SSE broadband feedback

Dominic123

GarbageGuy - thanks for the steer, but the 'Netintelligence_quickstartguide' says "Netintelligence detects the names of Windows users on your machine. For each Windows user, there will be a corresponding Netintelligence user. Up to six users can be ‘active’ at any one time.
There are as you say lots of filter options - but only for the that Windows machine.
Controls on that machine do not have any affect on other LAN / wireless devices.

One PC with people logging on and off individually is like gathering around the Radiogram to hear the news. It is an unrealistic and outdated concept in a home context.
Of course it's more normal in a school or at work.

A secondhand Android phone or a Kindle Fire now costs under £50. Things have changed.

Please tell me I'm missing something but if you search the Netintelligence_quickstartguide the words Google, Android, Mac, iPad or OSX do not appear once.

Ironically Netintelligence call their Gateway Filter (which is perhaps what SSE should be offering) 'traditional' - when their Windows application is what's old-fashioned.

nomaddjs

nomaddjs wrote: »

Ordered fibre with SSE on the 16th of September after it miraculously appeared both on their website and on openreach that they were accepting orders. After waiting for 2 weeks with the ridiculous cooling off period, I was told they'd be in touch for an appointment with Openreach engineer. No contact. Phoned them on 5th of October to check what's happening, told that an order didn't come through properly so an Engineer will come round between 19th and 21st of October again they should confirm. Phoned today 13th of October told again that the order was put in the database but wasn't put through to Openreach an engineer should be out on 20th-22nd of October. Then they phone me back saying they thought I ordered ADSL, for fibre the wait will be 27th-29th of October. Then a few hours later they phone back and tell me that actually my exchange is full and it's not accepting orders. Nearly one month waiting only to be told this now. Raised a complaint with them, somebody will supposedly phone me on the 21st of October when BT/Openreach are supposed to release more capacity on the exchange. But given the poor communication thus far, I won't hold my breath. They are saying I will now need to reorder the fibre again, of course the half price offer is no longer available. Utterly and utterly ridiculous. At a loss really as what to do. :mad:

Fibre eventually connected on 28th of October. It was ordered on the 15th of September. The openreach engineer said it was purely down to luck that somebody cancelled their fibre that I was able to connect as all 200 slots are taken up in my cabinet and BT can't expand as it's built into a wall. Ridiculous right?

SSE offered me £20 for inconvenience and 'promised' to log my concerns, although that seems highly unlikely given that they closed my case.

In terms of speeds I am easily getting in a range of 36-37 mb (I am on superfast), the upload speeds fluctuate between 7 and 8.5 mb.

Oddly however, whenever I try to stream a video, the speedtest still shows the 36-37mb but the video loads up at crawl speed which makes me wonder if they are deliberately slowing traffic when playing video in flash players. Not sure what to do, as bar youtube (where I don't use flash anyway) all video playback is terribly slow.

Have only tested out one torrent file and that was at 10kbps, but not sure if it is down to traffic management or lack of seeders.

Can't even begin to describe what a mess their online billing/account system is. It says bill not available, next bill due between 3rd and 26th of December. So naturally can't check if they credited anything to my account either. Have same issues with their electricity and gas accounts.

GarbageGuy

nomaddjs go to testmynet and do a combination test to see what actual download/upload speed you are getting. when i first connected I couldnt watch 720 or 1080p youtube vids, after a phone call, they must have done something as a few days later it was ok.
today Im getting 26mb on torrents, its usually about 1-2 mb at most!!
Ring the number in my last post to complain to the BB faults team.

I got a call yesterday from Manager Mike at BB Faults, he says I can now leave my contract free of charge if I wish due to low speeds I was getting.

GarbageGuy

Dominic123. I presume you have several users on several pc's? and your worried they are gonna watch !!!!!!? They are gonna find out about it sooner or later But if your very worried, Netinteligence can be installed on all the pc's and just go to "Managed Internet" and block adult content, ...dont save/remember the password, so no one can log in and change the settings Also the router can be set to block internet access after certain times at night, that may help,if they are on wifi on android or tablet. there are also several products that you can buy that will block internet sites for you, some may be free.

Dominic123

GrabageGuy I know you're teasing but it's not prudish for parents to want to keep young children away from hardcore !!!!!! and graphic violence..
My post was just to alert everybody out there that if they have Windows PCs which are nerdily logged in and out of, SSE's advertised safety features are clunky.
For the rest of us, they are plain old useless.
If you're all grown ups – who cares, and other than this gripe, the SSE switch, installation and speed were/are fine.
And of course if a savvy teenager is able to install new software, he/she can usually circumvent the restrictions using dark web browsers and the like.
With BT-style filters in place, you still get porny Google search result images, even if you can't click through.
Google SafeSearch may help, but you have to set it and lock it on every browser, for every user, on every machine. Google is not the only search engine, we must remember.
The Parental Controls features in Mac OSX are all log-in, log-out based too.
So nothing's watertight.

dpc1979

But there is plenty of ways to block unwanted websites via software/app on the pc device or by your router.

You can edit google settings to filter out adult content for search's and youtube.

Like i have said before SSE is cheap all round. If you want a premium product then you have to pay a premium price.

Ive switched back to BT and havent looked back, although I am waiting nervously for my SSE bill to arrive as the online bill says £278 owed and i was promised this would be credited off when the bill is processed by SSE and everything SSE do or promise has never happended.

EVERYBODY SSE are cowboys they make talktalk look like John Lewis. STAY AWAY.

YOU have been warned by many on here, its not just my opinion, Save yourself the stress and hassle.

weejas

Very similar experience here with SSE. To be fair to their tech support team I don't think Daisy are telling them the whole story. My throttling was coming on every morning around about 9am until 12am. You could set your watch by it. General web browsing wasn't too bad however Youtube, Gmail, any downloading and streaming of the Slingbox was dire. Anyway without any real fight SSE have released me from my contract. So back to BT it is for me. Such a shame as SSE was a great price.

As for parental controls, I used Opendns which protects everything using your router for access (I had to use telnet to change the DNS settings in the supplied technicolor router)

malakoffee

It appears to be the SSE Fibre, Superfast, BB that has been causing disappointments, as reported in this topic.

Problems with speeds and delays with implementation.

Without a forensic re-reading of the whole topic it is difficult to distinguish who has which service.

Do the standard broadband user have fewer problems ?

Why might there be a ( significant ) difference in problems encountered between the BB types ?

GarbageGuy

I removed Netintelligence from my pc and my speeds went up...hhmmm ?

"Do the standard broadband user have fewer problems ?" Dont know

Dark web ?? I know years ago I played with virus and used to be able to scan for affected Ip's and mess with their pc, like writing on their desktop and opening their cd drawer, lol....But I never saw a Dark web.

Dominic123

Having complained about the lack of effective parental controls in the SSE package, I just thought I would mention that as a solution I've now bought my Netgear R6250 router from John Lewis, and set it up.
It took quite a few attempts, mind you, just because SSE failed to make things helpful and clear.

To access a Netgear router it's just 'admin' and 'password'
– but to get the internet connection to wake up…. what was I to enter?
on the Net Genie Internet Setup Page, I – in the end – used the supplied Internet Security Suite username '1234567'-southern@ssebb.co.uk - and the supplied Internet Security Suite password.

All this probably applies similarly to other third-party routers.

I've spare you the detail, but I have now set up OpenDNS filters with no trouble at all, using the NetGear Genie software. They seem to work.
Fair play to the guy in #308 above who used Telnet to do this, but SSE can't expect customers to be adept at command-line instructions.
Naughty Google search image results still get through, but that's the same with BT/other ISPs. You can't click through from them.

Meanwhile, the Netgear's wireless range seems to be noticeably further than the supplied Technicolor modem, which is a bonus.

In terms of contributing to the SSE vs BT debate, I feel I'm back to the BT level of control but I have had to spend an extra £80 and much time getting to this point.

My SSE switch was easy, whereas BT broadband installation in 2010 was a six-week saga. There's a lot of luck with all this. Today's storm damage will have diverted Openreach engineers from SSE installations.

I just think that SSE could improve certain things so easily. Better instructions and an Open-DNS-friendly router option would save thousands of call centre enquiries, cut call waiting times, and mean that they are offering customers the level of parental control they can get elsewhere.

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One thing more and then I've wrung this dry.
When I mentioned the 'dark web' earlier ... for those that don't know and are trying their best to set up reasonable parental controls … the Tor browser bypasses all router/ISP filters. It was developed to protect oppressed dissidents but is also used by nasty people, horny teenagers and the generally paranoid. It's not an SSE-specific headache.