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[Astral]

No railways in the middle of Dartmoor. There used to be, but now there is only a branch to a track ballast quarry on the edge of the moor.

It's just that the Google Earth photo's are years out of date.

[soms]

Seems to work quite nicely kitz, brings all the info into one page.

Seems odd that my non-ADSL line might only receive 500K when the road distance is estimated 3.5Km and one ADSL line is on 1Mbps already. Anyways, it is  certainly a nice page and just as good as the other line estimators out there.

[roseway]

>>> Is it miles out?  could be a conversion error from postcode to longitude/latitude?

Miles out (literally). The straight line distance is shown as 3.21 km which looks right. The road between here and the exchange is almost a straight line and I've measured it in the car as 3.5 km, but the checker shows it as 12.8 km.

[jazz]

Tried it this morning and it looks spot on for me - very impressed with what you have managed to do.  I'm not sure that I would have known what to do with the code verification box the first time round if I hadn't read about it here first but I would have worked it out in the end!  The information is very clear and really well laid out.  Another winner from the Kitz site....

[roseway]

Yes, definitely a winner

[Astral]

With those recommendations I'd better get down to the bookies and put a tenner to win on it.

[kitz]

>>  the checker shows it as 12.8 km

ekies thats quite a lot out..  Ive just had a quick look and I cant see anything obvious which should cause that error.
However its something Im not too happy about therefore I'd like to have a look in a bit and make sure its not anything stupid that Ive done :/

[kitz]

eric kindly pm'd me his details so I could test using his info and Ive found where the problem is.

His exchange is reportedly smack bang in the middle of a motorway. 
If I put the postcode in it tells me its on the eastbound side.. if I put the address of the exchange in its supposed on the westbound side.

Extra mileage is finding the nearest junction to get on or off the motorway.   
Im also rolling at the satellite view.  I think I can safely say this is a "one off" based on that particular exchange location.

[tickmike]

I have broke it !.
1. The distance = 0.    each time I have tried it on different address's.

2. I use 'Firefox'      it remembers the last phone number and post code but you do not want it remembering the last 'Verification key' , can you change that at your end ?..

3.  You have  'Verfication key' should it have an i in it after r ? 'Verification key' ( I am not the worlds best speller ).

Its odd if you put the post code in for the exchange, I never got any higher than ADSL Max = 6.5Mb

The map is about right, its about 50M out ( short) . Because all our lane is the same post code it looks like the average position is used.

But other than that it's ok.   

[soms]

I use 'Firefox'      it remembers the last phone number and post code but you do not want it remembering the last 'Verification key' , can you change that at your end ?..

Used Firefox here and it worked fine [remembers if you click in the field and displays list of former entries but does not auto-fill], perhaps its your browser settings for remembering details automatically?

I do agree that if possible this isn't desirable.
I have seen sites such as Exchange Web Access e-mail sites where it will always refuse to remember any details. How this is implemented I do not know. All the same it doesn't seem to be a major issue.

[kitz]

Thank you everyone for all your comments and taking the time to test.

Some minor tweaks to the backend have been made and the page has now been "prettified"
New page is now live - Broadband availability checker.

----------

>> I have broke it !. 1. The distance = 0.

I was updating maps last night and moving stuff around at about that time..  so could have been something I was doing.
Do you still have the same problem with the live page?  If so would you kindly pm me the postcode and I'll have a look see what I can find (don't need your phone no).

>>  it remembers the last phone number and post code but you do not want it remembering the last 'Verification key'
>> How this is implemented I do not know

It uses "sessions" and has to be able to check the code.  If you do a simple refresh of the page it will probably remember the code. If you refresh the data from the results page it will still remember it by design.  A complete reload/re-request of the page back to the input should clear it.
The captcha wasnt meant to be anything fancy - more to stop bots accessing it than humans and it was also something I put in as a learning curve to help me understand how they worked.
Theres various ways that you could do this.. and it depends on whether you wish to leave cookies behind etc.  Using "sessions" you can destroy the session at any point in the program you wish.
It should have destroyed the session on a complete reload of the page. 

>> Its odd if you put the post code in for the exchange, I never got any higher than ADSL Max = 6.5Mb

I'm afraid thats the BT database and nothing I can do about that. It does that on my line too (6.5 Mb) and I'm less than 200m from the exchange.
Postcodes cover a "general area" and arent as accurate as data obtained on the phone no, so BT have been conservative with their estimates if you dont put the phone no in.
However post codes have to be included because some of the data is only available based on your post code (eg cable providers).

Whilst it may look from the front end that its only performing one check... behind the scenes theres lots and lots of checks being made..  and to different resources.

>> Because all our lane is the same post code it looks like the average position is used

Yep thats right   That check is done on postcode only since theres no way of tying a phone no up with a location any closer than that... so it just picks a "mid point".

>> would have known what to do with the code verification box the first time round

I'd already decided last night that I was going to abandon it. 
Im going to see how it goes for now without one.
This project was a bit of a "jump in at the deep end" to learning a new language..  even I didnt expect it to take a few thousand lines of code when I started it.. and by implementing the captcha it helped me understand how php dealt with sessions which wasnt anythign I'd done before.
The codes there now if I want to use it..  but Ive taken onboard all your comments and if it is implemented in the future.. its more a simple case of re-designing the input form which should be easy in comparison since thats only design

Thanks again everyone for all your comments

[kitz]

His exchange is reportedly smack bang in the middle of a motorway. 
If I put the postcode in it tells me its on the eastbound side.. if I put the address of the exchange in its supposed on the westbound side.

Im also rolling at the satellite view.

and to finish this off..  and explanation of why I found erics "bug" so funny.

As previously mentioned the postcode will always pick a midpoint.. and in erics particular case google maps decided that his exchange was smack bang in the middle of the M20.
-Therefore the road calculation had to take in additional distance to get off the motorway.

Anyhow I was looking at google maps longitutes/latitudes and my code with  to see if there was anything I could do about this. (My prog uses the postcode and I wanted to see if by using an address then it could narrow things down further).

Anyhow it didnt and even using the name of the road, google insisted it was on the other carriage of the motorway.  So I was having a look via sattelite to see if I could see where the exchange actually was.

Ive took a screen cap of the image..
Yellow marker is where the exchange is supposed to be according to the postcode.
Red marker is where the exchange is supposed to be according to the address.

Then I happened to notice something in the field towards the bottom right where I thought the exchange may actually be.
(see the red circle.)




Zooming in on the image brought this up....

http://www.kitz.co.uk/temp/zoomed.jpg


Yep.. that just about summed up my feelings about how google was handling the request.

 

[roseway]

 

The exchange is actually on the A20, the other side of the M20 from that 'feature'.

Anyway, you've done a very nice job on the utility.

[kitz]

>> The exchange is actually on the A20, the other side of the M20 from that 'feature'.

lol - the BT database wasnt really much use either. 

Bet someone had fun doing that   
Wonder if the "author" realised that his handywork would be captured for world-wide viewing 

[tickmike]

Just put my details in,
 Distance is still 0.

But all this came up as well.!
Hope this helps.


[urls removed by kitz - grabbed them tyvm]