Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Hi All

After 1 solid week Of pathetic unstable speeds with Virgin Media, I've decided to look elswhere!.

Bill & Ted Slang now.

I have used the most Excellent broadband checkers! Dudes,
And guess what My Exchange is better then I thought, Awsome!!! Yep .
here are results for my most fabulous local Exchange dudes.
Broadband availability overview
ADSL:https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/06/10.gif Yes
SDSL:https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/06/10.gif Yes
LLU services:https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/06/10.gif Yes
Cable:https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/06/10.gif Yes
Wireless:https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2007/06/11.gif No
Local loop unbundling presence
AOL:Not available
Be:Enabled
Bulldog:Not available
CPW / TalkTalk:Not available
Easynet / Sky:Enabled
Edge Telecom:Not available
HomeChoice:Not available
Lumison:Not available
Node4:Not available
Orange:Not available
Pipex:Not available
Tiscali:Not available
WB Internet:Not available
Zen Internet:Not available
Exchange historyhttp://www.samknows.com/broadband/images/rss.gif 13/01/2007

Be Unlimited has enabled the This exchange for their service
MOST Excellent news dudes.

So, According to Be unlimited Since the end of June This year, I can have the 24Mb Unlimited Service.!!!

Can anyone tell me if they also have this service! And is it reliable.

Thanks dudes.
One Snag though I'm 3.16km from exchange so 24meg is out of the question by looks of it!.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

I've not seen any problems in the Rottingdean area mentioned on the forums recently, there's a VERY vocal community who will immediately jump on the forums when there's problems, which is very helpful for diagnosing issues.

I'm in Birmingham on the Edgbaston exchange - due to the torrential rain and floodwater two of the BT cables from the Edgbaston to South Birmingham exchanges were taken out and there's been long outages, but I've not suffered anything like that.


What's your phone line like at the moment attenuation and speed wise? I have an attenuation of 41.5dB (it goes up on ADSL2+) and I get 8-10Mb, just about full upstream though as the lower frequencies are used (which are less affected by attenuation).

First thing I recommend you do is go on the Be* forums and read up all the helpful threads for newbies to tweak your line, make sure your wiring's right, get the DMT tool and check out your router stats and signal to noise ratio margin... All useful things to do to get the most out of your line.

Oh, and do the MaxMTU rigmarole to make sure your MTU send/receive window is optimised for fast ethernet traffic. And don't use the USB connection off the router! Please! :D


Ironically, as the Aussies are way ahead of us ADSL2+ wise, there's a few ISPs like Internode who've done graphs of estimated sync rates for connections (which are usually spot on)... You might find it useful:

http://www.internode.on.net/images/c...2-distance.jpg

More info and related reading: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...s.cfm?t=549601

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Hi There.

As I'm currently using Virgin Media Cable, I have no idea what the attenuation and speed wise are!.

I've never had ADSL you see so, for one thing I don't have a router. as for the MTU send/receive I clueless. Obviously ADSL at this level is far more for the advanced and experianced users of braodband. Seems I've been missing out on alot of Advanced info.

What's the address for the be-unilimited Forums!. I would sure like to have a chat with others in my area.

Thankyou

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Just go to the be website at www.bethere.co.uk (I think), and I'm assuming there will be a link to the forums.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Thanks, but I've been there and found no links to forums.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

you need the adsl modem to do the attenuation test m8 try this program http://www.2cent.de/dmt/dmt_client/dmtC.zip

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Customers Only :D (Im a be* Customer btw)

Hi Power User

If you go to http://www.samknows.com/broadband/checker2.php and tell me what Distance your away from the exchange..we could guess on what speed ud get...

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

If you don't mind me barging in, i'd like to know too... Mine's 900m direct...

Apparently, I should get close to about 20 meg?

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

I was just 200 metres from my exchange before I moved, but due to my awful experience with Tiscali, I shall never be going back to any form of DSL.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

id Guess 20+

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Apparently, Be broadband is actually the same as Sky's 16mbit offering. They advertise it as 24mbit/s because it IS technically possible to achieve those speeds. Only realistically if you live RIGHT on TOP of the EXCHANGE!

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Sky limit their customers' speeds from what I've heard, and their service is sheeeeite.

Be* have an 0808 freephone number for customer support, customer forums, and (usually) pretty good response time for the online tickets too. Oh, and their service isn't artifically limited - you get over a meg upstream and, if your line's good enough, 24Mb downstream. Plus they can do things like switch between interleaved and fastpath, for free, just by asking them to - I doubt Sky would do that!

If you sign up on the Pro package, you can get Annex M too (up to 2.5mbps upload, depending on distance from exchange and line quality)... The choice is up to you really, but I would never go near Sky for broadband. Ugh.


sir pingalot - have you not even considered ADSL2+? On a line of 200m you would easily be in the 24Mb club :D

---------- Post added at 10:24 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ----------



It's a bit of pot luck for you then, unfortunately - samknows.com's exchange checker will show you your straight line distance (as the crow flies) between you and the exchange, but if it's more than 2km straight line expect the line to be closer to 3km actual length. When you ring an ISP like Be* you can ask them to check your line length and they'll give you a rough (ROUGH) estimate of what speed you can expect - but ask them to tell you how long your line is as well.

All the very serious speeds - 15mbps and higher - only come if your line has an attenuation of less than 35dB, but our line has 41.5 and we can still get ~10. The best thing is it's not limited, capped, etc... So if you can get higher than 10mbps it's really worth considering it. We made the switch from Be* to Virgin (Blueyonder in Brum) because our line will never be able to get more than 10 and we got the lower price for signing up to XL, so economically it makes more sense for our student budgets, but we have our Be* line until September and I wish we could keep both :(

I'm debating putting aside some of the money I'll be earning through the summer so I can keep the BT line and Be* services going! Would be very nice to have two lines, if a bit extravagant...

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Cheers mate. Is that a real-world guess with real-world copper lines? Or a theoretical maximum for my distance?

Its really tempting as I can get 20meg from Be for the same price as 4 (traffic shaped) with VM.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

There's no relationship between line distances and speed. Theoretically, you should get around 21meg, but it's not as simple as that. This is where line attenuation comes in. I've seen people who's lines are half the length of mine, but double the attenuation, so I would get better throughput. I know it's no comfort to you Gavin, but you won't really know until your line is up and running, and you have some line stats to look at.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

truesay... I'd put money on it that Gav would most likely get at least 10mb though ;)

The whole problem is getting the line installed... I'm not sure you can cancel within 30 days with BT, I'd have to check with them (but I don't care as my 12 months are up now) - but of course Be* can't run a Whoosh and Fast Test on the line to give an estimate of the loop length to help you decide whether to order until it's actually installed and active, and therein lies your catch 22 :(

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Tiscali are a steaming pile of excrement and are in no way representative of ADSL as a whole.

They pretty much give it away for a reason. Pay peanuts...

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

there is people on bethere who do get 24mb m8

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

The results say:

You are approximately 3.16km from the exchange (straight line distance).

Verdict?. I think Below 10mbit Unfortunatly!. dam.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

ya m8 i was 2.4k from the exchange 8 meg i got

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Yep 21mbit at my old house, and a full 2+mbit up, boy do i miss that... (800 metres from the exchange)

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Hey Mate 3.61KM is a Rough from That Checker.. 3.61KM Times 1.4 = 4.424KM (Real Line Lengh) at a guess . My Real Line Lengh is 3KM and i get 6.7 - 8MB

Be* Do not Supply there service for anyone over 5KM so at a guess you would get 1MB-1.5MB

On The Subject Be* Do not Traffic Shape nor do they Impose a Cap..

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

:Yikes:

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

oh dear, not good, not good at all. :(

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Are you on ADSL atm Mate??

Sorry About The Speed...Its Depends on the Things you have inside your house

The Be* Guys told me 4MB and i sync at 6.7MB :D

So all is Nice :D

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Wow, 6.7MByte/s, that's like 53.6mbit/s ;)

---------- Post added at 17:55 ---------- Previous post was at 17:53 ----------

I must admit that, at 200 meters from the exchange, Be's services are very tempting indeed. Unfortunately, latency is my main problem with DSL. Fibre is the way forward in terms of speed...

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

No M8 I've always been on cable

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

Well, that broadband availablity checker is reliable. Apparently, I can't have cable XD Cable broadband availability
The following information details the availability of cable broadband in your area.

Virgin Media cable is not available in your area

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

200metres is nothing - the line would (should) be great quality, and you get Be* to put you on fastpath - bam, you eliminate interleaving from the equation an the latency is halved. WICKED line for gaming or time-critical uses like VoIP.

Re: Be There! Or be Square!, What Shall I do!.
 

I was on BE before I moved to VM. I was about 2km from my exchange and always got speeds of 14mb down and full 1.4bm up.

If your that fed up with VM then go for it. I went the other way to get the complete package.

LTG