A New Service From BT - Time Travel.

[Nige005]

Having problems with my BT BB, again.

After a visit from an Engineer last week the only suggestion to improve the Service was to get a new Router, duly ordered from BT.

Got a voice text at 08 00 this morning saying that it will arrive by 18 00 on the 19th Jan. A good trick if they can do it, an extension of my allotted years on this Earth would be quite nice..........

On a serious note does any one know how I can get access to this Voice Text again to triple check that I'm not death as well as daft ?

Is a new Router likely to improve and help stabilize my DL Speed ?

I'm not confident that this will do any good myself.........

[GhostyDog]

Originally Posted by Nige005

Is a new Router likely to improve and help stabilize my DL Speed ?

Yes, although in a lot of cases just changing the software that runs on the router can help.

Most 'one box' home routers are made up of two distinct circuits.

1. ADSL Bridge - This is what gets plugged into the Microfilter
2. Hardware Switch - This is where you connect your network devices

Optionally there may be a WIFI circuit, but this mostly deals with encryption of the data sent over wifi and some Quality of Service.

in between the bridge and the router is a piece of software that moves traffic from the WAN (bridge) to the LAN (switch) that software can also transform that traffic by sending it to different places and also perform analytical tasks on the traffic to ensure it is risk free, i.e. firewall, web filtering, etc. the problem is that often the circuit this software runs on isn't very powerful and the faster your connection is the more data it has to process at a faster speed, this creates a bottleneck within the router because it can only process a certain amount of information at a time, the end result is that you think your broadband is slow when in reality it is that the router isn't performing in line with your requirements, this can be born from two fundamental reasons.

1. The software (firmware) is poorly coded and/or has bugs
2. The part of the router that the software runs on is underspecification for the task.

I recently changed from a Speedtouch Business Router at home to a Draytek Business router and my broadband speed increased by approx 20-25%

Hope this helps.

Sean

[Nige005]

Thanks Sean, a good bit of info there.

Currently running a very old ( in computer terms ) BT Voyager 220V. Seem to have problems every three Months or so where the speed and stability suddenly drop and take ages to recover. Not fast at the best of times, 2.3 ish which I have to settle for, but then down to 1600 and unstable for days on end, it really irritates me !

On the Engineers Test Set the DSL rate was 3.3, on connecting my gear again it was about 2.0.

Over the years I have had all the wiring from my house to the Pole renewed and had the profile reset too many times to count but still have problems.

Most annoying of all was a network upgrade last May. Had been running for Months at 2.9 and very stable, once the " upgrade " was on line this dropped to 2.3 and that's about the best I've had for Months although for one glorious hour I broke the 3.0 barrier !

Have been thinking about going to plusnet, certainly be a bit cheaper but any better ?

[Alfamack]

Plusnet are BT owned. Are BT your bradband provider, get on the Forums on BT.com

Then drop a note to the mods about your problem. They can usually get your profile hardwired to a set limit and can do this reasonably quickly although you might not get an ommediate response tpo questions as you can imagine there are lots of people on them.

Alternatively drop Ian Livingston at bt.com an email outlining your thoughts. I'd guess emails to him from customers get dealt with

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Alfamack

Plusnet are BT owned. Are BT your bradband provider, get on the Forums on BT.com

Then drop a note to the mods about your problem. They can usually get your profile hardwired to a set limit and can do this reasonably quickly although you might not get an ommediate response tpo questions as you can imagine there are lots of people on them.

Alternatively drop Ian Livingston at bt.com an email outlining your thoughts. I'd guess emails to him from customers get dealt with

Hi Thanks for that.

I have E Mailed Mr Livingstone in the past, always gets things going but with no lasting results.

Just this minute installed the new BT Home Hub 2, slight increase in speed but early days yet, hope for better things in the next few days.......

[Alfamack]

Home Hub 3 seems to be the best home hub although if you can get a Business Hub it is the best they supply, apparently.

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Alfamack

Home Hub 3 seems to be the best home hub although if you can get a Business Hub it is the best they supply, apparently.

I needed the HH2 as it has the BT VOIP 'phone which I use a fair bit for overseas calls. From what I can gather this is the only available Home Hub/Router which has this facility.

Must say that it all looks very smart and is a nice package. Whether or not it will increase my Speed and Stability remains to be seen.........

[Nige005]

Well, still have problems.

The new Hub seems to be worse than the old one, a bit slower and have already had two problems, one where the Speed dropped to 500Ks and just now had to do a reset as it wouldn't load any pages.

I'm getting paranoid now. Is it possible that my very long in the tooth PC could be causing some or all of these problems ?

[Nige005]

Well, still have problems.

The new Hub seems to be worse than the old one, a bit slower and have already had two problems, one where the Speed dropped to 500Ks and just now had to do a reset as it wouldn't load any pages.

I'm getting paranoid now. Is it possible that my very long in the tooth PC could be causing some or all of these problems ?

[GhostyDog]

Originally Posted by Nige005

Is it possible that my very long in the tooth PC could be causing some or all of these problems ?

Yes, if you know someone who has a laptop get them to bring it round to your house plug it in either via ethernet or wifi and see what sort of connection they get.

Sean

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by GhostyDog

Yes, if you know someone who has a laptop get them to bring it round to your house plug it in either via ethernet or wifi and see what sort of connection they get.

Sean

Thanks Sean, I will have to try this.

I have just put the old BT Voyager BOL, the Home Hub was useless. Whether there any compatibly problems between this and my PC I don't know, I do know that the Voyager is working fine and giving me 2.2Mbs, about average for me.

The HH is now in a dark cupboard !