[MChatterley]

Hi All,

Not sure if this has been answered before, but does anyone know what Sky's fair usage policy consists of?

I'm currently with plusnet, they offer me 20Gb a month peak downloads and unlimited offpeak.

Any help would be appreciated

[BigRD]

Did you read my mind?

I'm on the same package with Plusnet and wondered if there is an any advantage moving to Sky. Sky have completed LLU at my local exchange - should I notice any improvement on speed?

...I'm still annoyed at Plusnet allowing my e-mail details to be hacked.

[MChatterley]

Yeap most ISP's are over priced. Admitted i've not had any drop outs from plusnet so its all good there, but if I can get 12-14MB through Sky and save 15 quid a month then why should I stay

[Rygar]

Skyuser have a sticky HERE.

Like most "unlimited" ISPs FUPs the actual cap is vague & undefined. However it is rumoured to be 250 GB per month (up & down are counted). I myself downloaded over 80 GB in my first month. Not sure how much I have done this past month but its been a fair bit, probably over 50 GB.

The base & mid packages both have fixed limits.

There is no traffic shaping on any of the LLU products. Connect on the other hand (non LLU) has a fixed limit & is shaped.

[BigRD]

No traffic shaping sounds good.

My current Plusnet 20GB limit service starts shaping during peak hours 4pm - 12am. I reached 13GB during peak so the 1st action level was in place, then reached 17GB and the 2nd action level was reached and they reduced my speed during peak to 128k from 4Mb - lovely unlimited at all other times though.

My dad had lots of problems migrating from Plusnet to Sky (took 3 months) with each blaming the other. I also like to have control over my router. Is it possible to use my own Netgear router rather than the one Sky issues? It's just I've set up firewall rules for port forwarding and don't fancy having to redo it all.

[Rygar]

You can use your own router but sky wont support you if you have any problems. So if you do decide to sign up keep hold of the sky router just in case you have any issues. You will need to use a utility to extract your ADSL user name & password from the sky router to use in your existing one.

http://dg834gt.mognuts.com/NetgearRouterUtility.html

[MChatterley]

Originally Posted by Rygar

You can use your own router but sky wont support you if you have any problems. So if you do decide to sign up keep hold of the sky router just in case you have any issues. You will need to use a utility to extract your ADSL user name & password from the sky router to use in your existing one.

http://dg834gt.mognuts.com/NetgearRouterUtility.html

Thats good, I'm in the same situation with firewall rules etc and I hate being locked down!

Quick question though, I've just done another availability check from the sky site and it states my phone line is capable of up to 5MB. With the Sky LLU installed at my exchange can I expect speeds of higher than that?

[Rygar]

Depends on your line conditions. Use the 2nd link in my sig to get an estimate of speeds you may get.

[BigRD]

Rygar,

I tried link 2 in your sig. Results indicate I should be able to get the following:

maximum line speed will be: 6258Kbps

Max product (yep that's me): 5.5Mbps - nowhere, near currently on 3.7Mbps

ADSL2+ we estimate you may manage line speeds of:6258Kbps
With ADSL2+ the max:5538Kbps

How accurate is this?

[Rygar]

Originally Posted by BigRD

How accurate is this?

It is just a best guess estimate but it is usually fairly accurate. ADSL can be in inexact science & therefore hard to predict, but actual live line data is as good as it gets when trying to predict ADSL speed. The guy who made it; Andrew Ferguson, is very knowledgeable about broadband.

You could also try THIS checker that looks only at downstream attenuation.

You can have a fair degree of confidence that the actual speed you get from ADSL2+ will lie somewhere in between both sets of results.