Way off topic I know, but there seems to be the most knowlegeable and accessible group of experts available to me to be found here (flannel.... flannel etc), and the canals are frozen over again. Can I have some views on whether my expectations are reasonable, whether the service I'm getting is to be expected and If and who I might be able to kick to do something about it. I live in a smallish (450 souls) canalside village, about 5-6 miles as the crow flies from the exchange. I have Broadband (ISP is AOL) and I pay BT for the line. I'm paying for an 'up to' 5mb service. the best line speed I have measured using software from the net is about 140 - 150kb on average (when available - see later). I often can only get to see the first screen on a website and subsequent linked screens don't load. Response time can be sometimes (very rarely) sub second, but more often it is much worse, around 5 - 10 seconds and often nothing at all. I experience connection breaks every 20 to 40 minutes and when I recently tried to update the maps on my Satnav it said it would take 38 hours - I optimistically set it going and the download failed after about 20 minutes. I did it the following day at my daughters house in Rotherham (same make and spec of computer as my own) and it completed the download successfully in about 1 hour 20 mins same nominal speed as my linK and same ISP. Perhaps worst of all I lose the link to the internet for days at a time (I'm at my daughter's now 'cos I have been able to get online for only 15 minutes since last Thursday). I can usually get a connection most weekdays between 10:00 and 15:00 but nothing in the evening before about 11:30 pm. Most weekdays (but not all) I can get on to the net between 12:30am and 3:00am (a bit antisocial). I have currently stacks of unopened emails (because I can't get on to read them). Yesterday (Sunday) I was actually able to log-on at 1:45pm and the link just died at 2:05pm and I haven't been able to get on to the internet since on my own computer. A couple of years ago performance was poor but regular and just about acceptable but over the last three or four months it has deteriorated steadily to be virtually unusable. Any thoughts / suggestions / advice (I notice that AOLs 'Fair Use Policy' does not offer any element of fairness to the customer, it only protects them). Is there any point in going to another ISP, is my BT line the problem (never have problems with the 'phone), where do I go from here. Arthur Naylor nb Betterandquickerbysnailmail
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