Zen Broadband
 

Since Virgin seem to be telling me I don't have a problem despite me showing them that I do, I think I'm going to change ISP.

Zen broadband are currently rated with the highest customer satisfaction and have a UK call centre, anyone here using them?

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Nope.
I'm with Vodafone.
Current pricing... Landline, unlimited interweb (at reasonable enough speed) unlimited anytime calls to landlines AND uk mobiles all for £29

The supplied router can be bothersome but can be changed.

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Wish I could leave VM. but the ADSL round here is 3-5Mb and no fibre.


Three have unlimited data/calls/text for about £20/month so tempted to give them a try, just need to work out how to connect my firewall by usb tethering.

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Three do a 4G wireless router so there's no need to do tethering.
Basically its the same as a regular home broadband wireless router but instead of a phone line it has a 4G mobile connection.

http://www.three.co.uk/hub/heck-home-fi/

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Devi...0&colour=Black

Re: Zen Broadband
 

EE also do a mobile data router called 4GEE https://shop.ee.co.uk/broadband/4g-home-broadband

You can install an external YAGI antenna for the best possible signal too. A number of the outlying farms around here are looking at it as we have a new EE mast giving coverage and line lengths means VDSL and ADSL are both poor. I haven't heard of anyone using it yet, so no information on quality of service.

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Back to the OP question. I'm sorry I have not used Zen, but like you have heard good things. A friend of mine used them and was impressed - he stopped using them when work started paying for broadband.

I'm with Vodafone and have been happy with them for past two years (might be 3). They have resolved technical issues on my line twice - both handled speedily and efficiently.

Re: Zen Broadband
 

I had a visit from the Virgin network engineer this morning to prove that I don't have a problem. At one point he tried to convince me that my two PCs might be causing the issue (assuming I have an issue). I have a win7 laptop and a win10 desktop, I suppose it's possible but Occam's Razor suggests it isn't likely (to me). It might push me to buy a new laptop though, so there is that. :)

I do see his point, though, because there are 900 customers on the same switch and I'm the only one complaining.

He left me his 350Mb modem to try since no one has swapped mine out. I can't get close to 350Mb/s though. Laptop maxes out at 100Mb/s and desktop at 200Mb/s (ookla test).

I was at the hospital yesterday afternoon and during that time BQM said my modem rebooted and the error log had zeroed out indicating the same thing yet his monitor said it hadn't, which is odd.

So, the area manager is coming round with the network guy on Tuesday to discuss what we do next. In some ways Virgin are their own worst enemies - the network guy admitted the call centre wasn't very good (he'd been there and listened in to calls) - they just follow a flow chart script, then I discover that they had been investigating my complaint for over a week but neglected to inform me. When I was a field engineer keeping the customer informed was stressed as being vitally important.

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Have you confirmed that your PC's and laptop's network hardware is actually capable of speeds above 200/100?


100 is damn fast btw.....

Re: Zen Broadband
 

No, and since my laptop is at least 9 years old, I doubt that it's capable, the desktop is a bit newer but to be honest I see no difference (with my usage) between 100 and 200Mb/s.

I have loaded another ping program called EMCO, it's pinging google in Los Angeles and Virgin in Nottingham, when it loses a packet it pings the modem to make sure it's not a cable problem, it also chimes when connection is dropped. If I wait for a chime and then try and load a new webpage it will fail - it sits there until it either belatedly loads (a new chime indicates reconnection) or it says: "no internet".
This happened twice between 10:13 am and 10:17 am, if I look at the BQM graph (which is an external site pinging me) it shows an interruption at this time (I've annotated the lower BQM graph)

Since the Virgin network guy implied it might be both of my PCs, I have just ordered a new Lenovo 330S, Ryzen5, 256Gb SSD laptop and a usb-C to ethernet adaptor since modern laptops don't have an ethernet port now.

I am pretty confident that this is a Virgin problem and I'm meeting the local manager on Tuesday but their network guy insists that everything is ok as fa as he is concerned.

This is what my BQM graph looked like after the last repair 2 years ago (working great).
https://i.ibb.co/kQcwFWM/morning-30-Apr.png

This is what it looks like now:

https://i.ibb.co/HBxJ3C5/350-9-Feb-11-05.png

The red spikes are packet loss. The network guy's equipment does not show any problems.
On 3 of my 4 upstream channels my modem is reporting 160 T3 timeouts (in 24 hours).

Re: Zen Broadband
 

Seeker.. how much time have you left on your VM contract?