Shared Broadband for Uni Usage (House)

[directhex]

"llu" means "effing fast for cheap"

or more technically, "local loop unbundling", which means "the isp buys actual space in the exchange, rather than just selling you a BT connection". it's massively cheaper, and about 4 times faster - but only works in areas with an LLU exchange

[muddyfox470]

through bulldog however they only offer me 2meg at the student house address which isnt so good

>2mbps would be superb, but 2meg may have to do. i think a few phone calls need to be made

ian

[directhex]

maximum of 2MB means it's not LLU - which means not only are speeds lower, but costs are higher (e.g. UKOnline charge an extra £10 a month for 2mb on a BT line rather than LLU)

[p5-]

through bulldog however they only offer me 2meg at the student house address which isnt so good

>2mbps would be superb, but 2meg may have to do. i think a few phone calls need to be made

ian

8mb really is that much better in a shared uni house. Probably wise to go Max with a bt ipstream based service (provided it's a half decent exchange), rather than a datastream based bulldog 2mb (the 1mb and 2mb services from bulldog aren't LLU).

Also, worth finding out what kind of usage your housemates will be making of the internet, so everyone is happy. As previously mentioned, if you have game players and p2p users in there, one party won't be best pleased. If you're worried about cost, old pcs to be made into routers can be had on ebay for very cheap. I myself got hold of an old celeron600mhz (low power) machine for a tenner, and tried out m0n0wall on that, though I didn't find it very effective. Couldn't be arsed trying linux based stuff on it, which could well be better.

If you don't want to go down the route of making a router from a pc, you could try to source an older linksys wrt54g(s) router (~£50 new), which has enhanced QoS facilities via third party firmware.

[chrestomanci]

How is Durham thease days? I used to be a student there in the Early Nineties.

Have you asked the University IT people, they may be able to act as your ISP. Because of the way BT wholesale sells ADSL, anyone with more than about 100 users can set themselves up as an ISP, it is possible that the University has done that, as I recall when I was there they where quite forward thinking in IT.

If you can go with that you will probably get faster and and uncapped access to systems inside the university such as anything you need for your course, and other sudents in their colleges or houses, but you will probably find P2P ports blocked. (Which IMHO will be no bad thing, those P2P users will suck up all your bandwith 24/7 and prevent you from doing anything usefull, and then get you kicked off your ISP.)