Broadband Internet & ISP Recommendations?

I can put in an address down the road and it lets me pick 5G. Guess for £24, it could be worth signing up for a month and testing it out.

Think it’s 30 days to return.
Do you have 5G on your phone? I don’t but had someone test the signal at old flat (no coverage supposedly) and it was fine.
They do a credit check for the DD so no idea how that works with home address and having to give a different one to get the 5G? Maybe go to the Three store and say that you know it will work but the computer says no so sell it to me over the counter.

Not a bad idea. Presumably I could also go in-store and just buy a SIM off them and then use a 5G box of my own instead of their probably super cheap box.

Zyxel NR5103E according to
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/compare/broadband/guides/routers/5g
https://5g.co.uk/reviews/three-5g-hub-review/

Using your ISP for email is just wrong.

I guess so? I’m not an IT guy.
It just has 2 Ethernet ports. 1 LAN and LAN/WAN (whatever that means)

LAN is internal facing
WAN is external facing

Spend around £10-£15 on a 5 or 8 port gigabit switch, connect a port to the LAN port, then plug all the rest of the stuff into other ports on the switch

Not sure this is the right place for this but... I have virgin broadband with Asus mesh. All works pretty well most of the time although probably not as fast as I'd like...

However I have a few WiFi enabled things that won't connect to it, mostly which seem to say they are compatible with WiFi 2.4 not 5. The Asus mesh nodes choose which to use, but although I've tried forcing them to use 2.4 they still don't seem to connect. What else can I check?

good idea, have seen a neat little netgear one with 8 ports plus 2 usb for £25
probably fine for an idiot like me to set-up

need Ethernet for TV/amazon stick/music streamer/Tado dongle+USB/Ikea smart dongle +USB and probably something else in the future so not overkill

Can you set the channel devices use? I know some turbo trainer/power meter/HRM stuff doesn't like certain channels.

I can try and tell it to use 2.4 only (is that what you mean?) but it doesn’t seem to work still - wondering if i am missing something

Nope, there's the two frequencies 2.4 and 5Ghz but there's also slightly different freq bands around those frequencies which you might be able to configure, referred to as channels...

https://zwiftinsider.com/how-to-fix-ant-dropouts-in-zwift/

https://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/how-to-change-your-wi-fi-channel-and-improve-performance/

Ah that is interesting - I’ll have a look and see whether I can change this

There is also different widths of channel you can configure which occasionally catches some devices out.

Often the easiest thing to try and make sure they can work together is to set up a guest WiFi on your mesh that only operates on the 2.4ghz and see if they connect.

Cheers, this was useful. I've followed up with Hyperoptic to get some more info.

We tried Three 5G - when it worked it was amazing, but you need flawless signal.

The receiver is insanely picky about it's location, you must place it within line of sight of the 5G mast to get good speeds. It's also so picky and sensitive that it doesn't work through double glazing. Seriously. We used it for a few months with the windows open but the moment winter came and we had to shut the double glazed windows it become unusable so we returned it.

Thanks. Yeah, I reckon it could be shit here with my phone flipping from 4G to 5G quite often.

I need to go into Three store and see if I can get hold of a box to test. £24 isn't an expensive experiment but I don't want to be locked into any contract nonsense. I could also try their 4G one, it just seems silly buying a lower tech bit of kit when there might be network upgrades that render it obsolete.

BT contract had expired, was paying loads.

Rang them up as my "personalised deals" on the site were more expensive and more restricted than when I wasn't logged in to the website.

Not only that, if I select either my upstairs or downstairs neighbours address I get the offer of "Fibre 2" with similar speeds to what I have now, but when I select my own address (without being logged in) it gives me "Fibre 1" as the best it can offer. The speeds of "Fibre 2" are what I'm getting now, "Fibre 1" is 80% of what I get now download, and half the upload.

Person on the phone was helpful and got me most of the way there as they could see more options on the internal systems than I could on their website, but the price is still more than it should be (at least it's a lot less than I'm paying now as I'm out of contract). Have kicked off that order and will then hassle them again, with screenshots, once the order has been applied on Monday.

Cunts.

Got 4th Utility connected today and so far so good, 2.5x faster than Virgin at 40% the cost. Will test it for a week or two and if it's reliable call Virgin and tell them to fuck off.
The technician installing it also does Community Fibre and said the same thing like
ectoplasmosis above, those new companies all offer a similar service.
Speed test shows my connection as Hyperoptic.

1 Attachment

Speed test shows my connection as Hyperoptic

That's saying it's connected to Hyperoptic, not provided by them.

It's not in the screenshot, but there should be a little person symbol below the world symbol with your provider's name next to it.

Not that it matters, it's the speed that's important.

The new companies may all offer similar services but that doesn't mean they're all the same - Community Fibre have their own network, for example.

your provider's name next to it.

that says Cogent Communications

Maybe Cogent provide their backhaul or peering, and 4th just run the last mile fibre (plus all the billing, marketing etc. of course).

I guess something like that, I hope it doesn't end in tears like with those energy resellers.

Cogent are pretty big. Anyway, it can't be worse than all the Openreach resellers desperately trying to get those bastards to do work for anyone but BT.

Virgin sent me a new hub and now I'm up to 270 so maybe the old (very old) hub was the problem.

Anyone here have a Zen referral? Thinking of switching.

Anyone have Community fibre and particularly their TV offering?

I'm pretty happy with Virgin but if they try and bump up the price massively when I am up for renewal (I currently have a good deal) I'll be looking elsewhere. Best thing about Virgin TV is most of the channels being together and a full tv guide rather than having to flick between multiple apps to watch stuff on catch-up.

Also, how does their modem work? Can you connect up your own router? Cheers