StainlessSteelCat Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 OP I think your street need to start some kind of local campaign to embarrass BT into action. I live in the middle of F*** knows where, and I'm getting 30+ Meg thanks to Welsh government lobbying. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porca misèria Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 Path of least resistance is probably 4g if it's available in your area. See here for my experience. But if it's your whole street, that might open another interesting possibility. Get together and share the cost of a high-grade satellite connection. If enough of you chip in, you might be looking at something of business-grade without the compromises[1] that bring the costs down to the individual/household subscriber level. [1] Whatever those are ... I think these days it's mainly just that the kit you have to install up-front is rather more demanding than a gawp-only sky dish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StainlessSteelCat Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 Or there's a strong community, create some kind of mesh network with the surrounding streets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted September 4, 2015 Share Posted September 4, 2015 In the same manner - you could all petition Virgin Media: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/02/virgin-media-expand-uk-cable-broadband-network-17-million-premises-2020.html http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2015/06/huge-virgin-media-uk-cable-broadband-expansion-begins-in-manchester.html “Our message is simple: help us to cable your street. If you want to switch to broadband speeds twice as fast as you can get today, simply register with Virgin Media to ‘cablemystreet’.” Will probably fail to create much impact unless you get quite a few people to email them. You should also have a look at your local authority website and their BDUK broadband section - this may show coverage maps indicating whether your general area is due to get upgrades. However these tend to be notoriously lacking in any real detail e.g. street level so you could ask them. http://www.hampshiresuperfastbroadband.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 Well, I've just ran Sky to see what they can do. They have offered a free sky hub, but I can't see how that will help... and I'm sure it will tie me into a contract! They're doing a line test... and going to ring me back. There's no Virgin/fibre in the street. I've owned the house from brand new, so no previous occupiers.. The speed was usually over 2mbps, but in recent weeks it has dropped to 1016kbps and it's really too slow to watch you tube - which I do a lot of.. Not cat videos! One thing I have just thought of is I uploaded around 1.5gb of photos to drop box (raw data files). Maybe that caused the internet to break? I did run this over night. OP I think your street need to start some kind of local campaign to embarrass BT into action. Well, the politics in our estate when it comes to, well, anything is bad enough - quite simply they can't manage anything (I even stopped going to the AGMs because it got so bad). I wouldn't mind putting letters through peoples doors, but it would only work if the provider managed it. I have sent an email out to the mailing list urging people to sign up, but they don't like me because I disagreed with a notorious clamping ticketing company operating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted September 4, 2015 Author Share Posted September 4, 2015 Oh, just looking at my router.. it's now jumped to: Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 605 / 1,627 Woooo... Edit: And they're giving me a free hub! As for 4G, I'm with Vodafone and got it free - although it seems to have disappeared from my phone recently. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 Fluctuations in sync rate can be normal to a degree, they can also be indicative of something called cross-talk which occurs because crappy old phone wires all stuck in a bundle together which were not supposed to be used for high speed data act like little radio antenna and signals from one interfere with another like two radio channels on the same frequency. Cable is immune to this because cable uses co-axial cable which has outer shielding not thin twisted pairs of wire. They can also indicate something failing, for example a badly made joint/repair failing, micro-fractures in the lines and so on. If you know what sync rates other directly adjacent users get and they're quite a bit higher then there may be cause to investigate further. If you listen to the line very carefully with a phone handset and you hear any clicking, buzzing, or anything at all when it should be silent, you may have an avenue to get that investigated. If such things are caused by line faults, then that may be repaired, and with it, the speed may step up slightly or become more stable. That the development is new build doesn't mean the lines are new. It only implies that the bit of wire from the street to your house is new. The rest of the wire could be getting on for 100 years old. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted September 6, 2015 Author Share Posted September 6, 2015 Ok, cheers for all your help. I'm now settled around 1.6mbps, which is just enough to surf.. I might switch to 3, and try that easy tether app, then I could get rid of the phone line completely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riedquat Posted September 6, 2015 Share Posted September 6, 2015 If you listen to the line very carefully with a phone handset and you hear any clicking, buzzing, or anything at all when it should be silent, you may have an avenue to get that investigated. If such things are caused by line faults, then that may be repaired, and with it, the speed may step up slightly or become more stable. If it's a BT line at least you can use 17070 to get a quiet line test so you're not trying to listen to a dialling tone too, or hearing noise that might be from the phone or line on the other end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
porca misèria Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 One further thought. Are you running tests with a wireless connection to your router? If so, try wired, just to eliminate the possibility that the problem is interference on your wifi. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geezer466 Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 I had a problem a couple of months ago where I would get random drop outs and slow downs. It bugged me for about a week before I got BT to check the line. They said everything was fine their end, they could see the drop outs. Offered a few connection tweaks and said leave it for a couple of days. No improvement so I went into the BT user forums where the advice seemed to be the connect to the master socket (wired to router) - no improvement. BT had already told me there was no issue with the line so I took the backplate off the socket and saw a loose wire in the loom it was hovering very close to its metal contact hence the random dropouts. I sourced an engineers fine screwdriver and secured it back into the pinch socket... Put everything back together and it has been right as rain ever since. I am 300 metres from the exchange though so even though still on adsl2 (fibre is in but not to cabinet just yet) it still motors along... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jason Posted September 7, 2015 Author Share Posted September 7, 2015 Funnily enough, I got a free sky router today (from Sky) and it's now connected at a slightly better speed - 2043kbps. Woooo hoooo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bootsox Posted September 8, 2015 Share Posted September 8, 2015 If you want to experiment a bit, I use these in my iPad mini (which is capable of tethering). Quick test gives gives 15Mbps upload. EE 4G 6GB/90 days Pay As You Go Mobile Broadband @ £15.99/14.99: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00FSDCCM8?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_search_detailpage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 Mr Branson has just sent me a new router. It's twice the size of the old one, and doesn't work any better, but it has more blue flashing lights! I feel like I am in a police station! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bendy Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 Mr Branson has just sent me a new router. It's twice the size of the old one, and doesn't work any better, but it has more blue flashing lights! I feel like I am in a police station! What a git - if he'd had sent one with red flashies you could've pretended you was in Bruce Wayne's drawing room! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrPin Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 What a git - if he'd had sent one with red flashies you could've pretended you was in Bruce Wayne's drawing room! Man, that's so 70s! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 You can buy satellite broadband now, one of the big providers is called Tooway. However people with it have discovered that: You can't change the laws of physics and the data has to travel a very long way. This creates horrendous latency. Latency manifests as the time between the web browser making a request and the time it takes for the data to start coming back. So if you request a web page with 50 images on it, there are 51 requests. Each request might take a second or so to make the "trip". Result: Page takes 51 seconds to load. (somewhat simplified but not far from accurate). And.. You cannot manage bandwidth. In a small local network, like a segment of the cable network, there might be 6GB at the street cabinet, and 300 houses using it. There is enough to deliver 200Mbps to every house some of the time though not all of the time at the same time, and to deliver decent speeds to all, almost all the time. Satellite is trying to deliver to people across countries and demand cannot be managed. Supply is fixed. Result: speeds slow down at peak times, sometimes, to a crawl. So you can indeed sell satellite packages which offer "up to 30Mbps downstream", but at peak times, you might be lucky to see even 1Mbps of that due to the number of people you're sharing with. Basically satellite is an absolute last resort for places that are literally in the middle of nowhere. It will however be the solution for people who are too far from their BT phone cabinet for their backward "Fibre to the Cabinet" - the performance of which is distance related as the speed falls away the longer and poorer the phone line is - as a "superfast broadband solution" because it delivers *up to* 30Mbps. And all BT is likely to do, is to resell the existing Tooway solution or similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si1 Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 Get a 4g wireless hotspot, and/or complain to your MP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OnionTerror Posted October 28, 2015 Share Posted October 28, 2015 Chap is in the middle of Salisbury Plain...I wonder if Planning would be snooping around? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DTMark Posted October 29, 2015 Share Posted October 29, 2015 The above is what we have, but with a self-installed antenna on the roof - we don't need to run miles of cable as we're only 2.6km from the transmitter and have near line of sight so we get a five bar signal and decent speeds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Si1 Posted October 29, 2015 Share Posted October 29, 2015 The above is what we have, but with a self-installed antenna on the roof - we don't need to run miles of cable as we're only 2.6km from the transmitter and have near line of sight so we get a five bar signal and decent speeds. This Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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