BT Infinity - anyone got it yet?

[CaptainCrash]

There's a difference between saying someone is sanctimonious and using the phrase 'sanctimonious git' in that context, especially in text as it's difficult to interpret peoples' intentions. I probably interpreted it that way because I am being somewhat sanctimonious and I don't necessarily see that as a negative description, again it depends on context. No hard feelings though?

Of course not. :hugs:

Perhaps if I could explain myself a bit more temperately (it was late last night when I posted), I simply started off with asking for useful info as to whether specific protocols, which are useful to *me*, are a viable option with Infinity, and I got a bit annoyed when the usual assumption of P2P=pirate started getting tossed around.

[watercooled]

And it is annoying that neutral protocols are made bad thus harming people who use them legitimately.

[yamangman]

...super seeded...

Classic

[Spud1]

Classic

touche =)

I hang my head in shame..I blame chrome's spell check for not recognising superceded

[yamangman]

touche =)

I hang my head in shame..I blame chrome's spell check for not recognising superceded

Oh I thought it was a pun. You coulda got away with that.

[Spud1]

I think i'll just slink away and pretend that never happened..sadly not intended but I wish it was

[Mighty God]

is what i get with O2 atm and its plenty for me. Whilst the extra upload would go down quite well, I dont think its available in the maidenhead area

Are you on ADSL, as that's still a decent download speed if you are and I wouldn't mind your upload speed either; I do a lot of uploading to different servers for website maintenance etc. and believe me with my speeds it's painfull!!

BT Infinity isn't available in my area yet and don't expect it to be for some time so for now I have to do with these speeds:

[GringoFrenzy]

So....you guys have had a little while to settle into using Infinity and find out what you love and hate about it.

Is there any buyer's remorse?

I'm very interested, as we only get 5mbps down on a good day, and it's annoying having to wait for iPlayer to buffer if my flatmates are patching WoW, etc.

P2P throttling is a non-issue for me, and in fact it's a bit of a bonus as I don't do it but I suspect my flatmates probably do. Seeing as my name is on the bill, I'd rather they didn't do it, but beyond asking them nicely (which won't stop them, let's be honest) I can't do anything about it, so if throttling puts them off I'm all for it!
(And before you say anything, they definitely don't have any legitimate uses for it).

[Jay]

Firewall

block P2P = Yes

If my name was on the bill thats what would happen.

[Bluecube]

I'm still using it and have only one issue now - you really need to leave the vDSL modem and router on to maintain a good connection. If you turn them off as I would normally do when they're not in use then the connection can be volatile and take a few hours to settle down. No idea what causes this but leaving the aforesaid objects on solves it!

Speed is good too. It appears that I was one of the random Infinity customers that had their connections throttled to 2Mbit after 6pm so I was well miffed when I couldn't stream iPlayer HD. This now works so I'm a happy chappy. For a single user I would go as far to say as Infinity is an overkill. For households that have several users online then it comes into its own.

P2P throttling may well be an issue for you as it only happens at peak times which I reckon to be 3pm to 12pm (rough guess) At other times it goes full whack as I've achieved 3Mbit downloads for some torrents. As Jay says, if it was my name on the bill and you have nothing to do with P2P then I'd be making sure it didn't happen.

One last thing is that BTs customer service is truly pants. They have no idea what you're talking about and just want you off the phone. When I had my connection issues, I phoned up and all they did was immediately say there was a problem with the router and sent out a reconditioned one. There wasn't a problem but I never got a chance to explain that to them!

[GringoFrenzy]

Hmm, yeah see.....it's the terrible customer services that puts me off. My girlfriend's family are on BT, and trying to get ANYTHING useful out of their support team when she had issues was an utter nightmare. Even finding the right number for their support department was a task in itself.
Amusingly enough, when I *did* eventually get through to a human representative (after initially being bounced around between inactive helpdesks by an automated system), I was told that I had come through to the wrong dept, and that they couldn't transfer me to the correct one because of some ongoing internal fault. They then gave me the correct number that I should have called.
....it was the same number I rang at the very beginning of the process.
That took around 30 mins, by which point the issue (which I maintain was at their end) resolved itself.

O2 customer services are oustanding by comparison. I know what I'm doing when it comes to this stuff, but I'd like the assurance that if something goes wrong at the ISP's end, there's someone with half a brain that I can relay info to and they'll fix it. I'm not confident I'll get that from BT.

With regards to the P2P stuff:

Annoyingly, blocking P2P isn't that simple. Firstly, the firewall on my router is pretty basic and doesn't have such a button. You can disable UPnP, but I'm a gamer, so this would be daft.

Secondly, BitTorrent has this nasty habit of jumping ports if it can't get a connection on others. This makes it bleeding hard to block at the transport layer, and my router doesn't 'do' layer 7 stuff.

[jordan427]

I think BT have scarred me for life...

[watercooled]

You don't need uPnP to game, I play on both PC and Xbox 360 without it - just forward the ports manually. For the 360 it's port 3074 UDP/TCP and 88 UDP only. The Xbox reports this as 'open' NAT and I have no problems connecting to anyone. I've not forwarded anything on PC but since PC games tend to be server based rather than P2P like the 360, it's normally not a problem.

[GringoFrenzy]

You don't need uPnP to game, I play on both PC and Xbox 360 without it - just forward the ports manually. For the 360 it's port 3074 UDP/TCP and 88 UDP only. The Xbox reports this as 'open' NAT and I have no problems connecting to anyone. I've not forwarded anything on PC but since PC games tend to be server based rather than P2P like the 360, it's normally not a problem.

Unfortunately I don't think it's that simple in my situation. We have 4 xboxes in our house, all connected to Live, so I can only forward the ports to one of them, which breaks things for the others. Also, no ability to place any of them in a DMZ.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought those ports you listed are only for the Live service? As-in, logging into the Live servers, browsing market place, and matchmaking? Aside from that the game can use whatever ports it likes, can't it? So just forwarding those would be pointless?

[watercooled]

Err, no I do exactly that and have no problems. But unfortunately uPnP is the only solution in your situation, after 3074 is used, random ports start getting used but since you have no way of knowing what they will be it's impossible to forward them.

[geezerone]

Plusnet are coming to the end of their trial for FTTC and those customers with plusnet can sign-up and pay what they are at the minute and not any added charges after the trial ends.