Will changing ISP improve connection speed?
 

My broadband has always been a bit poor but recently its slowed down to a crawl. My ISP is orange.

I do have an issue though as my noise ratio is 7 and my line attenuation is 56. About as bad as you can get I believe.

I'm thinking of moving to the work ISP which is eclipse.

I'm also thinking of callnig BT to see if they can do anything to boost the signal - but not sure if they'll charge me call out.

Generally BT can offer the fastest and best Speed, this is because unless its coming through virgin with fibre optic lines then they rent the bt line to provide u with internet. BT keep most of the bandwidth to keep their speeds up. each other provider only gets a small limited amount of bandwith hence slower speeds. I pay more with BT 25 a month as they can give me 3 meg speeds where as all others are .5 meg to 1 meg
also

Generally BT can offer the fastest and best Speed, this is because unless its coming through virgin with fibre optic lines then they rent the bt line to provide u with internet. BT keep most of the bandwidth to keep their speeds up. each other provider only gets a small limited amount of bandwith hence slower speeds. I pay more with BT 25 a month as they can give me 3 meg speeds where as all others are .5 meg to 1 meg
also they repair for free

Generally BT can offer the fastest and best Speed, this is because unless its coming through virgin with fibre optic lines then they rent the bt line to provide u with internet. BT keep most of the bandwidth to keep their speeds up. each other provider only gets a small limited amount of bandwith hence slower speeds. I pay more with BT 25 a month as they can give me 3 meg speeds where as all others are .5 meg to 1 meg

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange_search

what can you get at your exchange, is cable an option?

Your stats for ADSL do look bad unfortunately. How is the wiring in the house? This could be a factor but I'm guessing you are far from the exchange.

If the internet has gotten worse changing ISP could help, Orange may be getting oversubscribed.

BT do bill other ISP's for bandwidth however how much bandwidth the ISP has is up to them as they purchase lines (centrals IIRC) onto the BT network

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/BTCentrals.htm

Not true.

They gave me a max of 4 to 4.5mb on my line, arguing that it was the best i could get, even though i could go on upstairs unsecured wireless network and get 6mb via talktalk ?!?

So i left them and moved to Be*

They do not throttle and allow you to set your own suggested SNR

I now get around 8.1mb down synch speeds and 1.3mb upload ;)

BT = gash.

any SNr below 7 will cause ADSL to de-sync, or cause line droppage.

if your stuck with ADSL see if Infinity is in your area, Infinity goes back to a Green box in your street rather than to the Exchange as standard ADSL does so hence why they offer 40mb cos its fibre from the green box.

best still is Virgin cable

call Bt see if they can improve it.

basics are if your lines **** your SNR will be played with and your speed brought down to keep the Line stable

Also check if your local exchange has been upgraded to LLU (basically means ISP's can install their own equipment in the exchange). If so, see what providers are now in that exchange and consider using one of those as they will be able to give you better speeds.

When I moved the checks I was doing said I would get about 4Mb down for my line, after LLU upgrade I now get 8Mb down and 1Mb up. Also ping times have gone from around 50ms down to 20ms, so has made quite a noticeable difference.

I used to get 1Mb down / 250k up - Tiscali, which was worked on to give

me 2mb down & 250k up :)

A change to Aol say me plummet to 1MB, (they recconed that was the best i could ever get)

A change to BE got me back to 2mb / 250--

However the router they supplied is highly tweakable, and by using some

web tools, sees me running at a very stable 3mb down / 500k up, which

according to BT is what the line is capable of.


Mart

Yes even if you're with BT. I was an early adopter, with BT as provider, and got around 4.5mpbs (down), but recently it's was to 2.8mpbs. Actually, I think the down speed went even lower (although the up link speeded up to around 1mpbs ), when I upgraded to the new "20mpbs" line although I've less data on this to prove it was due to the upgrade.

Clearly it was due to the amount of users now using ADSL. But repeated calls to BT were just met with "well that's what your line is capable of". Clearly not as it was higher when I first took out the service.

So I moved and now enjoy 8mpbs down.

we heard you the first time:):):)lol

I am with sky and get about 6 to 7 meg depending on the time of day.But i do think its more to do with how close to the exchange or so i am told

BT are not always even close to being the fastest provider fellas. I had sky for many years and they insisted 2.5 was the max I could get, I checked on the samknows website and my local exchange showed 21cn and that sky and a few others were now able to provide services.
I called sky seeing as I have a sat box and telephone with them, they told me they ould do an up to 20mb service, me being a little skeptical decided to try it with the intention of cancelling if it was the same/worse than BT. now getting 10-13mb solid connections.

BTW the signal to noise ratio will always be around 7 Edd (ie say SNR is 10 and you are getting 4mbs, it is theoretically possible to get more speed out of the line until it reaches a snr of 6.5-7), if it is a lot more then your line isnt being used to its best potential, if its lower than around 6.5 then it is not a good quality connection and needs to be addressed.

I too am with SKY
I was having issues with speeds and generally an unstable connection
They reported fault to BT
BT came out - said yes fault on line blah blah blah
It took them 2 days to find the fault - at one point I have 3 BT vans in the street!
Now I have a stable 9.6M download speed.

So changing ISP isn't necessarily the answer.

BT are rubbish. And expensive. And P2P throttlers.

I was with them getting 6mb/s and now, with TalkTAlk, I am getting 12mb/s

I was with Tiscali (2mb/s) and moved to TalkTalk and get between 8mb/s & 12mb/s on what is supposed to be a 8mb/s line. All for £18 p/m inc line rental. VERY happy! :D

A BT engineer who came to mend my line told me that BT limit the bandwith that any other provider can have from them so BT can provide the fastest speed, i dont know how true this is but it makes business sense,

If an engineer from another company had told you that it may be credible, but sounds like an easy thing to say to ensure people go to BT!!!!

I doubt BT could give me more on my line, which is 17mbps, I am 1km from exchange and BT would not better that.

Geezer

Only thing we have is ADSL, no cable, no LLU.

I've even got the line to the router plugged into the test socket in an attempt to improve things.

BT do not and cannot limit the bandwidth to other providers.

BT are not the only wholesale provider for services and even if they were, they would be prosecuted for unfair practices.

If your exchange is LLU enabled as has already been mentioned, then you will get a better service using another provider. The very best is O2/Be if it is available or Zen.

Sky is also a very good option, but steer clear of Talk Talk, Orange, Tiscali etc, especially the cheaper deals. They have very high contention rates which means that at peak/popular times your speed will drop through the floor as you are sharing a portion of bandwidth at the exchange with too many other users.

There is a very good reason it is cheap.

Jason

No sorry, that's not true at all for the reasons jsh1 has already mentioned above. Maybe just sales tactics me thinks

Ok that's an arse, if it was me I'd go for Zen (who I'm with currently) however it is not cheap.

How much do you want to spend and how much do you download?

http://www.zen.co.uk/

My mate was with virgin and changed to Zen and saw a massive improvement. He only gets 2 meg ish though as he is VERY far from the exchange.

Is your area going to be Fibred?

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/356872/i...-300-exchanges

Mike :)

THis is completely untrue, and would get BT in deep trouble.


some people are obsessive about line speeds, and want the fastest they can get, without reasoning. one guy i had today complained that he was only getting 7mbps, his line had a maximum speed of 13mbps, his profile was set to 7150 (hence his 7mbps speed), a quick profile change, and he is up to 12mbps.........he uses his laptop for e-mails and shopping. :rolleyes:.

LOL... BT fastest is the funniest thing i've heard for a while. I got out of a 12month BT contract after 3 months as the speeds were fine during off peak times but during the evening the were down to dial up speeds. All i got from BT was 'sorry, that's line contention' .... balls to that. I then moved to Be and since to sky and have no slowing of speeds and a nice healthy 15.5mb sync speed for the past 3 years.

BT are sh*te and Orange were even worse.

sky being the best is even funnier. although i didn't LOL though.