we need these thing

we need these on VM, BT and TT lines to gather independant data before and if poss during the phorm / webwise trials (if we are lucky enough that a user invited into the trial has a box) to confirm any impact on browsing speeds

about time the claims of UPTO 8mbit when the average is 2-3mbit unless you are on a VM fibre line

Count Me In!

We all know ISPs lie, and it'll be nice to have some independent proof of this as opposed to the current situation of nothing but anecdotal evidence, which, as every marketing drone knows "doesn't reflect the excellent service that ShitCo delivers to its thousands of satisfied customers.."

It's a start

But it's really sad that it's a private individual - doing this the government, which ever dept it is, is not willing to open the can of worms that is the pitiful state of the broadband network in the UK.

I read today from a post on DigitalSpy that VirginMedia, the Phorm bedhoppers, are trialling a new type of traffic management that limits, which hit new heights in complexity and opacity...

http://www.trustedreviews.com/networking/news/2008/04/21/Virgin-Trials-Complex-Traffic-Management/p1

for the details. I think from this it's painfully clear that the much vaunted Telewest/NTL/VM fibre network has more than hit it's capacity, and there is no room on the net to complete the 10Mb upgrades (Edinburgh, where I live, is still classed as TBC for the upgrades, and even though I've downgraded to 4Mb, I still don't even get that), let alone roll out the 50Mb service that they are trialling.

What the heck is the point of willy-waving upgrades if you then shape/traffic manage/whatever doublespeak you want your customers to a lower bandwidth than they had previously? Obviously, they need a marketing line to entice customers - put the weasel words "up to" into the adverts to clear the trades description act, and even if your 10Mb connection has problems getting above 300kb, you're in the clear.

Let's hope that hard stats (isn't that a tautology?) from Samknows start a ball rolling - but hell - the government has ignored the consumers, it has ignored the Trading Standards, and it has ignored the consumer council, so I doubt that there will be much new from this initiative, however laudable it is.

I will be interested in the results

My Onetel "unlimited" package, now it's owned by Talk Talk is appalling. What used to be a superb service is little better than my old 38.8 modem.

Evenings & weekends forget it.

They are also packet shaping, the latest Ubuntu ISO, downloaded using bittorrent & despite there being thousands of seeds, took almost 2½ days. Speed never went over 20K. Bastards.

Can anyone suggest a decent ISP? Proper speeds, no packet shaping, no Phorm, static IP & a reasonable "fair use" policy.

Mine still has "Phuck orft Phorm" in Rhinestones :-)

Show us the source!

You can't, because the tests have to be secret? (They're using a modified Linksys router running on Linux.) Oh, very well. It wouldn't do to spoil your fun, I suppose, but do make sure you release the sources / describe the tools and methodology when the tests are over. I don't want to connect completely foreign hardware doing potentially strange stuff on my network, thanks. My own hand-built Linux router is already quite capable of doing all the monitoring in the world, and also keeps my network up. Unfortunately, though, the router also provides services from/to the net directly through the DSL modem inside, so testing on my network with this trick would never work. Pity! But I await the results anyway. They could be interesting.

Cheers,

Sabahattin

its a sad state of affairs

its a bit sad

a.) that we have to resort to this

b.) some (to me) previously unknown web site is doing it and not ofcom or trading standards.

I hope this routes out all the bad isps whic adversise unlimited boardband at 8 mbps yet dont let you download more then a couple of gig a month between 4 pm and midnight (some one in sheffield might know who you are). I would be up for this to clean out the market my only question is will this go far enough?

@ Neil Greatorex

Try Zen or Demon both are good (but not cheep).

Broadband shaken, not stirred

Decent ISP? I use the one with 3 letters beginning with the last of the alphabet.

Excellent - and i guess there are a few more offering good 'pure' broadband and can be trusted to contine unless they get snapped up by one of the majors.

And that's the problem. The good guys are small, expensive and no advertising budget. Even if you are prepred to pay that five/ten pounds a month for a decent service - how do find the good guys except by personal recommendation?

I wish they would band together into a trade group (after all their real competitive market is not with each other but with dissatisfied customers from the majors). A few well timed press releases using SamKnows figures could do wonders.

"Would you like your broadband traffic shaped or pure sir?" Lets give people a real choice.

You get what you pay for!

It is very true! You get what you pay for and cheapskates can't expect to get the same service as someone who pays significantly extra to get broadband for one of the better providers. Cheapskates of the world should shut the f*ck up! Dig into your pockets and pay for a proper broadband connection fom a proper provider.

Numpties of the world unite and realise you've bought into the marketing spin of the big boys and you need to pay more to move to a good provider.

Top tips for better broadband:

Avoid all the big boys who advertise on TV.

Avoid all the special offers that give you broadband for next to nothing.

Avoid all the deals that include broadband along with other services.

Be willing to pay £20 - £40 per month for a good quality ISP that specialises in ADSL broadband.

Chose a provider that has monthly contracts so you stay with them because you want to, not because you've signed their 12/18 month contract in your own blood.

Checkout the ratings on the compare tool over on ThinkBroadband.com.

Secret methodology

The test methodology needs to be more transparent than this, otherwise how can anyone scrutinise what Sam is doing to be confident that the tests are a reasonable reflection of real-world activity?

Top marks to Sam once again

Sounds absolutely marvellous, as Sam's followers would probably expect... and thanks to El Reg for the publicity...

www.netmonitor.org tried something not a million miles different a year or three ago, using a Windows client to monitor latency and host+service availability, but it never really caught on (before its time, maybe?). Hopefully this will do better.

NB from reading Sam's FAQ the testing alone uses 2GB/month download and 500MB upload by default, so those like me who are on PAYG or other low cost tariffs may wish to carefully read the small print. Sam describes this as "a very low cap", I'd describe it as typical small-household no-kids no-leeching broadband usage, which in my case also offers no noticeable traffic shaping.

Excellent idea, maybe

If they're upfront about this, then it's a great idea. Wish our lousy regulators had though of it first!

But given the rush by just about anyone to put spying hardware on our networks just now, I'd also like to know a bit more about what it's doing, who Sam is, and who he's planning to pass the data on to.

If you're thinking of joining up, have a good look at the T&Cs first.

Onetel

I'm still with them too, get max speeds at all times, no shaping and no complaints for downloading shall we say...rather a lot. Steady 30-50ms pings in various online games too. Torrents going at 180KB/s atm mainly because the swarms are bit a pants.

I've actually stuck with them because the service I currently get is better and cheaper than any other on the market today.

Which is nice. You prolly got auto-migrated over to talkcrap's systems. They do suck.

@ Neil Greatorex

as myself & others have said on here - go to any Entanet reseller mate

yes, Entanet do throttle at times of high demands (down to 2mbps in steps sometimes) - but they are COMPLETELY open - nice simple reporting so you know when it will get implemented, but heck I'm happy with 2mbps on a line solidly running at 6mbps (& yes, that's the same one that failed the BT test for static 2mbps ADSL)

this is done to ensure everyone gets a reasonable service / pings - some leeches don't like equal treatment such as this - but I'll admit I'm glad if they leave ;)

- you can even switch centrals if yours is unusually busy

- very fair prices for the quality of service

- 24x7 UK support as well (and not a script monkey in sight!)

- both CIO and CEO have made their position on Ph*rm very clear in public

FWIW

Mav

. . . mines the one with 'a happy user' on the back & underused bandwidth in the top pocket

38.8 Modem

Anyone else *not* remember these?

I'm sure I've never had one either!

Decent ISP

UK Online gives me a business package, including static IP, 20:1 contention ratio and a "up to" 8Mbps, which syncs at 5.5Mbps. A fair use policy exists if you download more than 500GB in a month. All for £19.99 per month.

Couple of other bits, like free domain name and some web space.

good one sam

keep up the good work and you could count me in!

Maybe, just maybe...

this could be my chance. I've been asked and have agreed to the test. ATM I'm waiting for confirmation and as I use BT I'm very interested.

Paris. Cos she looks how I feel Monday mornings. Who needs an angle?

Thanks guys

Unfortunately I can't get Be in my area (wilds of Lincolnshire) but Zen looks very interesting.

Maybe, just maybe, I might then actually get what I'm paying for. I was with Onetel, I'm bloody not with Talk Talk. 24 squids a month for an unusable service. Bah.

Paris, as even she wouldn't stay with Talk Talk.

I've got one ...

Had it some time now too, although I suspect it's a pre-release as it's not a modified router...

It does run Linux though - I watched it boot :)

I snooped it for a bit too - it does what it says it does - some pings, dns requests and file xfers...

Looking forward to seeing the results!

Think Yourselves Lucky

Living in the Algarve We pay €35 per month for an ADSL. connection at 2Meg with a international limit of 5GB. per month. It is the national provider the only one avalible in this part of Portugal. I have never seen more than 1.2meg down, and only that in the early hours of the morning. Daytime is normaly around 450k down and 40K up. Complaning gets you, just, If you dont like it go without!

So please may I have some of your "Rip OFF Britian" without the weather!

Thanks, Sam

Well done for putting this initiative together.

And thanks for a great site, too.

I'd happily volunteer [VM 4Mb cable] but I usually download 80GB/mth so can't take part -- what we think of today as 'heavy' downloading, will be 'normal' in just a couple of years!

ISP

I love my BT connection, easily get 800KBps downloads on torrents, cheap, unlimited and since the 4th of April on my PC alone, not the other 2 in the house nor the BT Vision or 360 I've totalled 175GB down and 91GB up

100mb for 20 quid

Yes, I live in Tokyo where I get a phone and internet for 20 quid a month, download speeds around 3mb/s and upload around 1mb/s. Its never broken. Britain just looks so old and tired from here!

So

So lifted from digg mob , will they be producing interesting reports like the following:

1/ beeb player bandwidth growth rate rates thus

link = http://community.plus.net/blog/2008/02/08/iplayer-usage-effect-a-bandwidth-explosion/

2/ Bell filtering p2p effects(note some one in IFPI/RIAA/MPAA does not know which end of his head is in his posterior about that one in either 2 or 3)

link = http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r20252608-How-much

3/ wired has an intriguing research data on p2p too

link = http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/how-much-file-s.html

Ah piracy by p2p appears to be more fiction then fact or so it would appear .

Oh well , let the fun with numbers and statistics continue .

Bandwidth Usage

I had a very interesting conversation with an ISP yesterday on behalf of a client, I don't want to name and shame them here, so I've abbreviated their name to their pure initials, we'll call them B.T.

I wanted to upgrade the aforementioned client from an older version of their package to the new one to take advantage of a speed increase, unbeknown to the call operator, my Netgear router has a traffic meter built into it which puts my usage at around 235MB a week.

So imagine my surprise when the call operator in a very sincere but certainly pushy manner tells me that my bandwidth usage is huge and that I will quite likely push through the 10GB bandwidth limit on my service! Within the first few weeks of the month I can tell you that my facial expression was not that of an impressed individual, I did however crack a wry smile when he had to perform a momentous climbdown after I quoted my actual usage, which is not the 10240MB he's quoting!!!

I wonder how many other ISP's use this (quite possibly illigal) practice in order to oversell bandwidth to their end users? It quite possibly has the trappings of a endemic problem in sales teams everywhere doesn't it!

I currently manage a few hundred DSL connections on behalf of my customers, and from this single experience I shall be installing traffic meters on all of the connections and adjusting my client's packages and changing ISP's if nessacary, I recommend you do the same.

I've got one

I've got one (an earlier version, thin client style) and before I plugged it in I disseminated it to check it wasn't doing anything wrong!

I'm obviously not going to reveal exactly what it does, but it's basically as Sam says... a few tests using standard linux tools (nslookup, ping, wget, etc)

Of course, it's remotely updatable (over ssh!), so it might have changed now - maybe I'll have another look to see :)

Oh, and I never agreed to not reverse engineering it - wasn't required for early adopters; is now!

Still posting AC though

A stroke of good luck for me.....

Just moved house (and counties), being a Northerner moving "Darn Sarf" I expected to easily beat my current DSL speeds (used to get 5.2 M down (ish) and 768K up (ish)

The wife chose the house on a nice new development outside Basingstoke center and I thought the world was my lobster, give Virgin (I know, phorm etc) a try but, New Development! Virgin have not (and probably will not) build out in that area.

I was with BT at home so decided to move address (apart from having to pay £125.00 for a line install (which was for connecting at the local exchange since the house had an existing line) The DSL checker told me I might not be able to get ADSL at all, and if I could it would likley not be more than 500K Up. Oh well, better than nothing since I do use it quite a bit and the current mobile offerings are a little punitive if you exceed your download limits.

The modem has been up for a few days now and I am getting a steady 3.5M download, 768K upload. Better than expected but I would have thought the DSL checker could be a little more accurate.

Now all I have to do is await BT's introduction of Phorm, not agree to the change in my T&C's and get my MAC code and start using a real ISP!

@ Andy ORourke

The cable company (there used to be loads, now it is pretty much just Virgin Media) hasn't done any cabling of any significance in the last ten years.

When franchises were granted, they came with cabling targets - 'w% within x years, and y% after z years' or something along those lines.

Even in the inner city franchises, neither 'w' or 'x' is 100%. Almost all cabling out stopped as soon as the franchise agreement figures were hit, even though the payback could be in as little as six months for a combined cable TV/telephone installation. I've lived in two 'new built' estates put up since 1999, typical cable fodder where one in three households could have been expected to sign up, so investment returned inside two years. Still no sign of getting cabled though. Eight years of profits lost. Ironically we get leafletted at least once a year to sign up for cable!!!

Paris, because even she can do the figure work and decide it makes sense to cable out...

@Gulfie

Must be a long time since you did figures in the Cable Industry. 6 months payback. No chance.

I think you'll find the new build cable laying stopped pretty much the same time as the cable companies went bust paying for it due to the long payback periods.