BT Trivia and FAQs on QuizRevolution

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Almost all providers now sell an 'up to 8Mbps' (8 Meg) product and very often it is all you can buy. The phrase 'up to 8Mbps' refers to the fact that the ADSL service will negotiate the best connection speed every time it connects to the exchange. In some literature this product may be referred to as a Max product. Click to View Source

The 'up to 8Mbps' products have no defined line length limits and will connect at between 160Kbps (Kilo bits per second) and 8Mbps (Mega bits per second). The exact connection speed depends on a variety of factors such as, the length of your telephone line, the state of the telephone extension wiring in the property, how well your ADSL modem copes with your individual telephone line and even the time of day (generally the hours of darkness are the most unstable time for ADSL). Many people with an 'up to 8Mbps' service have improved their connection speeds and stability of service by using things like ADSL faceplates at the BT Master Socket...

There are many broadband checkers. One is at http://www.btwholesale.com/getbroadband which estimates what BT believes your telephone line is capable of delivering in terms of ADSL connection speeds. The figures given by the checker are largely based on the paper records for a specific telephone line, but if you have an 'up to 8Mbps' Max product, data is fed back to the checker from the lines actual performance.

The checker while useful and reasonably accurate in many cases is not 100% accurate but unfortunately some broadband providers do take it as gospel. It should also be noted that some broadband providers refuse orders on lines that are termed as 'very unlikely' when in a significant number of cases ADSL would actually work. When you have a telephone number for a line always use that, the alternate postcode checker is a lot less accurate and generally should not be used.

The first thing you should do is ensure the computer itself is not the problem, for example is it slow because it has too much software running at once on it? Secondly check whether your computers MTU (Max Transmittable Unit) and RWIN (Receive Window) are optimal for broadband.

The various broadband speed testers are useful, and generally are accurate but are actually an end to end test with many places that could be a bottleneck between you and the server. The BT Wholesale tester in most cases will be the tester that should demonstrate minimal effects from congestion and will also let you see your current IP Profile setting. It is important to test speeds at several times of the day to get the full picture.

For those with an 'up to 8Mbps' (rate adaptive) service, removing unused telephone extensions can help to reduce the amount of noise affecting the ADSL service. To get an idea of the best speed you can achieve plug the ADSL modem into the test socket of the BT master socket and see what speed the modem is connecting at. Due to the way the IP Profile works speed tests will take between a few hours and days to catch up to changes in connection speed.

For those on a fixed speed service who want to know what speeds they may get on a rate adaptive service obtain the current line speeds and associated attenuation and noise margin (Signal to Noise ratio margin) figures from your ADSL modem then see what maximum speed the calculator at http://www2.farina1.com/adsl gives. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/frogstats.htm shows how to get the data from most kit.

Asked to name their single top use for the Internet outside of work, 13% of Western European respondents to a GFK poll cited e-commerce, such as shopping on Amazon.com or eBay, compared with 12% of Americans. In the U.K., 26% of respondents named this as their top use for the Web. Source

At 99.6% coverage, Scotland (and the UK) are ahead of most of Europe (and in fact most of the world) in terms of broadband availability.

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