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On Thu, 29 Apr 2010, Eion MacDonald wrote:
On 29/04/2010 16:29, Gordon Henderson wrote:They block all 3rd party VoIP (as do most other routers with built-in VoIP - but most of them make it easy to turn it off!)1. Not true for VoIP. I use Skype, extensively for all communications to China and Far/Middle East. If Skype is not VoIP then I don't know what definition you could use. PS Skype over both SuSE and MS Win OSs (depends on computer)
OK - Point taken - In my world, VoIP is SIP - an open standard which the BT Home hub (and others) block because they have their own (and in some cases competing) SIP services.
2. If any ISP uses BT wholesale, they cannot improve on the BT wire limit and in this village it is the age of the old 1960s cheap steel coated with copper in last cabinet to house wire that determines performance.
There's a whole lot more to it than the wire limit. The biggest impact is the ISPs own network. Go with a smaller ISP who can maintain a better internal network and your overall throughput will be much improved.
For example - what speed is your router currently syncing to, and what speed can you get from a speed test?
My sync rate is 8128000. A speed test: wget xyzzy.drogon.net/testfile Saving to: `testfile.1' 2010-04-29 17:09:27 (759 KB/s) - `testfile.1' saved [10485760/10485760] 759K Bytes/sec is as good as it gets. (BRAS profile is: adsl7150-b) Let me upload it: gordon @ yakko: scp testfile.1 unicorn: testfile.1 100% 10MB 79.4KB/s 02:09 79.4KB/sec. Yup, on an 832000 sync that'll do.
3. I understand BT Retail is only a customer of BT wholesale/BT infrastructure but it is the infrastructure the wire/distance from exchange that is the limit irrespective of ISP.
Nope. You've not read what I typed - or don't want to believe it. The limit is the ISP. Do you get slow-downs at peak times? I don't.
4. My speeds are adequate for all normal business needs.
Glad to hear it. But if you want better customer support and service and better throughput at more times of the day then just quiet times, then you have many alternatives.
I am not a consumer of video/entertainment but do shift large CAD files to and from other countries.
I hope you have a service from them which provides elevated services with up to 830Kb/sec upload speed. BT do sell a "business" package with only up to 440Kb/sec on the wire... They get away with it because most people don't know any thing else.
You have my sympathies - BT retail are masters of disgiuse and can easy trap people into thinking their getting better than they actually get. They've probably trapped you into a one-year rolling contract too - that's diabolical IMO. The people I use trust that their network is good enough to allow you to have a one-month contract.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html