Views on Plusnet please

patman99

Not a very good experience here I'm afraid.
I used to be a Demon BB customer and paid for an 8Mb service. I got an average of 7.6Mb (I have a 'Samknows' box connected as part of a long-term survey of real BB speeds and this is the ave. speed measured by the box). I had no issues with bufferng (even with my son watching catch-up TV at the same time).

In 2013, I switched to Sky (unlike Demon, they offered a phone and BB package) who promised me I'd get 16Mb/sec. My average with Sky was actually 22Mb/sec.

This year, I switched to Plusnet as they did free calls to 0845 & 0870 24/7 unlike Sky.
Plusnet promised at least 16Mb/sec like Sky, but in reality, I am averaging 10Mb/sec and suffer a lot of buffering on catch-upTV like Iplayer and Demand5 (especially from early afternoon through to aroun 22:00 hrs). I'm connected to a major exchange less than 500 line metres away.
My son has moved to his own place and has taken Plusnet. He is on a small rural exchange 1.2 line miles from his house, gets 7.5Mb/sec and has no buffering issues.

When I looked at his IP address via 'whatsmyip' it turns out he is connected to a totally different server to me (the site shows point of connection), so it appears to be pot luck as to wether or not you will get a good reliable connection, or one that suffers issues when under load.

brewerdave

@patman99 - you were attached to Sky's own equipment when with them. Now you are on BT Wholesale kit with PN - Probable that your exchange is suffering from congestion issues, the times you suffer from the problems support that.
As to which PN gateway you are attached to -you can do a "soft" disconnect on your router -leave it for 20 minutes or so, reconnect and you will find that your IP address has most probably changed and you are connecting thru a new gateway - if the problems still occur then its likely that local congestion is the issue.