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Decent VDSL ISPs

Sounds like you’re clued up so no offence meant - done usual stuff - swapped router for known good one, changed out all cables, quiet line test, checked it drops even on patched in computers so no Wi-Fi in mix.
 
MJS said:
Plusnet have been great for the most part, they certainly are cheap and cheerful, I just want a basic connection after all. But the needs of today's connection is vastly different to that of 6 months ago. I don't want to have to engage on twitter to get someone to tell me turn it off and on again, which, by the way is what has been fixing the issues. I'd rather someone could tell me why that's the case.
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Now we are getting somewhere! It may be that your network devices are screwing up the routers IP addressing some how. I've seen this happen and a reboot fixes it.

Next time it happens see if you are able to log on to the router and we'll take it from there.

Cheers,

DV
 
Damn, I am in the process of moving to Plusnet. They are owned by BT, I think, but are cheaper. I got pissed off with the latter when my contract ended and they put up the cost of my broadband by 30%. They also increased BT Sport and clobbered me with extras for Premier League games.

I looked for fibre optic deals. Unfortunately there are none in the area of London where I live. Sure there are plenty of adverts on places like Facebook for new companies. If you get in touch with them they'll tell you they aren't up and running yet. In other words the fibre optic cable hasn't been laid. They obviously plan to get start-up money from Johnson and his Cabinet skidmarks.

My experience with Plusnet hasn't been very good so far. The guy who took my order six weeks ago kept getting mixed up, apart from trying to get hold of my money. The mobile SIM came though quickly and is half the price of the BT one.

I wasn't sent a router, I had to ring up for that. I was quite shocked when it arrived. It is this white oblong thing which to be frank looks rubbish.

I still haven't got a Plusnet broadband connection, because there was an error in the coding, or something. In other words they f^^^ed up.

Plusnet will supply me with broadband on August 27th. They took my money on July 16th. When I told them I didnt want a direct debit going out on August 16th, the Plusnet customer service lady said something along the lines of "We'll work out how much time we owe you when your broadband is up and running."

It's quite simple lady, you'll owe me a month. And if you don't agree to that, I'll go elsewhere.

Jack
 
Plusnet use old BT equipment, so you are not going to get upto date gear to use. The first thing I did was swap the router and got better performance and more reliable WiFi.
 
bernardhepworth said:
Plusnet use old BT equipment, so you are not going to get upto date gear to use. The first thing I did was swap the router and got better performance and more reliable WiFi.
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That's handy to know. Their claimed DL and UL speeds are in theory quicker than BT and cost less money. This remains to be seen though.

Jack
 
Darth Vader said:
Now we are getting somewhere! It may be that your network devices are screwing up the routers IP addressing some how. I've seen this happen and a reboot fixes it.
Next time it happens see if you are able to log on to the router and we'll take it from there.
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Nothing has changed on my home network, but there are something like 6 iOS devices, TV and amp, several Macs and PCs, 2 printers, and 5 Raspberry Pis doing various jobs. It's a mix of wired and wireless and everything slows down. I suspect that the router just can't cope with the traffic levels. I'm on a work VPN and hit it hard with remote desktops etc. The Plusnet router is a cheap nasty thing with no useful network information bar the line speeds and S/N ratios and your Tx and Rx Packets, which is geared towards gamers from the look of its firewall. The Plusnet forums are full of ideas like "Buy a BT home hub 6" but I think I'm done with Plusnet. As A&A pointed out when I spoke to them, the router that Plusnet can give away for free is going to be the cheapest one they can lay hands on - I mean it looks like that's the case. Zen are offering a Fritzbox 7530 which I've never heard of but looks good from a review I saw of it.
 
MJS said:
I like the idea of Andrews and Arnold because I can talk technical to them and they're consistently rated the best by those that use them, however they're very expensive
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They're seemingly expensive but worth every penny, IMO. The cheap ones base their pricing on the assumption that you won't actually use much of the capacity ostensibly offered. With A&A you get what you pay for. They also don't do any blocking of supposedly "illegal" sites. I particularly like their suggestion that you move to North Korea if you want a porn filter.
 
Ha! My company regularly blocks "Illegal" sites, like one of the ISP's own sites I was looking for. Mind you, they were hacked in spectacular fashion a few years back so are naturally cautious.
 
MJS said:
After nearly two decades with Plusnet I'm ready to throw in the towel. I'm having intermittent problems and can't even talk to an engineer because they're too busy and just hang up on me now.
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Are you with Plusnet business or domestic? I've just been through the process of swapping a whole load of primary schools over to Plusnet business accounts and the team couldn't be more helpful. Plusnet business is 24-hours so as long as you call later at night you get through no problems.

BT Business used to be one of the best, but lately when I have tried to call them the response has been dreadful, I think because they have cut back support because of everyone working from home.

That being said, if you are using a FTTC product as you imply then it will be Openreach that supply product, so it doesn't matter what provider you chose, unless you can get Openreach out to fix your problem then you are stuck. A cheeky way round it would just be to order a new line, Plusnet are the cheapest on a business line at £22pm, then wait around and be friendly to the Openreach engineer who turns up and hopefully you'll get a good result. You can then cancel your old problematic line. Having met a bunch of Openreach engineers over the last month they seem to be mostly on the side of the customer.
 
Past experience with Plusnet router was it was definitely bargain basement. Struggled to get a signal across a corridor from one room to the next. Would certainly consider getting an alternative router to cope with the OPs connections.
 
I'm with Plusnet on a domestic connection. I like the idea of a provider like Zen or A&A because they can tell you exactly what's happening with the network and can pinpoint why you're having issues. If that's an Openreach problem then they direct the engineer accordingly and don't take no for answer when fobbed off.
 
MJS said:
I'm with Plusnet on a domestic connection. I like the idea of a provider like Zen or A&A because they can tell you exactly what's happening with the network and can pinpoint why you're having issues. If that's an Openreach problem then they direct the engineer accordingly and don't take no for answer when fobbed off.
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A&A also give you the tools to fix some problems yourself, or screw things up badly if you start randomly changing settings.
 
MJS said:
I'm with Plusnet on a domestic connection. I like the idea of a provider like Zen or A&A because they can tell you exactly what's happening with the network and can pinpoint why you're having issues. If that's an Openreach problem then they direct the engineer accordingly and don't take no for answer when fobbed off.
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I'm using Plusnet and it's been good to me. You mentioned their routers being rubbish, and that of course is true of all the supplied ones. Why not run your own with Plusnet? That's what i've been doing and I can therefore see info like the line noise etc.

Realistically, if the problem is with the cabinet or your link to the cabinet, changing supplier won't help, so the key is to get a service with a better SLA, so a business service for example. You can then use it to diagnose and fix the problem, then switch back to a normal domestic service in a year's time :)
 
MJS said:
Nothing has changed on my home network, but there are something like 6 iOS devices, TV and amp, several Macs and PCs, 2 printers, and 5 Raspberry Pis doing various jobs. It's a mix of wired and wireless and everything slows down. I suspect that the router just can't cope with the traffic levels. I'm on a work VPN and hit it hard with remote desktops etc. The Plusnet router is a cheap nasty thing with no useful network information bar the line speeds and S/N ratios and your Tx and Rx Packets, which is geared towards gamers from the look of its firewall. The Plusnet forums are full of ideas like "Buy a BT home hub 6" but I think I'm done with Plusnet. As A&A pointed out when I spoke to them, the router that Plusnet can give away for free is going to be the cheapest one they can lay hands on - I mean it looks like that's the case. Zen are offering a Fritzbox 7530 which I've never heard of but looks good from a review I saw of it.
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The plusnet hub is a re-badged Home Hub 5 and is utter rubbish - I have one! For business use and for the number of connected devices you need a better router. Something that has been designed for SOHO use. I use DrayTek but there are others. You pay more but they'll do what you want. I have a large number of devices connected over 3 floors of this house and the performance is fine. We often have two (sometimes 3) TVs streaming HD via WiFi plus computers etc over an ADSL service.

Also its worthwhile even with a proper SOHO router to reboot it every now and again to 'clean up'.

Sometimes when a router gets confused you'll find strange things happen such as you can't reach a device on your home LAN. If you ping the device its shown as unreachable but if you ping the devices from the hub/router both are reachable! Similar with the dual SSID. Sometimes you'll find that a device becomes reachable only over one of the two so if say a device flips from the 5GHz to 2.4GHz band the connection breaks. Thats when a reboot clears this sort of thing up.

Plusnet are just another retail outlet that is part of BT and works in parallel to BT retail. Openreach is what used to be called BT but they were forced to separate their engineering arm several years ago. I actually have both services one for home and the other for our holiday let.

Cheers,

DV
 
I agree with the need for a new and more capable router. I'd just like an ISP to go with it so I can actually talk to someone useful if I need to.
 
Don’t even think about going to Bt or Bt business they are the worst company that I’ve ever dealt with.

I’m with A&A purely for their internet phone service (as recommended by @Mark Grant in another thread here a while ago) and they’ve been excellent, my last ‘phone bill’ with them was for £1.45 that was last month, my BT landline monthly bill for years was £56 per month for essentially the same service.

Btw does anyone know if A&A does a broadband service like Virgin media who I’m currently with ie Fibre optic broadband?
 
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