Other BT Infinity, worth upgrading to?

We have the BT Unlimited Broadband with Up to 16Mb download speeds but we get no way near that, BT say its because we're about as far away from the telephone exchange as you can get.

I did a check with the phone number last night and now we can finally get it. Generally when i dl a file or update its between 400-550kbps.

The two packages they offer is the "Up to 38Mb & 76Mb download speed",

Has anyone here got either of these two packages, would they recommend it?

 

Infinity user here. 38Mb package, downloads at about 4MB/s, which is sweet for getting updates when you're itching to play on Steam. Picked the BT package as they offered free installation (something the independents couldn't match, sadly).

Not noticed any throttling, but I'm a fairly light user. In all honesty it's a little bit more than I need, but if you want speed, infinity delivers.

 

Top package here (72Mb/20Mb), Home Hub 5 (which is storming to be fair), ludicrous speed on downloads, no lag in BF4/Pay Day/Hawx etc etc, pings are low, streaming is perfect (Netflix).

I fear I may have to get fibre again when I move, going back down to anything slower will suck

edit: used to get 3Mb on my ADSL...

 

Oh rlly?



I do concede that they would be on the expensive side.

 

We're on TalkTalk Fibre, which is basically the same thing. Before we could only get 2.5Mb on their ADSL, now we get 38Mb constantly, all day every day. Was a no brainer for us really, only cost us an extra £5 a month, and we then got the Youview box too.

Not had any problems with it at all, included wireless routers done the job so far, the UI isn't as clear as the Netgear I had previously but I've just about figured it out, .

 

Is this a new thing? I've got a separate modem box plus the HH3, which is easy to replace with any PPPoE router, not that I've seen any reason to do so.

 

I have a HH5 and the white OR box.....

 

I'm on Plusnet's 80/20 fibre package, with a white OR box and an Asus router. Steam d/l updates at 8.6MB/s last night. Well worth it.

 

Yes! I used to be on a 6Mbps/600Kbps ADSL line and then we upgraded to fibre and I now sit on anything between 48 and 54Mbps down and 13Mbps up.

I'm quite a way away from the exchange and my town, Ringwood, isn't exactly the largest. It may very well be one of the largest towns of oldies, though.

 

You want to speak to me then, I've been through the majority of them

Draytek Vigor 2750N - Better than default kit. Average.
FritzBox 7390 - Looks crappy but is an amazing pice of kit and can give you nice detz on the equipment in the exchange.

I've heard from a friend that the Billion FTTC router dose a good job too.

I'm back to using the OR modem (unlocked of course) and a Fortigate 200B.
I did have stats logging but I needed to delete the Linux VM to make room.
Plan is to get the graphs going again on a spare Rasp Pi

 

And back on topic yes it's fab.

80/20 plan on TalkTalk here.
Cabient is about 300 meters away.

54Mbps down 12Mbps up

But with some tweaking on the OR modem and using shorter cables (10cm Sheilded RJ11) I'm up to 60Mbps down 15Mbps up.

 

Indeed it is very expensive.
The Draytek was a good £120 aswell. - Seem'd to max out at 40mbps. Max Sync I could get was 49Mbps. Looking into it it shares the same firmware as it's Voip System router which reserves some bandwidth. Also they provided a shoddy RJ11 once switched it went up to 45Mbps.



And yes. I have seperate hardware for that stuff aswell.
DHCP - Server 2012 Essentials, Wireless - Apple Airport Extreme & Express (I had these left over, Extreme covers half the house and also acts as a gbps switch for my lab, voip phone and Mac Mini, Express covers the other side of the house and provides Airplay.) I would say these arn't the greatest wireless units but with most of the house wired it's only there for phones and tablets and with 2.4ghz & 5ghz it pushes full signal around the house so not bad.
(I am planing to swap them out with some ZyXEL AP' or Meraki's at some point)


On the Unlocked BT modem front. There is some beta firmware which improves the line speed of long distance lines. It didn't make much diffrence on mine but for someone with a cabinet 900+ meters away it should give a noticable increase in speed.
Also usual stuff of disabling TR09 (I think) and QoS will give a 2-5mbps speed increase.


So... thanks..

 

The main thing to bear in mind is BT Ininity is only FTTC (fibre to the cabinet). The last run to your house would be over copper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_Infinity

This would mean lower speeds than you've been quoted, especially as you said you are "as far from the exchange as you can get".

Not saying that it wouldn't be an improvement to what you've already got though

EDIT:

Also VDSL suffers a lot from attenuation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_high_speed_digital_subscriber_line_2#United_Kingdom

 

I've found the choice of router is more down to the wireless signal, for me anyway. With the PlusNet free offering it was terrible. I bought a Belkin N750 and it was a lot better, but the signal wasn't strong enough for me. The Asus RT-N56U I've got is stellar, meaning I can get pretty near full speed over wifi. It's had a few firmware upgrades over the past year although they've added nothing new for me, perhaps it's made it more stable although I've had to reset it no more than previous adsl routers, maybe twice I think over the past year (discounting the restarts due to firmware upgrades, of which there's been about 3). The interface is nice and friendly, fairly responsive and the mobile app is good too.

I thought I was happy with 16Mb, but.. my word once you go fibre you no go back.

 

not sure how accurate the BT site is but check your phone numbers here