My move to Sky

[Otter]

I joined Sky Broadband on 9th July, and apart from a few fluctuations during the first week, it has been very stable.
My connection speed is 2432Kbps down, and 416Kbps up, and my download speed is constantly 2000Kbps or above ..... more than double the speed I had with Pipex.
There is a 40GB usage cap with the package I chose (Mid). Doubt I'll ever reach that
I pay £5.00 per month, and was paying £17.99 with Pipex.
Tried using my own router, but had problems, and am now happy to use the Sky one since I installed a brilliant monitor tool found on Skyuser forums.
Apart from the activation date coinciding with an ongoing major telephone fault (and my puter going up in smoke ), the migration was really smooth.
Been connected for 9 days since the last reboot (during thunderstorms), and have very few errors.
All in all, I'm very happy with the choice I made.

[yorkie_pudd]

I joined Sky early this year when LLU was available at my exchange.

Very satisfied so far - the quality of support can be quite dire though - fortunately there are always community sites that will have the answers.

Have you tried tweaking your SNR on the router for better speeds - the SKY impregnated malware (sorry firmware) on the router is very over cautious when it comes to stability and connection speeds.

[Otter]

I'm very happy so far.
Been connected for 32 days since last reboot, and my SNR is constantly between 9 and 10, so at the moment I don't think I need to tweak it.

I did try using my own router in the beginning, but since I installed the excellent Mossywell's Bounce Sky Router utility I prefer the Sky one. All the stats are just a click away, without having to access the router pages.

Thumbs up so far, and as you say, there is help out there if needed.

[eMuNiX]

A thumbs up for Sky from me too. Sync speeds of 16380/768 every single time, whether I use the Netgear supplied or one of the numerous other routers in my possession. Excellent download speeds, browsing is nice and fast and no drops in connection at all but then with attenuation of less than 20dB for both us and ds I would hope my connection would be solid with all but the worst routers. No port blocking and no download limits I can continue using my connection in the same way that I did with Bulldog. There were issues of high pings which did put me off, I like online gaming and so do my kids but a quick email to tech support asking the max_delay be lowered from the initial 32 to 8ms means that my ingame ping is as good as it was with Pipex but not quite as fast as Bulldog (but I can't moan about 5-8ms increases ). Very happy to be getting this for a mere £10 per month. Having troubles getting my email and Opera to play together (outgoing mail is fine) but that will just be one of my settings somewhere.

[Otter]

Glad you're as happy with Sky as I am

There have been lots of probs with their email, which will hopefully be sorted out when they shift everyone to Googlemail.
It's worth checking your online junk folder for any missing incoming mail. Sky even think mail from themselves is spam

[eMuNiX]

Glad you're as happy with Sky as I am

There have been lots of probs with their email, which will hopefully be sorted out when they shift everyone to Googlemail.
It's worth checking your online junk folder for any missing incoming mail. Sky even think mail from themselves is spam

Yes a friend was complaining that Sky seem to have the slowest SMTP servers in the history of the world. Yes a bit more tardy than I am used to but not that bad. Also not sure that I like the Googlemail but hey it is free

[Otter]

I don't use their email at all now, although the probs look to have been sorted.
I just use gmail, which works perfectly with the POP download feature.

[eMuNiX]

The settings are confusing ordinarily it will be pop.sky.com but once you upgrade to sky googlemail then it becomes pop.tools.sky.com (smtp similar format) so I think maybe that is where I have gone wrong, will check this evening.

[Otter]

Sky will email you when you've been transferred to Google, but you can check by logging in on the 'tools' page here, where you will (eventually) get a message telling you that you haven't been transferred yet, if that's the case.
I haven't been transferred yet, and the 'old' settings are working OK. It is, as you say, very slow though.

[Pengbo]

Hi Gaz and Otter.

Glad you are both happy with Sky. Was on my shortlist once and may make a comeback. Can you tell me if you have a static, sticky or dynamic ip-address?

[Otter]

Hi Ian
I'm on the Mid package, and mine's dynamic.

[Pengbo]

So it changes everytime you turn on your router bummer. Was hoping for sticky as my cousin recons his hasn't changed.

[eMuNiX]

So it changes everytime you turn on your router bummer. Was hoping for sticky as my cousin recons his hasn't changed.

Totally dynamic, I do miss my sticky IP from Pipex but after 12 months or so without I have lived with it. The Netgear has a DynDNS client, but I don't like DynDNS as they block you if you retrain too often.

[rockh]

Hopefully should be migrated to sky tomorrow, fingers crossed

[eMuNiX]

It is a shame that Sky cap their product at 16meg, other ISPs like Bulldog and Be* will let you have the full 24meg if of course you are close enough to the exchange which it just so happens that I am though 16meg is pretty fast though Seems such a long time ago that we were content with 512k

[ceejay13]

I still have the occassioanl 'fling' at 9600 and 5 megs is pretty fast! Come on Fibre to the Cabinet

[rockh]

Synced at 15334, so not too bad One firmware flash and ye olde router hack and the Cisco is back in action

[eMuNiX]

Since they have upped the speeds to 20meg I am getting sync'd at:-

Code: Select all

Modem Status
      Connection Status       Connected
Ds Rate (Kbps)       18012
Us Rate (Kbps)       1044
DS Margin       10
US Margin       8
DS Line Attenuation       17
US Line Attenuation       8
Trained Modulation       ADSL_2plus
LOS Errors       0
Peak Cell Rate       2462 cells per sec
CRC Rx Fast       0
CRC Tx Fast       0
CRC Rx Interleaved       101
CRC Tx Interleaved       243
Path Mode       Interleaved

I also note that I am on interleaved at the moment but the previous couple of times I rebooted the router it was on Fastpath. If I could get them to drop the US margin to 6 then I could get more speed

[ceejay13]

Not bad.

I can almost match your upstream speed (937kbps) but downstream is still hovering around 5-5.2 megs on both ADSL and ADSL2+.

There is a lot of digging up of ground going on around the cabinet I am attached to - hopefully that is the fibre going in!

[rockh]

With the O2 offer of 3 months free plus the cash back from various sites I've requested my mac from Sky.

[nadger]

Still sticking to Plusnet adsl - sync at over 7000kbps which a steady 6mb profile. On a market 3 exchange so paying £5.99/month with 10Gb allowance which does me.