I'm on Plusnet 8Mb/sec service with a 10 Gb download limit for £5.99 per month.

Birmingham server


I must be ignorant about download speeds, I thought my 8 Mb/s line meant the maximum I could get was 8Mb/s. How did I get over 10 there? I know the exchange is at the end of my garden, but how would that change this?



EDIT

Coventry server





1. Are you on a BT Wholesale, LLU or Cable product?
LLU I think.
2. How are your pings?
Good enough for me. I don't game online.
3. How are your download speeds on and off peak?
Good
4. Can you stream video consistently without buffering?
99 times out of 100
5. How heavy is your usage?
Light. I never use my 10Gb download limit.

Here's the test now my connection is not throttled:

1. Are you on a BT Wholesale, LLU or Cable product?
BT wholesale up to 8Mb although it should be switching to up to 20Mb some time this year.
2. How are your pings?
I don't do anything online where this presents a problem but the results I got don't seem too bad.
3. How are your download speeds on and off peak?
Fairly consistent. I've never really noticed a significant prop during peak times. Normally in excess of 500 K/sec
4. Can you stream video consistently without buffering?
Haven't had any problems so far
5. How heavy is your usage?
Fairly low by today's standards. I normally stay inside the 5GB download cap each month.

Generally very happy with Zen Internet. I could wish they were a bit cheaper but considering the trouble free life I've had using them I'm in o desperate rush to switch and I highly recommend them unless you are a heavy downloader in which case it gets rather expensive.
Having said that, when I get out of my current contract with BT I'm strongly considering switching to Virgin Media for the UP to 50Meg goodness, plus I should be able to get the top TV package for the same price as I currently pay.

FFS, I guess it's peak time but that is seriously f*cking sh!te.

I'm synced at 8megs down, 830K up. I used to actually get that, but now I'm capped at 1meg maximum and contended the hell out of during the evening.

Nice ping mate.

Have they started charging the extra £5 a month that is rumoured? Another ruomour is Tiscali, like TalkTalk, are bumping people onto higher ratios and are happy to leave them like that unless they kick up a fuss.

I was about to say that Plusnet offer more for less, but I've just spotted the * saying that price is only for three months. No mention of what the normal price is.

Tell me about it.

Luckily I'm not gaming at all these days.


I'm with F2S, a Tiscali reseller. I'm supposedly on a 20:1 ratio - I thought it must be 50:1 but I just double checked and it definitely says 20:1

I think the contention model is dying, but unless you want to fork out over £100 a month I really can't see any options. The really sad thing is that I work for a TiscaliTalktalkOpal reseller and I can't actually sell myself a better deal, even though I get wholesale rates. This is because I'm trapped on a non-LLU exchange

Still, it's usually at least 10x faster and a lot cheaper than my 64K ISDN used to be. I guess I should be happy.

Having problems with Virgin's 10Meg service as you can see.
I had been with Freedom2Surf up until last June when TalkTalk bought them(Speeds were Ok but connection dropped regularly, pity they were an excellent company initially) then Plusnet but they failed to give me any reliables ervice over the 5 months I was with them. Virgin was great up until the last week when I have been getting speeds of around 0.5-1Meg, not good!

1. Are you on a BT Wholesale, LLU or Cable product?
Was Tiscali... now TalkTalk I guess, would change but can't get anyone like O2/Be etc due to the area
2. How are your pings?
sh*t
3. How are your download speeds on and off peak?
Sh*t, Sh*t, 2mb max on an 8mb connection apparently and no way to increase it despite neighbours getting 6.5mbps from BT directly or from Sky (Will be trying them next I hope)
4. Can you stream video consistently without buffering?
No, iPlayer I tend to download in advance and watch later that day, sometimes I can get 10 minutes without streaming...
5. How heavy is your usage?
Less than 1gb per day if that now as it's so slow.

I have some stuff uploading atm... but still:


It's actually faster to tether my phone to my laptop sometimes than it is to use the wifi... it's that bad

GF has Virgin which is nice, fast and stable though, so usually at hers when I want to dl something (like the C&C4 beta)

1. BT Wholesale
2. How are your pings?

3. How are your download speeds on and off peak?

4. Can you stream video consistently without buffering?
No
5. How heavy is your usage?
Generally not heavy

Nothing seems to effect them in terms of peak time etc.

1) Cable
2) Pings usually not too bad
3)
4) Usually
5) A lot lighter than it used to be

This country's connections are generally tragic, aren't they?

I'm with plus net with a cap as well. It's good usually but stupid cap!

Okay, we've been activated on Virgin for some weeks now.

Demon Internet was:


Virgin is:


Pingtest for Demon was:


Virgin is:


(Packet loss not tested because I couldn't be bothered to activate Java.)

So, on the whole we've gained a more stable internet connection and a marginal increase in download speed, but lost somewhat in the upload speed. I can live with that.

I've recently moved to Sky after many years with BT. Moved principally to get away from BTs 'fair use' policy; even though we paid for "Unlimited" service we were constantly getting close to the fair use limit, especially when the kids are on holiday.

Please address the following points:

1. Are you on a BT Wholesale, LLU or Cable product?
It's SKY - LLU, I guess

2. How are your pings?



3. How are your download speeds on and off peak?


Pretty crap for a supposed 'up to' 20Mb connection….


4. Can you stream video consistently without buffering?
Most of the time, as long as it's only me; gets very iffy when my son's watching something on his XBox at the same time...

5. How heavy is your usage?
Always thought it was pretty average, until BT told us it was heavy <sigh>. 80-100Gb/month or thereabouts, probably more now we're not worrying about BTs 'fair use' policy...

Cheers, Pete.