[UK] Best Fibre Optic ISP?

[smooth_criminal1990]

Virgin is the way to go:

I've been on their 50Mbps cable for a year, and they don't seem to have capped it despite me and my 2 housemates torrenting quite a lot, and with heavy use of iPlayer.

When we started though, they mis-sold us the 30Mbps package saying it was unlimited (we were very specific when asking), but we put it to the test the day we got it by torrenting about 5 Linux DVDs (literally), and noticed we got capped (because it's not completely unlimited), so we called them up, and moved us on to 50 with a few months discount because they'd mis-sold it.

No problems since though, like CPressland we use the hub as a modem and control port-forwarding etc. on PFSense which runs brilliantly on a Pentium 2!

[CPressland]

It may not be fibre to your house with virgin but coaxial cable handles data a hell of alot better than your copper phone lines.

I pay for 76/18 with BT and get 75/17

He was referring to BT Broadband not BT Infinity. See copper phone lines.

The most I've seen on BT Broadband is about 4Mbit / 0.25Mbit

[SnoopZ]

I'm on the 120Mb package with Virgin Media and I don't have any issues with P2P. It just works, no throttling at all.

The speeds are excellent they advertise 120Mb and that is exactly what you get. I have a dedicated 1Gb servers in France and I can pull about 105-115Mb/ps from those to my VM line at any time of day over HTTP/FTP/Bittorrent. iPlayer, YouTube and other streaming video services buffer almost instantaneously regardless of quality level. Even the 1080p stuff on youtube is instant watch and buffers probably 10x faster than the videos play speed meaning there are no interruptions.

I can only really recommend Virgin Media as that is who I've been with for yonks and I'll admit there has been problems. Every few years VM tries to introduce some kind of P2P management system and it was affecting me until about 8 months ago where for some reason it just stopped being a problem and my P2P speeds went back to normal. I don't know if they upgraded their systems, improved their STM policy or just removed the Anti-P2P throttling altogether but things just work fine now.

If you want to look at other services definetly check out BT as their upload speed is faster than Virgin Medias. Currently VM's 120Mb down only offers 12Mb up while BT is offering 80Mb down / 20Mb up so if you or your house mates need more upload or intend to host any services from home such as a game server or a smallish website BT may be the way to go.

Oh and one last thing, the super hub VM give out is complete cack. Get your own Router.

Not trying to pick holes in your post but Virgin Media only offer 100Mb with 5Mb up currently for new customers and 10Mb up on the old 100Mb tarrif , this will increase in the summer to 120Mb and 12Mb up though.

To the OP if you go Virgin i would recommend getting the top 100Mb/120Mb package and for your information the Superhub they supply doesn't have a very good wireless range so you would be far better off putting it in modem mode and buying your own router.

If BT FTTC is available that maybe a better option.

[Detection]

He was referring to BT Broadband not BT Infinity. See copper phone lines.

The most I've seen on BT Broadband is about 4Mbit / 0.25Mbit

No he wasn't

Quote: "On BT you pay for upto 40 Mbit most likely receive bout 25 Mbit"

Infinity still uses copper phone lines from the cab to the house, hence FTTC

ADSL does not get 40mbit or even close. 40Mbit is Infinity 1, I'm on Infinity 2

[CPressland]

Superhub they supply doesn't have a very good wireless range so you would be far better off putting it in modem mode and buying your own router.

Or just buy an Access Point and save yourself ?100.

[CPressland]

Infinity still uses copper phone lines from the cab to the house, hence FTTC

Seriously?!!! Oh Dear!!!

[Vice]

Not trying to pick holes in your post but Virgin Media only offer 100Mb with 5Mb up currently, this will increase in the summer to 120Mb and 12Mb up though.

To the OP if you go Virgin i would recommend getting the top 100Mb/120Mb package and for your information the Superhub they supply doesn't have a very good wireless range so you would be far better off putting it in modem mode and buying your own router.

If BT FTTC is available that maybe a better option.

Actually I'm already on the 120Mb / 12Mb as I'm in the trial. Previous to this I was on 100Mb / 10Mb since September 2010. (I was in the trial for this too)

I'm not sure where you got the 5Mb upload from as 100Mb has always had 10Mb upload.

[Detection]

Seriously?!!! Oh Dear!!!

Yep, From exchange to Cabinet is Fiber, from Cabinet to house is normal BT phone line, you get a new master socket is the only change.

Apparently they are rolling out FTTP at some point

[Tjcrazy]

Great! Wouldn't mind playing around with DD-WRT, would there be any Wireless N AP for ?30ish with DD-WRT?

[Detection]

Great! Wouldn't mind playing around with DD-WRT, would there be any Wireless N AP for ?30ish with DD-WRT?

I'd visit ebay and ebuyer / dabs etc and pick some ?30 routers, then enter their model number into the DD-WRT router database to see if they are supported, I found a few cheapies on ebay the other day that were supported

[n_K]

When is FTTP coming around? We need to get a new BT line installed and it will be getting done around july, think FTTP will be BT's thing by then?

[CPressland]

Yep, From exchange to Cabinet is Fiber, from Cabinet to house is normal BT phone line, you get a new master socket is the only change.

Well thats not SO bad.

Great! Wouldn't mind playing around with DD-WRT, would there be any Wireless N AP for ?30ish with DD-WRT?

I believe TP-Link APs all support DD-WRT, but feature wise you won't gain much with just an AP.

EDIT This is what I use: WA901ND while it doesn't support DD-WRT, the range I get for the price of the device is amazing!

[SnoopZ]

Or just buy an Access Point and save yourself ?100.

As Vice says the Superhub is cack though and produces fart more jitter and ping and less wireless ranger than a router, even a ?40 router is better than the Superhubs.

Saying that though i do use my Superhubs router as i am so close to it.

[SnoopZ]

Actually I'm already on the 120Mb / 12Mb as I'm in the trial. Previous to this I was on 100Mb / 10Mb since September 2010. (I was in the trial for this too)

I'm not sure where you got the 5Mb upload from as 100Mb has always had 10Mb upload.

Great you're in the trial, the 'new' 100Mb tier starts off as 5Mb upload and this will increase to 12Mb when VM have upgraded their upstream capacity which they haven't started yet, You can find this information out on Vms own forums or Cableforum.co.uk.

[richardsim7]

Yep, From exchange to Cabinet is Fiber, from Cabinet to house is normal BT phone line, you get a new master socket is the only change.

Apparently they are rolling out FTTP at some point

They're trailing it at the moment, 330mb!!

[Vice]

Great you're in the trial, the 'new' 100Mb tier starts off as 5Mb upload and this will increase to 12Mb when VM have upgraded their upstream capacity which they haven't started yet, You can find this information out on Vms own forums or Cableforum.co.uk.

You mean people who are on 50Mb who get upgraded to 100Mb will have 5Mb upload. People who already had 100Mb still have 10Mb upload?

I'll admit I don't check the VM forums.

[remixedcat]

Well as long as you don't use the superhubs that were made by netgeat then you should be fine...

[CPressland]

I'll admit I don't check the VM forums.

Thats because they're full of idiots.

'My Internet doesn't work. Google loads fine, but the internet is down'

WUT?! :blink:

[SnoopZ]

You mean people who are on 50Mb who get upgraded to 100Mb will have 5Mb upload. People who already had 100Mb still have 10Mb upload?

I'll admit I don't check the VM forums.

Yes that is correct for 50Mb, or new customers taking the 100Mb service will equally only get 5Mb upload but this will rise to 12Mb upload in the summer when capacity is upgraded, when capacity is upgraded these will get 120Mb down and 12Mb up.

[Vice]

Yes that is correct for 50Mb, or new customers taking the 100Mb service will equally only get 5Mb upload but this will rise to 12Mb upload in the summer when capacity is upgraded, when capacity is upgraded these will get 120Mb down and 12Mb up.

Okay. Glad I was on 100Mb before they announced these changes haha I couldn't do without my high upload. If anything I wish it was higher. I've been with them since the Blueyonder days. I live for the day of 100Mb upload. :p

[WelshBluebird]

Well thats not SO bad.

The problem is that:

1 - It depends where the cabinet is.

2 - Even if your exchange is enabled for FTTC, it doesn't mean there is a cabinet for you to be connected to in your area.

[Jason87]

I've been with VM from back in the NTL dial up days and have never had a problem. Recently I have noticed that I have been getting capped. I had a look at their traffic management page and seen that they changed it on 2nd April, but I am not sure if they have decreased the amount that can be downloaded. Guess I'll just have to get the server to do the downloading from 9pm onwards :).

Link to traffic management if anyone needs it :).

[sagum]

WiFi is going to have to be an option, I'm sure I can change the channel settings in the control panel?

Then thats fine, but don't expect great results if you have anything more then 3 other wifi SSID in your area.

Wifi 802.11 spec uses a spectrum of 72mhz. each channel uses upto 30mhz so when we're trying to use 12 channels into that space, you can see we quickly run out of usable bandwidth.

To have a 'solid' (ironically i know) wifi connection, you need to have at least 3 channels spaces between each wifi network. if not you're going to have other networks transmitting on your freqency. While its not a problem as such with digital networks like wifi, it does create a large over head and the bandwidth is shared between both (or more) networks using the same freqency. resulting in high latency and less overall actual throughput bandwidth on your wifi connection. In some cases it can even cause your router to drop packets as they time out in the queue.

To make matters worse, a lot of routers use booter or afterburner technology, that'll use 'empty' channels next to it to double the bandwidth.

So while you might set your router to use one channel only, such as 1, 6 or 11 it doesn't mean other routers aren't hopping their uses to channel 3 and maybe even uses boosters to use channel 2 at the same time, meaning its very much overlapping your channel regardless of what you do.

[OOOOOOOO]

Actually I'm already on the 120Mb / 12Mb as I'm in the trial. Previous to this I was on 100Mb / 10Mb since September 2010. (I was in the trial for this too)

I'm not sure where you got the 5Mb upload from as 100Mb has always had 10Mb upload.

100 megabits per second. A byte is made of 8 bits. Therefore 100/8 = 12.5 Megabytes

I get at top speed around 12mbps on 100mb line from Virgin. You will get up to 15mb on a perfectly set up 120mb connection if you stream from the best servers/torrents. :)

[Detection]

100 megabits per second. A byte is made of 8 bits. Therefore 100/8 = 12.5 Megabytes

I get at top speed around 12mbps on 100mb line from Virgin. You will get up to 15mb on a perfectly set up 120mb connection if you stream from the best servers/torrents. :)

I max out at 8.9MB/s on a 76meg connection from BT