[GLLUG] Broadband/cable provider [OT]

[John Edwards]

Hi

On Wed, Mar 06, 2013 at 10:33:40AM +0000, Matthew Walster wrote:
> On 6 March 2013 10:24, John Edwards <john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk> wrote:
>> Remember that you are a sample size of one, and by the looks of it
>> someone who has been lucky with them and had problems with DSL.
> 
> I'd say I know 20-30 on Virgin Media, and 10-20 on DSL. The rate of faults
> is roughly equal -- but when it *does* work, by far the superior service is
> obtained through Virgin Media.
> 
> I have an inbuilt aversion to DSL not because of the technology, but
> because of the way in which it's implemented. If each exchange was an IP
> node rather than an aggregation point to send these L2TP tunnels back down
> to London (etc) then perhaps backhaul bandwidth would be a lot cheaper than
> BT currently charge.

I think the reason it is built that way it to allow for the
connections to be sent back to the reseller ISPs' networks.

Otherwise BT would have to have control of the IP backbone,
and I certainly won't trust them to not fiddle with that.


>> That Virgin Media are so hated and avoided by businesses and techies
>> might suggest to you that most people have the opposite experience,
>> especially with their technical support - which if you've never had
>> any serious problems then you will not had to deal with. People have
>> had ongoing faults that have taken months or years to resolve.
> 
> Virgin Media support *is* terrible. I've seen NTL/VM National Ethernet
> installs take over 12 months to provision. However, if the service is
> *working*, I've always had a fantastic service. My only gripe with the
> Virgin service is that they overwrite DNS TTLs, but I'm really clutching at
> straws there.

When it works reliably it can be very fast, especially during the
daytime in the week (when kids are school?).

But as someone who mainly deals with small businesses, the extra
speed and lower cost (compared to a good DSL ISP) just does not
make up for the possibility of days of downtime.

For a consumer who is only an occasional user and may have access
to the Internet via a 3G phone then the scales could be tipped the
other way.


-- 
#---------------------------------------------------------#
|    John Edwards   Email: john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk    |
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