is your isp giving you what you pay for ?

Message

Samray · #46 Post by **Samray** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 11:51 am

Dunno what pooter you are running HisNibbs but I know from experience that it can make a vast difference.
I once had a shit-hot (Rock) laptop on dial-up that was thrashing many bb connections when gaming.
Could be worth getting someone with a state of the art slaptop to try it on your connection?

wavey · #47 Post by **wavey** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 4:06 pm

To find your exchange put your postcode in the search box here
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/mapping/mapping.php

or your phone bumber here
http://usertools.plus.net/exchanges/

HisNibbs · #48 Post by **HisNibbs** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 5:12 pm

Thanks for the input.

I had thought about mobile broad band and may go that way, what has stopped me so far is we run at least three PCs from my house and share the ADSL modem and other stuff, off a small ethernet network. As far as I have seen the mobile stuff tends to be USB which would be problematic to share and, not that I've looked pretty hard, I've not seen one that is ethernet. The other thing is I'm getting broad band within a package of other services such as free international calls etc.

My PC is pretty new dual boot to either XP Pro Sp3 or Vista Ultimate and reasonably specified. I have a newish laptop with Vista as well as two older laptops I've retired to the kids. None of us can get a decent speed of connection.

For many years we could not get broad band at all and I think it was only when a supplier miscalculated that they said they could provide it. I know we are some 4 to 5 miles from the nearest exchange.

So it would be worth going to another type of phone package if I can't get a significantly better modem and if I can get or set up, shareable mobile broad band.

#49 Post by **Kwackerz** » Sun Nov 01, 2009 10:02 pm

Speaking of gain, have they tweaked the line's gain? Like you could on a Cb radio..

HisNibbs · #50 Post by **HisNibbs** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:48 am

My memory is a little foggy as to what exactly was being tweaked but we had quite a session with the broad band supplier with them altering I think frequencies, at their end and me reinitialising the modem at mine to see if the modem would sync up sufficiently to establish a dialog. This was all to get communication at any level rather than for performance.......

wavey · #51 Post by **wavey** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 1:45 pm

HisNibbs - do your neighboors have the same problem?

D-Rider · #52 Post by **D-Rider** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 1:47 pm

Neighbours? ...... you've obviously never visited Keith's place .......

wavey · #53 Post by **wavey** » Mon Nov 02, 2009 10:21 pm

D-Rider wrote:Neighbours? ...... you've obviously never visited Keith's place .......

Ah, some sort of Robinson Crusoe then?

HisNibbs · #54 Post by **HisNibbs** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:27 am

I used to consider the Talkin Heads song "road to nowhere" as a bit of a personal theme song. I think we live about as close to the "middle of nowhere" you can get in this part of central England.

wavey · #55 Post by **wavey** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 9:58 am

I knew a guy who lived about 10 miles from Penwortham nr Preston, farming country, no neighbours for miles.
He needed broadband for his business, neither BT nor Telewest Cable would help, (BT wanted £30000+) so he had a microwave system setup in relays to the town, only cost in the region of £10000.

Went bust 6 months later.

Falco9 · #56 Post by **Falco9** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 12:28 pm

Whilst I wait in vain for any sign of action from Tiscali....One month after complaining, loads of telephone calls and e-mails from them but no action whatsoever

I decided today to disconnect my Belkin router and go directly to my desktop from the modem. The result was startling

A fourfold increase in speed over my current connection speed. Nowhere near what Tiscali claim to be delivering to me of course and I'm staying with my decision to move to cable but maybe I just have a dodgy router?. This is still so slowwwwwwwwww but after 2 weeks of 0.25 speeds this feels like doing 150mph in comparison

F9

Firestarter · #57 Post by **Firestarter** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:31 pm

Wireless router F9? What about connecting via cable into the router (if there is a network port on it?) and re-running the test?

Falco9 · #58 Post by **Falco9** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 2:40 pm

Firestarter wrote:Wireless router F9? What about connecting via cable into the router (if there is a network port on it?) and re-running the test?

Hi M8, It is a wired router, I took the ethernet cable that ran into the router and stuck it straight into the PC and voila! I do normally have another ethernet cable that runs back from the router straight to the PC so my desktop is not actually wireless

Sorry I'm not very techy on these subjects, so aplogies if I've missed the point

F9

Firestarter · #59 Post by **Firestarter** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 3:18 pm

Falco9 wrote:
Firestarter wrote:Wireless router F9? What about connecting via cable into the router (if there is a network port on it?) and re-running the test?
Hi M8, It is a wired router, I took the ethernet cable that ran into the router and stuck it straight into the PC and voila! I do normally have another ethernet cable that runs back from the router straight to the PC so my desktop is not actually wireless

Sorry I'm not very techy on these subjects, so aplogies if I've missed the point

F9

No mate, you've hit it dead-on. Connected via a wire to the router = not wireless. I'd have a look at your network card configuration and your router.

One thing I did find (although I didn't run a speed test on it) - when I put a Belkin router on (instead of the "modem"), my connectivity was rubbish. Took an age to open webpages, if it did at all. I was (eventually) directed to a tool by Tiscali customer non-services called Dr.Tcp. There's something called a maximum transmission unit, or MTU, which seemed to be the problem - the default is 1453, set mine to 1400 using this tool and voila! Sorted. The tool only works on XP though - no Vista. Might be worth a look

joecrx · #60 Post by **joecrx** » Tue Nov 03, 2009 7:03 pm

good thread but getting to tecknobubble for me