UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

[tom66]

Need help from UK residents on this.

Signed the lease on a new student house, am moving there in

Want to go with a fibre ISP. Looking at around £30~£45/month (including line rental charge.) Looking at >50Mbit/s hopefully.

I will sort out routers etc so no need to have an ISP that provides that.

My requirements:
- Fast 50Mbits or higher.
- High reliability
- No traffic shaping. i.e. no blocking/limiting of iPlayer, Netflix or BitTorrent
- Specified high data limit (e.g. 50~100GB/mo), rather than unlimited**** (conditions apply, see 300 page T&C's)
- Good customer service. Like they know what they are on about.
- Not Virgin, BT or Talk-Talk. Had poor service from all three.

Help?

[gilly1984]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

I have been a virgin customer for 5 years, the internet has gone off about 10 times in that 5 years, ranging from 10 mins to 2 days.

I know you said "Not Virgin" but its the only thing I can offer

What was the poor service?

We get 60mb (actually 61) DL and 3mb UL and it has always been spot on. (Apart from the 10 dropped connections).

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

My main gripe is traffic shaping, which I include under the "poor service" category. Basically limiting download rate at peak time, and limiting traffic such as iPlayer/Netflix, so HD video becomes choppy. And they've been involved in "deep packet inspection" for "targeted advertising". Something I'm going to stay well clear of!

My dad has Virgin, and they are OK I suppose, but he doesn't use it much.

[Steve.B]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

I was looking into isp's that specifically stated that they did not throttle, shape or manage any of their traffic in any way, and the only one i found was Sky. I think every other one i looked at had little clauses in the small print that gave them the right to 'manage certain' traffic at peak times.

Here's a link to Sky's Traffic Management Policy, click on the package you want - fibre optic in this case, and it will give you all the details about their management policy, telling you which traffic they manage. None!

Is traffic management used during peak hours? - No.

http://www.sky.com/shop/terms-condit...gement-policy/

Have a read, certainly seems like they do not throttle or manage any of the traffic in anyway, even during peak time's.

Anyone here on Sky that can back up their claims? I am on BT, so cannot say for certain.

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Heh, may consider Sky, but I've never liked the company for TV... so... don't know.

I found one other: ZEN.

I like that they have a stated 100GB limit rather than "unlimited**"

£35/month... but doesn't mention line rental (which'll probably put it up another £15/month)

It's tipping the budget but it may be doable.

[Steve.B]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Yeah, the line rental is always the killer, along with the 20% vat on top of all of it. I share the same dim view about Sky, never liked their tv service, especially since they got the major rights to the F1. I think the only time i would ever consider them is if they got the exclusive rights to the F1 - can't be doing without my F1 fix every year.

How many in the student house will be sharing the connection?, these days i am not sure how far 100gb will go each month between a few of you. Should be ok, so long as your not all HD film freaks.

I am with BT at the moment, £46 all in, that includes unlimited broadband, free calls anytime of the day, line rental and the vat. Not the cheapest, but in this part of the country we are limited to what isp's can use the local exchange, BT have the monopoly on it at the moment. But, at least we have learn't that we will be getting fibre within the next year - at last. I am 7 line miles away from the exchange, so you can imagine i am on a really slow speed at the moment - 1.4mb.

But, BT do throttle at peak times, if you want to download a torrent between 6pm and midnight, forget it!

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

I've experienced traffic shaping myself at home, when it slows down to a mere megabit per second at peak times (sold at 8Mbits), really annoying when you are trying to watch iPlayer.

Four of us will be sharing and I will be limiting our "legitimate bittorrent activity" to at most 20GB per month. I think as long as we are careful not to watch too much extra we should be able to remain within limits.

£50 total works out to £12.50/ea month (or about £3.12 per person per week.) I think that's worth it, as I'm currently paying £96/week for my rent including utilities (we're moving to £72.50/week rent excluding utilities, but we'll be sharing them, so hopefully it will all cost less.)

The £35 figure includes VAT but not line rental. And I still have to find an ADSL router. I want to find one capable of gigabit LAN on board. Because I was going to hook up the media PC to it directly, then two 100Mbit switches, for three floors. (It's all going to be wired. I may have wifi, but I certainly won't be using it.)

[Steve.B]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

That's a good price between you all, don't think you can complain about that.

I have always preferred a direct wired connection to the router, rather than Wi-Fi, i have never wanted to go down that route. But after two lightning strikes on my phone line in the space of a week, i am seriously considering a wireless bridge set up of some sort. Could not believe my bad luck with the two lightning strikes, normally you can hear the storm coming and have time to unplug things, but these two both struck without warning. Between them they took out two routers, my motherboards Ethernet port, plus a PCI ethernet adapter i had just fitted to get the pc back up again.

So i am considering wiring everything as normal to somesort of router or bridging device, which then connects wireless to another router plugged into the phone line.

My TV and 360 are also connected directly to the router, but luckily they survived both times. BT Home Hubs seem to like directing any lightning surges out of port one first i guess!

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

I'm going to hope for no lightning strikes. Ethernet should be isolated to a few kV. So it would be a very bad router to allow that damaging surge to come through. It's something for me to consider. And I'll avoid the first port!

I want to be able to take advantage of the full 78Mbit that Zen offer, so the media TV PC (and also the media server) will be connected to ethernet no matter what. Gigabit will ensure than several computers can stream video off of it too. I also plan to use a Raspberry Pi for the basement TV (we've got a basement, and there's either going to be a kick-ass projector or big TV down there for watching very loud films.) The Raspberry Pi would be capable of streaming video via the network from any other PC ideally.

[Steve.B]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Wow, 78Mbit!, you got the fibre going straight into your property? Best we are going to get (when they finally get around to our exchange next year) is going to be the fibre to the cabinet jobby. Urm, god only knows where my nearest cabinet is, i live on a farm, so it's probably at least a couple of miles away. Still, that should give me a whopping 7mb, lol, but that will be luxury to what i have at the moment.

I know what you mean though, what's the point of a super high speed connection if the ISP is only going to cut your bandwidth down to nothing when you need it most? Let's hope that the ISP's will invest in upgrading their equipment in the future so that it can handle the increasing demands that will be made of it from now on, rather than just throttling everyone back down to a snails pace.

Good luck with it all Tom, hope it all goes ok for you.

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

78Mbit is what is claimed to be available, I got an estimate in our area of 65Mbit though, so only a speedtest will show, still not too shabby I think . Still using fibre-to-the-cabinet over BT's landline network, though I believe there's a very close datacenter.

[vinceroger69]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

tom did you build your own media pc i was thinking of building one up out of the parts i have collected over time and what the specs of yours if you dont mind me asking also what programes do you need add to get the best out of a media pc on a limited budget.

[tom66]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

tom did you build your own media pc i was thinking of building one up out of the parts i have collected over time and what the specs of yours if you dont mind me asking also what programes do you need add to get the best out of a media pc on a limited budget.

Haven't built it yet, but I've temporarily hooked up the 46" Panny plasma to my computer. It's running the XBMC suite which is very, very nice indeed. Install plug ins for iPlayer, ITV player, 4oD, YouTube and it works really well. I especially like that playback is much smoother than any Flash rubbish, and there are no included ads.

I will be building a media PC at some point though.

[selldoor]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Sky router delivered today - modem on Thursday
Suggested speed 40mbs so should get 20? based on current O2 suggested 6 actual 3 . I will be happy if the phone stops crackling I think that is down to the O2 router -tried changing filters re-wired the sockets Bt reckoned O2 problem - guess who O2 blamed. Not on contract with either so swapped the lot to Sky.
Of course its still BT really but at least I will only have to speak to one party.
I still recall eons ago when I couldnt get any sense out of BT as to why our dialup barely made 100bitsps ( I think it was that) -There answer went like well you cant expect more than that down a 20 year old copper wire.

The "Sky" ( BT?? ) Fibre is just to the Cabinet so it will still be coming down the Now 30 year old copper wires.
The ones outside the bedroom window are "twist" connected with a ceramic pot screwed on to keep them in place.

[selldoor]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Double post - sorry

[selldoor]

Re: UK ISP which doesn't traffic shape

Well they came yesterdays and fitted the BT, whoops sorry SKY modem and
Sky Router and its belting along at just under 40Mbs. Cant say that I have noticed the difference - my old Dell laptop still chuggs along nicely thankyou.
Perhaps if I try and watch a BBC I player program it will be less quirky than usual though I think that is again probably down to my laptop.
They say they do the 10 day speed testing thing so will have to wait to see if they have to chop it down. My son will no doubt be telling me if anything is amiss regards traffic shaping. He is main user and its all in his name bills and all hehheh. what a good move.
I have to say though that the phone is a whole lot clearer.
They did put a new wire from the pole to the house that I had been asking for for 20 years or so - engineer said everyones really need changing but no-one ever offers to do it unless they really have to and ours was so bad it wouldnt handle to 40meg.

So Tom, make sure if yours is a" to cabinet installation" try and get them to replace the pole to house cable.
Ours now has no joins outside and could have come straight into the BT master box and modem, but it is a black cable twice the diameter of the old white cable almost like tv coax and he was going to tack it around the living room!! and into the hall so I compromised and he brought it 2 feet into the living room and jointed it to the old inside cable which he said was ok.
I think they like to install it just inside the house but I wanted to keep the box where it was as I had previously put in electric sockets to service the router and phone. Also means I can get the wireless at the bottom of the garden.

Will update if we become aware of any traffic shaping.

Just read this morning that SKY have bought O2 landline broadband operation so we would likely have been changing anyway - only had O2 as it was subsidised as a mobile customer. I was wondering why they had not moved at all into superfast broadband -perhaps this has been on the table for a while awaiting the result of the 4G auction.