
The practice used to be common place when I was an engineering manager...........but frowned upon now as it uses spare capacity
It certainly helps if you are a fair(way) distance from the exchange

[CubanGav]

Ufffft. The butchers

[Doc883]

Hi Guys
Does anyone else suffer from a sh*t internet service>?
Since moving out of the big smoke, its actually not been to bad (BT broadband) and off late its been so poor it been dropping Skype calls, something I do quite a lot for work.
Any clever ways of improving it? There has to be some tech alternative to this BT option.

Carry out a speed test at the master socket with the internal wiring effectively disconnected then again from an extension. More often than not the internal wiring of a house can drag down your speed.

[tut]

Andy, make sure that you have the latest master box from BT which has internet and phone sockets without a splitter. After my first set of problems they fitted it, but the actual cause was the Exchange equipment, seems that the engineer set it at a 15db rate instead of 5.

The last problems were an increasing number of dropouts over a three week period, ending up with no connection at all. They cured the initial one by changing the channel number, but then we had what they said was a major outage for Mintlaw and Peterhead areas, it was supposed to be fixed after a couple of hours, but I was without for two days. Will give the support staff in Mumbai a big thumbs up though, good English, very polite and patient, and could not do enough to help and try and sort it out.

However they could not know that they had to contend with numbnuts at this end who could not trace the fault to the equipment in the Exchange for two days, once this was changed I was back on line. Pretty obvious as I had a connection to my router, but no internet connection. I get a 6-8mb connection, which considering I am on the lowest of the low configs, old copper cable fed by a non LLU Exchange, is pretty good. Can watch utube, video and iPlayer in HD.

However I will be ditching them when my contract is up, they were charging me £26/month for Broadband alone, which I got reduced to £16 after telling a Supervisor they were a bunch of robbing barsteward, to which he agreed. Will change the whole package over to Sky at £2.50 for unlimited.

tut

[jason]

Hi Guys

Does anyone else suffer from a sh*t internet service>?

Since moving out of the big smoke, its actually not been to bad (BT broadband) and off late its been so poor it been dropping Skype calls, something I do quite a lot for work.

Any clever ways of improving it? There has to be some tech alternative to this BT option.

Assuming you're on Gullane exchange (but maybe you're on Dirleton?). We've been having show-stopping slow downs during peak periods the past couple weeks or so on Gullane exchange with BT Broadband. Been as fast as can be and reliable for years prior. There is no fault with the hardware (downstream connection, etc remains normal), and BT Openreach guys concluded it's a throughput issue, ie. too many customers...

[Sanjøy]

Wired or wifi? Could be a new neighbour with a kick ass wifi box on the same channel. Those new BT black bband routers put out some signal.

When I moved out here I called in a line fault as I did have noise on the line then bribed the engineer with tea, cake and the wife in her lingerie to put me on a fresh pair from the pole to the house. My download went from 10 to 16 iirc.

I then started using Cisco Jabber and needed 1024kbs up for HD calls so spoke to talk talk and got them to tweak my profile so I could get the extra upstream for video conferencing by sacrificing some of the downstream.

Recently I thought I would invest in my home setup and retired my ancient but reliable Netear for a Cisco (LinkSys) x3500 which shall we say is still "bedding in".

S

[Andy G]

thanks gents! Cuban Gav - what can you do to help me mate???

Happy to let the problem fixer take the F430 for a wee run

My house did have multiple phone & data lines coming in to it previously, there is an office above the garage, but this is driving me nuts.

Its also made me look shambolic on some recent Skype calls, and one job interview I was Chairing where i couldnt hear the reply to my own questions!!

[DJ]

Might be BS, but rumour was everything was ramped up for the Open and is now being returned to 'normal'. I've generally been OK recently (same area as Jason and Andy) apart from a few weeks ago there was a period of a few days where BT kept dropping out. Over last few years this has been the norm; usually stable but then goes through the odd poor spell lasting up to a week. If it helps CubanGav, you are on the Dirleton exchange Andy. Fibre or cable is but a pipe dream for us and getting more than 1 bar of signal strength on any network here would be a huge leap forward never mind 3/4G sadly!

[Sanjøy]

Hmm multiple lines you say? Could get two adsl accounts an bond them at the router?

PS I had to instruct Sarah no peppah on the iPad when I was working from home .....

[Andy G]

Actually - I just found the old connection and they had socket with 2 ADSL connections in addition to 3 other sockets.