ADSL ISP's (how do they differ)

[Kumagoro]

Me bird after much pestering will now get broadband.
DSL is the only available broadband to her and all i know about is NTL.

There seems to be loads of different ISPs and i would like to know what
i should be looking out for in terms of hidden charges and pitfalls.

I cant use the new bulldog or ukonline malarky as its not available here.


I have read that Tiscali (like many others) dont give you your MAC if you want to transfer. Is it even called a MAC???

I would prefer a 1 or 3 month minimum contract rather than a year.
Cheap (512 Kbps ok) but pretty rock solid connection. (id prefer under
£20 inc vat) I know a lot of you recommend zen but they are a bit too
expensive.

Does the distance from the companies servers make a difference or I dont
have to worry about anything like that.

Im reading stuff on ADSLGUIDE now but still hard to know what seperated them all from each other.

[jsterling]

pipex should give you what you're after.

[Nox]

i'm with eclipse, highly recommend them.

Nox

[Dooms]

It does seem like its all down to personal experiance... some people say 'x' are great while others found them crap and recommend 'y' ....

Ive been with
Nildram - brilliant service, bit more expensive but well worth it IMO)
Tiscali - Found them god awful and lots of people resently have been getting the 'you are using the internet to download to much - stop or we will cut you off)
Bulldog - With them now and wow i love the service, never dies on me and its 8meg for £30 including the phone line (whichs adds up to less than £20 a month with a BT line ontop) however if you do have problems their customer service isnt great and you cant get it in alot of areas atm (mainly just cities)

There are my experiances...

Leon / dooms

[Nick F]

Dooms how are you getting bulldog for £30/month I am paying £52/month including the £10.50 for the phone line with them. I get the first month for £1 then the second for £29.

I was also reading on their forums that you can use Sky with their telephone lines ? Anyone had any problems with this?

[Dooms]

An offer they were running in Jan - 4mb (which is now 8) with phone line (not the one that includes calls) for £30 for a year and then £39.99 after that.

[Taz]

Another vote for Nildram. I've had Nildram for a while and they are brilliant. My other ADSL line is on PIPEX and they are complete sh*te. My third line is with BT Yahoo who are okay but will take over your PC like AOL if you let them.

Recommending an ADSL ISP is very difficult as each person has their own set of criteria for what is good. If you're a novice and are after a relatively straightforward setup that is controlled by the ISP then ISP's like AOL, Pipex and BT Yahoo should be better for you.

If you want to set up everything manually then ISP's like Nildram would be better (i'm sure there are loads of others but I don't have any personal experience of them).

You've then got some other potential considerations:

- Download limits (many ISPs cap the amount you can download per month)
- E-mail addresses
- Usenet (news) access
- Compatibility with online games
- Virus checking on e-mails
- Static IP addresses
- Web space
- Domain names
- E-mail mailbox space
- Webmail access to e-mails
- POP3 access to e-mails
- BBCi access
- Contention ratio (how many users are multiplexed onto the same ADSL line from BT back to the ISP, 50:1 is common for home users and 20:1 for business users)

It's all the little things that could end up making a difference but in my opinion there is no substitute for raw speed and as close to 100% uptime as possible.

The distance of your home to the companies servers should not make a difference. The distance of your home to your BT exchange will make a difference.

It's also worth looking at how the ISP hooks into the Internet backbone as the bandwidth of their own connection to the Internet may influence your real-world speeds.

[Kumagoro]

i would like something which is good for gaming. so i want a consistantly low ping.


I dont need a massive monthly transfer limit but it seems most of the are offering
only 1 GB and then £1.75 for every GB you go over. Which is crap.

Ideally im after at least 512 with 30 Gb a month limit. things like webspace etc dont
really matter.

If the distance from the compaines servers doesnt matter why does it matter how
fat the pipes are at their end? how does the system generally work.

Also do cheap micro filters from say ebuyer not work as well as the expensive ones
these compaines sell? or is it a bit of a con?

[Kumagoro]

I have had a look at plusnet and ukonline. plus net has this to say.

With Broadband Plus you can use any type of Internet services you want. In order to ensure we deliver a high level of service, during busy periods we will give priority to services such as web browsing and email and a lower priority to high usage services such as downloading and file sharing.

So what does gaming come under??? will it be affected or not?

[Atomic]

Im with plusnet and they have no cap. 2MB as its shared with 2others, and its always super speedy when not having a p2p hammering.

[Kumagoro]

they seem like a good deal, i have seen the above quote i.e giving priority to web surfing over p2p at others ones could have been zen nildram or eclipse. Does anyone know which camp gaming comes under, priority or restricted?

Also with plusnet there is a years contract or montly with the monthly you play £11 one off. Does that mean after a few month i dont have to pay the activation fee if i quit? Is the year contract one where its free mean you have to pay in one lump sum?

[Atomic]

with plusnet you *can* enable priority if u choose. Its an user settable option.

Dunno about the pricing options cant even remember what we pay!

[Kumagoro]

cheers atomic,
--

Ive also been reading about IPSTREAM and DATASTREAM. Its seem IPSTREAM is better
anyone know if zen nildram eclipse and other popular highly rated ones use? are they all
IPSTREAM. Is plusnet?

[Kumagoro]

Im thinking of going for the plusnet broadband plus @14.99 inc vat a month.
the £21.99 pack doesnt say anything about restricting. just this one.

http://www.plus.net/residential/broa...resbb_pluslink

I wish it would give some info on what happens with this restriction. how slow does it
get?

[Kumagoro]

OK i have a reply to my questions already which is a good sign. they had this to say

1, The way the system works is that speed is restricted when certain
protocols hit certain usage levels. If many users were using the same
game on the same port then the speed may be restricted but there are
no hard and fast rules with regards what is restricted and when.

2, The busy periods will depend on the amount of use on a protocol,
and we cannot provide definate times.

3, The speed will be limited not the amount of data transfer.

4, If you choose to have a modem from us then we will supply 2
microfilters, unfortunately we cannot supply these on their own.

I have now asked how much the speed is limited to and how much latency/ping is affected. Also how much its affected just by the traffic and every packet being inspected.