I need some alternatives to my internet connection because it is simply too slow.
My maximum ADSL speed is about 3 / 0.75 with poor line quality.
I'm not in a cable area.
My exchange has been activated for FTTC, but I have no cabinets in the area. A Business FTTC connection would have been ideal for me. (£80 / month, 40 / 10, unmetered, nearly uncontended)
I'm on the edge of a city. (Penwortham, near Preston.)
I need a decent upload speed (> 10Meg) and decent line quality. (Jitter / ping) I will be hosting gameservers and webservers. I don't want to co-locate.
I'd be happy with a 20 / 10 connection, but 30 / 20 would be better.
I want a near uncontended line with no bandwidth limit.
I don't mind paying £150 / month for the kind of connection I'm after.
I have looked into leased lines and the best I've managed to find is 2Meg unmetered over copper for £400 / month (+ VAT) with a £1,700 installation charge. (+ VAT) If it was just the installation charge I could (Just about) live with that, but the monthly cost I cannot - Especially for a 2Meg connection. I'm currently asking Talk Internet if they can do me a deal on the leased lines, but I doubt they can.
Any ideas ? I'm really starting to get frustrated.
Honestly? Move. The costs to have a special line installed can easily reach tens of thousands of pounds.
Things like this are probably out of your price range. It's significantly cheaper to rent servers or co-locate. I can't imagine that a new line (at your distance from exchange and desired speed) would be anything other than fibre optic, and needless to say having your own personal fibre optic line installed is not cost effective for non commercial things.
[QUOTE=Catdaemon;29300297]Honestly? Move. The costs to have a special line installed can easily reach tens of thousands of pounds.[/QUOTE]
Moving house would cost far more. We couldn't get a house that's even nearly as good as this one without paying much more.
[QUOTE=AMD 32;29300551]Things like this are probably out of your price range. It's significantly cheaper to rent servers or co-locate. I can't imagine that a new line (at your distance from exchange and desired speed) would be anything other than fibre optic, and needless to say having your own personal fibre optic line installed is not cost effective for non commercial things.[/QUOTE]
That's simply not an option for me unfortunatly.
It's not an issue that a private line would cost more than co-location, even if it's double. Nor are the installation costs too much of an issue at ~£1700. (And that was including a router, which I don't need.) My issue is that it costs silly amounts for a decent connection. I don't see why we are bailing out shitty poor countries when we have this piss-poor excuse for an internet infrastructure in this country.
I do have to admit, the UK's internet is quite random.
Last year, we had an internet speed of above 1MB/s. We then moved 3 miles away. Same exchange, same company, only our location is different. They can't fit us on the exchange, so we have to pay more money a much slower internet (it is now roughly 150KB/s).
[QUOTE=Omolong;29301171]I do have to admit, the UK's internet is quite random.
Last year, we had an internet speed of above 1MB/s. We then moved 3 miles away. Same exchange, same company, only our location is different. They can't fit us on the exchange, so we have to pay more money a much slower internet (it is now roughly 150KB/s).[/QUOTE]
Ouch, I feel for you. :( It's appalling that we still have these kind of connections over here.
[QUOTE=Catdaemon;29300297]Honestly? Move. The costs to have a special line installed can easily reach tens of thousands of pounds.[/QUOTE]
The cost of a new house? Hundreds of thousands (depending on if you upsize/downsize)
You'd pay 150 a month for internet?
Just wait until your lines get upgraded, bt are doing them all.
I pay for a 10mb connection and get around 16.
[QUOTE=Omolong;29301171]I do have to admit, the UK's internet is quite random.
Last year, we had an internet speed of above 1MB/s. We then moved 3 miles away. Same exchange, same company, only our location is different. They can't fit us on the exchange, so we have to pay more money a much slower internet (it is now roughly 150KB/s).[/QUOTE]
BT are in control of the majority of exchanges, they really need to fit more, my town is getting near over subscription if I remember, so everyone is experiencing really slow speeds. Some people get decent speeds, but I have a feeling that affects those of us who are getting slower than we should really.
the state of the internet here is a disgrace, while the rest of the world enjoys 100MB symmetrical connection the fastest you can get in most of the UK is 20MB (I can get 17 down 2 up)
[QUOTE=Trumple;29301641]The cost of a new house? Hundreds of thousands (depending on if you upsize/downsize)[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
[QUOTE=joe588;29303592]You'd pay 150 a month for internet?
Just wait until your lines get upgraded, bt are doing them all.
I pay for a 10mb connection and get around 16.[/QUOTE]
Yes I would pay that much, that is the value of a high quality connection to me.
I'm sure the line will be upgraded within the next 5 years, but by the time they actually decide to do so it will be out of date and I'll have been stuck on this 3Meg low quality line for years and this is something I cannot afford to do. In fact FTTC is still out of date for todays standards in other countries.
[QUOTE=hexpunK;29303698]BT are in control of the majority of exchanges, they really need to fit more, my town is getting near over subscription if I remember, so everyone is experiencing really slow speeds. Some people get decent speeds, but I have a feeling that affects those of us who are getting slower than we should really.[/QUOTE]
BT are just out for a profit, just like any company would be. They pretty much run a monopoly and as such have no real reason to do anything in a timely manor. The government needs to step in and sort this out, but they aren't prepared to do anything drastic enough to get us up to date.
[QUOTE=chaoss1986;29309240]the state of the internet here is a disgrace, while the rest of the world enjoys 100MB symmetrical connection the fastest you can get in most of the UK is 20MB (I can get 17 down 2 up)[/QUOTE]
Yes exactly, I pay £17 / month for a 3Meg connection (Cheapest Be package) - There are cheaper ISPs but they are usually oversubscribed and I might as well do everything I can to get the most out of this pathetic line. Meanwhile some countries are setting up their infrastructure for gigabit FTTH / FTTP.
[QUOTE=joe588;29303592]You'd pay 150 a month for internet?
Just wait until your lines get upgraded, bt are doing them all.
I pay for a 10mb connection and get around 16.[/QUOTE]
They aren't doing them all, my area isnt even on the scheduled list
[editline]20th April 2011[/editline]
[QUOTE=chaoss1986;29309240]the state of the internet here is a disgrace, while the rest of the world enjoys 100MB symmetrical connection the fastest you can get in most of the UK is 20MB (I can get 17 down 2 up)[/QUOTE]
You're lucky to even get more than 1 up with 90% of plans
You're asking a lot for a consumer ISP. A hell of a lot. They aren't designed to host services such a games or web daemons. Live with it - you are a consumer.
[QUOTE=runtime;29314228]You're asking a lot for a consumer ISP. A hell of a lot. They aren't designed to host services such a games or web daemons. Live with it - you are a consumer.[/QUOTE]
Not really anymore, FTTC is growing in the UK and I have seen consumer plans that offer 40 down 10 up.
[QUOTE=runtime;29314228]You're asking a lot for a consumer ISP. A hell of a lot. They aren't designed to host services such a games or web daemons. Live with it - you are a consumer.[/QUOTE]
I was just getting a leased line quote from TalkInternet. They are a provider of up to 1Gig leased lines for businesses.
Hardly a consumer ISP.
If you haven't got the budget for leased lines have you looked into bonded broadband?
You'd need extra phone lines putting in (along with the associated monthly fees).
Then you need an ISP which allows bonding. You pay a fee for the bonding service as well as having to pay for multiple ADSL accounts (the more you have the more aggrgated bandwidth will be available). These lead to a specialized router on your end which divides packets up across the available connections. Hardware at the other end re-assembles the packet stream and sends it on its way to the destination IP (likewise for incoming data).
It's mainly used for businesses who have multiple users wishing to use the web simultaneously, and/or for connecting multiple VPN clients to the intranet.
There's probably some latency overhead to do with sending stuff over multiple connections so I've no idea if it'd be suitable for hosting game servers. You'd need to look into that.
Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately I have already looked into bonding and it doesn't work out being very good for me.
I got a quote from my current ISP (Be) and if you include the extra line rental it works out at about £70 / month in total for two lines. Due to my distance to the exchange I'd get a total of 6 / 1.5 which is rather low for that amount of money. What makes it worse is my line quality (Latency and packet loss) which is poor anyway. I'm sure the latency overheads of the bonding wouldn't make a difference because of my 150ms ping to the ISP's gateway. (The quality isn't so bad (~30ms / 0% loss - Best case) when the line is at idle, but whenever you use it the quality drops quite quickly. (~150ms / 20% loss - Worst case))
The setup cost wouldn't be an issue for me as my pfSense router would support MLPPP, it's the monthly costs which get me. (Same story for the leased lines too, in fact. The problem is the distance to the exchange, which is the part that TalkInternet can't do a deal on.)
I'm in a other country, but i feel you. My downloads not too bad 8Mbps, but the upload is measly 0.53Mbps.
Ironic thing is that my country (Lithuania) has the 2nd best or the best upload speeds in Europe. I would get massive speeds if we would get fiber optic cables, but the people who live in apartments only get that (more people in one place).
[QUOTE=yngndrw;29311543]BT are just out for a profit, just like any company would be. They pretty much run a monopoly and as such have no real reason to do anything in a timely manor. The government needs to step in and sort this out, but they aren't prepared to do anything drastic enough to get us up to date.[/QUOTE]
BT can't just go around causing massive disturbances digging up places to lay FTTC, not to mention they are required to keep the rest of their infrastructure running while they work on it. That is why it is taking so long.
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