BT Internet Broadband Service

[ianhind]

The new cabinet (which I'm assuming is for Infinity) is only about 100 yards away from here which is a lot closer than the exchange (1.5 miles).

However I still get around 6Mbits/s on the standard "up to 20Mbits/s" service, at least during the day.

One major attraction of Infinity is the much higher upload speed compared to standard ADSL which is going to make working from home a bit easier. And I've just found out the company I work for will contribute up to £18 per month towards broadband costs (they used to pay for a separate connection which I never bothered with - too much contractual bureaucracy). I think they insist on BT so suits me.

Ian

[MALTBY D]

I'm not with BT, but I recently had some trouble with slow internet connection too. Eventually found out it was my wireless connection.

I always plugged direct into the router with an ethernet cable, but a phone wiring problem in our house forced me to go wireless using a USB dongle thing instead.
All worked fine, but after a while it degraded and would often be under 1 Mb/s. Plugging a laptop direct into the router with ethernet was getting 10 Mb/s!

Anyway, I ended up swapping my ZyXEL dongle (free with the router) for an Edimax dongle. The Edimax has a directional aerial and some fancy wireless monitoring software which shows details of all the wireless signals picked up from the local area (signal strength, channel etc).
The signal strength monitoring allowed me to find the best USB port and aerial direction to use (boosted speed to 5 Mb/s).
But the main thing was that I could see that the strongest of the neighbours wireless signals was on the same channel as my router (channel 6).
So I changed my router to use channel 9 instead and that boosted the speed to a very consistent 7.5 Mb/s. Probably improved the neighbours wireless as well!

Maybe I'm way behind most people, but I was never even aware of wireless channels and that you could change it. I also wasn't aware that any wireless connection could be quite so bad.
Apparently the new BT home hub checks the channels and automatically changes if needed.
I now see there are some freeware wireless monitoring downloads on the internet. I've not used any of them, but they could be a real help if you're wireless.

DM

[hobby]

I did send a reply on this topic earlier this week but it just did not reach the forum!

So here is the update to the present:

Three days ago a charming lady from India telephoned me and told me that the fault had been traced to my malfunctioning BT MK1 router. She told me to discard that router and to connect to the small, very neat looking, MK3 router that the puzzled Openworld engineer had left with us last week. First thing I discovered was that my old BT dongle could not receive signals from the MK3 router! We had found that out when we quickly tried the MK3 router while the Openworld man was here. Would you believe the next bit? The Openworld man had no means of testing my old wireless dongle and then told me that he was not responsible for anything after the router in the system!!! He did however suggest that I went to PC World and bought a new wireless dongle and that advice proved to be sound. The problem came when I told PC World staff that I am still running XP. However a decent technician found me a NETGEAR N150 Wireless USB adapter and this proved the necessary part to receive the MK3 router signal. Now running at a higher speed than ever before(65Mbps) with Excellent to Good signal strength. The Indian lady is to telephone us on Monday to find out how things are going.

Meanwhile since the installation of the MK3 router my wife cannot receive BB signals some 20ft away. That may be due to the different security system she has on her computer which might be firewalling out the MK3 signals. We shall see on Monday when the local professional computer guru arrives to look at her computer/BB system.

Lots of "green box" activity in this area where for months we have been bombarded with "Virgin" leaflets via snailmail. One Openworld engineer told me that the nearest large town some 4.5Nm from here is to have a fibre optic system brought into service early next year. Our small town may be next!

All of the foregoing forum messages on this topic have made interesting reading - it is very reassuring to read of other peoples problems and to realise that one is not the only ISP user who has problems getting the thing to work.

What intrigues my wife and I is the fact that we lived for over 50 years without all this Internet wizardry yet any loss of internet service, even for a short time, has now become a major problem. Quite ridiculous really!

[DaveB]

I have a similar quandary here James. My 'current' BT router is a Voyager 2000 which was good at the time (type b) but the signal standard/protocol has since changed to 'g' and now 'n'. My daughter recently bought a brand spanking new HP i5 laptop which comes with a multi option protocol but it refuses to talk to my 'b' router even though it see's it fine. In the end, she bought a USB dongle which is both 'g' and 'n' and it will connect.. 'g' being backward compatible with 'b' whereas 'n' is not.

Incidentally.. I got an email from BT today saying they're putting my BB charge up by a couple of quid a month

ATB
DaveB

[hobby]

Dave, I have not yet received an email from BT regarding increase in BB fees!

Perhaps if I shut my eyes tight enough that increase will never arrive!!!

[DaveB]

I know what you mean. I got one saying they were dropping the cost of my 'Option 4' package then another saying I was getting up to 20mb for free but I've not noticed either happen. Perhaps the price increase will not happen too though I doubt it

ATB
DaveB

[Garry Russell]

Our's might be coming down in price, they've been told it's too expensive

[Paul K]

Apparently the new BT home hub checks the channels and automatically changes if needed.

Hmmm, I wonder if thats what my new BT hub was doing when the broudband indicator changed colour then returned to blue. I haven't had time to read through the handbook yet, but wireless interference from the neighbours was always something I suspected as a factor in my problems. Its absolutely rock steady now.

[speedbird591]

Choosing the right wireless channel can make a hell of a difference but don't rely on the router to do it for you. Even the BT HomeHub 3 seems to choose the same as all the neighbours. I use InSSIDer which is a free download (http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/) and will detect all the nearby wireless channels, in my case 10-12 of them, and shows you the strengths. There are 13 channels but the strongest are 1,6 and 11 so you should try to choose one of those. By using InSSIDer pick the channel which has the fewest or weakest competitors and change the channel manually in the HomeHub software (type: http://bthomehub.home/ into your browser address bar). It might overpower a neighbour's BB so if you hear anybody moaning, shake your head sympathetically and blame BT

Just been given a free upgrade by BT from ADSL to FTTC (fibre to the cabinet, aka Infinity) which has increased the download speed from 4.5Mbps to 17Mbps. The speed is restricted because of the copper line from the cabinet to the house which is several streets away (the cabinet - not the house. The house is here, obviously). But not without teething troubles as the copper line was reliable for the slow ADSL signal but can be a bit shaky with the increased speed.

The biggest problem has been the modem (with Infinity you have a modem AND a router (HomeHub) but you don't need those filter things any more). The modems are cheap and nasty Chinese things and they overheat and go pop. I'm on number three (in 2 months) but the new version (3) is supposed to have solved the problems. I also had to replace the new HomeHub 3 as the wireless part failed, but the line seems to be about 99% reliable and it's great for streaming iPlayer and movies through the Smart TV via an ethernet cable. You can buy your own router with a modem incorporated but they're quite expensive. I may get one (a Vigor) if I have more equipment problems.

Now BT. Because of all this I've had a lot of dealings with the BT BB helpline over the last few weeks and in every case they have been incredibly helpful. It seems that the fibre product is handled by a call centre in Newcastle and the staff there are fantastic. The phone is always answered within a couple of minutes and they stay with you as long as it takes to either fix the problem or report it as a fault. If it's reported as a fault an engineer is sent within a day or two and sometimes the same day. You can track the fault and change appointments in your online BT account. And then they follow up with a phone call to ensure that the fault is fixed and that you're happy.

The engineers, lines and infrastructure is now operated by BT Openreach which isn't the same as BT Internet. Most ISPs using the fibre or copper wires will use the same BT Openreach engineer to fix it so leaving BT because you're not happy with the infrastructure probably won't help - unless you use cable.

So how can I go online to check my account if I haven't got a BB connection? Here's the clever thing with the HomeHub 3. A small part of the wireless signal is set aside as a BT Fon hotspot (optional). This allows BT to offer millions of wireless hotspots all over the Country. In return you can log in to any hotspot yourself for free unlimited wireless surfing by using your BB login details. So if my BB has failed I use the hotspot provided by two of my neighbours' HH3s and use theirs instead. It's not very fast but does the job and takes all the drama out of a crisis.

Ian

[Paul K]

A free upgrade to FTTC ? You jammy b****r ! I think I shall go for Infinity when it arrives in this area.

My slow speed problems have returned; after 6 days at a rock-steady 5.7 MB/s it went down to about 2 or 3 on Sunday. BT is due to call this evening to see how I'm getting on with the new hub - and having noted all the problems down, what do I see when I run BT Speedtester just now ? The bloody things gone back up to 8.7 MB/s !

Here's a thing one of you might be able to explain to me; when I ran BT Speedtester and was getting 5.7 Mb/s on every test for about 6 days, the results page also said that my maximum achievable speed was 7.6 MB/s

Now, on Sunday, when the download speed went down to 2 or 3 MB/s, the results page stated that my maximum achievable speed was 21 Mb/s ( Yes, twenty one ! ) At the same time, the upload speed went UP from 460 KB/s to 760 KB/s !

Does this mean anything to anyone ?

Thanks

Baffled of Cambridge