ISP recommendations and recent bargains

[charlesr]

Not the cheapest but you get what you pay for.

Quoted for truth.
How much do you pay? And is your exchange LLU?

http://www.vivaciti.net/product/2/office-internet/21/llu-unlimited-office

[monel]

How do I find out about my exchange? When I threatened leaving over a year ago, someone from Virgin told me I'd be a fool because my area was only up to 20 meg via ADSL at the time, and I wouldn't even get that. I didn't believe her 100% about the speeds I'd get, but I think she was right about local lines. Thing is, Virgin is doubling their speeds so I'd get a massive downstream increase, upstream still pretty crap, but it seems they have been ranked pretty badly with regards to traffic management. I'm a bit scared to leave, it's like dealing with the mafia. I've never had a problem with them to be honest, although Telewest were actually brilliant, and it seems they oversell their services.

[charlesr]

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/broadband_checker

This will tell if your exchange has been "unbundled" (Local Loop Unbundled, LLU)

[charlesr]

I dream of 20Mb. Man up

I really can't imagine what you'd need more than 20Mb for, apart from faster large file download/torrents, but since my 6Mb line is plenty good enough for HD streaming on Zune and my 1Mb upload with 20ms ping is great for gaming, I think perhaps you are perhaps concentrating on the wrong things. Quality is more important than speed (said the actress to the bishop).

What's important to you?
Ping rates and upstream speed for gaming?
Stable unthrottled downrates for steaming HD movies?
Or ultimate top speed that gets messed about with depending on time of day / application protocol you are using etc.

[Brad]

All the things Charles just said. I only get about 4mb down, 1mb up but I get that 24 hours a day every day of the year, unlimited* uninterrupted, gaming, video, music, usenet, torrrents, ftp, everything. I pay ?35 a month for that including my phone and all phonecalls. Not cheap but compared the garbage Sky broadband it's incredible. No cable in my area.

*actually unlimited. They have never limited anybody ever.

[monel]

You both make good points. With Virgin I would be upgraded to a theoretical 100mb downstream but would be 10mb upstream. Problem is you can really only use it after 11pm at night. I sometimes have other people using the line on occasion, and it helps to know that I have enough bandwith. I would probably prefer a completely unmessed with connection, though. I remember some comments on The Register about that service, can't remember exactly. I'd have to decide really if I want to take the hit to upload speeds, I had to upload stuff to someone once to their private account and if that amount of time was increased ten fold it's scary.

[ETC]

I get a great upload from BT Infinity (around 9-10) anytime of the day but it's very expensive for what it is (40mb) with line rental and calls its just under ?50 a month totally unlimited though

[speedlolita]

I get 2Mb down and less than 1Mb up..

Really is bad. Well, at least it saves me on HDD costs. Have about 1.5TB of data currently.

[shaffy_oppa]

I was with Sky for about... well I dunno I've been with Sky since they started doing broadband before that it was Freeserve with their awesome 512kbps!!!

I never had problems with Sky, my download and upload speeds were consistent through out the day and thats pretty much all that matters to me. Until I moved house... it started dropping my connection quite often about a year after being here but they couldn't find any fault with my line so they replaced my modem twice and a few weeks later it'd start again. Eventually we figured it was the actual wiring in the house and my dad wouldn't admit it so I hurled the Sky modem out the window and order Virgin...

At first it was a bit of a mixed bag... on a 50MB connection and while the download speed is great the upload speed is terrible and the way the speeds are so inconsistent is pisses me off... Overall I'm getting my files at an incredibly faster rate but the way the speed jumps up and down is just annoying but it seems to have calm down and become much more stable now. Also it is much more stable on the PS3 unlike Sky was.

[capcom_suicide]

Finally got my internet sorted, now connected directly to the main fibre loop in my city. Seems good locally and OK over the water.

Local:





Over to UK (Takes a bit of speed hit, but still should be good for hosting games etc I think.)







Fingers crossed even the fail netcode of GRAW3 will be satisfied!

[ETC]

^^ That must be insanely expensive

[capcom_suicide]

Work covers home connection, but the normal price is ?45 per month, which isn't that bad IMHO.

[EvilBoris]

That's pretty good, bearing in mind your scandinavian prices, it's about ?35 for a virgin media 30mb connection , which is actually pish for gaming

[capcom_suicide]

That's pretty good, bearing in mind your scandinavian prices, it's about ?35 for a virgin media 30mb connection , which is actually pish for gaming

I guess the key difference is that there are only 4.5 million people here, and the government pushed very hard to get a high speed fibre backbone into the major cities. Bergen is the second largest city, but only has a population of 250,000 and I suspect this makes it easier for companies to offer good upload speeds as the inffrastructure is capable of supporting it.

Why is the Virgin fibre bad for gaming?

I haven't tried gaming yet, Open NAT works fine on XBL and the ping test reslut was good. Are there other tests I should try?

My main driver for the upgrade was Video Conferencing back to family in the UK. I think they have between 3Mb and 8Mb DL and hopefully this will mean at their end they get a reasonable quality picture of us.

[EvilBoris]

There are several reasons that I'm unsure if, but they got in trouble for describing themselves as being best for gaming and cannot make that claim.

Most recently it's been crap because they've turned on some traffic management things which are interfering with online games.