[Chester LUG] Good broadband

[Sebastian Arcus]

Hi Stu,

On 05/02/12 23:21, Stuart Burns wrote:
> Hi Everyone,
>
> As per title. Virgin have just decided to increase my package by over
> 5%  from the £65 a month I already pay (includes TV and phone!). The
> thing is, it's pretty crap anyhow. VPN - Your having a laugh! They
> advertise 120MBit broadband, but in reality, they won't let you get
> anywhere near that speed.
>
> Problems include, limiting speed to 64K/s as soon as there is a sniff of
> p2p traffic (Centos 6 anyone?). If you try and download more than about
> a gig, ie a vmware ISO, your speeds get capped again. Then the offshore
> technical support, who when you say "Mac" Metaphorically sh1t themselves
> as it's not in their script and you know it's not your  issue as your
> modem isn't getting sync.
>
> I'm looking at Plus.net because as they say "Good honest broadband". I
> am not particularly big downloader, maybe 5 - 6 GB a week, sometimes
> more, sometimes less.
>
> Any suggestions welcome,
>
> Stu

I am on Plus.net - and I have quite a few clients on Plus.net on the 
business package. Two of the main reasons I steer clients towards 
Plus.net is because their packages are fairly straight forward, and 
because they give free fixed IP with the business package.

On the one occasion when we had real technical issues, I have to say 
they were surprisingly helpful, with the same UK based person calling 
back on my mobile several times over a week or so with advice and to 
check if the problem was sorted OK (it had to be referred to BT 
wholesale / OpenReach engineers for fixing etc.)

At home I just switched few months ago from Virgin Media to Plus.net - 
mainly because VM kept on putting prices up gently every few months. I 
was only on VM 10mbs. The thing is, after I went through the whole 
installation and reconfiguration, new (proper, not the one they send) 
ADSL modem router, and then subsequent package upgrade, because the 
Plus.net base 10GB/month package wasn't enough - I worked out that any 
savings from moving away from VM have kind of been wiped out for about 2 
years.

I can't comment on p2p situation for either provider - as I download an 
ISO maybe once a year - so can't really tell the difference. Plus.net 
gives me a measured 15mbs - but unlike VM, that will depending on the 
quality of your copper wire - so not really predictable.

One significant downside of the move is the upload speed. With VM I was 
getting about 1mbs upload - which is useful for my OpenVPN link - while 
with Plus.net I get about 350kbs - which is normal for ADSL lines - but 
not what I need.

So all in all - a mixed conclusion really. VM called to say after I 
moved that I could have hassled them back to £21-£22/month (for basic BB 
and basic phone line) before moving away (which was my tariff to start 
with, 2 years ago) - which would have rendered the move irrelevant - but 
by then it was too late :-)

Hope the above helps a bit,

Sebastian