Fibre Optic Broadband - Is it worth it?

[Torgan]

Morning Folks,

Would like your opinions on a little decision I am making at the minute.

BT Fibre Optic Broadband is being introduced into my area in the next couple of months and I am pondering whether to upgrade my service from BT Total Broadband I currently use.

As it stands at the moment, a Broadband Speed Checker shows a connection of 18Mb/Sec between my router and the local exchange, however I have never seen anything downloading into my computer at a speed greater than 2.5Mb/sec. This is using both Gigabit Ethernet and 450Mb Wifi. General Browsing is almost instant and I do not see any lag whilst online gaming.

I understand that this is because you can only download data at the speed that the website chooses to send it out at therefore I never see that 18Mb/sec fully utilized.

My question is then..... What is the point of paying for 60Mb/sec fibre broadband if the sites I generally download from (Steam/Origin and other retailers) only push the data out at lower speeds.

If I am missing something fundamental and completely misunderstand the process, please feel free to call me a noob and correct me

Any thoughts?

Torgan

 

[Rakk]

Remember that most speed checking sites, and broadband speeds are measured in megabits per second, whereas most download things like Steam show it in megabytes per second - there are 8 bits per byte, so 2.5megabytes (that steam is showing) is 20megabits, so it sounds about right.

My 60meg connection can get upto 7.2megabytes (8x7.2=57.6 ie. about 60) per second through Steam and I've seen it reach that, though admittedly recently has only been getting to 4-5

Note: Mb= megabit, MB = megabyte, easy to read them as the same thing.

 

[Torgan]

Told you I was a noob!!

Guess I need to take a bit more notice of MB/s and Mb/s

I think I'll go for it then.

Thanks for clearing things up Rakk +rep

 

[Rakk]

Told you I was a noob!!

Nah, a lot of people I suspect don't know/realise either, and I think the broadband companies are relying on it so that people think their speeds are higher than they are.

 

[Kalisnoir]

Yeah I'm on 60meg package as well with Virgin, generally I get 7.2MB/s download speeds but I have seen 7.9MB/s every now and again. Had it a while now but I was excited as hell coming from about 600kb/s to see them speeds ha.

 

[DeadEyeDuk]

Do it!

I'm impressed you get 2.5 on downloads using standard BT broadband

It is markedly more impressive when you upgrade if like Kalis (and me) you used to get excited when it stayed on 600kb/s for a few minutes, but it will still be faster.

The biggest difference I found when we upgraded was when installing games (dont really download much else tbh). Where once I was given a few hours estimated time to download, I can now get 15 minutes even on a reasonably sized game (a few gb).

If nothing else you can just feel all superior about it...gotta count for something

 

[rosgor]

Do some research about the quality of the fibre optic internet in your area first.

If by chance the company over sells it in your area, you'll have a major problem for about a year.


Virgin media over sold in my area, me being stupid did not research before I bought it, and they did not tell me that this problem had been going on for 6 months before i bought it. All through 2012 I've had the problem, and finally its due to be fixed in feb 2013. Problems like low speeds at peak times etc etc, only time I got what I payed for was in the mornings -_-

 

[Wozza63]

I'm on the virgin 60MB/s package and I've seen my steam go up to 8.5MB/s not even for a second or two either ive had it stay there for 20 seconds and stuff

If you are downloading a lot of games then i definitely think its worth it, bear in mind that you are using wireless so it may not be able to take full advantage of the speeds

 

[Everon]

Broadband speeds in the UK are like a lottery. If your lucky you will get good speeds with low ping, and here lies the problem. Most of the companies promise the high speeds but cannot deliver on the low ping and jitter which are critical for online gaming and streaming services.

It is all very well having 100MB download speeds if your ping is 60 with 40 jitter, meaning playing games like WoW, Guild wars 2, BF3 and others are a total nightmare.

The other thing you need to be aware of is speed or bandwidth throttling, Virgin are the absolute worst for this and if you are a heavy downloader then you simply do not get what you pay for, I know as I recently left them after 5 years. VM's capping policy is a total JOKE as you can see here:

Virgin restrictions: click to see full




The problem with the reduction in speed is not the speed in itself which is bad enough at 50% but the fact you are placed on a low priority connection while the reduction is in place which means you get insane ping times meaning streaming movies is a no go.

I have just moved to BT Infinity after being with Virgin for 5 years and I can say the difference is like night and day. While on Virgin 100mb I got great download speeds but high ping and I mostly play online MMO's which is useless. Coupled with the fact that what use is having a 60MB or 100MB connection when you are limited to using it at your maximum speeds for only a few hours a day. If you look at the chart you will see you are restricted between 10AM and 3PM then AGAIN between 4PM untill 9PM! Yes 100mb connection for 20 mins a day yay!!

On BT Infinity I have a slower speed for sure (40MB) but i get no jitter and a constant ping of 10 making gaming perfect. Also there are NO bandwidth restrictions whatsoever at any time of the day and NO max bandwidth per month. The only thing that BT limit is P2P which is 4pm-12am weekdays and 9am-12am on weekends but this does not include Newsgroups or anything else. This means you can max out your connection as much as you like all day, which means overall you get more downloaded in the same space of time.

As others have said, check local utilisation especially with Virgin as they have massively oversold the bandwidth they have available in some areas. They doubled their customers speeds without the infrastructure needed to cope with it. With BT make sure your phone line is on copper wiring to the street cab and not aluminium as Alu gives extremely poor speeds compared to copper and check the distance to your nearest Infinty enabled cab.

If your thinking of getting BT Infinity check the speed you may get on your line at:http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband and click "test your speed"

Also you can use this to check what speeds are expected on BT ADSL/ADSL2 or Infinity from your nearest cab, this requires a BT phone number but also allows address checker or postcode: http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput

Both of those checkers give a rough estimate of what your line is capable of, but is fairly accurate (was in my case)

Finally you can get a good idea of what customers are saying about BT or Virgin on their official forums which are at:

VM:http://community.virginmedia.com/
BT: http://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/bd-p/BTInfinity

Hope some of that was of use! Jay (jaded VM customer)

 

[Wozza63]

Broadband speeds in the UK are like a lottery. If your lucky you will get good speeds with low ping, and here lies the problem. Most of the companies promise the high speeds but cannot deliver on the low ping and jitter which are critical for online gaming and streaming services.

It is all very well having 100MB download speeds if your ping is 60 with 40 jitter, meaning playing games like WoW, Guild wars 2, BF3 and others are a total nightmare.

The other thing you need to be aware of is speed or bandwidth throttling, Virgin are the absolute worst for this and if you are a heavy downloader then you simply do not get what you pay for, I know as I recently left them after 5 years. VM's capping policy is a total JOKE as you can see here:

Virgin restrictions: click to see full
View attachment 2643



The problem with the reduction in speed is not the speed in itself which is bad enough at 50% but the fact you are placed on a low priority connection while the reduction is in place which means you get insane ping times meaning streaming movies is a no go.

I have just moved to BT Infinity after being with Virgin for 5 years and I can say the difference is like night and day. While on Virgin 100mb I got great download speeds but high ping and I mostly play online MMO's which is useless. Coupled with the fact that what use is having a 60MB or 100MB connection when you are limited to using it at your maximum speeds for only a few hours a day. If you look at the chart you will see you are restricted between 10AM and 3PM then AGAIN between 4PM untill 9PM! Yes 100mb connection for 20 mins a day yay!!

On BT Infinity I have a slower speed for sure (40MB) but i get no jitter and a constant ping of 10 making gaming perfect. Also there are NO bandwidth restrictions whatsoever at any time of the day and NO max bandwidth per month. The only thing that BT limit is P2P which is 4pm-12am weekdays and 9am-12am on weekends but this does not include Newsgroups or anything else. This means you can max out your connection as much as you like all day, which means overall you get more downloaded in the same space of time.

As others have said, check local utilisation especially with Virgin as they have massively oversold the bandwidth they have available in some areas. They doubled their customers speeds without the infrastructure needed to cope with it. With BT make sure your phone line is on copper wiring to the street cab and not aluminium as Alu gives extremely poor speeds compared to copper and check the distance to your nearest Infinty enabled cab.

If your thinking of getting BT Infinity check the speed you may get on your line at:http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband and click "test your speed"

Also you can use this to check what speeds are expected on BT ADSL/ADSL2 or Infinity from your nearest cab, this requires a BT phone number but also allows address checker or postcode: http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/ADSLChecker.TelephoneNumberOutput

Both of those checkers give a rough estimate of what your line is capable of, but is fairly accurate (was in my case)

Finally you can get a good idea of what customers are saying about BT or Virgin on their official forums which are at:

VM:http://community.virginmedia.com/
BT: http://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Infinity/bd-p/BTInfinity

Hope some of that was of use! Jay (jaded VM customer)

I'm pretty sure the limit is only in place when you have gone over the fair use policy and lasts for 5 hrs after that, I doubt id go over 10gb in 5 hrs during the day even if i downloaded a game, although the evening one is a bit annoying I must admit, and the fair use policy needs to be increased

 

[Everon]

Thats correct Wozza 5 hours after you exceed those download caps in those time periods.

But the problem is that most people start downloading at around 18:00 and you can easily exceed those caps on a 100mb connection in no time at all. This means that if you use your full 100mb or 60mb connection in the evenings you are likely to be capped and for the majority that means untill 23:00 which is when most people who work start going offline. A few HD movies on stream coupled with kids downloading and bingo! you are capped.

Also remember that the problem is not the "speed" caps in themselves but the fact that when you are affected by the cap you are placed on a low priority connection which gives insane ping times which is a double slap in the face. This was discussed at length on the VM forums at the time, but VM chose to double customers speeds without planning ahead for over utilistation and did not and still have not increased infrastructure to match the demand. Take a look at the 60mb and 100mb forums and you can see this for yourself.

There was a large heated discussion when VM introduced those caps in April of last year and I was one of the customers who felt that it was the final nail in the coffin with VM. You cannot advertise a high speed service which is crippled for 70% of the day as being fair to people who use what is in effect the service they pay for and expect.

Basically if your a person who needs low ping and use newsgroups go with BT, if your someone who is a heavy P2P downloader go SKY as they have NO P2P capping, and finally if you are someone who wants to shout about having 120mb connection that you can only use at your FULL speed for short periods with a high ping go with VM.

Of course we all have our own opinions on our own experiences with these companies, but in the last year of being with VM I had 12 (yes count em) engineers out to try to rectify massive ping with spiky speeds which they could not fix after 2 total repulls from the cab to the property. Finally they admitted it was down to over utilisation in my area. Since being with BT I have had no issues whatsoever (looks for wood to touch)

Jay.

 

[Wozza63]

well in the evenings there are four of us on the internet at the same time, im the worst one as the others just browse and watch the odd video, but I am the one who donwloads games and streams from youtube all evening in full HD, and I don't really see it drop and even if it does, its fairly late, I can understand fair use policies because they would probably lose a lot of money, as I imagine a lot of people just go crazy and are downloading/uploading torrents like theirs no tomorrow, phone contracts also have fair use policies even if it says unlimited, they are designed to not effect the average user, but to penalise those that go over the top

 

[Wozza63]

me personally, I don't think ive ever had a problem with ping on virgin its always below 30 and most of the time its about 15ms

 

[rosgor]

Of course you could try it out, and leave within 7 days? Or even a month if the service is not right for you without having to face the contract cancellation fee

 

[Grimezy]

250kb/s for the win...

 

[Torgan]

All a bit immaterial now anyway folks...... BT Infinity Site had 31 Dec 2012 as the available date for my postcode, so I apply for it only to be told it has been pushed back until 31st March 2013 and they had "forgotten" to update the website

Good Old BT eh??

 

[steaky360]

All a bit immaterial now anyway folks...... BT Infinity Site had 31 Dec 2012 as the available date for my postcode, so I apply for it only to be told it has been pushed back until 31st March 2013 and they had "forgotten" to update the website

Good Old BT eh??

At least your postcode is getting it... mine isn't even in the upgrade plans BT FIBRE FAIL!

 

[DeadEyeDuk]

Sort of on-topic.

Just wanted to make sure people are aware that Infinity, or any of the other service providers superfast stuff, does not automatically mean more reliable.

Not saying this is rocket science, but I have gathered the impression from across the web that suddenly thered be no problems with connections etc because you are on Superfast.

DED

Disclaimer: This note, and any further comments to do with BT Infinity have nothing to do with my losing BB connection on Saturday, only to be told "its a line issue", and an engineer coming to (hopefully) fix it today.

 

[Grimezy]

Sort of on-topic.

Just wanted to make sure people are aware that Infinity, or any of the other service providers superfast stuff, does not automatically mean more reliable.

Not saying this is rocket science, but I have gathered the impression from across the web that suddenly thered be no problems with connections etc because you are on Superfast.

DED

Disclaimer: This note, and any further comments to do with BT Infinity have nothing to do with my losing BB connection on Saturday, only to be told "its a line issue", and an engineer coming to (hopefully) fix it today.

That's the one thing I actually like about my internet as slow as download speeds are. It never drops out or slows right down. Browsing and gaming tend to be spot on, it's the download rate that I'm missing! Especially now that most of my gadgets are based around the cloud..

 

[Karnor00]

Similarly for me - what I care most about are relatively low ping times and maximum reliability. Which happily I seem to have with my current provider. Download speeds aren't super fast, but aren't that bad and I don't download a huge amount of stuff anyway. And on the occasions when I do download a game, I'm not that bothered if it takes a bit longer.