ADSL broadband services in the UK are a bit variable when it comes to the actual day-to-day speed you'll get out of them. Most of the ISPs market an "8Mb" package, which is really only "anywhere up to 8Mb". There's a fair bit that can affect the speed of the connection. The greater the distance from the exchange, the greater the signal loss will be. And in the home there are a variety of things that can interfere with the phone line, including extensions for other phones.
I haven't been happy with my connection for a while. My old ISP seemed to provide a progressively worse service through the year I was with them, so I've recently jumped ship. I did a few speed tests via the excellent speedtest.net averaging between 2 and 3Mbps. I thought I could improve on that though, and I remembered hearing about a gadget called the BT i-plate which might be worth a try. It's not a well advertised thing but it can be easily obtained from Broadbandbuyer. Essentially it is a little plate that fits over your master BT socket and filters out interference.
Installing the i-plate is simple, though I didn't get the right screws with mine. Once I'd obtained a connection again it was back to speedtest.net. This time I was getting an average result of between 5 and 6 Mbps. That's quite a leap, and a very pleasing justification of an experiment that only cost about £10. Your mileage will of course vary, and I obviously have a lot of noise here!
I haven't been happy with my connection for a while. My old ISP seemed to provide a progressively worse service through the year I was with them, so I've recently jumped ship. I did a few speed tests via the excellent speedtest.net averaging between 2 and 3Mbps. I thought I could improve on that though, and I remembered hearing about a gadget called the BT i-plate which might be worth a try. It's not a well advertised thing but it can be easily obtained from Broadbandbuyer. Essentially it is a little plate that fits over your master BT socket and filters out interference.
Installing the i-plate is simple, though I didn't get the right screws with mine. Once I'd obtained a connection again it was back to speedtest.net. This time I was getting an average result of between 5 and 6 Mbps. That's quite a leap, and a very pleasing justification of an experiment that only cost about £10. Your mileage will of course vary, and I obviously have a lot of noise here!
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