Decent Broadband package for gaming

[Flibb]

If you play on MPUK servers you cannot beat VM, 12ms on average with 10 hops...

Bethere are giving me 7ms and 6 hops, thats on the unlimited package.

[razer121]

The problem with Bethere is i would have to wait upto a month without broadband and phone...cant really do that so i've looked into plusnet....

[Phage]

Plusnet are fine. BT resellers in my area.
I'm about 300m from the exchange so I get ~7.9mbps all the time. However, becuase the exchange is heavily congested this can drop to a mere dribble in peak times. Also, I've noticed some severe jumps in ping. I've been booted from servers because my ping jumps up from 30 to >300ms and back down again.
On the plus side (ha!), I've found their cistomer service to be excellent given there's nothing they can do about the congestion in my area, they sorted out my faults in quick time.

[abaxas]

Plusnet are fine. BT resellers in my area.
I'm about 300m from the exchange so I get ~7.9mbps all the time. However, becuase the exchange is heavily congested this can drop to a mere dribble in peak times. Also, I've noticed some severe jumps in ping. I've been booted from servers because my ping jumps up from 30 to >300ms and back down again.
On the plus side (ha!), I've found their cistomer service to be excellent given there's nothing they can do about the congestion in my area, they sorted out my faults in quick time.

Thumbs up for plusnet.

They are not the fastest or he most reliable. But they have a support team that actually supports people, they are 100% honest about traffic shaping and priority and you get what you pay for.

I'm happier with a company who is honest, rather than one that isnt.

[razer121]

im not that far from the exchange but know im able to get about 3m connection, crap but good enough i dont need speed, i dont care about download or upload, i care about the reliablitiy of the line, i've a mate with them on a 7mb connection and he has a nice stable line so part of the reason im considering them, plus the fact they let me use my own router AND they provide an option to not go into contract....i would of course pay for the better package from them too, they are looking promising!

[spoon_]

Bethere are giving me 7ms and 6 hops, thats on the unlimited package.

Is that the case 24/7 even during peak hours?

Don't forget that doorbell wire cannot cope with peak times very well i.e. your neighbor downloading porn

[Phage]

Thumbs up for plusnet.

They are not the fastest or he most reliable. But they have a support team that actually supports people, they are 100% honest about traffic shaping and priority and you get what you pay for.

I'm happier with a company who is honest, rather than one that isnt.

Yup - I'm on the Premium (damn those kids and their downloading....<ahem>).

[LuckyNV]

Is that the case 24/7 even during peak hours?

Don't forget that doorbell wire cannot cope with peak times very well i.e. your neighbor downloading porn

Can't speak for him personally, but for myself, peak or off-peak is the same for me (pings and downloads)
The low hops and ping is probably due to Fastpath enabled though, free but only available on the Unlimited and Pro packages on Bethere.

I'll try the multiplay.co.uk traceroute when I get back home (incidentally peak time) but this is a UK TF2 server you can compare if you want



edit-

Tracing route to multiplay.co.uk [85.236.96.68]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  my.router [192.168.0.1]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     5 ms     4 ms     5 ms  linx1.multiplay.co.uk [195.66.224.224]
  5     5 ms     4 ms     5 ms  www.multiplay.co.uk [85.236.96.68]

Trace complete.

but surely that is only a website and not the game server? Any MPUK IPs I can tracert?

[Flibb]

Is that the case 24/7 even during peak hours?

Don't forget that doorbell wire cannot cope with peak times very well i.e. your neighbor downloading porn

Yep its 24/7, and the cabinets are currently being upgraded as well. Have been LLU with ADSL2 through bethere for a while now, connection has been faultless.

[ArtAddiction]

I don't recommend Virgin Media. A large percentage of people are still having constant disconnections since last winter, plus they have traffic shaping. Can't really suggest other ISPs as I have only been with VM (way back when they were called ntlworld).

[riviera76]

Another recommendation for BE. I'm about 2 miles from the exchange and always got a constant 4.5mb a second no matter the time of day. They've also got excellent customer service.

Edit: I stopped using BE about a year ago to go to Virgin Media and can safely say that the service I got from BE was awesome in comparison. My VM speeds fluctuate greatly but my BE speeds were always the same.

[OilSheikh]

I would say Be , a bit pricey though. What about XILO? I see that some people use them.

[razer121]

Well, i'm giving Talk Talk ago....fingers crossed!

[abaxas]

Well, i'm giving Talk Talk ago....fingers crossed!

Watch out for talktalk's magical ppp slowdown.

The more you download/transfer the slower it gets.

[razer121]

Well good thing i dont download alot then