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

PowerUser · 21-06-2007, 20:20

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:

Yes
SDSL:

Yes
LLU services:

Yes
Cable:

Yes
Wireless:

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 history

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!.

christopherw · 22-06-2007, 11:08

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!

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:

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

PowerUser · 22-06-2007, 13:53

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

Sirpingalot · 22-06-2007, 14:15

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.

PowerUser · 22-06-2007, 15:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirpingalot

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.

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

Safeman · 22-06-2007, 16:08

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

Spitfire12 · 22-06-2007, 20:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sirpingalot

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.

Customers Only

(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...

punky · 22-06-2007, 20:53

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?

Sirpingalot · 22-06-2007, 22:07

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.

Spitfire12 · 22-06-2007, 23:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavin

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?

id Guess 20+

Sirpingalot · 23-06-2007, 00:05

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!

christopherw · 23-06-2007, 09:24

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

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by PowerUser

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

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...

punky · 23-06-2007, 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spitfire12

id Guess 20+

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.

pedantic · 23-06-2007, 10:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavin

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.

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.

christopherw · 23-06-2007, 10:24

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