FTTC

David · Jul 20, 2012, 19:36:38

Quote from: MisterW on Jul 20, 2012, 18:45:04
Not Sheffield by any chance ?

Will you stop that singing and who drew that dog on the hill

David · Jul 20, 2012, 19:37:15

Quote from: MisterW on Jul 20, 2012, 18:45:04
Not Sheffield by any chance ?

I believe its very near there

David · Jul 20, 2012, 19:39:28

Im lost that pctech wont talk to me and what is the dark side ?

I have no idea

MisterW · Jul 20, 2012, 19:46:18

I'm sure he'll be along to explain.

IIRC He used to be with them and had lots of issues with the traffic management. If you use ptp or ftp extensively ( which I guess you don't! ) then you may see some slowdown during peak times. For general browsing, email, voip and vpn TBH I've never had any problems.

Shame I didn't know you were moving to them, you could have used me as a referrer and saved me another 50p/month

NB on a more pertinent note. If there isn't any sign of your router by Wed then give the CSC(Customer Service Centre) a call and check its been dispatched.
They( like most places these days) operate a 'just in time' system of despatching stuff and sometimes its 'not quite in time'
If you have problems then drop me a PM with your account name and I'll prod one of the Digital Care staff on the forums.

David · Jul 20, 2012, 20:07:07

Thats very kind of you thank you so much and if I had known would have used a referral ( I just liked the ad )

but seriously I dont do games or anything else and was unaware of any real issues with FTTC .

I will take you up on that very generous offer if the package isnt here by wednesday though

pctech · Jul 20, 2012, 20:23:43

I hope things have radically changed since I was with that Sheffield outfit.

I was doing normal stuff (I don't do torrents) and it would often slow to a crawl, while my line isn't the quickest and has had quite a bit of work done on it since then when I was using non traffic managed ISPs the performance was quite adequate.

Their support maintained my problems were due to my line and dismissed completely the idea their traffic management appliances were struggling or incorrectly classifying traffic despite the fact they used to post regularly about 'gold' classified packets being dropped (DNS lookup responses were supposedly classified as this and I was having trouble with them)

As an experiment I upgraded to their pro package which prioritised everything and the issues disappeared, by this time I was fed up with their lies and so requested a MAC and had to buy myself out of a contract.

I moved the phone line away too but it took 3 months of phone calls to speak to someone within the company who had the permissions to kill the billing for line rental I did not owe as the line had transferred elsewhere.

It taught me that you get what you pay for, that traffic management is bad and that dealing with smaller companies is best.

The only upside was their forum as, just like here there were a lot of good people though a few used to defend the company relentlessly just because they'd been invited into the offices for a cup of tea and a biscuit once a year and had had forum moderator status conferred on them.

YMMV of course as have others.

David · Jul 20, 2012, 20:30:54

Im on the Fibre plus or something and have read some good things about them and even had a friend in Yorkshire ask around and he has not heard any great moans so hope they have upped thier game I think they are leaders with which or somebody but I dont take a lot of notice of awards we will see

pctech · Jul 20, 2012, 20:39:40

I will say this is over three years ago so one would hope that they had improved but I am happy where I am so not tempted to move back to find out but as you asked I explained my own experience.

I would advise though that you register for their forums as they are used as an official support channel so you may sometimes get a quicker response from there than sitting on the phone and like I say there are a few interesting characters there too.

David · Jul 20, 2012, 20:45:50

Many thanks have registered and see from there what you mean

David · Jul 21, 2012, 22:18:43

Installing the actual service takes about 3-4 hours

Just taken that from my order perhaps its all that time in total and not in my home ?

Lance · Jul 21, 2012, 23:14:11

Nope, it's just a load of rubbish! It really doesn't take longer than 15-20 mins in the house and 10 mins beforehand at the cabinet.

David · Jul 22, 2012, 14:48:32

I hope you are right Lance

seems a long time jus to what looks to be fitting a modem and configuring that to the cabinet if thats the right expession from what I have read the router has to be confirured to the modem then it should in theory work but you know me thick as two short ones most of the time

Glenn · Jul 22, 2012, 14:58:22

From what I remember, it was along the lines of;

Phone call to say the internet would go off in a few minutes (doing some work at the cabinet)
10 mins later a knock on the door from the BT chappie
Decline a cuppa
Swap the faceplate
Fit the modem
Test the connection with his handheld tested
Connect the router and see if it connects
Off to the next job.

Steve · Jul 22, 2012, 15:04:52

I seem to recall it was about an hour from the first phone call telling me my phone would be interrupted to him finishing the job.

MisterW · Jul 22, 2012, 15:29:38

Yes, that sounds about right Glenn. I've no idea why it says 3-4 hours on your order David, but it says similar on the Faq's on the website, maybe that's just the maximum it could take ( assuming the engineer drinks his tea very slowly

). A colleague of mine just had FTTC installed with your new ISP and it went just like Glenn said.

As to the router, no configuration should be needed, its preconfigured with a special username/password which connects to the TR-069 server at the ISP, retrieves your account information from the serial no of the router, and then configures it automatically with your account details. You just need to connect it to the modem with the ethernet cable supplied and power it on, its Plug & Play ( or should that be Plug & Pray

)

Steve · Jul 22, 2012, 16:37:16

I think the time duration on the ISP's FAQ may well be related to the fact that you can only book a sometime AM or sometime PM appointment with an engineer.

David · Jul 22, 2012, 18:23:41

Sounds fairly straight forward to me roll on Friday in some ways but I will say a big thank you to all the people at IDNet for what has been first rate service and not needing anything other than reminders of my password every once in a while which if course is me all over but it does speak volumes how good the service is and has been for me for a long time now

Ardua · Jul 22, 2012, 18:26:59

Only recently, I was told by the technical department of another Which-recommended ISP that the data extension cable had to be used between the FTTC modem and router. When I drew their attention to the BT Infinity data extension cable video they went away to think about it.

To be fair to David's chosen ISP, they are obviously allowing for all contingencies.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2012/06/bees-attack-the-sheffield-office-of-broadband-isp-plusnet-uk.html

David · Jul 22, 2012, 18:56:27

They did mention an extension lead but I didnt ask for it !!! oops maybe ?

Steve · Jul 22, 2012, 19:03:31

If your router and modem can be placed near the master socket you will not need the additional lead. The Master socket is the only socket you can use for FTTC I believe, you might want to think about power supply availability near the master socket.

David · Jul 22, 2012, 19:47:20

Thanks Steve the master socket is inches away from the router so thats good and the power supply is a foot away so no issues there

David · Jul 27, 2012, 09:18:30

Install was quick and smooth Bt a day early but no big deal turned on this morning and its all up and running and god its fast

Thanks all for your help this proved to be childs play

I can use my wireless and Wi Fi now

pctech · Jul 27, 2012, 13:20:29

Isn't the extension cable just a bit of Cat5?

David · Jul 27, 2012, 14:09:35

Seems so I am going to mount these on the wall they got very hot stacked on top of one another but cooled down once seperated

Steve · Jul 27, 2012, 14:17:55

The modem needs to be on the wall David, a couple of protruding screws heads will do it. If you need a template it's easy enough to fashion , likewise I did the same with my router , end result is quite tidy imo.

In fact I'm surprised the modem is not fixed to the wall, my engineer insisted upon it.