Broadband speed in Charlbury

Sun 11 Oct 2009, 19:44

Whilst I love it to bits in many ways, Charlbury is technologically still stuck in the dark ages! I seem to remember we were amoungst the last to get broadband. And it's probably best if we don't mention freeview!

Thu 8 Oct 2009, 22:01

I've recently transferred from Tiscali to Talk Talk. The Talk Talk salesman who switched suppliers for me phoned up his control centre to find out what the maximum broadband speed supported by my phone line is. The answer he got was 18 MB! (salesman's jaw almost hit the floor at this point). According to broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk (which I recommend) I live 327 m from the telephone exchange so that must be the reason. Am now regularly getting download speeds of about 6.6 MB for half the price I was paying for 2 MB broadband from Tiscali.

Wed 7 Oct 2009, 21:25

The simple answer is no.

The copper wire infrastructure currently limits this area to a max of 8mb and the actual rate depends on how far you are from the hub at Lee Heights and The Slade. 6mb isn't bad, and you probably will need to be satisfied with that until the infrastructure is upgraded.

The BT site offering the 20mb kit has a link for ascertaining what your particular telephone line will get.
www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayTopic.do?topicId=16738

Wed 7 Oct 2009, 16:47

Im currently on BT Option 3 (including there new Hub) and I know the Hub can do 20Mb speed! But at the moment its only doing 6Mb speed. Is it possible that Charlbury could get a faster internet connection?

Sun 27 Sep 2009, 18:39

I'm running a mix of 802.1b and g protocol machines wirelessly and don't find that the speed of the g protocol devices is affected by the performance of the b devices and was under the impression that the suppression of performance throttling under b as lowest common denominator had been…

Long post - click to read full text

Thu 24 Sep 2009, 17:32

Richard, almost but not quite correct, indeed the wireless part of the network may only run at the slower speed, but even wireless b (11mb/s) is faster than the broadband side of the network (upto 8mb/s), wireless g at 54mb/s and wireless n (not sure about spec) are far faster than the broadband. So for internal network you may be limited by the slowest device but this should still be faster than the external connection.

Then again m ancient b+g wireless router can cope with a mixture of devices with no problems. All exceed the external broadband speed whatever the mixture of device types.

Wed 23 Sep 2009, 12:49

I think Kate's son is right. If you have (say) an older Mac with an 802.11g wireless card, and another with a newer, faster 802.11n wireless card, the network will run at a slower speed even though the router is 802.11n. See this link. But I'm no expert.

Returning to Alex's question - I wouldn't go anywhere near BT broadband, or indeed any BT Internet service, after some really terrible experiences trying to sort out friends' connections. It's full of arbitrary restrictions, the way they market their Home Hub is (in my opinion) little short of fraud, and their call centres are beyond useless.

Tue 22 Sep 2009, 13:52

Having devices of any kind connected shouldn't affect the performance of your internal wireless network, unless they are swamping the network with data (which could happen if you've a virus or some such electronic nasty). As your internal wireless network is effectively a separate entity to your broadband connection, the only thing that will affect broadband performance from inside your house is the volume of traffic to and from the outside world. Large volumes (particularly in an outbound direction) can quickly swamp your broadband link.

Mon 21 Sep 2009, 17:36

We're on BT Broadband (though I can't remember which option..) - currently around 6mb - not too bad - but I think that it may be determined by the lowest speed appliance you've got on your own wireless network. According to my son if the old eMac were on the wireless network the whole thing would be much slower, so it's on a wired connection instead.

Mon 21 Sep 2009, 12:26

Does anyone here use BT Total Broadband (Option 3). What is the Broadband Service like?

Wed 22 Jul 2009, 22:17

Threatening to leave usually works - especially if the contract has expired like mine has!

Tue 21 Jul 2009, 14:47

I don't think any refunds will be given for not achieving the "up to" headline speed - I believe this has already been challenged through OFCOM and they have given these claims the green light, although I think ISPs (if they are following a voluntary code of practice) have to now give you an estimate as to what you can realistically expect.

One of the problems you get with estimating speed is that, as home users, you share the bandwidth with potentially 49 other households - just watch your connection speed plummet when the school day ends! That demand is very unpredictable, which is why they can get away with quoting theoretical maximums.

Tue 21 Jul 2009, 00:54

The download speeds vary wildly. I have just checked mine on Speedchecker. The first read 2.6 meg and the second (less than a minute later) was 3.7 meg! I usually get around 6 meg as I am not that far from the exchange in Marlborough Place (not as near as Andrew though!) These discrepencies will continue until all the old fashioned copper wiring is replaced with fibre optics. Bearing in mind we haven't even got cable yet, I am not holding my breath!

Mon 20 Jul 2009, 10:20

An Orange engineer phoned on Friday. He talked mainly in jargon, but the basis of what he was saying was that when I upgraded my broadband package online, Orange did not upgrade my line (how convenient). As of this morning (according to the broadband checker) I am getting over 6 megabits upload per second. I think I will demanding some money back for all the time I've been paying for service I haven't anything like I should have had. The customer service representative I spoke to on Friday has already tried to say that it says "up to" 8 meg.

Fri 17 Jul 2009, 13:37

Yes, from where I,m sitting at the moment, with the router right beside me, I can see the exchange roof about 75 yards away. OK, I'm lucky.
In response to Alex F, I have no idea what I'm doing differently to you, other than running Ubuntu Linux, rather than Windows, but that should make no difference to download speeds, as far as I'm aware.

Fri 17 Jul 2009, 10:43

The Exchange is almost next door to Andrew so he's the lucky one with 8Mbits.

Thu 16 Jul 2009, 21:30

Google is amazing. Type in "charlbury telephone exchange" and up pops a map informing us that it is on Lees Heights, just off Sturt Road.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=charlbury+telephone+exchange+location&ie=UTF8&split=0&gl=uk&ei=-IxfSpbPC56hjAfa0u3dDQ&ll=51.869602,-1.475612&spn=0.002554,0.003744&t=h&z=18

Thu 16 Jul 2009, 21:21

One of the major determinants of the broadband speed that one obtains in the home is the length and quality of the copper wire from the nearest telephone exchange. Typically homes closer to the exchange will get speeds closer to the 8 meg max while those farther away will get lower (sometimes much lower) speeds, even from the same ISP, as noted in this thread. Also relevant is the quality of the in-home wiring and connections, and whether the wires run near devices that can cause interference. While ISPs do vary, more often than not the factors that influence broadband speed are in the last few kilometres of wire. One of the sites I find helpful is www.thinkbroadband.com.

I am not sure where the Charlbury telephone exchange is located, but perhaps someone can post that and then we all can estimate our distances from that.

Thu 16 Jul 2009, 20:29

Andrew I am with Orange (Home Select Package) and according to the checker am only getting 2 meg. What are you doing differently I wonder? And yes, in my experience their Customer Service sucks!

Thu 16 Jul 2009, 13:00

I'm still on a Freeserve connection, which was taken over by Wanadoo, and then they were taken over by Orange.
In surveys, Orange has in the past faired pretty badly in terms of customer service, but I have to say that the broadband speed is regularly up to the maximum of 8Mbits, and we have never had any problems at all with them.

Wed 15 Jul 2009, 18:05

I use Sky Broadband, they can't offer their Sky broadband max package here because the BT exchange here isn't up to par, it needs upgrading before they can offer unlimited downloads and faster speeds.
Right now I'm getting just over 4 meg on this speed test site:
www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

If we want BT to upgrade their hardware on the exchange or Richard Branson's merry men to come to town and lay down their magic cables then I imagine we'd need to highlight to the powers that be that Charlbury's people would like faster broadband.

Wed 15 Jul 2009, 16:35

I have 8 MB broadband with Tiscali and regularly get speeds around 6.5-7.5 MB (according to Windows!).

Wed 15 Jul 2009, 13:25

I get a maximum of just 2mb download speed with my current ISP. My ISP does up to 8mb but I don't get it on my line.

Will migrating to another ISP make any difference to the speed in Charlbury?