I got 99 problems but my WiFi ain't one

Openreach is governed independently from BT these days. I wasn't suggesting BT retail product!

Or whatever full-fibre provider is available to you.

Personally I use Zen flavoured Openreach because their customer service has been impeccable for about 2 decades.

Full fibre still doesn't appear to be properly switched on and available in my London street though 😬

are they materially different?
I had BT in various guises for years, then Virgin for years. All of them basically worked all the time. Maybe I just got lucky.
I changed to Community Fibre a week ago because I couldn't be bothered with the renewal price dance with Virgin again, but the service was generally fine.

are they materially different

Yes. Your local link speed is only part of the picture. You can have insufficient capacity in backhaul and peering, both of which are unde the control of the ISP and can but cut if costs need to be saved.

At work part of my job is to look after our VPN. We get loads more complaints from Virgin users.

I think it's only fibre to cabinet here. Zen might be an option but they're more expensive and I don't need customer support when the connection goes down - I know it's their fault I just need them to fix it :) So it doesn't really matter who has the best support it's who has the best uptime vs. speed vs. cost.

they're more expensive and I don't need customer support when the connection goes down - I know it's their fault I just need them to fix it :)

This (or at least getting from here to actually fixed) is customer support, and it's worth paying for.

All of them basically worked all the time. Maybe I just got lucky.

Well yeah, it's fine when it works, it's when it doesn't that you see the real difference between providers.

Ability/ease of using your own modem/router/specialist config is also a factor - as @hippy is finding out...

This is all very timely, as VM have been shite here recently.

Zen serves my address, and is cheaper than what I am currently paying.

Any other Openreach providers worth considering? I currently need modem plus router but will soon be switching to modem only, when I get the Pi OpenWRT finally built....

I can also recommend Zen i used them for about 6, their staff are excellent, as soon as we get fiber that isnt virgin in my area i'll be moving back.

Had two blokes in hi viz from Viberoptix on the drive yesterday pointing at various things..... Popped out to chat and they are looking at the cost effectiveness of putting fibre to our little nest of 5 properties.

Has to be better / cheaper than the satellite link we have now.

This chat about switching ISP has had me pondering the viability of sharing the ISP connection with my neighbours, to reduce costs. I mean, if I get anywhere approaching the advertised 900Mb/s then I could easily spread that across a couple or three families.

How would I go about making three totally separate subnets, one for me and one for each of my neighbours.

Presumably I could do this with VPNs somehow, hopefully using OpenWRT to implement? Then just use a WiFi mesh network to actually distribute the packets.

You are probably breaching the T&Cs of a consumer service if you do that.

You also need to look at some of the liability. If your neighbour downloads child abuse images the police will arrest you first.

VLANs are what you'd need. And you'd need to be aware of the risk of possibly being first suspect for what they do online and the hassles of dealing with any outages.

At work part of my job is to look after our VPN. We get loads more complaints from Virgin users.

Don't know whether it's still the case but something with the virgin hub used to cause issues with my work VPN. Virgin connection but using my router was fine.

Personally I suspect a lot of the virgin issues are down to their crappy router. I always see complaints that it has gone down on neighborhood forums when it is working fine for me.

My parents' virgin router has an ethernet cable connected which only has one pair of wires terminated in the plug . It disappears under the carpet and along a wall but I've no idea where the other end is.

Any idea what it might be? They previously had BT internet and I'm wondering if it's left over from that and now redundant.

Virgin have moved to Internet phones, so it could be for the land line phone.

Phone is connected to a specific socket on the router via an adapter.

doesnt the router tell you whats plugged into to the ports?

Was interested that Virgin could tell how many devices were connected to my network even though I only use their hub as a modem, not a router.

That is interesting, in modem mode the NAT table is held by your own router and not there's.

But, it's still possible to do connection tracking and have a conntrack table that would provide a high confidence signal as to the number of devices on the network.

Virgin famously use a lot of traffic shaping and I would not be surprised if they have flow tracking stats that provide this info from their side and not from the hub — actually I'd say tha this is more likely :)

I would guess that you don't have the modem mode fully switched on. When enabled the only device that can be connected would be your router as the WiFi and remaining Ethernet ports are switched off. If that is the case you can probably get a bit more performance out of it by checking and switching.

It could quite likely be for a BT or Sky TV box from the past? I think BTs old boxes had to be hard wired.

You could log onto the GUI of the virgin hub by connecting to the WiFi, entering 192.168.0.1 into a web browser and logging in via the password on the bottom of the modem. This would show anything that is connected.

Or unplug it and see what stops working.

How did you find this out?

Definitely properly switched to modem mode. I did use it in router mode a few months ago whilst my usual router was out of action so it is possible that some data is held over from there.

@TW I was having a call with them about renewing and when talking about broadband speed they said something along the lines of "I can see that you've got 35 devices connected so you won't want to drop your broadband speed".

I read something recently while setting up a new router about some kind of messed up bridging mode where you end up with both devices acting as DHCP servers on the network or some shit like that. I had a quick look but couldn't find the article again.

Is there any issue with having my router at the end of a 10m stretch of CAT6 from the rest of the network?

I'd assume not but my knowledge is pretty limited.