Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi all

My broadband provider recently informed me that my ADSL connection (8mb) would be upgraded free to ADSL 2+ and I would potentially benefit from doubled connection speeds.

now, I reset my router etc and tested on broadband speed checker before and after and my DL and UL speeds havent changed.

Do I need a new type of router?
The one I have is a Belkin 54g wireless router.

I must admit to not keeping uptodate with this kinda shizz so do I need to buy new hardware to get advantage of the new speeds?

many thanks

oh and if it is the case, can anyone recommend a model for a good price please.

What were you connecting at before and now? You may not benefit on lines that aren't getting the full 8 anyway.

Yeah, ADSL2+ DL only increases over BT's ADSLMax (which is plain ADSL2, I think?) within the first km or two from the exchange.

Maybe the router needs a firmware update to support ADSL2+, though.

Here we are, although obviously it's not scientific you get that point that you need to be getting at least 4mbit to even see an increase and doubling is only going to happen right at the top end.

In short: when looking to move, stick the prospective postcode into samknows.com, if they still do the line-length approximator.

I get about 7mb something like that

I have a belkin 54g ADSL wireless modem router.

I should apparently be good for about 12mb but I need hardware that supports adsl2+

Just saying it's a belkin 54g ADSL router doesn't help, there are bound to be billions of varieties. What's the model number?

If you get 7mbps on ADSLMax, I wouldn't get your hopes up too high for a reliable 12mbps.

I live about 600m away from my telephone exchange

Malc

I'm 1.5 miles away from mine.

I used to live 450m from mine and got all 20 of the "up to 20"mbps. Now I live even closer (to the same one), have a brand new line from the pole to a fresh master socket, and it's finally stabilised at 15 of "up to 16". It's possible it's further by line though, instead of running straight down one road to the exchange at the end it has to work through a bunch of terraces.

The cabinet is at the end of my street though. Bring on FTTC, BT. BRING IT.

I live about a mile from mine. Unfortunately, it's a creaking old dinosaur of an exchange that was built to supply a tiny village and can't really cope with the sprawling 50s built estate where I live. So 2mb was all I could hope for. IN RIDES VIRGIN MEDIA and I get 10mb. Cheers!

I am about that, just it is a small village, and only the Talktalk llu on there

Lucky you. Our new house has 1 meg max. More likely 512k. Bah.

Mine comes in around 22Mbit on that graph.

I've also discovered my old house was 78m from the exchange. No wonder I did well.

Only because you live in the revolving restaurant at the top of the BT Tower.

Sorry to slightly hijack the thread.

I'm on Virgin broadband at the moment, and I'm getting increasingly pissed off with it. We only took it out originally because we had the TV package and got free line rental on a phone. Now, however, we only bother to have Freeview and so line rental has to be paid.

I want to ditch Virgin, get a BT line connected again, and find a good, reliable internet provider.

Have any of you got any high opinions of the myriad providers available these days?

I am with sky, and have their max deal, so I'm on 16M ADSL2+ anyway.

I did hear rumours that they are going to be upgrading the max speed of that to compete against virgin media.

Malc

I'm with Sky and their broadband is absolutely sublime. HOWEVER, I want to ditch the TV package as I barely watch it (even the sport I hardly bother with anymore).

The problem is that you can't currently have the broadband on its own. It's great, but it's not £50 a month great. Are O2/Be any good?

router model number belkin 54g F5D7633-4

Last time I was shopping around they were meant to be shit hot & two of my mates were very happy with them. Our exchange hasn't been twangdoodled though, so we went with one of the Entanet resellers & they've been fine.

How can you get sky to put an llu in your exchange..

POTW for this word, which I intend to use at least a dozen more times today, even if I have to complete twangdoodle my sentences to make it fit.

I've been with various providers, and have never been satisfied with any of them until I got Virgin Media.

Of course, to get Virgin set up took 3 months, £50 of phonecalls to bangalore, three missed apppointments, a non working phone line for 3 months, an incorrectly dated contract, Broadband installed which wasn't activated (repeatedly), a broken window, no router as promised and a sense of humour failure, but we got there in the end.

To be fair, if Virgin was shit I'd probably stay with them because I'd have heart tremors at the prospect of the uninstall. Its bad enough that I want to scale back the TV package to remove films, but the myriad of potential issues that involves means its almost worth paying £5 a month extra to not have to deal with it.

Do you mean F5D7633? The Internet, for what that's worth, suggests updating to the 'pre-release' firmware linked on that URL, although not for ADSL2+ reasons. It is an ADSL2+ mode, at least.

O2 are good.

that firmware wont upload to my router, but thanks

update : had to install v.17 before I could upload the v.25 above. done now. thanks!

I'm with O2 and I think they're great - however I used to be with Virgin Media (formerly NTL) on cable broadband and, to contradict Riles, thought they were fucking, fucking, fucking shitty shit shit.

So the fact O2 works at something resembling the advertised speed is all good in my book.

It's also pretty cheap - £10 per month for 10Mbps as I also have an O2 mobile phone (it'd be a still reasonable £15 a month without). Though I haven't bothered yet, for an extra £5 a month I can also have a static IP address.

If I had any complaints at all, it's that the wireless router they provide does some sort of update (or maybe it's just the dynamic IP shifting) bang on 3am everynight, so you lose connection for a few seconds. Not a big deal, unless you're some sort of idiot who's still playing Killzone 2's Warzone mode online, despite the fact you should've gone to bed 3 hours ago as you've got work in the morning - and suddenly find yourself being unceremoniously hoisted out of your frantic online battle. Fortunately I do not know anyone like this... *looks sheepish*

*wonders how one goes about looking sheepish - presumably it involves glueing cotton wool to one's self*

Mine doesn't do that.

It did drop several times a week, though. Magically that stopped happening after a few months (it was not the 10 day training period), so I think BT found and fixed something in the exchange.

Moving the connection between properties was a pain in the arse, but that was almost entirely BT Retail's incompetent fault.