Looked into upgrading with Talk-Talk and it worked out more expensive than going with PlusNet. Also just signed up to the 80/20 trial so in theory 80Mbps download and 20Mbps upload. Should be interesting.

You can’t actually measure the real “speed” at home

I understand that your saying that speedtest.net (or similar) is a bit of a rough guide rather than an accurate measurement but what sort of margin of error are we talking about?

I understand that your saying that speedtest.net (or similar) is a bit of a rough guide rather than an accurate measurement but what sort of margin of error are we talking about?

TBH, I’m only a lawyer (been working on fibre for nearly 2 years though…). I’ll find out from one of the geeks some time.

Looked into upgrading with Talk-Talk and it worked out more expensive than going with PlusNet. Also just signed up to the 80/20 trial so in theory 80Mbps download and 20Mbps upload. Should be interesting.

Fair enough. Would be interested to see if that remains true when 80/20 is for sale (it’s imminently available as a retail product).

Solid 38mbps for me for over a year. Moving next month, back to 3mbit ADSL even though the exchange is set up for Infinity.

Really!!? As per my previous post, my “up to” 8Mb line gives me HD streaming through iPlayer, Netflix etc with very rare buffering. Are there other factors at play for you?

Yeah really, not sure why I’d make that up!

More often than not iPlayer buffers for about 15 seconds after playing for around 5-15 minutes. Last time i used it it did this but then also did a very short 1-3 second buffer around 6 times during a one hour programme.

It seems likely that there are other factors in play, but I’ve no idea what they might be, any suggestions gratefully received.

Yeah really, not sure why I’d make that up!

Sorry. It was more my surprise than questioning you 🙂

I’m with Zen who make a big deal about not traffic shaping. I wonder if that is more relevant than out and out download speed. I can watch iPlayer with no buffering at all at 6.5Mbps download speeds

Decided to upgrade my plusnet package. Will see what 30mb works like

My BT Broadband was changed to infinity a couple of weeks ago. The whole process took about an hour and the new broadband was working before the engineer left.
Download speed appeared to increase from 2mb to 20mb using a wireless connection. However, connecting the laptop to the home hub using the supplied cable improved things loads more. Well worth the £2 extra a month.

Very happy with BT Infinity, 30+ mb over wireless, 40+ mb ethernet, 8 mb upstream, and I’ve just heard they’re speeding up to 70mb. I know people have had gripes with BT but I’ve always found them pretty good.

Just for info the upgraded 80/20 FTTC is giving me 74.76 Mb/s download and 16.19 Mb/s upload.

Yeah really, not sure why I’d make that up!

More often than not iPlayer buffers for about 15 seconds after playing for around 5-15 minutes. Last time i used it it did this but then also did a very short 1-3 second buffer around 6 times during a one hour programme.

It seems likely that there are other factors in play, but I’ve no idea what they might be, any suggestions gratefully received.

Must be other factors at play, I can watch a full HD iplayer programme on my mobile via wifi on an 8mb normal BB line without buffering pauses.

I’m on the verge of signing up to Virgin for their 30Mb service, the missus signed up with AOL last year for some un-known reason, and it’s been staggeringly slow…

People whinging about 4Mb? I dream of those dizzying speeds try 0.6Mb/s, average speeds and regular service dropouts and a support line that just ask you to log a speed test and then do sweet FA to address the problems Nah we’re done with them…

Are Virgin as Shit hot as many people have told me?

I’m seriously Keen even if they ‘Only’ deliver 10Mb that would be awsome… I’m half tempted by their 60Mb service is it guaranteed to be above 30Mb/s though?

I spoke with one of the Virgin engineers the other week who informed me. The virgin exchange in the town I live in is supposed to handle 250 users. It is actually handling 1000 users and was due to be upgraded 6-8 years ago, and this is why the broadband isn’t that great all the time.

This is why Virgin in Yate is pretty shit at times, but still miles better than BT lines. 😉

Are Virgin as Shit hot as many people have told me?

From various posts on here, it seems that it depends on where you live to some extent.

For me here in Bristol, they’ve been great. In 7 years with them I can recall it being down only twice and the speeds are consistently good and reasonably close (say 75% IIRC) to what they advertise.

My mum’s on the lowest rated virgin broadband deal I think she gets something like 12Mbits/s. She had a problem with intermittently losing the connection a couple of times at the end of last week. Phoned up the help line and after a short while they’d arranged to have an engineer out to look at the problem on Tuesday. He supplied a new combined cable modem and router to replace her two separate units and everything’s been hunky dory since.

I thought that was pretty decent service, no need to rant or rave just described the problem and they sorted it out pretty quickly.

I’m in Reading, So big town not really in the sticks I should expect good servic from them then… Right I’m off home early to sort it out!

Headline sync speed is irrelevant if your ISP is traffic shaping, QOSing etc. Iplayer, ITV player, Sky Player, Netflix et al are killing ISPs who typically sell cheap and historically oversubscribe their networks, so the cheaper ISPs are throttling that traffic.

well bt guy installed today

getting 37 wired, 26 wireless

quite happy considering its the same price as my old 6megs or so on a 10meg deal