Be There Broadband - Whats It Like

[Crispy]

Yay, mine's still fastest

 

[RaverDrew]

Yay, mine's still fastest

Don't count on it, mine flits between 19-23 Mbps depending on what time of day I reset the router.

Then again, I am slap bang next door to the exchange

 

[Crispy]

I've had to reset mine three times so far, and it's always come back on at 18. Must be decent copper, but I have no idea where the exchange is.

 

[Jambooboo]

Ooooh, Be is now live in South Manchester.

I wasn't going to change ISP's as despite using utorrent pretty much 24/7 for months (especially since I got my Xbox 360) BT haven't been in touch once regarding my going over the miserly usage limits (I think it's something like 2gb a month!).

But, upto 24mbs sounds too good (I'm getting 2mbs at the moment) to not bother with.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Any updates on Be? Can't get cable broadband where I'm living so Be is looking very tempting indeed.

 

[ChrisFilter]

After the initial problems, I'm impressed. Rock solid, no downtime, very, very fast.

 

[Kanda]

I've just ordered a 2nd one. I'll let you know how it goes, mine is rock solid as Chris said.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

*prepares to lobby flatmates tonight*

 

[Mapped]

Do these guys have a "fair useage" policy?

I'm happy with my Telewest "download as much as you possibly can at 10meg" connection, but their 384k upstream is doing my head in with torrent ratios etc.

 

[Crispy]

There is no usage policy AFAIK. I've been pretty greedy with mine and nobody's kicked up a fuss. It's no difficulty at all keeping my ratio up on torrent sites either - plenty of upstream.

 

[cybertect]

My exchange goes live with them in November... very tempting, particularly at that price.

 

[RaverDrew]

I've been doing at least 100gb per month with them I reckon. My upstream has been maxed out since the day I got it. My torrent ratios are insane. All that for £20 month.

 

[Sunray]

Well, the old connection gets kicked off tomorrow so I will raise a ticket to remind them that my order is to be processed. There are loads of extensions in this house, couple in mine and one in every room so it might not be the best but I keep my fingers crossed. Should be live some time next month.

I am on a shared wireless connection for web but I am starting to get bandwidth hungry again.

 

[Jambooboo]

I need to get Be, just to get decent bittorent upload speeds. Was kicked off two private trackers a couple of weeks back due to my poor seeding ratio on them (downloading new release stuff even though my current ratio sucks is too tempting!).

 

[wonko the sane]

Ok based on the recommendations on this thread, I'm gunna look into Be when i move next month. None of you better be lying *shifty eyes*

 

[Sunray]

well, the old DSL got kicked off on the 25th and today I get a date of the 3rd so they get some brownie points for that. Neither did I realise that I got a wireless router in the bundle, not bad for 24 quid.

Will see how it goes.

 

[Kanda]

The line I got activated on Fri is pretty FUBAR, problem is escalated to tech support and I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[wonko the sane]

So did it work out for you Sunray?

 

[Sunray]

Yup, its 12Mbs at the moment but looking at the line stats they are quite good so I am going to leave it a few days to see if it jumps as part of its training that the DSLAM does and if that does not work have a word with Be. According to a chart i saw with a line attenuation of 22dB I should be getting 20Mbs.

Still getting about 600Ks and my uplink is perfect so I can hit ratio sites hard and get a positive ratio from the start.

 

[wonko the sane]

cool - well this thread is pretty good advertising for Be!

Kanda - be interested to hear how or if your prob. gets sorted!

 

[Crispy]

I got 1.38MBps download speed on a torrent yesterday - that's a new record!

 

[Radar]

Yup, its 12Mbs at the moment but looking at the line stats they are quite good so I am going to leave it a few days to see if it jumps as part of its training that the DSLAM does and if that does not work have a word with Be. According to a chart i saw with a line attenuation of 22dB I should be getting 20Mbs.

This graph is speed v distance, which suggests you'd want to be within 1300m of your exchange to hit 22Mb. I've seen a suggested conversion factor of 13.81 for copper to go from attenuation to distance. 22 / 13.81 gives a slightly further distance of about 1600m, suggesting a max speed of 16Mb. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I suspect.

As you've got shitloads of extensions inside the house I'd be tempted to whack a filter on the master jack and stick the router on it for a few minutes just to eliminate your internal wiring and see if the attenuation figure improves (not that it really needs to, 22db is bloody good; mine is over 30)

What's your current downstream SNR margin ?? Is it large enough to suggest there's more scope for speed tweaking ??

What 2+ router did they give you ??

 

[wonko the sane]

Oh yeah that was another thing i was wondering - Is the Be stock router any good? or shall i just go for the Netgear dg834 i usually use (which i think is adsl2)?

 

[Sunray]

Stock router is a Speedtouch 780 which is more than fine for the 24 quid. Quite a nice modem, got every connectivity you can possibly ask for and a reasonable UI to boot.

Currently I am getting 12Mbs which i cant actually max out just yet, not that I haven't tried. There is a few things to do but until I can actually max this out I am not that bothered as my uplink being perfect 1.3Meg means all my ratio sites , my ratio stays positive and gets higher irrespective how much I download.

 

[Sunray]

This graph is speed v distance, which suggests you'd want to be within 1300m of your exchange to hit 22Mb. I've seen a suggested conversion factor of 13.81 for copper to go from attenuation to distance. 22 / 13.81 gives a slightly further distance of about 1600m, suggesting a max speed of 16Mb. Six of one, half a dozen of the other I suspect.

As you've got shitloads of extensions inside the house I'd be tempted to whack a filter on the master jack and stick the router on it for a few minutes just to eliminate your internal wiring and see if the attenuation figure improves (not that it really needs to, 22db is bloody good; mine is over 30)

What's your current downstream SNR margin ?? Is it large enough to suggest there's more scope for speed tweaking ??

What 2+ router did they give you ??

I've tried all the sockets and the one its on has the lowest attenuation, though its not noticably different from any of the others. I was looking at this graph as a guide to show what is obtainable.

http://www.beforum.co.uk/forum/default.aspx?f=2&m=3875

I have filters on all the extension sockets.

There is a nice tool called DMT which shows how the line is behaving across all the tones. There are quite a few gaps for me, the middle of the graph is showing that the line isn't so great across all frequencies.

My stats are

Uptime: 1 day, 18:50:12
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,325 / 12,563
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 10.35 / 4.89
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 9.0 / 22.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 7.0
Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / µ
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 9,184 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 62,789,036
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 3,043 / 6,084
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 1,999 / 5,022

 

[wonko the sane]

kanda - did yours ever get sorted?

 

[Radar]

I've tried all the sockets and the one its on has the lowest attenuation, though its not noticably different from any of the others. I was looking at this graph as a guide to show what is obtainable.

http://www.beforum.co.uk/forum/default.aspx?f=2&m=3875

I have filters on all the extension sockets.

There is a nice tool called DMT which shows how the line is behaving across all the tones. There are quite a few gaps for me, the middle of the graph is showing that the line isn't so great across all frequencies.

My stats are

Uptime: 1 day, 18:50:12
Modulation: G.992.5 Annex A
Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,325 / 12,563
Data Transferred (Sent/Received) [GB/GB]: 10.35 / 4.89
Output Power (Up/Down) [dBm]: 12.0 / 19.0
Line Attenuation (Up/Down) [dB]: 9.0 / 22.5
SN Margin (Up/Down) [dB]: 7.0 / 7.0Vendor ID (Local/Remote): TMMB / µ
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Link (Remote): 0
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 9,184 / 0
FEC Errors (Up/Down): 0 / 62,789,036
CRC Errors (Up/Down): 3,043 / 6,084
HEC Errors (Up/Down): 1,999 / 5,022

Hmm, I don't think you'll be able to drop much below a 7 dB margin without things becoming wobbly as fuck.. (assuming youi're already on 2+.. Aahh, 992.5 means 2+ so forget that)

 

[Sunray]

its very likely that the loop in this house is doing it in, sockets all over the house. Would need a BT engineer in to sort it out properly. I've not maxed it out tho, so not a problem.

 

[Jambooboo]

Woot!

Signing up for Be today. Just spend 20 minutes on the phone with BT getting the Mac code (their retention department trying to persuade me not to leave them by giving it me for a quid or two cheaper, and coming up with shite about being offline for weeks on end with a rival).

 

[Kanda]

kanda - did yours ever get sorted?

I kinda let it slip as the user hasn't hassled me and I've had a fuckton of other stuff to fix. I'll get back on it in the next day or so and let you know.