4 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

At risk of setting off the Milkman, I have gone with Vodafone Superfast 2.  £22.95 a month for up to 75MB, guaranteed 55Mb I think.  Free router and no setup fees.

Hope it all comes good for you Tom and you won't have any issues with this less than competent Company, just make sure that you have absolutely everything you have signed up to and been promised in black and white and keep a duplicate of everything, you're not setting me off, just looking after your interests. 😉

The thing with most ISPs is that you don't really deal with the support team until something is wrong. How they handle it then either leaves you happy or dissatisfied.

I've been with various ISPs over the years and when it comes down to it, they all have there faults. BT back in the day were despised but I used them for a long time without problems. Then I had a line fault that un-resolved for 3 months (and several engineer visits). Finally got matters resolved but swapped to Sky not long after. Same as with BT no problems for several years before another line fault and almost similar 3 months of issues before I ended up leaving Sky still with an issue on the line (Sky just stopped wanting to raise an engineer visit - no fault of Openreach if the ISP doesn't give a ****!). Swapped to PlusNet who got the line fixed and again had a number of trouble free years.

Now I'm with IDNet who are a smaller ISP but are bang on with support and they were tried and tested right from the start as an engineer visit (third party not Openreach) failed to hook up the new line correctly and left me with no service. IDNet were very prompt in getting Openreach out and expediting the matter while also putting back the start of my contract (I had paid the full year up front on credit card). Had a few other minor issues in the last few years and again IDNet are very active in getting matters resolved.

On 5/6/2020 at 12:40 PM, Zico said:

Why on earth would the monthly price increase just because you are leaving? Unless they are part billing for a month (if you're leaving mid way through) the only other charge that I can understand is if the line is being disconnected rather than swapped between providers (the disconnection/termination charge is something from Openreach and usually passed on by the ISP).

TalkTalk will never get my service even if they were the last ISP on earth.

TalkTalk do a weird billing thing where they have a fixed day to bill. So you may get a random first bill of a few quid, then a proper bill. If your last bill then has a price increase half way though, that explains the higher price.

On 5/6/2020 at 9:49 AM, TomsFocus said:

Hmm, TalkTalk sent the 'last month' bill in today...and it's more expensive than usual.  Apparently they'll refund the difference if I renew with them!  If I don't renew or switch ISP, my current package jumps from £19.95 up to £33.50!!!!!! 😮  I sent them a message a week ago asking if there was any negotiation on price, either to keep what I've got, or to upgrade to the faster package, but they haven't replied.

So that's made up my mind, sod 'em, I'm moving!  

Can highly recommend Plusnet (BT in a different guise). I will be going back to them as soon as the TalkTalk wart has run out (sorry, contract).

Thought the buggers had cut me off a week early this morning!!  Turns out it was a nationwide issue.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/talktalk-down-not-working-internet-broadband-how-to-fix-a9538416.html?amp

45 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Thought the buggers had cut me off a week early this morning!!  Turns out it was a nationwide issue.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/talktalk-down-not-working-internet-broadband-how-to-fix-a9538416.html?amp

Wasn't just talk talk broadband that was down, Virgin Media was also offline from about 1am. 

I've freed myself from the long overpriced contracts from the fixed line providers, and gone with a cheap unlimited data-SIM, and popped it into a 4G router.

I get 30Mbps down, previously was only getting 12Mbps with Sky! Sky is such a rip-off, they sell themselves as having the best customer service amongst their competition, but in reality who needs customer service from an ISP since routers rarely fail, and most people will never really use customer service as regional/area faults are fixed automatically.

Edit: Oh and virgin media were the most unreliable ISP/connection I've ever used, so won't be touching them again. Frequent long outages, most flaky connection ever.

Well, I'm now posting via Vodafone BB (hopefully, assuming you can read this! )

Not quite as smooth a switch as I'd hoped.  Internet and WiFi activated on the router quickly after TalkTalk dropped out, and although I could connect to the router, there was no internet connection through WiFi. 

Left it an hour or two before giving in and using some data to webchat with tech support.  They sent me a Vodafone webpage with internet permissions on it.  As soon as I clicked through the permissions the WiFi worked fine.  I assume that page should've opened automatically when I first tried to connect but not sure.  

Anyway, it all seems to be working now and speeds are steadily increasing so will wait and see how high they get over the next few days!  

 

The Vodafone router appears to be far better quality than the TalkTalk one which felt cheap and flimsy and kept collapsing if the table was nudged.  It's also got colour coded plugs which are basically idiot proof!  

So, we're a few days in now but the speeds seem a bit odd.  I'm getting 57Mb on the phone WiFi, 55Mb on the Xbox WiFi, but only 35Mb on the laptop WiFi.  All the same distance from the router.  Can the laptop wireless card restrict the speed like that?  Can't think of any of other reason that might happen!

How old is the laptop? What connection speed/type does it have? N? AC? etc.

55 minutes ago, alexp999 said:

How old is the laptop? What connection speed/type does it have? N? AC? etc.

Bought it in July 2013 but it was already 'end of line' by then so on offer lol.

Definitely doesn't have air con...no idea what N is...   I do cars, not computers, you'll have to dumb it down a bit more!  

It's probably just 2.4GHz N and limited by it's older technology on throughput.

Your phone and Xbox will have newer Wifi radios that can make higher bandwidth connections to the router.

@TomsFocus

Only high-end and business laptops had AC WiFi back in 2014, so probably even less mainstream in 2013. Your laptop most likely has regular b/g/n WiFi card in it, meaning it's limited to 54Mbps maximum. But obviously that's the theoretical maximum, so you'll likely achieve much less than that due to radio interference etc.

You could replace the WiFi card with a newer one (assuming you laptop supports it and it has an 'open' BIOS or you find a compatible part from the manufacturer), or use ethernet, or just put up with it lol

Well this is weird...  33GB Xbox update needed today, assumed it's be much quicker with the faster download speeds but it's not!

Network stats shows just under 60Mb, but it's only downloading at around 10Mb average...am I missing something here? 😳

It's a COD game, the servers will be trying to hand this out to so many Xbox's it won't be able to offer you the max your connection supports.

This is what ISPs said, COD updates cause a much bigger demand on the network than any of the Covid related stuff like WFH has done.

Down to Kbps now! 😮

 

It's called contention.

Your ISP and/or the xbox servers themsevles, just don't have sufficient bandwidth to serve everyone trying to download the update.

1 minute ago, alexp999 said:

It's a COD game, the servers will be trying to hand this out to so many Xbox's it won't be able to offer you the max your connection supports.

This is what ISPs said, COD updates cause a much bigger demand on the network than any of the Covid related stuff like WFH has done.

How inconvenient that everyone else wants to download it at the same time as I do...

What would be the fix at their end out of interest?  Would physically bigger servers help?

I imagine it can only be the Xbox/cod servers seeing as I'm getting such higher download speeds on the network stats.  If it was the ISP surely all the speeds would be slower?

No you need to remember the ISP is sitting between your physical connection and the rest of the internet.

They have many, many routes out to different servers/networks all over the world.

The contention happens when their route to the xbox servers becomes full. All their other routes to the rest of the servers around the world are still within capacity, so anything else you do is fine, it's just that one route to the xbox servers.

If we assume Microsoft can handle the load and it's your ISP, then the ISP just has to pay for a wider "road", or more roads to that destination, with their backbone and higher tier providers.

Typically the cheaper the ISP (think talk talk) the less bandwidth they pay for and the more contention.

Thanks Alex, I get it now, the driving analogy was very helpful!  

It's now whipping through the download averaging 50-60Mb, with the odd flash up to 70, 80 or even 100Mb, not entirely sure that's possibly but it does seem to be moving more quickly now!

Sometimes ISPs will react to a sudden surge in demand like this and temporarily increases their bandwidth along a certain route.

Or the CDN/xbox server has spun up additional instances to cope with demand.

Or both, lol.

sounds like Alex is in the same business as me lol

Well, he is the resident techie!

Should wrap this up by saying the download finished super quickly after my last post! 

Just looking through Instagram stories and seeing loads of other people were downloading the update at the same time lol...  I'll try to leave it a bit later in the day next time!