UK People: Who Is Your Internet Provider ??

check adslguide for useful stats and reviews etc

all adsl ones are much of a muchness as they are all reselling the bt copper that is there

my gf is in a non virgin'd area and it sucks.

hang on, that last sentence is wrong on many levels.

I'm with BT. Not got great speeds but it works, and I am too far off the beaten track for cabled internet (virgin)

Was thinking about switching to SKY case that gives you the VOD features on the SKY HD boxs...

But its not really worth the hassel...

If a dedicated FO line was available - Top end virgin or BT Infinity... I'd be there in a shot... But till then, I will just make do. Dont download much, and I can leave my uploads going overnight if need be.

Not ideal... But what can yah do?

what no fibre? The govt's been on about that for ages now - nothing still budged on that front?

BT is really pulling all the strings on this that is cutting off any advancement by other providers - paraphrasing here, but what I read, BT wholesale, that all none-cable providers have to go through is crippling development cos they force them through their older switches while BT as a provider themselves use their new exchanges. And lo and behold any provider that wants to install their own equipment in the BT Wholesale centres....

anti-trust suites are thrown in the bin, meanwhile mainland europe bband grows through the same principle but with a lot more regulations preventing ex-monopoly holder regulation.

BT still haven't learnt that it may well be their cables other providers are using, but those cables where installed with tax-payer's money, which is why they need to be opened up 100%.

^^^^exactly my point

A basic bog standard ADSL connection that costs me €15/mo. It's what could happen if the govt intervened to tell france telecom (BT equiv) to stop fucking around and open up their lines to the competition.

Sorry Scott, didn't mean to turn this into a speedtest pissing competition, but it frustrates me how I see BT cock blocking innovation and competition. There's a fibre box outside my house that I can plug into to have 100mbs asynchronous, but I can't be arsed - it would cost me €30/mo and so why bother when for €15/mo I see no lag in any connections?

Other innovations that BT cock block is VoIP - for €1/mo I have a main line, another €1 I have the equivalent of an 0800 freephone number (for the kids), another €1 I have a Manchester 0161 number so my UK mates can call me at their UK rates, whatever that may be for them, and for another €1/mo a premium rate number (€1.50/call) that I use for my customers to call, so I make money each time they bug me. At any point I can simply buy a new VoIP phone and redirect any number to that - eg a family of 5 could have 5 lines separate, one for each person, for €5/mo only. All calling 40 countries for free.

The UK is a frikken long long way away from that amount of freedom, and there's no reason why they should be, except for BT cock blocking....

--edit
and if you think BT isn't cock blocking how is it I can go to the UK, or the US, or frikken middle-of-nowhere, take my WiFi-enabled VoIP phone plug it into the electricity socket, connect it to a WiFi network and have all my calls arrive there, and make all my calls from there for free? The UK still pay for the privilege of using a telephone, when all that is needed is an internet connection. And a clear one. Hell, when my smartphone is on a wifi connection, that's what I do - I don't know of a single UK person that doesn't cringe (because of their bill) calling the US on their cell phone....

Looks shit but that's really good for here

Our connection in Dallas is not exactly blazing either.

Wow, not quite as bad as some posted here then.




Still very shitty to what i was used to before...

Do you actually see any connection lags to sites with that connection speed? I have a pretty much identical speed connection to you, but I use Paris as my test base cos I know that Paris is a transatlantic global hop DC... I think in terms of peering, Aberdeen needs to connect to London to make the transatlantic connection, so for you a speedtest with London is probably more pertinent. It's irrelevant your speed to aberdeen if your speed to london is shite, when all connections to the real world route through london....

some eg's for me - my b/w to london is pretty much identical as the one I have to Paris:



and connection to NY isn't to shabby either:


funnily enough, my peering is such that to CA is better than NY:



these types of analyses are more important than those of your nearest neighbour....

let the bandwidth pissing match begin....

this wasn't the OP's question

--edit and with a ping of 40ms for <50miles for that type of a connection, I'd be asking serious questions why the ping wasn't < 4ms :P

Hmmm, via London:

That wouldn't shock me if eg FR, NL, DE were identical - if they are you have good peering to europe. How do those transatlantic tests compare?

In all fairness, I'm in Marseille, which has a direct peer conn to Paris, so for me to get to the US, it's 3 hops - for you in glasgow, you prolly route through aberdeen (wot no glasgox->london?!!!!), hence the lag.

Go on, poste the US connections, cos that tells how you perceive your connection.... Personally if shit in the FR works and US wokrs, I rarely get on the blower to my ISP, cos I couldn't care less.... but I can tell for eg when a Bordeax->London conn goes down cos I have a client in Bordeaux that blows my ear off each time.... and a re-routing at Paris is all that is needed to solve the situation.

For me, what happens in Paris I can control by a telephone call, if it's a link between the minions and Paris, I'm fucked.


---edit
also do a traceroute for your own interest if you don't want to publicise it -

traceroute uk2.net

they are in the docklands in a DC that peers directly with europe and the US - would be interesting to see why you have 10+ mbs to aberdeen (down the road) but only 5mbs to London (also down the road in the big equation)

fuck BT their bills WILL scam you...

Bethere are pretty good, just moved to them from Zen, very happy.

---edit
I can tell you I peer direct (in Marseille) with the global crossing DC (gbxs 4-500km away) in 1 hop from my ISP (the *** thing). I get the exact same results when I try a NY server or a CA server (I have a dedi in CA). *THAT* is the reason I *don't* want to change my ISP from ADSL to fibre. I am offered 25mbs ADSL, and I get ~13mbs, and right in front of my door is the chance of 100mbs but I won't take it. Simply because with this connection I have, it's perfect - I don't want to host shit in my house, just surf etc and all pages whether in France, UK, or US load lightentning fast. So why change?

You have to ask youself - ok my ISP offers me xxmbs, and I get xx mbs, but is that real-world values ie how does my ISP peer with the rest of the world...


edit - whoops, forgot to blackout my IP - not sure if it's important but all the bug guys do it on the internets....