upgrading broadband
upgrading broadband
I can't find the thread, but I think someone recently mentioned upgrading the broadband to get more bandwidth. I don't know where we are contractually with BT, but maybe it's worth switching to another provider such as Be, who are apparently very cheap, fast and reliable.
This is the Be Pro package:
https://www.bethere.co.uk/broadbandoffice.do
I rang them and the guy I spoke to said forest would be able to get this on the BT business line and could expect download speeds of 14Mbps. Uploads would be 1.5Mbps. He confirmed the cost would be £21.50 a month in total, with a £24 connection fee. (Last time I checked we pay about £35 a month to BT for broadband)
The only possible complication is that the direct debit may need to be set up via an individual's account rather than the business account, though possibly not.
He said the service is compatible with Linux, though of course they only support Windoze & Mac.
This is the Be Pro package:
https://www.bethere.co.uk/broadbandoffice.do
I rang them and the guy I spoke to said forest would be able to get this on the BT business line and could expect download speeds of 14Mbps. Uploads would be 1.5Mbps. He confirmed the cost would be £21.50 a month in total, with a £24 connection fee. (Last time I checked we pay about £35 a month to BT for broadband)
The only possible complication is that the direct debit may need to be set up via an individual's account rather than the business account, though possibly not.
He said the service is compatible with Linux, though of course they only support Windoze & Mac.
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Re: upgrading broadband
Looks good.
Be are highly recommended by all my techie friends and I have personal reasons for disliking BT; Have you heard of Phorm? It's a tracking service that watches every webpage you visit so you can get more targeted adverts and *cough*spam*cough* emails from your service provider. It's a massive privacy invasion and there's nothing you can do about it, since it's all done at BT's end of the connection. They ran this in secret without informing anybody and passed all of the customer's data to this third party. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webwise and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/ and http://badphorm.co.uk/
More speed would be good, we do get a bit laggy at times.
Be are highly recommended by all my techie friends and I have personal reasons for disliking BT; Have you heard of Phorm? It's a tracking service that watches every webpage you visit so you can get more targeted adverts and *cough*spam*cough* emails from your service provider. It's a massive privacy invasion and there's nothing you can do about it, since it's all done at BT's end of the connection. They ran this in secret without informing anybody and passed all of the customer's data to this third party. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webwise and http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/ and http://badphorm.co.uk/
More speed would be good, we do get a bit laggy at times.
Mike
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Re: upgrading broadband
its looks great ,
martin
martin
Heaven is a disaster
Lambchop , The Saturday option .
Lambchop , The Saturday option .
Re: upgrading broadband
I just checked with BT. We are paying 29.99 + VAT per month. Apparently we max out at 8Mbps, though of course we probably only get about 4 or 5.
One month's notice is required to quit.
One month's notice is required to quit.
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Re: upgrading broadband
There is no way we get 4/5 Mbps, let alone 8.
I will check when I get into the Forest today but I think we are only getting 2Mbps tops.
Let's give in the notice.
I will check when I get into the Forest today but I think we are only getting 2Mbps tops.
Let's give in the notice.
Mike
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Re: upgrading broadband
It might be worth checking out Virgin. I did make a thorough attempt to get cable many moons ago but they (Telewest in those days) refused to accept that we could be connected, despite the existing sockets of theirs. But that was ages ago and may worth another go.
I love the bomb.
Re: upgrading broadband
Need to get a MAC code from BT. I can do this if it is what the people want.ChaoticReality wrote:Let's give in the notice.
I checked Virgin. As far as I could tell, they are more expensive and they like to limit your gigabytage. Be is unlimited subject to fair usage policy. Anyone know how much gigabytage we use per month, overall?
Re: upgrading broadband
Would cost £46 (including vat) a month for Virgin business 10meg.
I don't know, but I reckon their throttling will be less or non-existant for business connections.
I'd be happy to get in touch with them and at least find out if it's a possibility.
Installation would cost, no idea how much.
I don't know, but I reckon their throttling will be less or non-existant for business connections.
I'd be happy to get in touch with them and at least find out if it's a possibility.
Installation would cost, no idea how much.
I love the bomb.
Re: upgrading broadband
not heard great things about Virgin at all.
Heard very good things about O2 though
Heard very good things about O2 though
It's like God's vagina!
Re: upgrading broadband
Well, I've been a Telewest/Virgin customer since the early days of cable and they've been very good. There is some throttling on residential connections at certain times of day after you pass a certain quota (a lot of video downloads) but mostly get full 10 meg, much better than any ADSL I've experienced.
Had a good experience with their support as well.
We had their business cable in Westport and that worked out well.
Had a good experience with their support as well.
We had their business cable in Westport and that worked out well.
I love the bomb.
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Re: upgrading broadband
*bump*
Our broadband is still slow and clunky. Can we do something about it?
Our broadband is still slow and clunky. Can we do something about it?
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Re: upgrading broadband
I'd still like to know how many gigabytes we download per month, to be sure we won't fall afoul of any fair usage policies. Can anyone measure this and give me a rough figure?
Also, can anyone confirm that the slow speeds are due to lack of bandwidth and not the limitations of some ancient piece of hardware we have in our setup?
Thanks.
Also, can anyone confirm that the slow speeds are due to lack of bandwidth and not the limitations of some ancient piece of hardware we have in our setup?
Thanks.
Re: upgrading broadband
i'm sure i've phoned BT about something a couple of years ago and they said that our connection always gets capped due to high usage after about a day into the month.
the best way we can combat this is by using the QoS settings on the WRT router. we have things setup which we think are working, but the firmware is ooold and doesn't have nifty features such as graphs for QoS differentiation and logs of individual machines throughput.
mike - could i ask that you have a look at upgrading the firmware? while i know there are various distros based on the OpenWRT (Gargoyle seems a together project) or DD-WRT which do nifty things, i'm afraid i don't have the lunix-fu to go about it. something that allows us to drill down to what traffic is going where and refine our QoS would be awesome if possible.
the best way we can combat this is by using the QoS settings on the WRT router. we have things setup which we think are working, but the firmware is ooold and doesn't have nifty features such as graphs for QoS differentiation and logs of individual machines throughput.
mike - could i ask that you have a look at upgrading the firmware? while i know there are various distros based on the OpenWRT (Gargoyle seems a together project) or DD-WRT which do nifty things, i'm afraid i don't have the lunix-fu to go about it. something that allows us to drill down to what traffic is going where and refine our QoS would be awesome if possible.
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Re: upgrading broadband
or maybe we could hack up an aerial or two to stick on the roof so we could start a Freifunk style community network...
(and *cough*darknet*cough*)
or maybe not....
(and *cough*darknet*cough*)
or maybe not....
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Re: upgrading broadband
i (heart) the darknet
Our big brother's got no heart,
when I get my chance I'm going to punch him in the nose, in the nose, in the nose
when I get my chance I'm going to punch him in the nose, in the nose, in the nose
Re: upgrading broadband
Bumpity-bumpity-bumpity-bumpneil wrote:I'd still like to know how many gigabytes we download per month, to be sure we won't fall afoul of any fair usage policies. Can anyone measure this and give me a rough figure?
Also, can anyone confirm that the slow speeds are due to lack of bandwidth and not the limitations of some ancient piece of hardware we have in our setup?
Thanks.
Mike, you've been looking at this recently? Can we get some expert advice?
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Re: upgrading broadband
I haven't had chance to check this out properly. I'll get some monitoring software running and see what data I can gather.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
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Re: upgrading broadband
Our new router is running dd-wrt so I should be able to get some pretty decent figures soon.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Re: upgrading broadband
I just called Be again. They're offering genuinely no limits (they say), up to 20meg broadband for £17.88 per month. I'm thinking we should just go for this. Be have a good reputation and it sounds like BT have been pretty shit lately? And Be is cheaper.
They will also give us a free router, which might be handy.
They will also give us a free router, which might be handy.
Re: upgrading broadband
New router?Our new router is running dd-wrt so I should be able to get some pretty decent figures soon
Re: upgrading broadband
For £21.97 per month (extra £4) we can get a faster upload speed (2.5 instead of 1.3 meg) and one static IP address. Anyone think this would be worthwhile?
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Re: upgrading broadband
The old router went boom yesterday morning. We now have a dlink dir-615d, donated by Huw, running in its place.
Last edited by ChaoticReality on Fri Jun 18, 2010 5:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
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Re: upgrading broadband
Also, I support moving to Be and getting more upload speed (because we'll be doing some off-site backups with dropbox) and a static IP.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
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Re: upgrading broadband
We're averaging about 7 gigabytes of traffic a day at present.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
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Re: upgrading broadband
yay, great work getting the the new router up and running mike
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Re: upgrading broadband
Thanks Mike.
I just found out BT have us signed up to a 2 year contract for broadband since February! This was done without authorization so I'm making a complaint in an attempt to extricate us.
I just found out BT have us signed up to a 2 year contract for broadband since February! This was done without authorization so I'm making a complaint in an attempt to extricate us.
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Re: upgrading broadband
Hmm, that's a bit dodgy.
Well, when you get Be sorted, chuck me the username and password for the PPoE and I'll get the router reconfigured.
Well, when you get Be sorted, chuck me the username and password for the PPoE and I'll get the router reconfigured.
Mike
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Dawnsio 'mlaen i'r gwres prynhawn a rwy'n addo erbyn yfori byddai wedi mynd, hwyl fawr i pawb, hwyl fawr i pawb...
Re: upgrading broadband
Just got off the phone with highly annoying BT legalspeak person. They flatly refuse to give any ground on the contract. They are sending me an official statement of their legal position and telling me I should take it up with the telecoms regulator. So that, I suppose, is what I will do.
Re: upgrading broadband
is this someone from the complaints dept? only they can change or cancel contracts just like that, iirc.
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