Possible new house, broadband speeds showhome vs plot

[thewhippet]

Hi,
I was wondering if someone could assist with a question relating to broadband speeds.

My wife and I were considering moving to a new house, and tried www.speedtest.net in the showhome to see what the broadband speed was like.

Given the rural location the speed was, surprisingly, a lot faster than I thought 44ms ping, 18Mbps upload, 5Mbps download. I was informed that their broadband connection was via a BT phone line.

The BT website suggests that 1-2Mbps should be possible for the exchange/location.

So, the good news is it looks like its technically possible to achieve the sorts of speed I would need to work from home via this location.

I appreciate that the plot we're interested in buying (100metres from the showhome) has no guarantee of the same speed but my question relates to whether the showhome connection could have been rigged in any way (several ADSLs bonded together) or something else - I understand very little about networks and really don't want to make the financial commitment to buying a house if I won't be able to achieve similar speeds.

For reference, my current connection is 4-5Mbps download so 18Mbps would be wonderful!.

This is the exchange the traffic would be routed via : http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WSANK

Thanks for any responses,

[qasdfdsaq]

That speed would be over fibre, not ADSL.

And for fibre that's actually a very poor speed, within the bottom 10% of the country.

Fibre is deployed on a per-cabinet basis so there's no guarantee you'll get it regardless of exchange, unless you know which cabinet you will be connected to.

[thewhippet]

Thanks for the reply.

The BT exchange is ADSL (not fibre) as you say, so I cant understand why the www.speedtest.net figures are so high and was wondering if there could be any other reason.

The Annbank exchange is showing as 'Under Evaluation' on the BT Openreach upgrade site and I doubt it would be upgraded anytime soon due to the lack of people who use it.

Cheers

[qasdfdsaq]

Interesting. If as you say fibre isn't available from the exchange at all, then I guess yeah, the only other explanation is multiple ADSL lines being bonded. However to get that speed even close to the exchange would typically require 3 lines minimum, and without annex M probably closer to 4-5 lines. Which is highly unlikely. I'm quite curious as to what they are in fact doing, what did the ISP show up as during the speedtest? Do you know the postcode for the area?

[thewhippet]

The housing development is located here

http://www.cala.co.uk/homes/developm.../Location.aspx

With the postcode being

KA6 5HL

The number the test was performed from was - 01292 521613

I hope that I am not breaking any rules of the forum with respect to providing this information as it is freely available on the corporate site for the developer.

There are several exchanges around, however the '521' prefix for the number would suggest that the Annbank exchange is the one being used.

I didn't notice the ISP name from the speedtest.net results - will have a look when I go back later in the week and take a photo this time.

I tested using the website twice, 4pm and 5pm with very similar results on both occasions

Thanks.

It's quite important at this point that you post the name of the ISP which was stated by Speedtest.net as the test was underway. We need to establish that you were actually connected to a physical copper phone line provisioned by BT. Did you even see the modem/router that was in use at the property? Can you state with certainty that you were attached to it, and not to a signal from a neighbouring property?

---------- Post added at 17:40 ---------- Previous post was at 17:34 ----------

If you look at the device you used to take the Speedtest, you should be able to recover the IP address you were on at the time. Were you using an app via a phone or tablet, or the website via a browser? Either way if you go back to it, it should remember that test.

[thewhippet]

Hi,
It was the sales advisors PC in the sales office (the garage of the showhome).
I explained the website to go to as they wouldn't let me touch the PC.

Appreciate the advice, i'll go back and retest but take a screengrab of the test this time and post it on the forum.

Thanks.

[qasdfdsaq]

According to Samknows, KA6 5HL is served by the Prestwick exchange. The checkers indicate fibre should be available by December and the estimated speed is 24.6Mb down, 5.7Mb up - which chimes pretty closely with what you got.

It is right on the edge of the exchange area though:



On the other hand the phone number itself as you say, seems to be served from Annbank so while a bit puzzling I suspect it's a BT fibre connection. It's remotely possible, though unlikely they have more than one line at the premises and which are connected to different exchanges - or that the number they gave you wasn't the one they're using for broadband.

In any case if they were indeed using ADSL from the Annbank exchange that'd be needing something like 10 bonded ADSL lines which just doesn't happen. Whereas those speeds seem spot on for a fibre connection from Prestwick, which the postcode checker says is what covers 100% of that postcode, and seems a far more likely scenario.

Or it could just be the number was transferred or reallocated in the past and BT's records haven't been updated properly to reflect the exchange it is now connected to.

---------- Post added at 23:50 ---------- Previous post was at 23:40 ----------

Assuming (as you're talking about "plots" here) that the prospective home hasn't actually been built yet, I would suggest getting in touch with BT with regard to the phone line installation - you may be able to negotiate exactly which cabinet the line comes from and dictate fibre as a requirement, as it's a new build and they will be installing a new line from scratch anyway. That's the only way to be sure I'm afraid.

That said, it seems almost certain at least part of the development will have fibre coverage so at worst you could buddy up with a nearby neighbour who can get it and relay it to your home wirelessly

[thewhippet]

Apologies for the delay in response.

The screen grab is from a visit to the show home today. So it looks like it's Demon/Thus who are the provider for this line.

The PC was connected to a Draytek router, and into the phone port rather than anything wireless.

The linechecker on the demon website https://demon.net/demon-business-lite-broadband/ suggests "you will get an estimated speed of 2.00 Mbps on on this telephone number." for the Annbank number provided by the office.
There is another number for the office which has a Prestwick prefix but the demon site suggests "Unfortunately this product is not available for 01292 844306 at the moment"

I don't know if the sales centre has a Prestwick number (01292 844306) which diverts calls to the Annbank number (01292 521613) or whether there are 2 lines in the office from different exchanges.

So, it looks like the router must be connected to the Prestwick exchange to achieve the speed rather than the Annbank one.

I haven't had any success through talking to anyone via the BT 'Chat' or calling a technical person within BT to understand if its possible to stipulate a connection to the Prestwick exchange rather than the Annbank exchange for a new line.

Screengrab as below

[qasdfdsaq]

Dang, should have got the model number of the Draytek router.

But if there was just one phone line coming out of it it'll have to be FTTC VDSL2.

However as neither Thus or Demon actually have a FTTC service, it's all the more puzzling. Vodafone, who own both, don't have one either.

[thewhippet]

Apologies for the unclear previous post.

I can't be sure there was a single phone line into the back of the router - the sales assistant said the phone line went into it.

The router is in an area that is inaccessible to me and I could only see the front of it.

Had a look on the Draytek website and I'm pretty sure this was the router

http://www.draytek.com/index.php?opt...id=660&lang=en

Thanks.

[qasdfdsaq]

Oh, if it was that router then the phone line can't have been going into the back of it since it doesn't have any phone ports. I'm getting suspicious of what they're telling you tbh.

As I've said though, the only 100% reliable way to know for a particular plot is to reach an agreement with Openreach about what will get installed there.

[thewhippet]

OK - Thanks. I'll keep trying to get an answer from Openreach.

I don't think the sales staff are intentionally misleading me but rather they, like me, aren't sure of the setup.

Thanks again to all who responded. I'll hopefully be posting the final update to this from a reasonably fast connection from a new house in a couple of months time.

[Qtx]

Just to throw another idea out there....would a mobile unlimited plan on 3g (HDSPA) or 4g possibly give you a better connection in this location? You can use a mobile dongle and set it up in a similar way to a router for sharing the connection.

[qasdfdsaq]

I suspect working from home that require such high speeds may involve some latency sensitive systems, for which even the "same speed" 3G/4G would be considerably worse.