blonde poker forum

Hi, My broadband sucks and seems to be getting worse by the day,  I knew I had to sort it and now is the time.  I have carried out  a number of different down loads checks and they came out as follows:

            Download       Upload     
Test 1   .05 Mbps           .35Mbps
Test 2   .17                   .35
Test 3    .3                    .36

Besides the obvious speed, surely upload should not be faster than download?

I am with AOL and can give a month notice, as I will be like now.

Am looking at Virgin and as I am making this change might as well go for the big one at 100 Mb ( like it will get any where near that ). Does any body have this package and is it noticeably better than BT and the like?  I know at the moment a slug carrying pictures of a poker table would be quicker than mine but I would be interested to know what speed you guys are getting.  I will check mine again tomorrow coz seriously it can't be that slow.

Any thought or suggestions?

Steve

Try here http://www.broadbandchecker.co.uk/

Make sure u can get virgin fibre not analogue or it will be the same as bt... If u get fibre you will get a pretty true speed most of the time

I change mine to BT Infinity last month . It was awesome . Never in doubt . I heard Virgin Fibre is good but the area where I live don't do virgin .

There's absolutely no point getting 100Mb broadband unless you've got multiple users in your household all online at the same time.

This is what I get with the 60MB package.

(http://www.speedtest.net/result/2870222330.png) (http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2870222330)

I live on my own and this is massive overkill for anything I need. Streaming HDTV is perfect, downloads are super fast.

The extra £7.50/month for 100Mb just isn't worth it.

Pretty sure that aol is via virgin anyway, mine is.

Doh, that doesn't sound good, if so does that mean I will never get better than the figs above, even if I change to Virgin?

Well I'm not sure how yours is set up, but I was 'moved' to Virgin by aol a few years back. My understanding is they took on all aol accounts, but I might be wrong mate  :dontask:

Do you have an ADSL splitter between the BT wire coming into the house and the Sky wire to the skybox / phone line.

My download spead was terrible till I got this right, but upload was fine,

Yes  I do mate.

(http://www.speedtest.net/result/2870480866.png)

thin

WAL

I have 1.2mb ADSL, FML

Yeah mine looks pretty similar with the 60MB package too, slightly worse ping but meh. Never had any problems with not getting what I'm paying for from Virgin.

Defo on the fishy side.

Wow Tom that is some speed it must be like its 1978 and you have seen what the future might hold, with flying cars and time travel and of course lightening fast Broad band. Meanwhile I am  stuck in 1907, even MC is in about 1935.  Fixable though :)

Bro's are still in the tank and I've already sucked out and gone on to ship it!!!!!

I with virgin broadband on there 30 meg package and get 32 meg all time with wireless never a problem not the cheesiest but always there

I had the older virgin broadband and it would be fine for days then constantly cut out...however I phoned them and got a new superhub (only launched about 1-2 months ago) and its been fantastic.

http://store.virginmedia.com/broadband/wireless-broadband/index.html

that one.

 

[ ] super

Have been with talktalk for ages but started to cut out ,
moved to sky and got a good deal and soo far no problems

wanted to try B.T. but no infinity in my area ( still in the stone age )
and virgin no good unless ur in a city

Ty all

One thing I would say is what do you use you Internet for is it just for poker and surfing the net, Facebook the like or do you use it for watching tv and streaming music? Are you using wifi or do you hard wire into you modem.

If your no wifi how old is your ruter as some of the older ones can only go so quick so it might be good to look into that in the first place all so do a test on your line to find out just how quick it can go be for you pay for something that you can't use

General surfing, poker, you tube that sort of thing.  Wired directly into Pc, use wireless on Lappy.  No TV  or films ect

I would say you don't need anymore the 12meg if its just you online

Don't need anywhere near that much actually...
Doesn't mean that I would get less if I had the option.  AOL was always horrid for installing software you didnt ask for or want.  I would heavily advise all against using them.  Having used Tiscali and Talk Talk their actual service product is good but their customer service is horribly unfriendly and bordering on illegal incompetence.
Sky, BT and Virgin all have good products and customer service, my question if I had a house instead of my flat would be to do with purchasing a more competent router than the free one given.  There was a pretty sexy test done on The Gadget Show recently which highlights the strength in the BT, Virgin and a third party router, the big point was wifi as its becoming essential in the home.

Steve, with regard to your needs... poker takes so little bandwidth its not your primary worry.   Better to get a service that fulfills your needs and save some money then get a dongle to help you survive the unlikely event you lose your connection for longer than 30 seconds.  Fortunately you don't need a large allowance, just a second option.

Cheers mate, think I was just over compensating, got dongle already for back up and times when camping and just got to play :)

Went for Talk Talk Fire optic in the end,  Now getting  27  and 1.6,  seems like heaven to me.

Sounds awesome.... just pray that nothing goes wrong or you ever have to speak to them, ever.

;)

I would suggest there is an issue with your connection that may not be solved by changing provider, and may be easil fixed.

Firstly check every phone socket in your house, and check you have an ADSL filter fitted.

Once this check is done, disconnect every phone from every socket. On your BT master socket, remove the front plate and plug and old fashioned (non cordless) phone into the test socket, and check for any noise on the line. If this is ok, plug your router in to the master socket (don't forget your filter) and run a speed test again.

If you're unsure on any of this, google it, there's plenty of info out there.

Also, ADSL filters can fail, so try a few filters (borrow a mates that you know works).

I've seen a bunch of times people find the tandom phone socket without a filter, or with a failed filter, and this will kill your broadband speed.

Have 30mb virgin.

Never had a problem and only disconnected once in 9 months (albeit for 24 hours). Lucky there is a £5/day BT wifi connection to use as back-up.

My laptop has become a bit banged up over time and now it appears like the wireless range on it has completely died. I used to be able to connect from my bedroom with the router ~15m away and now I'm having to sit 6ft away, altho it just about had signal by the door. Any advice on what gear to get to improve?

Something like this (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Edimax-Ew-7711utn-150Mbps-Mini-size-Adapter/dp/B001UE6OU0/ref=tag_stp_s2_edpp_url) would be cheapest and easiest. You'd need to disable your laptop's built in WiFi, there is sometimes a physical switch for it or it's simple to do from within Windows.

Sweet, thanks a lot. Sending off for one now!

Or just look up the wifi card on your laptop and investigate an onboard replacement... nothing more tilting than if you get an external wifi dongle (have one for PC so I could use hotel wifi in GPS stoke) and then forgetting it!

You could try and see if the aerial has fallen off the wifi bit. Somewhere in your laptop (probably easily accessible from the bottom if you take some screws out- the best thing to do is google for laptop model disassembly and there are probably lots of videos and pages about taking your model to bits) there will be a little card like:

(http://i1158.photobucket.com/albums/p604/superdjc/2008-06-09_laptop-wireless-card-antennae-connections_zpsbd3da966.jpg)

The arrows cunningly point to the bits that might have got disconnected. As John says you can probably get a whole new little card from eBay, but if you are getting some but not enough signal, that seems to be unlikely as a fix.

Cracking stuff and i did drop my laptop a little bit before this problem started! Not from very high but it seems a likely cause of the problem. Thanks a lot to everyone who posted.

Thanks for the replies guys all still going peachy at the moment.