Which Broadband!?

[sidcos]

We're setting up a community centre and hope to run approximately 12 pc's. The pc's will be mainly used for IT classes, basic html, word processing, home work classes etc..
Which connection speed and ISP would you advise?
Thanks

[peterb]

Depends on your budget and how much internet use you expect. (I run a home network of 5 Pcs with a 2 Mb connection withought any problems)

Personally I would recommend Zen for a good solid ISP, but their home ADSL product at £35/month carries a 50Gb/month cap. Alternatively you can go for their unlimited 8Mb service - bt it'll cost over £80/month. If you can find one, a 2Mbyte unlimited would be OK - and cost less.

[sidcos]

Thanks for this. As for budget, well we are definatley skint! As we will not be charging for the service we'd like to keep it as low as possible. I guess the net use would be quite high as we're going to encourage people\kids to use the net.

[cougarslam]

telewest/ntl if you can 10mb would run well for that lot.

we use a 2mb adsl connection for 7 pcs in our office and we are a web design company. real pain when looking for stock images or ftping files to a server.

[sidcos]

Thanks again

[TheAnimus]

if your in london something like Be would be good 24mbit.

With that many PCs with a web cache (proxy) would be usefull. 2mbit thou should be fine if you have any form of QoS or caching proxy

[cliky]

WWW.plus.net would be my recommendation

8Mb connection no Monthly limits all for £29.99

and they're bloody reliable too! (only 28hrs of lost connection in 21/2 years!)

[capt_cornflake]

I'd advise to steer clear of plus/net to be honest.
I haven't had anything like the positive experience cliky has, and when something goes wrong, their customer service is shocking.
They weren't too bad when I signed up 18 months ago, but seem to have deteriorated rapidly.

And in the last couple of weeks I've being experiencing random DNS outages, which they've considered serious enough to put a service alert up on their site.

I'm considering moving, and wouldn't recommend them to others.

Oh and something else you should know if you're still considering, there "free activation" isn't free at all, it's merely delayed until to terminate the contract. It decreases slightly each year, but you'd have to be with them for years to pay nothing on exit (the only reason I've hung in so long)

[cotswoldcs]

I have been a PlusNet customer for over 6 years and until recently have been very happy and have recommended them to others without hesitation. Recently however, their service has deteriorated and I've been hearing complaints from others as well.

I've also recently heard (via Hexus) that it is likely that BT are going to take over PlusNet. This would probably spell the end of them as an ISP and therefore I would recommend you look into an alternative ISP.

[Pdog]

I use Freedom2Surf. They are reasonably priced, They have had some issues and are now owned by Pipex. All in all I would recommend them.

[cougarslam]

if you only have adsl in your area maybe go with bt business bband £30 a month 8mb unlimited (unlike other fup, packet shaping isps).

although if you exceed 100gb they may have a go at you.

[malice19]

I use Freedom2Surf. They are reasonably priced, They have had some issues and are now owned by Pipex. All in all I would recommend them.

Im with Nildram and was thinking switching to Freedom2surf but is there any point as you just pointed out they are also owned by pipex

Would there be any difference?

[cdpuk]

I'd recommend Eclipse. www.eclipse.net.uk

Business pricing from £19.99/month
Up to 8M down, 448k up
Free setup
Free 4 port router
I think they're even giving away free domain names at the moment!

-Chris

[malice19]

I'd recommend Eclipse. www.eclipse.net.uk

Business pricing from £19.99/month
Up to 8M down, 448k up
Free setup
Free 4 port router
I think they're even giving away free domain names at the moment!

-Chris

Aye enjoy looks good, but who ownes them then?

[malice19]

Aye enjoy looks good, but who ownes them then?

DOH!
12month contract.... Yeah rite

[muddyfox470]

Namesco are great, eclipse have gone very down hill (luckily i managed to escape )

Check out adslguide forums for indepth comments on each of the main isps

Ian