Bethere Broadband

Lee · Post by **Lee** » January 24th, 2008, 16:35

I'm planning to switch to Bethere broadband's 24mbps unlimited package for £18 a month soon and I've seen it mentioned on here a few times.

So who here has it and what are your experiences with it? Are they reliable? Do they throttle torrent downloads etc? and can I use the Be Box router with other ISPs if I changed again in future, or have they haxed it to only work with be?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 24th, 2008, 16:40

It's fast, very reliable, nothing is blocked or throttled.

the bebox can be made to work with other ISPs, but I wouldn't bother, it's fine for be (their hardware can be funny with some routers) but there's far better, cheaper routers out there for other ISPs (I think they charge like £100 if you want to keep it, which is massively overpriced)

Lee · Post by **Lee** » January 24th, 2008, 16:43

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:(I think they charge like £100 if you want to keep it, which is massively overpriced)

Hmm, I assumed they'd just let you keep it.

Have you used its wi-fi? does it give a strong connection? my brother has to connect via wi-fi and he uses it for gaming, he has no problems with the current router but its ADSL1 so no good for Be.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 24th, 2008, 16:45

I've used it a little for my wii, seemed fine.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » January 24th, 2008, 16:52

Cool, I'll probably make the switch then. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't making a bad descision like sky would've been from what I've read about it

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » January 24th, 2008, 16:55

unfortunately, the only problems that really happen with be is because the bebox is a lump of shite, functional, but shite.

also, I'd suggest getting a static IP, it makes life a bit easier.

amblin · Post by **amblin** » January 24th, 2008, 16:56

cheeseandham · Post by **cheeseandham** » January 24th, 2008, 20:02

amblin wrote:I have beThere as my main internet connection in the office with BT as secondary.
(snip)
No idea about the hardware, we have proper kit instead of the stock stuff.

Sorry for the thread hijack, but out of interest Amblin, what kit do you use for your dual/fail-over WAN?

amblin · Post by **amblin** » January 24th, 2008, 22:09

Post by **FatherJack** » January 24th, 2008, 23:30

amblin wrote:Biggest issue with the draytek is it isn't clever enough to recognise failure of the internet

That kind of sucks, as it's what I want (as mentioned in another thread) but both connections will have their own connecty boxes, so the draytek will probably think they are both fine. It won't be in a position for me to quickly reboot it manually, either.

I want automatical failover to a secondary connection, rather than spanning/bridging to increase bandwidth - I plan for one fast (but perhaps unreliable) link, plus keeping my existing slow (but v. reliable) one.

Any ideas of better devices? Although I was looking at 250 notes as a price mark.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » February 13th, 2008, 18:31

Just got activated yesterday. I'm getting 18mbps via ethernet which is pretty decent, not sure what other peoples average is.

The wi-fi on the bebox seems pretty crappy though, I'm only getting 6mbps through it. I've sent be a ticket and hopefully they'll come up with a solution...

Hehulk · Post by **Hehulk** » February 13th, 2008, 18:34

18mbps for £18?

Is that a special offer, or the long term price?

Lee · Post by **Lee** » February 13th, 2008, 18:36

Hehulk wrote:18mbps for £18?

Is that a special offer, or the long term price?

Long term, its 24mbps theoretical but it depends on line quality. At least I got fairly close to the max.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » February 13th, 2008, 18:36

Hehulk wrote:18mbps for £18?

Is that a special offer, or the long term price?

Be are just good. £18/mo for (up to) 24/1.3 depending on line quality etc.

no limits either. at all.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 20th, 2008, 23:23

I've gone for a Virgin Media package - XL broadband, M TV, M phone and V+ and it was installed today. Around £25 a month to start, rising to £35-ish I think later.

I'd been a Sky digital customer for about 15 years, and had used them before back when there was only Sky One, Sky Sports, Sky Movies and German Porn.
I cancelled early last year, and with the new freeview channels, haven't really missed it. Got used to having a hard disk recorder, though - so the V+ service is quite handy - also it spits out 1080 via HDMI. Slight problem with activating the V+, which took four phone calls to sort - but they were quite ridiculously polite and it was free. I had the day off so was much calmer about it than I might otherwise have been.

The broadband seems to be working, got this sucking some news:

which is a slight increase from the 64kB/s I am used to seeing in that second box, and equates to around 16Mbps.

I'm using this http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000ALAJHS dual-WAN router - which while a lot cheaper than the Draytek, seems to do the same job.
I'm running in load-balanced mode, which allows me to redirect certain traffic (ie News) to the new WAN connection, while continuing to play games/surf at the same speeds I'm used to on the other. Also, if one connection goes down - it carries on using just the other one - I heard Virgin has issues with reliability, so it's an insurance policy I might get rid of if it behaves well.

It's bit odd in that my IP address can change between a Pipex and a Virgin one at random, but it didn't seem to cause a problem with games or surfing, but some YouTube videos got "stuck" before playing trying to contact virginmedia.com, also Amazon asks me to login twice sometimes.
Because of the physical location of the Virgin modem, it means my consoles and laptop are on a seperate VLAN to my main PC and DVD burn slave, so the 360 streaming from them might no longer be possible - so the new 750G USB disk (WD of course) I just bought for the laptop can hold any media that needs sharing.

I suppose I could have got arsey and insisted they route the modem separately, but the installers were nice blokes - if rather taken aback by my console collection - and I didn't want to give them any further grief, as they had been given bad information about what the installation entailed, but went out of their way to get everything going regardless.

It's been a hectic year since I inherited some money last January, upgrading not only my PC and AV kit, but completely redo-ing two rooms of my house from a dingy hovel with a second-hand chair with my feet nearly touching the TV screen and a dumping ground into a proper living room with console cluster and Wii space and a dining room/library.

Post by **HereComesPete** » February 21st, 2008, 0:00

Yay for speed! I'm getting a free upgrade from 4 to 10 Meg from virgin, not sure when it lands, but it's free so I can hardly complain.

Moving house may see me just buying the tv package for the missus and me getting bethere, I was fairly certain of this a few months ago when virgin was spazzing out all the time, but it seems to have settled down now and hasn't offered any problems in about 2 months.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 21st, 2008, 0:41

Yeah, they said to me that the 20M will soon be upgraded to 50M - but they've been saying that for about a year.

I plan to be a model customer for while - a few bursts to saturate the connection but nothing too big, plus lots of use of the V+ on demand (whose traffic they prioritise) - will hopefully put me near the top of the list should they choose to pilot the new speed.

I'm pretty glad it mostly worked straight off, and what didn't was actually sorted out. I'd been dreading going through the infamous customer support nightmare that's their legacy from NTL, but it seems they are really trying hard to shake that, which is kind of what I expected from Virgin.

Post by **HereComesPete** » February 21st, 2008, 2:50

Yeah, I've been on the phone to them a few times. The first time was trying to sort out kv's bb, I talked to their adsl helpline and nearly crushed the phone in my fist. But I've rang about various things for my bb and I've been very impressed.

The first time the box was overdue, it arrived the next day and they knocked twenty quid off my first bill. The second time it wouldn't even ping, they came out, climbed in a hole up the street and fixed it the same day. The last time I rang them was because my mate had forgotten to mention my name when he got bb, I twenty quid off for referring him because I said I knew him and gave his address.

I try to not be elitist/racist but the truth is that the biggest hazards of a call centre are 'tards who know less than you and they're reading a screen, and johnny foreigner with a hellish thick accent. With virgin I've always talked to easy to understand people who seem to know what they're talking about, or at least can read the screen in front of them, it makes it so much less rage inducing.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 21st, 2008, 8:54

Hopefully my 2meg will be upped too then, probably to 4. Hurrah.

Post by **tandino** » February 21st, 2008, 10:48

Sky have been spot on for me. Although their customer service was 90% fail at first, they've been fine since. At home I download via abusenet at 950 - 1040 k/s torments download at about 100 - 500 k/s depending on the other users. No service outages yet and no hassle about heavy downloading. I did choose to be limited to 40gb a month though, purely because the unlimited option is an extra tenner a month I could do without spending. Overall for 3 sky packages, home phone and broadband I pay 26 squids a month.