topic Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer in Plusnet Feedback

Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:51:16 GMT

Hi All
Am joining Plusnet after being right royally shafted by Tiscali/TalkTalk. For years I've been on a 512k unlimited usage connection with Tiscali, quite happy with that as I live 4.5 miles from the exchange and have a signal loss of about 65Db. They did try to push 1Mb down at first but connection was very flakey, so capped the speed at 512k.
Ah now, TalkTalk have taken over and changed my package to 8Mb and upped the price from £9.99 per month to £19.99, I wouldn't mind if I could get more speed but I know the line won't physically take it.
Rang to complain about the change and asked to be put back to my old 512k-£9.99 a month deal, sorry can't do that the £19.99 is for the upgrade. I tried to explain that it was of no use to me whatsoever, and was simply told that's it (like it or lump it), the only deal they do now.
Asked for a MAC had it within the hour signed up to Plusnet straight away, hope the change goes smoothly.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

Strat — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:34:53 GMT

Welcome to the forum and PN farnorth.
Kitz speed calc suggests you could get 1632kbps but only time will tell.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:52:47 GMT

If I could get that it would be amazing, for me that is, I have never had anywhere near that speed. Even though Tiscali put me up to the 8Mb package my router only reports 800 to 890Kb connection, dropping to 730 or so.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:59:44 GMT

Just had a look at the Kitz thing. Put in the line attenuation 63.5dB and it comes up with a line length of 4.6 k. My line is at least 4.5 MILES long cos' that's how far we are from the exchange and the line doesn't go straight it loops all over the place. So maybe those speeds are a pipe dream for me.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:59:39 GMT

Hi again
Just had an email that's confused me a little.
We are pleased to announce that we have ordered the broadband line
activation for your account. Overall, this process normally takes
5 to 10 working days. We will send an email to your PlusNet email
address once your line is activated
and
Please note: you will not be able to connect with us until you
receive our confirmation email, even if the hardware appears to be
active.
If my current connection to Tiscali is terminated when I go over to Plusnet, how will I get the email to say my line is now activated?

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

paulpicks21 — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:09:54 GMT

I got a text message from plusnet as well as an email to say mine had been activated.
So assuming you gave them a mobile number then I would expect you to get a text as well.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:27:45 GMT

Unfortunately mobiles don't work hereabouts, it has it's drawbacks living here. We can't get terrestrial tv have to pay for Sky or we wouldn't have tv.
dick:quote

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

Chris — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:32:28 GMT

If your connection from Tiscali ends, just try plugging the router we sent in. It should set itself up and you'll be able to connect once the line is active.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

scootie — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:41:04 GMT

this is what i get from a zyxel P-660HW-T1 v3 on 63db atten, my dg834g v4 syncs much lower even on the same NM. this zyxel seems to be fixed to a 6db NM where i have to fix the netgear's NM my self and that syncs at best 1500.
i perfer the netgear for setup options but this zyxel kicks butt on super long lines
noise margin downstream: 6 db
output power upstream: 12 db
attenuation downstream: 63 db
near-end interleaved channel bit rate: 1952 kbps (during day i can get upto 2200 but dosent tend to hold over night)

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:52:02 GMT

Quote from: Chris
If your connection from Tiscali ends, just try plugging the router we sent in. It should set itself up and you'll be able to connect once the line is active.

Got my own router. So basically when the Tiscali connection stops just put in Plusnet settings and I should be ok?
Many thanks for the quick reply, very refreshing!

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:37:17 GMT

Quote from: Asbo
this is what i get from a zyxel P-660HW-T1 v3 on 63db atten, my dg834g v4 syncs much lower even on the same NM. this zyxel seems to be fixed to a 6db NM where i have to fix the netgear's NM my self and that syncs at best 1500.
i perfer the netgear for setup options but this zyxel kicks butt on super long lines
noise margin downstream: 6 db
output power upstream: 12 db
attenuation downstream: 63 db
near-end interleaved channel bit rate: 1952 kbps (during day i can get upto 2200 but dosent tend to hold over night)

Netgear DG8345G V5
At the moment my router gives
Line attenuation 63.5 db
Noise margin 6.5 db
Connection speed 832 kbs downstream
No idea how you set the NM manually

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

Oldjim — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 19:32:19 GMT

I don't think you can with the v5

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:01:10 GMT

Anything else aside I don't think the v5 is as good as the earlier ones. My v3 never gave a moments trouble 'till a lightning strike nearby took it out, literally blew bits off the board. This has some weird little traits.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

shutter — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:51:02 GMT

Quote

If my current connection to Tiscali is terminated when I go over to Plusnet, how will I get the email to say my line is now activated?

I have a PAYG Dial Up account with "nippy internet", so that if my broadband goes down, or I am in a location that does not have wireless broadband connection,(e.g. hotel/guest house/rented holiday accomodation) I can still access the internet, albeit v e r y s l o w l y....!

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

scootie — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:52:13 GMT

your v5 seems to be all ready syncing with a 6db maybe 9db NM all ready. even when i force the v4 netgear to use 6db just like the post office suppiled zyxel seems to be doing auto, the netgear still syncs at least 500kbps less than the zyxel.
i was reading a article on routers tested on i think be connection's and zyxel's came out i think top for pushing the most sync out of a line, i will try and i find the article again
on the dg834g v4 i use the dgteam unoffical firmware as this enables the router to lose sync and resync with the self adjusted NM still, where routerstats and DMT tool dosent
http://dgteam.ilbello.com/
edit. was in fact able to matian the highest upstream sync with out losing to much downstream sync other annex m http://80.249.99.130/news/4144-how-fast-is-your-broadband-router.html

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

spraxyt — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:32:01 GMT

@farnorth
I suspect your line attenuation is probably far more than the 63.5dB reported by your router. I think that value was (at one time at least) regarded as the maximum value at which ADSL would work, with routers designed so they couldn't store or report a larger value. Kitz's calculator doesn't supply estimates beyond 67dB, since I believe she had no (or insufficient) results beyond that to check the answers were meaningful.
As she notes at the bottom of her calculator page the initial data source is from the graph on this Internode (Australian) page.
What results do you get if you put your phone number and postcode into another of Kitz's pages? Did Plusnet supply an estimate when you signed up?

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 08:21:44 GMT

Postcode etc give pretty much the same 512k maximum. Plusnet gave an estimate of 0.5Mb. Speed not really the issue, stability to me is more important. When the engineer set-up the broadband line in the first place he said if the house was about 100 yards farther down the the road I wouldn't get any broadband at all. Houses along the strath from us have to have the government subsidised satellite service, they pay 24.99 per month for 0.5Mb. For me it was down to Tiscali putting up the price by over 70%, and making me pay for something I know I won't get. By not giving me the choice to go back to what I had they lost a customer.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:28:49 GMT

Well that seemed to go fine. Line went down this morning about 10am, we went out about then, for a couple of hours, came back thought I'd try the settings for PN. Connected straight away, no problemo!!
Emails and everything working fine, connection reported as 896kbs, nr as 6.5dB.
Great stuff.

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

farnorth — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:46:19 GMT

Having said the above, I have just used the speedtest.net checker and it reports a download speed of 0.25mb and an upload speed of 0.17mb, ping was 88ms. ?

Re: Hello from soon to be ex Tiscali customer

Oldjim — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:03:34 GMT

Better post the stats from the router - noise margin, attenuation and speeds (I have a horrible feeling what the result will be :-X)