Sponsored Links

2mbps any good?

  • Thread starter Thread starter fatJock
  • Start date Start date

fatJock

Guest
SM's 2mbps any good? I've read the threads below but would like to know from al larger cross spectrum of users.
 
Hmmm, well, I get 225k/sec if I dont upload at the same time. well, to be more precise, I can upload at 28k/sec while downloading at 225k/sec from a private peer, but if I download from a non private peer, the download speed drops to about 50-60k if i upload any faster than 10-15k/sec

Silvermead ADSL is a Telefonica reseller, so I imagine you will get the same download speeds and problems as you would on any other Telefonica resold ISP.

If you want a real ISP, people seem to like PlusNET and Nilly, but expect to pay 50-75% more

Just my 2 pence :)
 
We're assured that the simultaneous upload/download speeds issue is being worked on and I'm sure that either we or Shaun will update this when we have a result.
 
Sponsored Links
Shaun said:
If you want a real ISP, people seem to like PlusNET and Nilly, but expect to pay 50-75% more

I'll keep my eye on this post to check out the upload issues.

I like the price ...... but my concern is that mostly you get what you pay for. To be honest ...... I wouldn't be upset if I never dealt with SM again however, I'll be led by product and price - I expect little in terms of customer support.

The thing that concerns me however is that this and other Datastream products are too competitively priced and I think very immediately prone to contention issues as I believe it is fudamentally a virtual pipe configured to run from your exchange to the chosen ISP's backbone. From reading about other providers such as Bulldog it seems that it may be OK at the start then it could get fairly saturated.

I would ask these questions on the SM public forums but they're members only now and I no longer have any sort of account with them. I guess I have some more homework to do.

What is the minimum contract term and what are the ISDN conversion implications?
 
Last edited:
Silvermead said:
We're assured that the simultaneous upload/download speeds issue is being worked on and I'm sure that either we or Shaun will update this when we have a result.

Stephen [I presume it's you].

What is the timeframe for the issues to be addressed and/or resolved. I would have though that resolving such a fundamental issue would be top of the list but I can see from the SM forums that Shaun has been mentioning this issue for over a week now.
 
Well, if you are at all weary of Datastream products, then I can only advise you to stick with IPstream and wait for Home2000 to come up.

No matter who you go with for 50:1 Datastream 2mb, you are going to get pretty much the same service, all thats in it really is customer support and a spiffy website, lol. Silvermeads site is currently in development, so all that you get right now is the connection, things like email and webspace are due to be available within a few days/weeks.

If you do however wanna go for 2mb 50:1 datastream, then no matter who you go with it isnt going to make much of a difference...I find it hard to 'tell' you to go with silvermead due to the problems I have had getting the service to work totally fine.

1. delayed initial activation - resolved

2. was initially capped at 512/256 for a day or so, fault of one of SM's workers - resolved

3. download from non-PP's slow when uploading - still in the process of being resolved, no one seems to know the cause, but I point the finger at the transparent caches

4. data corruption of uploaded data - resolved, was found to be that the MTU needs to be set lower at the customers end

5. bout it really :)

Before I joined silvermead, I always recommended Freedom2Surf for 512 and 1mb aDSL, and I still do, if you want IPstream that is.
 
Thanks for the reply Shaun.

The ADSL campaign I run has 368/500 pre-registrations and with doorknocking I'll trigger in a couple of weeks. In the meantime before RFS I'll keep doing my homework and look at the others you suggest.

I probably don't need 2MB .... just want it. That said - I don't want any less than the 1MB Sat connection I have [when I actually get 1MB in Priority 1].
 
Sponsored Links
Aye I could prolly live with 1mb, but I wouldnt wanna go back now that I have 2mb, lol. If I was to move ISP's, I would move to freedom2surf for definate, but thats about £35 for 1mb 50:1 IPstream.

But yeah do ya homework n all, but ya either got IPstream, Datastream VISP's, or IP/Data real ISP's for about 50% more :)
 
Shaun said:
But yeah do ya homework n all, but ya either got IPstream, Datastream VISP's, or IP/Data real ISP's for about 50% more :)

That's the conclusion I've come to - would be nice to know the minimum contract term with SM though, I wouldn't be too keen to sign up for a year of potential misery!
 
3 months min contract.

I think f2s are 1 month contract but I'm not sure...but then, I think the process of setting up IPstream is shorter than setting up Datastream
 
You'd be right, Datastream takes around twice the time that IPStream takes to setup, with Freedom2Surf they quote 10 days for IPStream and 20 days for DataStream, but it's usually much quicker than this.

Freedom2Surf Offer a couple of 2MB Products which are priced at £69.99 inc VAT per month, the 20:1 which is based on office 2000 from BT Wholesale, and has a ten day lead time, and the 50:1 which is the same price, but is datastream based and has a 20 day quoted lead time.

Activation is waived for the 2MB IPStream package providing you stay 12 months on a one month contract. Activation is 59.99+VAT for the 2MB Datastream, and is a two month contract.

If anyone has any further questions about Freedom2Surf packages, drop me a line at Justin@freedom2Support.net and I'll see if I can help you out.

Kind Regards,

Justin Johnson
Freedom2Support 'Knackered' Project Leader
http://www.freedom2support.net
 
Last edited:
Sponsored Links
We quote a lead time of 10 days based on our experience of the VP taking 5 days and line activation taking another 5 days.

To be honest though, I wouldn't have thought that and extra 5 of even 10 days would put people off given the opportunity to save over £30 a month for a service that gives the same if not a better end user experience.

That said, 10 days in our experience, is the average adn fo course in areas where we or Telefonica already have a VP (which is growing very quickly) only the 5 day line activation lead is required.

The issue of contention is an interesting one FJ - in central london where 50:1 IPStream contention ratios are beginning to affect members becasue the excahnges are very busy, we have people switching to a Datastream products to jump out of that contention pool and in to ours which is a lot less busy as it's only 1 ISP and not many selling in to the same IPStream pool.
 
Last edited:
Silvermead said:
The issue of contention is an interesting one FJ - in central london where 50:1 IPStream contention ratios are beginning to affect members becasue the excahnges are very busy, we have people switching to a Datastream products to jump out of that contention pool and in to ours which is a lot less busy as it's only 1 ISP and not many selling in to the same IPStream pool.

Are you saying that you resell into a seperate isolated pool through Telefonica that only they use? You mention only one ISP but how many VISP's like you?

I don't see my exchange suffering the heavy usage of 2MB products that some of the London exchanges do so I wouldn't expect contention to be a major issue.

I'll probably dip my toe into Datastream and see how I get on.

Originally posted by Freedom2Support
Freedom2Surf Offer a couple of 2MB Products which are priced at £69.99 inc VAT per month, the 20:1 which is based on office 2000 from BT Wholesale, and has a ten day lead time, and the 50:1 which is the same price, but is datastream based and has a 20 day quoted lead time.

How can you price these both at the same cost - surely the 20:1 package should cost more than the 50:1
 
Becasue all of our accounts come with static IP's, the VP to the exchange has to be routed and therefore they are all Silvermead VP's. (So I am informed by Telefonica anyway!)
 
Silvermead said:
Becasue all of our accounts come with static IP's, the VP to the exchange has to be routed and therefore they are all Silvermead VP's. (So I am informed by Telefonica anyway!)

Hmmm .... can you let me know how you handle ISDN conversions and any associated fees?
 
Just used your live member services.

Though it chokes me to say it, nice touch.

They said there was no additional fee other than the £50+VAT activation fee.

They did say however that they would need to confirm what would happen in the scenario whereby my ISDN was converted to PSTN for ADSL but then subsequently failed a WHOOSH test and therefore got rejected for ADSL.

BT reinstate the ISDN at no extra charge - what do SM do? After all, it's still BT doing the engineering but through SM.

I don't expect to fail as I live within 2-3 mins walk from the exchange, have ISDN at present and line checks show that I will get 2MB but better to have the cards on the table now to avoid disagreement later :D
 
Sponsored Links
Confirmed that if I failed for 1-2MB but could get 512 from Silvermead but chose not to [for whatever reason] the ISDN would not be reinstated free. Fair enough.

With 427/500 pre-registrations I expect to trigger in a week or two after more doorknocking. With an RFS then prolly about end of March / early April that'll give me plenty of time to see how your 2MB offering is behaving before I jump into anything.
 
FatJock, since Silvermead use Telefonica for their ADSL services, you could try keeping an eye on other ISP's forums, since any major problems will most likely be with them too, as well as Silvermead's. Silvermead has no where near as many users as an ISP such as Fast24, which is also a Telefonica reseller, but that means that any problems with the Telefonica service will be spewed all over their forums.

I do believe that Silvermead own their mail and radius servers, so are totally separate from any other ISP, so its only the actual connection to worry about really.

It all boils down to, no matter who you go for for Datastream 1-2mb with a Telefonica reseller, the service is relatively similar.

In case you fancied a traceroute to see hops and all, I'll paste one to ummmm, www.bbc.co.uk now :)

Maybe not, there seems to be a problem somewhere, getting huge pings so you prolly wont be happy with one right now...am finding out why now :)
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Hop | %Loss | IP Address | Node Name | Location | Tzone | ms | Graph | Network |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| 1 | | 192.168.0.1 | - | ... | | 0 | x | (private use) |
| 2 | | 62.53.1.1 | - | ?(Germany) | +01:00 | 23 | -x- | Telefonica Deutschland GmbH |
| 3 | | 62.55.109.49 | - | ?(United Kingdom) | * | 16 | x- | mediaWays GmbH |
| 4 | | 62.55.96.9 | rmws-lond-uk09-gigaet-1-0.nw.mediaways.net | ?(United Kingdom) | * | 71 | ---x---- | mediaWays UK |
| 5 | | 62.55.96.16 | - | ?(United Kingdom) | * | 23 | -x | mediaWays UK |
| 6 | | 195.66.226.103 | rt-linx-b.thdo.bbc.co.uk | - | | 81 | ----x----- | London Internet exchange (LINX) |
| 7 | | 212.58.224.116 | www.bbc.co.uk | - | | 72 | ---x----- | BBC Internet Services, Docklands. |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roundtrip time to www.bbc.co.uk, average = 72ms, min = 16ms, max = 156ms -- 27-Nov-2003 14:37:25

Hope that formats correctly, in case you are wandering, yes the first hop is in germany, and it is always in germany no matter where you go

EDIT: Hmmm that traceroute program seems to make things look really bad, so eres a dos tracert for ya :)

Tracing route to www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.224.123]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <10 ms <10 ms <10 ms 192.168.0.1
2 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms 62.53.1.1
3 31 ms 15 ms 32 ms 62.55.109.49
4 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms 62.55.96.24
5 16 ms 31 ms 31 ms 62.55.96.16
6 32 ms 15 ms 31 ms rt-linx-b.thdo.bbc.co.uk [195.66.226.103]
7 31 ms 32 ms 15 ms www23.thdo.bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.123]

Trace complete.
 
Last edited:
Shaun said:
... such as Fast24, which is also a Telefonica reseller, but that means that any problems with the Telefonica service will be spewed all over their forums.

Thanks for the heads up and the traceroute - I'll keep my eyes on the forums :D
 
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6026)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules