Anyone using BT as their internet provider? (UK users)

Hi all

Is anyone from the UK out there using BT as their internet provider? If so, have you experienced any problems and how have you managed to sort it out regarding SL?
I've changed to BT recently - quite a few weeks now, but this week I've had alot of SL problems, and none of the solutions given by LL have worked.

I'm wondering now if it's the internet connection somehow, although I have had absolutely no problems before this week, and changed nothing, so I can't see what would have caused the problem. The network button in the lag meter is red and the bandwith meter in the Statistics bar starts of fine then goes down to zero. Any suggestions would help!! I can't do anything in SL.

I'm on BT - used to be on Virgin - even on a crappy ADSL ( through the phone line not the cable ) It runs fine for me. Very heavily dependent on the area you are in but it doesn't sound much like a BT thing

Thanks for that Amy - I'm at such a loss as what to do and it was the last thing I could think of.

Oh holy holy crap. GET A NEW ROUTER!

If you are using a Home Hub this is the root of all evil - IM me in world if you want some moral support (or via here if you're set up for the private messages). Also thank you, for the reminder to call BT and downgrade my account if I am not moving house (and therefore onto Virgin Media). Don't see why I should pay for a web based phone that has not worked for ages and now never will!

BT are clueless - they can NOT help you, you'll just get patronised by a support monkey who knows less than you do.

Suggest you try running a trace route (Go to Start, then Run and type in cmd.exe to get the DOS console window, then type in tracert www.secondlife.com (***edit WITHOUT the [/url} bits, just the website address) and see what the first set of figures are - they SHOULD be less than a millisecond).

My guess is that your router has enforced a strict NAT (Network Address Translation) on you - and the Home Hub is a rebadged Speedtouch piece of crap, you can't access any important bits of data to reset it ... and BT themselves do not know what it does.

Get yourself a new router! Get a friend to set it up and configure it if necessary! Doing so gave me my Second Life back.

I have symbolically rubbed my now defunct Home Hub on my bare backside ... Ms Macha Morigi - come forth and tell the tale of how you barbecued yours!!!

Kill it ... kill it ... the white lump of EVIL!!!!!

BT keeps asking me to come back as a customer. I just have to say I'm with TalkTalk and knowing they can't compete they politely say sorry for bothering me and that's that. If BT know TalkTalk are offering a better deal then themselves, why don't you change?

I have SL running fine with both BT and the "white lump of evil".. but I do recall having to change some settings in the hub software at some stage to get stuff working properly... I'll try and have a look this evening to jog my memory...

Fair call - I have a voyager not a home hub maybe thats the scoop

Oh I loved my Voyager - how I wished I'd not given it away!

Ee ... tried all sorts. Even upgraded the firmware ... to no avail. Basically, when it flips it flips and that's that (admittedly there's an Xbox Live connection and a wireless laptop in the mix with my wired PC, but all works fine on the new router).

@Dekka - been on the verge of moving house as soon as a nice place came free, this is now looking likely. We can't get cable on our side of town, which we can if we move. However, our 8Mb connection is showing results of almost 8Mb as we have a brand new line from the exchange which is not as yet shared with anyone at all. Makes sense to not rock the boat when we have it stable for now

/me gets all sentimental about the routers I have known and melted in 2.5 years of playing sl

Macha really did BBQ hers, if she is to believed, and I am inclined to believe it frankly.

It goes something like this:

1) Sign up to BT
2) Receive truly APPALLING speed levels from them for months
3) Get driven to distraction calling Indian call centres for help every 5 minutes
4) Hold a Router-Roasting party in your back garden by dousing the thing in lighter fluid and dancing around its burning plastic shell whilst making loud whooping noises of pure joy
5) Switch to Virgin Broadband and
6) Subsequently never have any issues with your internet service EVER AGAIN*


The BT Home Hub is a device that should be consigned to the dustbin of technological history to rest alongside the Betamax video recorder as soon as is humanly possible.

A friend of my parents used to work for BT and says that their exchanges are so hopelessly out of date that they aren't able to provide the speeds they claim to offer their customers.

Avoid BT at ALL costs.


* so far, anyway. AND Virgin won't attempt to charge you £150 for the priviledge of an engineer callout, as BT do. The cheeky, greedy little bleeders...

Macha Mirighi:

Please tell me how an alternative supplier would be faster - given that the same routes are used. I'm with BT and we're a long way from the exchange so the speed is low. How would changing supplier change that?

sorry for the misspelled name.

Try Be Unlimited if you can get it in your area. Cheap, fast and unmetered for around the £20/month mark. They do supply a nasty badged speedtouch wireless router but you can replace it with the router of your own choice (I use a 3Com router). Just make sure it suports ADSL 2 / ADSL 2+. Be use some non-standard parameters for their ADSL connection so be sure you get all the details from tech support.

On the downside the Be Unlimited tech support is flakey. It used to be hosted in a Bulgarian call centre when I joined but they've now moved upmarket to an Indian call centre.

/seconds this.

Be* are fantastic. I've been with them about 16/17 months now.

It's nice just to be with an ISP that has no limits and is relatively uncontended. Not to mention, fast.

Ditto here.

I find that late at night our Internet Connection drops out totally (I get redmap on SL) - I blame people in the new housing estate nearer the Exchange than us downloading movies overnight.

And this is on *business broadband* - you might expect some sort of priority service on that, but, no And of course, any time we phone up we get the usual "support monkey who knows less than you do."

If I thought there was a viable alternative, I'd change provider in a flash - but I'd always understood that BT provided everybody else's infrastructure?

When I used to be in the U.K. I used Telewest (Blueyonder Broadband), did not have any real problems with them...No noticeable drop in performance at any time of day..Even though I lived in Gloucester...

Indeed they do. The likes of TalkTalk etc are purchasing network access on a wholesale basis from BT.

The exceptions are the cable companies (well, company singular, after the NTL/Telewest merger into Virgin Media) and any business that has a direct pipe into the true IP network providers (Telia, Level 3 etc).

Mind you, when I was living in the UK, I used BT and its infamous HomeHub, and rarely if ever experienced the issues discussed in this thread.

Right now though, I am travelling by train from the South West to London Paddington and using 3's Mobile Broadband. The coverage is rubbish.

Looking forward to my 24Mb home connection in Stockholm. That's one great place to be an internet user.

Er.... how's about using a cable company instead..?

Of course, if there's no cable in your area, THEN you have issues.

I am with BT.

No, I have had no problems. Managed to get online on my desk top yesterday (laptop is still not cooperating) and enjoyed a pleasant afternoon sailing my 42" schooner.

Nothing further to report.

Although, Cherry's advice of getting a new router is sound - the Home Hub is absolute pants, and the phone is even worse.

Who would you suggest? Virgin Media and Sky both have worse customer service than BT (and that's saying something!). I wouldn't recommend using them even if they were offering a terabit per second!

I'm running a BT phone line, Zen IP through a linux(266Mhz Pentium . Smoothwall( Gotta recomend it !).
No problems here.

"Customer sevice" is all "in the head"usually(I agree there are missunderstandings but in the main it's not in a companys best interests to anger the consumer))

I've always found Virgin to be very good, and my sister, parents and boyfriend all use V.M and have had any issues dealt with quickly.

YMMV, of course, and I do think they're a bit on the expensive side.

Plus it depends who offers services in your area...

Dittto . I was with Blueyonder before they changed to virgin.
I never had a problem with their support.

However I think the OP might not have that option.

I moved from a fibre area to an ADSL and also had to change IP provider.

I use a BT line but a 3rd party (Zen) to access WWW I have very few problems.
Minor niggles being when BT dig up the pavement to fix cables.