To BB or not to BB, that is the question?

isofa

If you want a top notch service, I'd recommend Zen, they aren't the cheapest, but you get a 5Gb allowance a month on their £17.99 package, the service and connection is the best I've experienced.

They also don't tie you into long contracts, just one-month, so you can cancel at any time without potentially paying off the remainder of a 12 month contract as with many "lesser" providers.

Once you move to broadband, you'll wonder how you ever survived on dialup!

Stompa

chunter wrote: »

I've been using a huge length of a telephone extension which is at least 20 metres long for the last 5 years and my broadband's absolutely fine.

Yep, me too.

Leopard

Frugal,

Don't cancel your Tesco dial-up account yet!

Getting the broadband installed will involve sending emails, so you'll need an Internet connection.

Even when your broadband's up and running it's always best to keep a dial-up facility as well, to deal with any problems or outages that occur.

You can organise that (now) by signing up for a 56K dial-up service that operates a PAYG system via an 0845 number so that it costs you nothing except when you use it.

Once that's working you could then cancel the subscription account with Tesco.

(It's best to use it briefly once a month, too: partly to check that it's still working and partly so that the ISP doesn't cancel it in the belief that it's no longer active.)

The immutable Law of Dr. Professor Sodt ensures that a broadband outage will always occur at the most inconvenient moment possible - for example, when you need to do some online banking - so it's essential to keep a PAYG dial-up facility as well.

PlusNet is a good ISP with a decent Customer Support system based in Sheffield and it's owned (without interference) by BT, so it it has huge resources to call upon when necessary and it won't get bought up and then wrecked by Carphone Warehouse or anyone else.

Zen is the best, if the difference in price is acceptable. Bear in mind that, surprising though it may seem when you're used to dial-up, 5 GB a month may not prove to be enough once you get into all the things that suddenly become possible when you upgrade to broadband.

Good luck with it: you'll enjoy broadband.



Chunter & Stompa

Your broadband may work "fine" if you run it through a telephone extension lead but, even if the lead is shielded, the ADSL signal will degrade and it won't be so fast. You need to get the signal to the modem through as short a lead as possible.

There are people here running computers on 512MB of RAM who say it's "fine" and don't know what they're missing.

That's why Penrhyn's advice is good.

Woby_Tide

at less than a mile from teh exchange the likelihood is that his speed won't be too bad, as long as teh router is decent enough it's not going to make that much of a difference. I run through 15m of the cheap extension cable(I think I bought it in my first flat about 9 years ago). Without it in place I sync at 17.5Mb, when I put it through the extension to the next room, I sync at 17.2Mb. Unless the OP really struggles with speed once installed in pure MSE terms the extension cable is the best option

Stompa

Leopard wrote: »

Your broadband may work "fine" if you run it through a telephone extension lead but, even if the lead is shielded, the ADSL signal will degrade and it won't be so fast. You need to get the signal to the modem through as short a lead as possible.

FWIW I've tried both with & without the extension and seen no discernable difference.

penrhyn

Its all a question of best practice, if you look at your router stats, downstream speed, noise margin and attenuation, and compare the figures at the end of a long extention and when connected at the master socket, or master test socket then there will be a difference.
This is largely irrelevant if you are only getting a 2mbps service , but if you are attempting to get 8mbps + then the degradation caused by internal wiring becomes more important.
Of course your ultimate speed will be limited by the attenuation of the line between you and the exchange, and how noisy it is.

Conor_3

Leopard wrote: »

Penrhyn is absolutely right.

Definitely do not attach a broadband router to the end of an extension lead: broadband is very sensitive to electronic interference and will degrade if you run it through a conventional extension lead.

What utter tosh. Mine is running off a 50ft one and is running fine, having no problems syncing and downloading at 8 meg.

BritBrat

Best to run an proper extension to near where the PC will be.

Having said that the last 5m here is running on an extension cable and has done for many years with no problems.

I use Zen internet expensive but one of the best.

Leopard

What on earth is the difference in convenience between siting the modem close to the socket and running a long Cat5 or Cat6 Ethernet lead to the computer, compared to running a long telephone extension lead to a modem sited close to the computer and then connecting them by using a short Ethernet lead?

The former, as Penrhyn points out, is a far better solution technically.

Ask yourself, how often do you ever actually want to look at your broadband modem?

Woby_Tide

a telephone extension cable is often a fraction of the size of cat5 cable and thus easier to conceal/route under skirting boards/door frames. Technically the former is better, but on a cost and potentially for aesthetic reasons the latter is better.

Also factor in that not all houses have power sockets located right next to phone socket, nor maybe somewhere to locate the router, and siting a router in the middle of houses gives better all round signal. Without knowing all the details it's impossible to say which is the better solution. One is technically better, one is MSE better. Thats for the OP to decide which suits their situation not us.