Thoughts from my first month on broadband, hopefully useful to anyone
considering it. Long message so please snip if you are replying.

I came from using 0845, changing on the basis broadband was now nearly
the same price. Gave me the opportunity to shed a few ISP's. So I
dumped all the ones that do not allow mail to be read when not dialed to
them. Bye bye Brightview, tesco and eidos still work and of course I do
need to dial them occasionally to do website updates. This is something
to plan ahead carefully, you would not want to have your old main email
address left needing a separate dialup session.

ISP & Signup
Went on holiday and when I got back online found that 1Mb was now the
same price as 512kb :-). So went for plusnet 1Mb / 2GB without kit. I
don't have a problem paying the up-fronts up front, liked the large
webspace and generally positive comments from the NG.
Some oddities on the signup as it was quoting 'Price £14.99' in several
places, I think the website does not show/remember the options correctly.
Line conversion went through no bother in 8 days, just in time for me to
get home.
I paid the setup fee by switch card OK (speeds it up while they process
the DD apparently) and was going DD for subscription thereafter. Oddly
there then appeared a 'Switch pending' notice on my account for the
first month's sub. emailed and this was 'in case the DD didn't work and
you should ignore it', well it looked like potential for double charging
to me but had it all sorted out OK, hardly the best way to start !
As I had the data cap checked at the same time I do not know if I would
otherwise have ended up with 1GB or 2.

Kit & Installation
2 £5 D-Link 528 network cards and Draytek 2500 (seem recommended and
regarded as less buggy ) got together with a few people at work whose
exchange had just gone live, split the postage from BroadbandBuyer. I
only got myself one extra filter, I'd advise thinking this through up
front a bit more. Those 'T' adapters get in the way a lot. I'd have
got a slave ADSL/POTS wallbox and a second box & tail style filter doing
it again. The boxed filters are supposed to be better as well, but I
won't notice that.
My setup is an old master socket (NTE2?) downstairs, modified socket
doubler to allow a phone (now filtered) and 30 foot or so of proper PABX
cable to an upstairs slave socket. That socket then has a 'T'
filter/splitter for a second phone / POTS modem and the ADSL modem plugs
into the data outlet. That is the bit that would have / will be tidied
up a lot with an ADSL extension socket.
So ADSL does work off extensions, but then I am in a favoured location.

Setup
Almost plug in and go apart from Draytek settings. Now had I hit the
'Quick setup' 'auto Detect' on the web interface I would have been OK
but I used the setup programme instead. With that I managed not save
the settings quite right, so it worked until I powered down and promptly
went back to defaults. Re-entered and saved the setup using the web
interface and it has been OK since. Change the passwords ASAP is the
best advice here I think.

Use
Well this is what it is for after all !! Took a while getting all the
updated plugins for video to settle in, but at least they download fast.
I had a 113kB/s data rate from apple for quicktime upgrade, and
several up in 80kB/s. Normal pages load almost instantly, a slight
hesitation is noticeable as the address resolves that is all.
Getting text e-mail however is not a lot faster than dial-up, I suppose
it is all server waits and not content. Based on 100+ 4kb mails a day
News seems OK too, I use both plus and 3rd party servers, text only.

I found it took a while to get out of dial-up habits, like I kept
wanting to turn it off and doing all my 'internetting' in one go. I
certainly have not used much of my first months' data allowance, 400MB,
but I'll give it a few more months to see if I take to any of the
data-hungry uses before considering a downgrade to 1GB.
I will be interested to see how it goes with my parents visiting soon,
all day access compared to their present 0845, kept for off peak, and
only 24kb. Shame they can't get ADSL if they like it.

Line statistics from the modem are SNR 40dB, Loss 8.5 dB. And yes, the
big building at the end of the road is a telephone exchange. The line
reports as 540m, I'd say nearer 300m physically.

Bill