Think yourselves lucky you have a choice!!!

No BT where I live, so just have a choice of 1 ISP :(

Your not stuck in a certain part of East Yorkshire are you?

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk

Your not stuck in a certain part of East Yorkshire are you?

Sent from my Galaxy S5 using Tapatalk

Well and truly. KC or KC!

We're with Plusnet. Other than the garbage router they give you (you can use your own) and a couple of minor outages in 5yr, they've been fine. We had a couple of issues initially sorted out quite quickly via their online chat thing.

 

We were initially on a discounted rate which went up after the end of the contract period. I phone them up and asked for a discount to stay and they immediately offered to knock £10 a month of the bill. That was to be for an 18month contract but 2yr later they still knock £10 a month off. So we pay £23 for Unlimited BB and Unlimited Phone we only pay for mobile numbers.

 

I did a hunt around recently to see if better deals were around but other than TalkTalk there wasn't much when you added on our extras and then went more expensive after the offer period.

 

I do like the idea of fibre but we really don't need it. Not yet anyway. We're still hitting 60Gb a month usage and we're not downloaders that's just streaming video.

Edited 18 January, 201610 yr by Aspman

We're with Plusnet. Other than the garbage router they give you (you can use your own) and a couple of minor outages in 5yr, they've been fine. We had a couple of issues initially sorted out quite quickly via their online chat thing.

 

We were initially on a discounted rate which went up after the end of the contract period. I phone them up and asked for a discount to stay and they immediately offered to knock £10 a month of the bill. That was to be for an 18month contract but 2yr later they still knock £10 a month off. So we pay £23 for Unlimited BB and Unlimited Phone we only pay for mobile numbers.

 

I did a hunt around recently to see if better deals were around but other than TalkTalk there wasn't much when you added on our extras and then went more expensive after the offer period.

 

I do like the idea of fibre but we really don't need it. Not yet anyway. We're still hitting 60Gb a month usage and we're not downloaders that's just streaming video.

 

Hi Aspman, online help is great - if you have access to the internet, if the line is down and you have to rely on calling them,, the service is dire. They also - regardless of what they say, bandwidth limit; when I still used ADSL I was connected to the same exchange as my parents, but 300m further away; yet my ADSL2 speed was twice theirs - 5.5-6Mb v 2.2Mb. PN claimed it was due to the cabinet being over-subscribed. When BT did the Century21 upgrades in Malvern, my line speed went up to 6.5Mb and I got 1Mb upload speed; my parents speeds stayed exactly the same.

 

They are off on holiday next week, and I am staying there while my house is re-roofed, so I will run some speed tests to see if the situation has changed since last year.

I think like many ISPs (and other things) they're great unless they're not.

The problem with Sky is that your stuck with their router. You can add an access point to improve the WiFi but your still stuck with a pretty basic router. Personally I've moved back to BT; never had a problem and you don't get passed pillar to post with the ISP trying to blame OR/BT and vice versa

The problem with Sky is that your stuck with their router. You can add an access point to improve the WiFi but your still stuck with a pretty basic router. Personally I've moved back to BT; never had a problem and you don't get passed pillar to post with the ISP trying to blame OR/BT and vice versa

 

With Sky you can apparently use WireShark to pull the info you need if you're stuck but may not be the best choice of options if you're set on using your own router.

 

I think if you're ordering FTTC, BT will now give you a combination modem/router rather than the separate openreach modem meaning you'll struggle to use your own.

 

Some companies do do VDSL modems but I've not seen many about - Draytek do the Vigor 130 for example but it's not cheap.

Big problems with SKY VDSL, they use a slightly different encoding to everyone else, and very few 3rd party routers can do it.

(Sound like an Apple trick to me!!).

 

I dont think BT give ANYTHING these days, assuming you mean OpenReach; if you dont get a free router from your ISP, you have to buy one, BT Retail give (or sell) the HH5, but it has a few issues, especially the WiFi side, and not everyone wants to host a public hotspot.

 

I recently got a TPLink "Archer VR200" VDSL2/ADSL2+ router, my BT white box had started locking up, and BT have just ended support for them. A lot of the early VDSL routers cant match the old WB for line sync, and a number of the newer ones have other issues, Fritzbox have had a security backdoor issue, several are reported to overheat, and some have stability issues (the £200 Asus job needs resetting every week as it syncs at slower and slower speeds), a few are still lumbered with 10/100 Ethernet ports!! (the latest TT drops Gigabit for 100Mb).

 

The VR200 is the baby of the new TPLink VDSL range, and the ONLY one of the TPLink range that hasnt had overheating reported. Mine syncs at 100Mb/s (BT capped to 80Mb/s), and has been rock solid for the 2 weeks it has been installed; the only downside is that the 2.4Ghz is a lot slower than my old TPL router, although the 5GHz is fast enough to make the fibre connection the bottleneck!

 

Obviously I havent been able to test the ADSL2 side, but I have owned a number of TPL routers, going back to "G" spec WiFi, and all have been rock solid, out-performing most other routers on line sync and throughput speeds.

 

A few ISPs advice against the TPL routers, but wont publicly say why; I do wonder if customers are getting lost in the advanced set up options and expecting the ISP to sort it out.

 

BTW, the VR200 can operate as an ADSL router, a VDSL router, or a 3/4G router (if used with a suitable 3/4G dongle), so it covers all the bases.

Edited 19 January, 201610 yr by GentleGiant

Big problems with SKY VDSL, they use a slightly different encoding to everyone else, and very few 3rd party routers can do it.

(Sound like an Apple trick to me!!).

 

Sky simply use DHCP authentication, nothing else.  Quite a few routers can do this, and I have been using my own hardware on Sky for many years (LLU and Fibre).  They simply ask that if you have an issue you check with their router first.

 

I can see the logic, as it means their helpdesk staff only need to know their way around one router's screens (all their various routers have the same looking screens), so this is a plus point.

Sorry if I am mistaken, this is what I saw posted on a tech site thread about replacing SKY VDSL routers recently.

 

I just found the article and this response.

 

"It’s just standard DHCP/Routed IP the only thing is they want the username/password supplied in a DHCP option (61 if I remember rightly) – Which although option 61 is part of the DHCP standard a lot of SOHO vendors don’t bother to support it. Specifically their DHCP client probably DOES support it but they don’t expose the required configuration options to set it in their webUI.".

 

(Option 61 confirmed by another post).

 

So people need to check to make sure their intended router supports DHCP option 61 if they want to use it on SKY.

Edited 20 January, 201610 yr by GentleGiant

The problem with Sky is that your stuck with their router. You can add an access point to improve the WiFi but your still stuck with a pretty basic router. Personally I've moved back to BT; never had a problem and you don't get passed pillar to post with the ISP trying to blame OR/BT and vice versa

 

 

Sky are aware of how poor the SR102 hub is for wireless.  They gave me the money to buy my access point.  As a modem the SR102 is no worse than any others.

 

Hopefully the new "Q" hub will be better.

In the end we've left the ISP where it is with Sky and moved the phone line to benefit from the deals.

£33 a month becomes £20 and nothing really changes

 

here's hoping the internet is up to xbox one gaming

not that it really matters as there's no realistic way of improving the speed anyways

Edited 27 January, 201610 yr by PastyBoy