ADSL in this country just totally "Stinks".
First off, ADSL is normally used on Fibre; Has been in the US & most of Europe for the last 20 years or so. Unfortunately, we had BT (British Telecom) taking up the reins to launch ADSL for the UK. Unfortunately, it cost Millions to get it to work down Copper Wire. Now some of this wire is very sub-standard. Some of it is Aluminium. An awful lot of BT's wires were actually put in place by the GPO (General Post Office) about 80 years ago. Large areas use Aluminium because it was cheaper than Copper & the more backward areas of the UK suffer consequently. Unfortunately for me, Cornwall is one of these backward areas, but it becomes more backward as time goes by.
Allow me to explain.
About 10 years ago, I had a Pentium II 450, Voodoo SLI, Sound Blaster & a 56k modem. Trying to stay on line was a joke.......like 2 seconds...Disconnect! We had the GAIN turned up on the phone to keep connection. It was set at 7; The Echo on voice was like being on a Tolberone Mountain Top with f'kin Cuckoo Clocks everywhere!, but I still managed to rack up a £500 phone bill & frag a huge pile of sad Ass! :twisted:
The problem was it was all very intermittent. Then out rolled ISDN.
At this point I was using a PIII with Voodoo 3 & ISDN just made me an LPB (Low Ping Bastard) Fragging now was never so easy. Run into the Terrorist camp, kill the whole Terror team & still have rounds left in the first clip! Wicked days untill......
18 months later, ISDN is so slow, when it eventually connects, it might take 45 minutes for your home page to load. That was the worst case scenario ever, but it was that bad. You couldn't even ping the f'kin DNS servers you were allegedly connected to! - Pathetic! :roll:
So, wasn't it a blessing the day ADSL went live here in St. Austell on 31/03/2002. I was the 4th Person to get ADSL & it was like fookin' Lightning. A 512K line cost £40 then. you could Download files in the background & still play on-line Games with absolutely ZERO fps hit for it. - And that's using a PII with Voodoo3 & ADSL PCI Card. Was like dailing up on a modem, but using your ADSL service for connection. Click Connect & less than 1 second later, you were on line!
We had problems getting more than 2Mb here & eventually got an 8Mb service via Nildram ISP. I beta tested 8Mb without any drop outs or issues. Gaming was spot on, fragging headshots for breakfast with one shot so effortlessly, but I couldn't download in the background whilst gaming & my log on times with my Netgear router were taking as long as 2 minutes & thirty seconds before I could load my home Page (Google UK btw)
Over the last nearly 3 years now, I have slowly seen my ADSL service get slower & slower. The SNR margin on my router has just got less & less at set speeds, resulting in even slower speeds to help lift the SNR. We had our Phone line moved from an Electrical pole about 2 years ago. It came to the back of the house & brought in a whole pile of noise from the overhead Electrical wires to the houses. Once at the front of the property, we had ZERO noise on our Digital DEC Phones & the ADSL service was good again for about 18 months. In the last 6 months, we have the electrical buzz/Frying pan sound back on the Voice side of things & my SNR ratios are about HALF what they should be compared to before 6 months ago.
My last ISP sent engineers out on 2 occasions. When the dumb fuk's arrived here, (BT Open Reach) they were only PSTN Engineers & couldn't do ADSL tests. I phoned BT Faults & tried 5 times to get an ADSL engineer out. On ALL occasions, BT insisted it the fault raised was a PSTN fault. Meantime, since January this year, we have had £599.00 + VAT of other charges slapped on the bill because of this.
I acted by getting a PTO (Precision Test Officer) in from BT. He'd been here before & found us a spare pair of Copper wires up our road. I had been on Aluminium for about 80 yards whilst beta testing 8mb, so Aluminium wasn't doing a bad job really! He stood in my workshop saying he was going to replace the last 4m of Aluminium wire, that formed part of the WP out of our local Cabinet on up our road. he also said he should be charging us for this work! :shock: The following day, I saw my ADSL service go out for a few hours at 10.00am & then go live again around 1pm. There was NO surprise from me to see my ADSL service fall over & die on a reset @ approx 7pm...just like it had been for the last how many frigging months. :roll:
My new ISP recently picked up the Ball about my issues. Their engineers had been monitoring my line for nearly 2 months & the conditions they were seeing on my line suggested there certainly were some serious issues at hand. They actually got a BT Open reach PSTN/ADSL competent Engineer here, - F'K ME! :shock:
Well I know he's had the ADSL training, he'd been here that often :roll: ) but he cant be competent. When he was here, he said he couldn't run the tests because I was on DATA Stream & not IP stream. I already knew he was gunno say you need to see your ISP & there it stopped. My ISP said I was in a different Cloud from their Normal users & was probably something to do with that!?!?
I raised another issue with my current ISP. They still have to phone & their deadline is 72 hours, now 86 hours.......
Total f'kin Pi$$ take by retard mutant pillocks that think they know how to do a job. BT couldn't wire a f'kin LAN Party up, but BT blame your ISP & your ISP blame BT. Meantime, BT still charge you top rate whilst F'kin you in the Arse! - BASTARDS! - I just don't know how they get away with this shit! :evil:
First off, ADSL is normally used on Fibre; Has been in the US & most of Europe for the last 20 years or so. Unfortunately, we had BT (British Telecom) taking up the reins to launch ADSL for the UK. Unfortunately, it cost Millions to get it to work down Copper Wire. Now some of this wire is very sub-standard. Some of it is Aluminium. An awful lot of BT's wires were actually put in place by the GPO (General Post Office) about 80 years ago. Large areas use Aluminium because it was cheaper than Copper & the more backward areas of the UK suffer consequently. Unfortunately for me, Cornwall is one of these backward areas, but it becomes more backward as time goes by.
Allow me to explain.
About 10 years ago, I had a Pentium II 450, Voodoo SLI, Sound Blaster & a 56k modem. Trying to stay on line was a joke.......like 2 seconds...Disconnect! We had the GAIN turned up on the phone to keep connection. It was set at 7; The Echo on voice was like being on a Tolberone Mountain Top with f'kin Cuckoo Clocks everywhere!, but I still managed to rack up a £500 phone bill & frag a huge pile of sad Ass! :twisted:
The problem was it was all very intermittent. Then out rolled ISDN.
At this point I was using a PIII with Voodoo 3 & ISDN just made me an LPB (Low Ping Bastard) Fragging now was never so easy. Run into the Terrorist camp, kill the whole Terror team & still have rounds left in the first clip! Wicked days untill......
18 months later, ISDN is so slow, when it eventually connects, it might take 45 minutes for your home page to load. That was the worst case scenario ever, but it was that bad. You couldn't even ping the f'kin DNS servers you were allegedly connected to! - Pathetic! :roll:
So, wasn't it a blessing the day ADSL went live here in St. Austell on 31/03/2002. I was the 4th Person to get ADSL & it was like fookin' Lightning. A 512K line cost £40 then. you could Download files in the background & still play on-line Games with absolutely ZERO fps hit for it. - And that's using a PII with Voodoo3 & ADSL PCI Card. Was like dailing up on a modem, but using your ADSL service for connection. Click Connect & less than 1 second later, you were on line!
We had problems getting more than 2Mb here & eventually got an 8Mb service via Nildram ISP. I beta tested 8Mb without any drop outs or issues. Gaming was spot on, fragging headshots for breakfast with one shot so effortlessly, but I couldn't download in the background whilst gaming & my log on times with my Netgear router were taking as long as 2 minutes & thirty seconds before I could load my home Page (Google UK btw)
Over the last nearly 3 years now, I have slowly seen my ADSL service get slower & slower. The SNR margin on my router has just got less & less at set speeds, resulting in even slower speeds to help lift the SNR. We had our Phone line moved from an Electrical pole about 2 years ago. It came to the back of the house & brought in a whole pile of noise from the overhead Electrical wires to the houses. Once at the front of the property, we had ZERO noise on our Digital DEC Phones & the ADSL service was good again for about 18 months. In the last 6 months, we have the electrical buzz/Frying pan sound back on the Voice side of things & my SNR ratios are about HALF what they should be compared to before 6 months ago.
My last ISP sent engineers out on 2 occasions. When the dumb fuk's arrived here, (BT Open Reach) they were only PSTN Engineers & couldn't do ADSL tests. I phoned BT Faults & tried 5 times to get an ADSL engineer out. On ALL occasions, BT insisted it the fault raised was a PSTN fault. Meantime, since January this year, we have had £599.00 + VAT of other charges slapped on the bill because of this.
I acted by getting a PTO (Precision Test Officer) in from BT. He'd been here before & found us a spare pair of Copper wires up our road. I had been on Aluminium for about 80 yards whilst beta testing 8mb, so Aluminium wasn't doing a bad job really! He stood in my workshop saying he was going to replace the last 4m of Aluminium wire, that formed part of the WP out of our local Cabinet on up our road. he also said he should be charging us for this work! :shock: The following day, I saw my ADSL service go out for a few hours at 10.00am & then go live again around 1pm. There was NO surprise from me to see my ADSL service fall over & die on a reset @ approx 7pm...just like it had been for the last how many frigging months. :roll:
My new ISP recently picked up the Ball about my issues. Their engineers had been monitoring my line for nearly 2 months & the conditions they were seeing on my line suggested there certainly were some serious issues at hand. They actually got a BT Open reach PSTN/ADSL competent Engineer here, - F'K ME! :shock:
Well I know he's had the ADSL training, he'd been here that often :roll: ) but he cant be competent. When he was here, he said he couldn't run the tests because I was on DATA Stream & not IP stream. I already knew he was gunno say you need to see your ISP & there it stopped. My ISP said I was in a different Cloud from their Normal users & was probably something to do with that!?!?
I raised another issue with my current ISP. They still have to phone & their deadline is 72 hours, now 86 hours.......
Total f'kin Pi$$ take by retard mutant pillocks that think they know how to do a job. BT couldn't wire a f'kin LAN Party up, but BT blame your ISP & your ISP blame BT. Meantime, BT still charge you top rate whilst F'kin you in the Arse! - BASTARDS! - I just don't know how they get away with this shit! :evil:
