Numpty broadband question

**stek** · 2 February 2011, 10:15

Originally posted by Pondlife View Post

The Pondlife's will be relocating from Pondlife House to Pondlife Towers soon and I need a new Broadband connection set up. PL Hse had cable but the new place doesn't.

My question is, since they (ISPs) all seem dependent on having a BT line installed, are different ISPs really able to offer better than BT? I'm talking about down/upload speed NOT customer service.

TIA

PL

Be - if you are in there LLU areas. Check on SamKnows - Accurate broadband performance information for consumers, governments and ISPs - Be and no frills be excellent, absolutely no capping or throttling or download limits.

**Pondlife** · 2 February 2011, 10:23

Be doesn't seem to be available but cheers for the linky.

Very helpful.

**Platypus** · 2 February 2011, 10:24

It's a good question, and I suppose the answer could depend on whether your ISP has its own kit in the exchange. As far as I know, only a few large ISPs do this in small number of exchanges.

I've opted for a package from a non-BT ISP called ADSL24. By opting for their business package, there's supposed to be less contention. In reality, I get 8Mb download speed (this is actual, not advertised) and 768Kb upload (again, this is actual, not advertised). Obviously I'm chuffed because my connection is so fast, so for me the business option is worth the extra (I pay £30 per month). I suppose that is uses all BT kit in the exchange.

HTH.

**monkeyboy** · 2 February 2011, 10:53

Though the copper is BT owned what really matters is the peering relationship the ISP has and how many hops it takes to reach the peering point. Generally telehouse in docklands but there are others. I'm on BT and they haul me up to Manchester for some reason before coming back to London for peering. This introduces a lot of unnecessary latency.

Basically the traffic is routed to your choosen ISP over BT links then Your ISP is responsible for connecting this to the internet. Some are better than others at doing this and these will give the best experience. SO local contention is one issue and if its bad, no ISP will be able to improve this but the path to the internet is controlled by your ISP and some will be better than others.

The one I worked for basically had one hop once out of BTs hands to the internet and was very good though this is a few years ago now.

They stopped doing this and moved all the customers to a major ISP and it went downhill from there.

So small ISPs will be better but as they grow more popular their infrastructure may struggle to cope. There's not a lot of margin in the business and the kit is expensive so you tend to find they lag behind in investment as there start up kit gets saturated.

Mind you I'm with BT so not a good recommendation......

Numpty broadband question