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Re: [LUG] Fwd: UK 'misled' on broadband speeds

 

 On 27/07/2010 16:32, Anthony Williams wrote:
On 27/07/10 16:11, Gordon Henderson wrote:
On Tue, 27 Jul 2010, Anthony Williams wrote:

On 27/07/10 13:32, John Williams wrote:
On Tue, 2010-07-27 at 12:58 +0100, Rob Beard wrote:

Are there any better deals around on packages over 100GB-150GB per month
that anyone has noticed ?

I use ukonline (http://www.ukonline.co.uk). All their packages are
unlimited usage, and very good value. The only "limit" is their "fair
usage policy",

So not unlimited then...

There is no cap on bytes, and the FUP only caps bandwidth during peak time (5pm-midnight). This is quite different to other ISPs I've looked at, which cap bytes as well as bandwidth. Some even have an explicit byte cap on their "unlimited" tariffs.

Sounds a bit like the Virgin FUP where on the 20Mbit connection (not sure about 10MBit) where if you download over 6.5GB between 10am and 3pm and/or over 3.5GB between 4pm and 9pm then you're throttled down to 5Mbit for 5 hours. It's annoying although I don't get hit by it very often, usually if I leave the XBOX 360 downloading a demo or something (usually between a couple of hundred megs and a couple of gigs at a time) and watch a load of HD Youtube videos.

They don't have their equipment in our exchange, so I'm stuck to a BT
50:1/up to 8Mbps connection which is typically 6-7Mbps during the day,
but <2Mbps (often <1Mbps) in the evening. With their equipment you can
get a 20:1/up to 16Mbps connection, but I don't know how good that
really is.

There is no 50:1 or 20:1 anymore. It's managed differently.

Interesting. Their website still quotes those numbers, and every other ISP I spoke to when I signed up (~18 months ago, I think) mentioned the 50:1 contention. Where can I find more information on this?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/technical.html#72

Your slowdowns in the evening are caused by their own network, or
interconnect with the BT Wholesale network being inadequate. Very
probably nothing to do with the BT Wholsale network itself.

Why do you think that? The connection here has always been slow in the evening, even with my previous ISP (onetel, who got bought out by TalkTalk). The exchange is not unbundled, so it's still a BT line.

Could be an oversubscribed provider. When I was with Enta before the changes for 21CN I believe they had something like 7 pipes to BT and occasionally some pipes had more subscribers than others. The only way of changing pipes was to disconnect and re-connect. Now I'm not sure if some ISPs are still doing things like this, but it could be a case that you're stuck on a pipe that has lots of heavy users on there.

Also, isn't UKOnline an Sky/Easynet ISP?

Having used other Sky/Easynet ADSL products (Sky Broadband and Easynet Business class ADSL) I've found that the speeds can go up or down depending on different times of the day.

Rob

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