Aye.

But Orange best was 3.5mb and Sky testing so far hasnt broken 3 according to the speedtest.net site, yet the difference loading pages is unreal. Like instant loading pages and very little of the progress swirl in the tab bar in FF.

The BRAS profile will be setting itself to optimum speed. It will be slow and slowly increase until it can sit at a speed comfortably without dropping out.

Try and avoid rebooting router for 7-10 days and then give it a reboot and that should then be your optimum speed.

I would say the 'instantness' of the pages loading will be the servers that it is feeding from, most probably the dns servers.

would have been interesting to do a traceroute to bbc on orange and then sky to see exactly where it is going.

I am on BE broadband and mine looks like this:

Traceroute has started…

traceroute to bbc.co.uk (212.58.241.131), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets

1 dsldevice.config (192.168.1.254) 62.399 ms 96.005 ms 99.828 ms

2 * * *

3 10.1.2.173 (10.1.2.173) 32.140 ms 31.607 ms 26.413 ms

4 bbc-gw1-linx.prt0.thdoe.bbc.co.uk (195.66.226.103) 26.483 ms 26.635 ms 26.580 ms

5 212.58.238.149 (212.58.238.149) 34.268 ms 30.963 ms 35.176 ms

6 virtual-vip-231.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.241.131) 31.192 ms 30.618 ms 30.666 ms

Mine shows:

1 1 ms <1 ms 3 ms SkyRouter.Home [192.168.0.1]

2 39 ms 40 ms 39 ms *.*.*.*

3 43 ms 39 ms 39 ms 10.245.201.129

4 48 ms 44 ms 42 ms te0-6-0-5.er11.thlon.ov.easynet.net [89.200.135.33]

5 41 ms 41 ms 42 ms 212.58.238.189

6 42 ms 42 ms 42 ms 212.58.238.153

7 42 ms 41 ms 41 ms virtual-vip-231.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131]

Sky use a DLM based system to give you a maximum stable speed, this can take 10 to 14 days to stabilise. Basically the DLM starts you slow, then the speed will be steadily increased until the line becomes slightly unstable, then backed off to the stable settings. If you have 3meg now, it will improve over a couple of weeks. How much by depends on distance from exchange, I get 4meg on my line from Sky whereas they estimated my speed at 2meg.

With sky its all about a stable connection, not the headline figures. The 3.5meg orange speed may have been slightly to fast for your line, hence why it was laggy and so on.

Visit www.ispreview for listings and customer reviews of all of the UKs ISPs.

  They are NOT all alike for download speeds: I am on the same exchange as my parents, yet I get 6.5MB on VISPA and they get only 2MB (on a good day), on PLUSNET, despite having an identical router, newer phone line, BT iPlate and living 300 metres closer to the exchange (by length of the phone line). 

 BE have had an excellent reputation, up until recently, when they have started getting some shockingly bad ones from people in certain areas. Like many before them, they have gone for sucking up customers without improving their network capacity, and now many of their customers are suffering.  

7 days to 4 months ?? No WAY!!! Vispa fixed a problem I had in 4 days, after my previous ISP (PIPEX), had been faffing around for months; and my sister; who had the exact same problem; got hers fixed by ORANGE about 18 months later!!! (Faulty batch of Fujitsu DSLAMs).  

She does have a nice (huge), collection of Orange "Green Frog" modems and some Orange branded routers to show for it though.

Edited 16 October, 201114 yr by GentleGiant

I have had Virgin for years (when it was called NTL) and ihave had no problems at all with the Broadband service, it is always fast and reliable.

If i had my internet connection with any other company using landlines round here my speed would be carp as i am at least a mile from the nearest (analogue ) phone exchange and all the phone lines around here are ancient copper wires.

My son works for BT and we could get virtually free TV , Phone & Internet but he agrees that our connection speed would be so slow it would be farcical.

For bog standard ADSL: Eclipse, Eclipse, Eclipse... every time. You might pay a little bit more but believe me when the time comes when you have to ring them up for some support (very rarely!), you will be thankful as you won't be playing ticket tennis with about 20 Indian call centre operatives who are all telling you to check lights on your router.

Avoid BT like the plague... my experience has proved that they are simply incapable to listen to any instructions at all. They have MASSIVE communication issues, I.e. ask them to come and install a line, and the engineer rocks up with the instruction to remove all lines and install them to a address you've never heard of. True story, this has happened to me several times at a business I support in mid-wales. They have almost been forced to close a few times due to BT screw ups.

As for Sky, I would avoid all of their non-LLU services like the plague as well. Their support is absolutely diabolical, and they claim to give you good speeds, blah blah with their quirky adverts - the reality is that you will be lucky to achieve dialup speeds on their 8mb service at peak times. Just seeing their stupid TV adverts makes my blood boil - bunch of liars.

Virgin seem to be good, I have a 30mb line at Uni and the speed is awesome. I presume this is due to not having to deal with any of the congestion and contention problems posed by BT's third world network, thanks to Virgin's fibre infrastructure.

In short... ECLIPSE.

Aye.

But Orange best was 3.5mb and Sky testing so far hasnt broken 3 according to the speedtest.net site, yet the difference loading pages is unreal. Like instant loading pages and very little of the progress swirl in the tab bar in FF.

As an update, currently peaking at 12mb compared to Oranges best at 6.5, and usual of 3.8mb.

Very impressed so far.

If you can get it, virgin media cable all the way. For a start there's none of this 'up to' rubbish. If you pay for 10, 20, 30, 50 or 100mbit you'll get it (or a near as makes no difference)

I'm currently on the 50mbit have never had a minute of downtime and the slowest speed test during the busiest times I've had is 47mb, best I've had is 58.x mb

Really is the way to go

If you can get it, virgin media cable all the way. For a start there's none of this 'up to' rubbish. If you pay for 10, 20, 30, 50 or 100mbit you'll get it (or a near as makes no difference)

I'm currently on the 50mbit have never had a minute of downtime and the slowest speed test during the busiest times I've had is 47mb, best I've had is 58.x mb

Really is the way to go

+1

True story. We got 30mb in Cardiff at Uni house, it's epic. Just preying it doesn't go wrong because I've only heard bad things about Virgin's customer support :S

Funny mis-spell.

Anyway, if you want to look at ALL the options, visit http://www.ispreview.co.uk/

Just remember, many ISPs are great when everything works, but you want one that will quickly and reliably fix problems, so that counts out BT,, TalkTalk, and Orange for starters.

And unless you can talk the lingo use on their overseas call centres add Virgin to that .

I've resorted to a T mobile stick .£40 for three months @ 7.2Mb reported .It coul be this ancient laptop but it seem to drop out every so often .

As for Sky, I would avoid all of their non-LLU services like the plague as well. Their support is absolutely diabolical, and they claim to give you good speeds, blah blah with their quirky adverts - the reality is that you will be lucky to achieve dialup speeds on their 8mb service at peak times. Just seeing their stupid TV adverts makes my blood boil - bunch of liars.

I agree, Sky Connect (the non LLU upto 8meg) service is rubbish and as you point out at peak times download speeds are terrible. The LLU upto 20meg service is excellent and I have never suffered any speed issues and always get the 4meg my line is capable of. in the single time I have needed to contact Sky customer services, my issue with line sync speed was resolved the very same day, sent email in the morning and came home in the evening to an email saying it had all been sorted and indeed it had.

And unless you can talk the lingo use on their overseas call centres add Virgin to that .

The last time I spoke to a virgin call centre a couple of months back when my dads cable modem died, the person on the other end of the phone was most definitely in the UK. Either that or the welsh person was now residing in India. New modem dispatched and setup in 48hrs without a hicup anywhere.

in the single time I have needed to contact Sky customer services, my issue with line sync speed was resolved the very same day, sent email in the morning and came home in the evening to an email saying it had all been sorted and indeed it had.

That's interesting that you had a good experience with their customer services. I remember one instance a few years back, where I was staying they had Sky Connect and it was only syncing at 2mb when they only leave a few hundred metres from the exchange, so it should easily be 7-8mb. Many many phone calls to them asking to reset the SNR and re-stabilise the line did not work. The Indian telephone operatives were just baffled. In the end, the only solution was to pretend I was a BT engineer and that I was "calling on the customers behalf" and then asked them to reset it. Then it went through quickly and got sorted - the line eventually settled at about 8mb sync, but at peak times they were still lucky to see >10KB/sec download speeds, which is just simply shocking. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with it.

Eclipse on the hand, who I have already recommended, their support is fantastic. I rang them once about a dodgy line speed sync and the guy instantly recognised the problem as a dodgy SNR margin, and then politely told me about restabilising etc, within 5 minutes on the phone he had fixed the issue and the speeds were excellent again.

Seriously, Eclipse are absolutely awesome. Speaking to their support is like walking outside to breath in nice, crisp fresh air, after being in a hot muggy room full of the smell of really sprouty farts.

The small companies can be awesome, until they get too big, or lose the 1-2 staff that used to fix all the problems, after experiencing the difference between a small ISP and the big guys (BT, Orange and Pipex), i would never reccomend a big company again, no matter how many people rave about their download speeds. You dont need an ISP until something goes wrong, and then you REALLY need them to there with someone who understands the system, and not a monkey reading a script from a sweat box in Bangalore or an ice box in Edinburgh

I agree, Sky Connect (the non LLU upto 8meg) service is rubbish and as you point out at peak times download speeds are terrible. The LLU upto 20meg service is excellent and I have never suffered any speed issues and always get the 4meg my line is capable of. in the single time I have needed to contact Sky customer services, my issue with line sync speed was resolved the very same day, sent email in the morning and came home in the evening to an email saying it had all been sorted and indeed it had.

A bit issue I'm having is videos, but not the sound, stuttering on streaming videos especially on my Desire. Even on the laptop youtube pictures freeze even though the sound keeps going.

All was fine before the switch.

I have been with BT since 2001 when first go onto the internet. If i ever had a problem it was dealt with quickly and without hassle but i can only recall have 3 problems in the 10 years.

They may not be the cheapest but i believe i get a great service and i now have fibre optic internet and be 30meg all the time.

So i recommend BT.

I wouldn't recommend Orange, but use PlusNet ( a BT arm's length coy, I think) is a good supplier and cheap - but you do need a BT line currently abt £13 per month....

PlusNet is BTs "cheap" internet provider, the service is OK, but in my experience (see earlier post), they do cap the speeds on many packages. Their latest claim for my parents slow speed is the exchange is over-full; which is ****** as I am on the same exchange and get THREE TIMES the speed they get.