Today was the today my broadband was changed from the excellent, but expensive, Zen to the incredibly cheap O2.

And so far, it’s worked like a dream.

As I mentioned previously, they supply their own router but I intended to use my own. As soon as I was swapped over (and they emailed and texted me to make sure I knew!) I rang them up – on a freephone number – for technical support. They couldn’t have been more helpful (you’d think they’d be less impressed with the fact that I was only ringing them because I was using my own router rather than the ones they went to great expense to send me!).

For the record, for a Netgear DG834G, here are the changes…

Basic Settings

Does Your Internet Connection Require A Login? No
Account Name: (leave blank)
Domain Name: (leave blank)
Internet IP Address: Get Dynamically From ISP
Domain Name Server (DNS) Address: Get Automatically From ISP
NAT (Network Address Translation): Enable
Router MAC Address: Use Default Address

ADSL Settings

Multiplexing Method: LLC-BASED
VPI: 0
VCI: 101
DSL Mode: Auto (Multi-mode)

In preparation I’ve been running some timing tests using a combination of 8 different online speed test sites (Broadbandmax, ZDNet, InternetFrog, thinkbroadband, Alkin, Kbps and Zen). I picked these as they all appeared to be using different timing methods (many sites use the same code so will product similar, if not identical, results).

Whilst at Zen my average download speed was 1982Kbps and upload was 374Kbps. The lowest speed was around 4:20pm a few days ago (when you’d expect it be quite busy) which averaged a download of 1517Kbps.

At the same time today (4:20pm) I tested my new O2 broadband. This averaged at 3386Kbps download and 929Kbps upload – that’s an impressive 70% quicker download and 148% faster upload, the latter of which is fabulous. However, as I’m sure we’re all well aware, the first 10 days (is it 10?) is when the line gets tested and stabilised, so all this may change. Naturally, I’ll let you know how it goes.

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1. to be perfectly honest, it was being just a touch flaky since Google took over. Not only that but it kept complaining that my feeds were too big. [↩]