Hi All, After some advice. I cancelled my subscription with Sky broadband after a year with them, slow connection and an unreliable connection were my reasons. I'm in an area where our exchange is yet to be upgraded so the best package I can go for is 8mb. I opted for o2 Internet after some decent reviews and I get two months free and a reduced rate for havign an o2 mobile contract. Anyway, after a month with them I have found them just to be as poor as Sky in terms of speed, especially gaming wise I see a large amount of lag. The router I am using is a Netgear DG834GT (I was advised not to use the o2 jobby that came with the package) The router displays the following as my connection "speed", hope this can help. At first I thought on my Xbox 360 it might be wireless that was causing lag so I used a network cable for connection and no improvements. Just pinging www.localwebsite.com I get an average of around 170ms reply, I was told it should be around 50ms?! Not sure what to do next, first thing is to rule out that this might just be the best I can hope for? If not, what can o2 do? And lastly is there anything I can at home, try the o2 router for example, change microfilters etc etc? Any help greatly appreciated.
sorry but you've been mis-informed. i don't know where you idea that o2 were any good - well at least for the non-LLU service you are on. their LLU service is excellent but their "normal" service - "o2 access" has always been poor. if you've been with them less than 30 days you might be able to get out with no penalty. i suggest doing that if you can.
So they are worse than the other 8mb ISP's, Sky, BT, etc? The reason? They haven't been any better than Sky but not worse neither which leads me to believe this is the best I can do for where I live.
Try an Enta reseller, likely be a damn sight better and certainly can't be any worse. Also Zen, AAISP and a few other business grade providers are certainly a cut above just about all the other BTW ISP's (and all the LLU ones tbqfh when it comes to quality of service and customer support) but you will pay a premium.
Oh, and if you're going to ping a website for a rough idea of latency try not using one based in the US, even I'm seeing 150Ms to that. Try using something fast, UK based and reliable OpenDNS IP's are often a good to try, as are things like the BBC. 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220 Code: Ping has started ... PING 208.67.222.222 (208.67.222.222): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=15.089 ms 64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=14.579 ms 64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=14.220 ms 64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=16.279 ms 64 bytes from 208.67.222.222: icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=16.322 ms --- 208.67.222.222 ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 14.220/15.298/16.322/0.864 ms Code: Ping has started ... PING bbc.co.uk (212.58.224.138): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 212.58.224.138: icmp_seq=0 ttl=118 time=14.109 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.224.138: icmp_seq=1 ttl=118 time=13.795 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.224.138: icmp_seq=2 ttl=118 time=17.594 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.224.138: icmp_seq=3 ttl=118 time=15.183 ms 64 bytes from 212.58.224.138: icmp_seq=4 ttl=118 time=15.262 ms --- bbc.co.uk ping statistics --- 5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 13.795/15.189/17.594/1.334 ms
They're pretty poor for a BT Wholesale ISP but as said there are better. The reason: selling "unlimited" without charging the sort of money that you can keep adding bandwidth without going bust. That's why they're going to start using traffic management - so you should see some improvement soon if you're stuck.
