Your WBC experience

Rik · Jul 19, 2009, 12:41:22

Subtly different from other threads, this is about whether WBC has lived up to your expectations, fallen short or surpassed them. No "I'm having problems..." posts, please, this is just about gathering people's feelings about WBC.

For myself, the migration was fairly painless and not too dissimilar to a new Max line. Downstream speeds have settled where I would have expected, upstream are not quite as good as I can achieve on a premium Max product. The one thing I have noticed is that the advertised lower latency simply has not shown up for me. Stability is not as good as Max, and that is disappointing.

Overall, I'd be reluctant to recommend anyone to move to WBC if they have my kind of line stats, I feel it's more a product for people with higher speed Max connections, and in that respect, nothing has changed - I started off believing just that.

David · Jul 19, 2009, 12:54:45

My changeover went smooth enough but didnt see any great increase in downstream but did in Upstream .If asked I would advise anyone to give it time before switching I would suggest even a year from now I am sure it will live up to expectations but give it time perhaps my expectations were too high

Rik · Jul 19, 2009, 12:55:38

Managing expectations will be critical with WBC. Thanks, David.

bobleslie · Jul 19, 2009, 14:43:53

Fallen well, well short, considering I have a top quality ADSL line.

zappaDPJ · Jul 19, 2009, 14:47:58

I'd compare WBC to that nasty little TV dinner that's been kicked around the floor for a week in Tesco before finding itself being sold off at half price on the damaged goods shelf

Its rate adaptive nature coupled with BT's antique infrastructure make it an unsuitable product for ISPs that are not on LLU'd equipment. In short I'd describe it as a lottery.

Sorry, but you did ask

Rik · Jul 19, 2009, 15:49:22

Thanks, guys, that's the sort of thing I'm looking for. No amount of stats will convey the 'feeling' of WBC to someone considering the move. Personal reactions are exactly what I want.

Simon · Jul 19, 2009, 16:19:37

Having seen more negative comments than good ones, although, that was inevitable, as people more often complain than praise, I am pleased I didn't upgrade, and have no intention of doing so at this time.

Bill · Jul 19, 2009, 16:54:04

Ignoring BT's knack of not supplying the requested extra capacity when it went live...

Sync is lower than I'd hoped/expected (~12,500 vs 15-16,000), and what I assume is the error rate on the line means that I'm on interleaved rather than fast and target SNR is 9db rather than the 6db I was expecting.

THBS, the transition was smooth and now that a few resyncs seem to have settled on values that the exchange kit is happy with, it's a good stable connection with an 11,000Kbps profile and a regular >10Mbps download speed (tbb speedtester) with very few indications of congestion anywhere.

Interleaved means pings are up around 20msec (a lot better than I expected) but as I don't do gaming, who cares?

And of course, a much bigger d/l allowance. Spoilt a little by the fact that I can't find how to do scheduled downloads from the iTunes store so there's been a few late nights

.

Overall- glad I switched.

Rik · Jul 19, 2009, 16:55:10

Thanks, Bill.

D-Dan · Jul 19, 2009, 17:23:22

My problems have been well covered elsewhere, but I wouldn't recommend upgrading. I had a rock solid 7.5 Mb connection with max, that deteriorated over the two weeks following the switch to WBC.

After a lot of work by support, they got me back to where I was on Max, and in fact my sync has improved to 8.5Mb (though as yet no corresponding increase in profile). However, I've been looking at SNR of between 3.0 and 4.5 for the last two days, and fear that the deterioration will start again soon enough.

The infrastructure is simply not capable of supporting WBC.

Steve

Rik · Jul 19, 2009, 17:24:32

Thanks, Steve.

rireed3 · Jul 20, 2009, 14:23:04

The switchover was diabolical, if you happened to be on the wrong hardware or firmware. Neither BT nor the router makers did anything at all to help this.

I can only guess at the problems BT have put IDNet tech staff through, but these have affected us also.

I now have more than double the connection rate of Max and about 20% more throughput. Congestion is as bad as before in relative terms, although ping times are much lower. Good for gamers, I guess.

To clarify my remarks about throughput and congestion, on Max I got between 2M and 5M throughput, with outlying results at both ends of the scale. On WBC, I now get between 3M and 11M with a 17000 profile. This has been slowly declining from original results between 10M and 16M.

I have just stopped my router for a few minutes and re-started it. The (relatively) slow throughput and big throughput swings are still there.

I'm not actually suffering, but page-loading delays have become noticeable and annoying, not to mention slow/halting file downloads.

So much for WBC.

Richard

4Way · Jul 20, 2009, 22:39:03

My switch-over was quite painless but I've seen little improvement in speed (6200 rather than 6000) and the experience is well short of my expectations. If I had the choice again I wouldn't bother. Maybe a year will sort out some of the problems that other people are having but I can't see it improving my situation.

Bill · Jul 20, 2009, 22:43:31

Come on, I can't be the only one who's happy to have switched?

Sebby · Jul 21, 2009, 00:25:51

Is that an echo?

drummer · Jul 21, 2009, 03:23:46

Quote from: Bill on Jul 20, 2009, 22:43:31
Come on, I can't be the only one who's happy to have switched?

You're not.

My migration to WBC was seamless, halved latency, doubled up/down sync and [almost] doubled my BT profile.

I'm also paying less and have an extra 10Gb download allowance to play with.

Stability isn't what it used to be so I'm deliberately being a bit panglossian in assuming WBC will eventually stabilise once it becomes the norm.

I'll probably come to regret that last sentence...

Noreen · Jul 21, 2009, 11:00:03

Quote from: Bill on Jul 20, 2009, 22:43:31
Come on, I can't be the only one who's happy to have switched?

You aren't.

jameshurrell · Jul 22, 2009, 13:06:33

I'm happy. Switch over was plain and simple for me, although I required a new router as I was using a 6 year old device that did not support ADSL2+. I replaced it with a Netgear DG834 v4. This has been excellent on the line, with sync averaging at around 15500 (lowest I've had was 14400 and highest 16800) with 27db attenuation downstream. Throughput is greatly increased also, however it is only really noticeable when downloading large files.

The best bit in my opnion is the increased upload speed. I'm syncing at around 1200 and this is a vast improvement on the 384 I had on ADSL Max. Great for video/voice.

netn00b · Jul 22, 2009, 13:34:43

i'm tempted to change - even before my exhange is actually enabled simply to get an increased monthly allownace from idnet for exactly the same money as i pay now.

if i got any sort of speed improvement on my cr4p current speed i'd be happy...esp if latency reduced as i do online gaming.

but some of the bad stories hear make me think 'if it aint broke, don't fix it'.

maybe by the time my exchange is enabled......30th Sept 09....the process might be a little smoother.

is the infrastructure really not capable of supporting wbc ?

zappaDPJ · Jul 22, 2009, 14:02:25

It is for a lot of people but not for others. It's a lottery and the only way you'll find out unfortunately is to try it. I suspect there are more success stories than failures but the ratio between the two is very hard to gauge as those that shout loudest will alway be those that are unhappy with the service.

One thing that is apparent is that latency is better on WBC so if you play online games it's probably worth taking the gamble.

Rik · Jul 22, 2009, 15:02:07

OTOH, for me, latency has been identical between WBC and Max, Zap, so even that's a lottery.

D-Dan · Jul 22, 2009, 15:04:49

I'll add that there do seem to be different stability criteria. Despite my earlier woes with WBC, I've had a rock solid connection faster than my line should be able to handle, and with an SNR that peaks at 3.5 (early in the morning) and has dropped as low as 2 in the evening without losing sync.

Or maybe I'm just being incredibly lucky.

Steve

Rik · Jul 22, 2009, 15:08:19

Whereas I'm seeing re-syncs from a 9db NM, Steve. I think you're right, and I suspect the differences come down to the MSANs.

zappaDPJ · Jul 22, 2009, 15:08:42

Quote from: D-Dan on Jul 22, 2009, 15:04:49

Or maybe I'm just being incredibly lucky.

Steve

Somebody has to be Steve, that's the nature of a lottery

Rik · Jul 22, 2009, 17:59:45

It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that, if you make the move to WBC, you cannot go back to a 'real' Max product, BT are ripping out the DSLAMs as fast as they can go. Instead, you will be put on a WBC service which is profiled to look like a Max product.