Living in the countryside is great, except for one thing, the dreaded curse that is rural broadband.
Actually to be fair we weren’t tooooo poor as well as our 8 meg downstream speed was a great deal much better than numerous of our neighbours (lots of them have less than 1.0 Mbps).
Our upstream bandwidth was the primary problem, which was stuck at around 0.25 Mbps for many of the time we’ve had ADSL. An unannounced modification around a year back (presumably some kind of upgrade at our exchanged) saw this enhance to around 0.8 mbps. This still was quite useless for streaming any type of kind of high quality CCTV from the home though as well as was the bane of my gamer sons life.
Phat Pipe
Back in March, when the snow was still on the ground in the UK, I discovered a contractor pulling a new cable television down our road as well as had my fingers crossed it was fibre. when they had completed as well as gone I got a possibility to look at the cable, the enjoyment grew.
BT Are really Awful
I contacted a few of our neighbours to tell them the great news as well as likewise to caution that it would be a headache trying to purchase from BT, however to stick with it as it would be worth it in the end. I was best on both counts.
This is perhaps the 4th or 5th time I’ve had the misfortune of putting a Fibre purchase with BT. That includes a couple I’ve done for household members in addition to in work.
I don’t believe I’ve ever dealt with one more business that’s in much more disarray than BT. They truly are a total mess. as well as I’m speaking about several orders over years now, without any indication of improvement. If anything they are getting worse.
He are just some examples of the kind of crap service BT provided us in this install…
Over the last perhaps five years I have went into several email addresses in the BT checker system to be informed with BT Inifinty was offered on my line. I never got a single email now that it is.
2 orders in a row were cancelled by BT since of their ‘system problems’. So I had to purchase a 3rd time before the process even started.
When an problem arose they stated they couldn’t get in touch with me – turned out they had ancient mobile number for me in spite of me putting my new number on the purchase in the box designated for alternate get in touch with details.
Our very first engineers go to visit cancelled.
BT phoned me to apologise that the surveyor had not been out to survey our set up yet as well as it would be one more few weeks. This phone phone call came around 8 hours after the surveyor had been with us as well as completed the job.
I got a text from BT on the morning of the set up with our engineers name as well as number. I rang him to talk about times as well as he told me I wasn’t on his listing as well as he wasn’t our engineer. Phoned BT, they admitted ‘this happened’ however couldn’t provide me actual engineers details.
Our actual engineers shown up 15 minutes after their 5 hour window to show up (8am to 1pm) as I was about to head back to work.
One (of many) of their traditional lines was ‘We may not have a long sufficient fibre in the van as the surveyor didn’t put down any type of measurements on his report”.
Un-prompted BT rang me to state they were decreasing my one-off set up fee from £29.99 to £9.99 as well as the monthly charges from £56.49 To 49.99 for the duration of our 18 month contract. So £137 saved over the duration, that’s great of them as well as goes some method to compensating for the hassle. however I’d like for them to just get it best from the start.
Replacing the Draytek Vigor with a….
The fibre comes into our Node Zero as well as emerges as Ethernet presentation to the BT HomeHub version 6A that includes the service. It’s good sufficient as well as a great step ahead from any type of of the previous ones I’ve seen, however no utilize for the VPN, bandwidth limiting or a hold of other features I needed. It won’t enable the 10.xxx.xxx.xxx IP variety I utilize at house either.
I’ve had Draytek Vigor routers for numerous years now as well as my very first instinct was to purchase another. Asking guidance from some uber-geek buddies turned up different fantastic options including these that are worth a look.
pfSense (ready developed example)
UniFi safety and security Gateway
MikroTik routerboard
However none of them seemed to offer the one box, appliance-like service of the Draytek, as well as a few seem to be mired in command line interfaces (life’s as well short).
So I’ve gone with what I understand as well as utilized a DrayTek Vigor 2926 (the fundamental version as our WiFi is handled individually with a UniFi system). The 2926 Firewall is rated at as much as 400Mbps so ought to last lots of years.
26 ReviewsDrayTek Vigor 2926 Router
supports double Ethernet-based Broadband as well as USB 3G/4G LTE
4-WAN Simultaneous : double Gigabit Ethernet as well as double optional USB 3G/4G
Wireless administration of compatible DrayTek APs
purchase on Amazon
Installation is a easy matter of complying with the Ethernet cable television out of the fibre wall box as well as unpluging it from the BT house Hub. then plug it into the WAN port on the router.
After that setting up the Draytek to link to BT is a 5 minute job. There’s a helpful guide on the Draytek site and the only details we needed was this generic login for the Infinity service…
Username: bthomehub@btbroadband.com
Password: BT (I believe this can be anything, or even blank?)
The requirement for Speed
Fibre to the Premises, Home, building (FTTP/H/B) is ending up being much more commonly offered as well as is a really fantastic thing. It was definitely worth all the hassle…
Down speed enhanced by 736% from 8.85mbps to 74.01mbps
Up speed enhanced by 2,376% from 0.86mbps to 21.30mbps
The enhancement in ping time is a huge hit for the gamer in the household too. The BT Broadband Availability Checker shows our line can support “Upto” 330/50 Mbps, nice. So I can have even much more bandwidth if I pay much more (although once again the BT site elicits eye-rolling as the choices seem quite confusing).
My parents similar rural FTTP set up is now reporting availability of the full-unicorn 1,000/220 option!
Gigabit broadband. now there’s something to look ahead to.
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Last update on 2021-10-04 / affiliate links / pictures from Amazon product marketing API