Do freedom2surf/Tiscali/Talktalk think anyone will put up with this?

[cheesemp]

I keep having really poor connection during peak times - Just did a ping test with pingtest.net (the guys who run speedtest.net). Look at my results - 96% packets loss - what a joke...



I will not be keeping my Freedom2surf (owned by Tiscali who are owned by Talktalk) package when I move.

Edit : Just done a speed test as well - good to see the speed is just as good for a 8Mb connection!

[DDY]

Run a f8lure test for a few days (sign up first), it should return a graph with your pings against the time and date like my two below.

By using these graphs you can determine if your issues are time dependant i.e. peak time congestion or a bad line, or both.

If it's just congestion, there isn't much you can do but switch ISP. Of course you can complain, but I've not had much fun myself with Pipex, Tiscali, Talktalk, or what ever they're called these days. A bad line as well as congestion, perhaps there is something your ISP or BT can do.

My two connections, Be and VM. These graphs shows nothing out of the ordinary.

[Lee @ SCAN]

I'd really recommend that you jump ship to a reputable ISP.

Fair enough you would need to pay a bit more for the web connection from other suppliers, but at the end of the day you'd get better speeds and a connection thats not contented to hell and back.

All these cheap ISPS are the same. They reel all their customers in with the offering of a cheap broadband connection and phone and expect them to hardly use the connection apart from the odd bit of browsing and emailing. As you can imagine, if a load of their customers are online using technology like iplayer, this affects others as connections are usually under a 50:1 contention ratio.

[BobF64]

The problem isnt always the ISP, per se, its the underlying network.

If youre unlucky enough to be connected to an "unbundled" exchange, youll almost certainly be moved from the BT network to the unbundled one, often with much worse performance.

The Tiscali network is a good example of this.

They do it because it saves them money, so Im currently glad Im stuck on the BT network

[GoNz0]

it could also be your phone line or a microfilter issue

[listy]

we had same problem with pipex who were also bought over by tiscali so we made the jump to bt for our sins but they have not been too bad as yet bar the home hub which i dont like anyway

[Phage]

I jumped from Tiscali (nee Pipex) to Plusnet. I can recommend them.

[cheesemp]

I've found it goes down hill really quick when I visit the BBC iplayer site (then nothing else works for at least 5 minutes). Strangly no problem when visiting 4od/demand 5 etc. Also mainly at peak times. Also occasionaly have problems with facebook....

Sad thing is F2s use to be amazing - would have recommended them to anyone.

As I said - I will be moving soon (assuming someone buys my house!) - Then it'll be buy bye to the lot of them. I've been moving my email over to a private domain for months in readyness.

Edit: Also I use to get 6Mb on these tests up until a year ago.

[CrazyMonkey]

Jesus, packet loss like that is bad. I'd either get on the phone and demand the problems be resolved instantly, or terminate the contract as they arent providing a fair service and go to someone who can.

[Zadock]

Originally Posted by CrazyMonkey

Jesus, packet loss like that is bad. I'd either get on the phone and demand the problems be resolved instantly.

Ever spoken to tiscali customer services on the phone? your lucky if they can speak english let alone understand anything technical related to your internet connection, they just have a set list of things to tell people to do and if your problem is beyond their list they do nothing. Thats one of the reasons I ditched them along with the fact that they managed to completely break my adsl connection by attempting to apply an upgrade that was not supported by my exchange (don't ask but I was getting bps connection speeds).

Jump ship cheesemp, try Be/O2.

[Champman99]

Originally Posted by BobF64

The problem isnt always the ISP, per se, its the underlying network.

If youre unlucky enough to be connected to an "unbundled" exchange, youll almost certainly be moved from the BT network to the unbundled one, often with much worse performance.

The Tiscali network is a good example of this.

They do it because it saves them money, so Im currently glad Im stuck on the BT network

I think this is a bit of a generalisation, it's true for Tiscali maybe (although I think Tiscali are pretty terrible unbundled or not), but Sky, Be, and O2 - some of the more decent 'mainstream' ISPs at the moment, all use unbundling (LLU) to provide their best service. In fact you can't even get Be at a non unbundled exchange AFAIK, and Sky only offer their pretty poor "Connect" service unless you are at a Sky enabled exchange.

[TooNice]

For the love of God, or whoever you care about, don't go TalkTalk LLU. 18 months contract, and I had exactly what you experienced, and worse (frequent drops, massive slowdown for 5 weeks - improved but not fixed now). With O2 in the same flat I've had zero drops in the last 2.5 weeks.

By all mean, check that your microfilter is still working (it was the main cause of a connection problem I had in my other flat, the line was noisy and connection would drop whenever I receive a call), and yes, there could be other underlying cause too.

But there is no doubt in my mind that TTalk is a big pile of garbage, to be undeservedly polite. It's not 'getting what you pay for', but utter false economy. I'll be staying away from anyone they've acquired too from now on.

[ajones]

Originally Posted by Lee @ SCAN

I'd really recommend that you jump ship to a reputable ISP.

Fair enough you would need to pay a bit more for the web connection from other suppliers, but at the end of the day you'd get better speeds and a connection thats not contented to hell and back.

All these cheap ISPS are the same. They reel all their customers in with the offering of a cheap broadband connection and phone and expect them to hardly use the connection apart from the odd bit of browsing and emailing. As you can imagine, if a load of their customers are online using technology like iplayer, this affects others as connections are usually under a 50:1 contention ratio.

But what do you consider a reputable ISP? I get work to pay for a business connection, and am currently fighting with tech support over the speed of my connection. It's improved a lot recently, and I'm now seeing 1.1 Mbps (which compared to 210kbps is a HUGE improvement), but this is on BT ADSL2... and whilst I'm not getting packet loss, for £2k pa I expect more.

[Lee @ SCAN]

www.thinkbroadband.com

Check all the reports and forums for a feel of who to go for

The flavour of the month at the moment appears to be O2/Be (same company lol) but I'd expect these soon to experience issues with contention if people keep signing up at the speed they are.

[spiral out]

O2 broadband are only good if your exchange is LLU enabled, O2 access is awful. I was O2 LLU and already miss it (moved house) I have just moved to plusnet and so far not impressed with the evenings as they are having issues with there network, but i believe they are working on this so will give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

There seem to be a handful of decent ISPs these days. Zen, IDnet and newnet spring to mind.