I Need Internets.

[Muel]

Howdo.

I need some internets, when I say need, I mean that if I get it wrong and buy shite, I can't get extra freelance Web work in, so I will carry on barely having enough money to live on, so it's fairly important.

I want decent speeds (5mbps download, 0.5mbps upload. Minimum, not maximum), but more importantly it needs to be stable (none of this capping in the evenings bollocks, that's when I'll be working). I couldn't give a shit if it's "up to 50mbps" if I actually get 3mbps with a 300ms ping.

Also, if I could not be shouted at for stealing telly and softwares that'd be nice.

What I'm looking for is real life accounts from you lot, I.E: computer literate young men that I know and trust.

EDIT: I also need phone and line rental, as it's not connected at the moment.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Muel

[Azarathal]

Talktalk.

I get consistant download speeds of between 700kb/s - 1.1mb/s

Upload speeds vary between 50kb/s and 300kb/s (I have a crappy router though)

I never see a drop in speed, this is with my laptop + pc + phone constantly using the internet as well as sisters + dads lappy's and phones using it occasionally.

I cba to google for the document but they've said before that they don't want to do a ISP block of pirating sites as it defeats the "free web" and our rights as users.

Mine is about £15 a month including a landline

Playing games I generally get between 3ms - 300ms but that is all dependant on the server load.

Hopefully I helped

[AndrewEH1]

Talktalk.

+1

Been using them for a few years now. My download speeds are usually around 3-5 Mb/s in the evenings. Upload varies quite a bit I think max I've had is 0.8Mb/s. Although I'll do a couple of speedtests when I get home.

Edit: Talktalk also includes unlimited 01/02/03/0845/0870 call and line rental, which can cost around £100/year.

Edited July 1, 2011 by AndrewEH1

[Muel]

My Dad and Aunty are on TalkTalk. They're fine when it works, but if something goes wrong they're the most useless company I've ever dealt with. My Dad rang them 3 times to get them to cancel his account, in the end he just stopped the direct debit.

At my Dad's on his connection with them, he get's 5.3mbps down, 0.2mbps up and 45ms ping. I could live with that but really I want more than that.

I think TalkTalk are my backup though if all else fails.

Anyone use ADSL24 or Xilo? They seem to get rated pretty highly on my nerdy forums.

[JD™]

Don't do anything without finding out the maximum PHYSICAL speed of your line. I'm on 8mbps line, but the actual line itself can only handle 1mbps so no matter what I pay for that's what I'll get until BT infinity is ready. I can't remember where you find out, I think it's on the BT website though, because obviously they provide the cables.

[Krisboats]

I couldn't find any decent adsl providers so went with virgin. Been with them for 3 years and had 2 days with no internet. Had written warning a week before on the first occasion and second time the modem was replaced by an engineer the same day. Always great connection speeds.

I heard BEthere were good, and owned by o2 which offered the same package. No download limits last time i checked.

[forteh]

Ive used eclipse for the last 10 years now, I can honestly say in that time its gone down something like 3 times, all of which was a failure at the local exchange and all local adsl was out.

Speed is constant about 7-8Mbs, downloading at 905-940kb/s; it maxes out my copper lines and is more than enough for me. Im capped to 50gb a month but again thats more than enough for me, they do larger packages aswell. I ping at about 15ms in css if youre particularly interested, more specific to server location though I guess.

Its relatively expensive at 20 quid a month but for me the service you get is second to none and tech support is excellent. Im on a 1 month rolling contract aswell, can change my package online for no extra cost and there is a whole host of gubbins on the the customer control panel that allow you to monitor the connection and change options.

Ive never experienced speed throttling, only bandwidth caps which if exceeded restricts the connection till the next bill.

edit: If I could get cable to my house I would use it

Edited July 1, 2011 by forteh

[Fish-Finger-er]

advice on stuff to check before you go ahead and order(im not going to give advice on who to go for, i work for bt, so am biased towards them, as theyve never ever let me down, in 3 years ive never once had a connection go down, i get 8mb download speeds, theyre download fair usage limit is 400gb a month currently)

check what speed each ISP can deliver(jd it may be worth you checking this). Basically excluding the virgin fibre network(i.e the cable TV providers) everything runs through BT exchanges, companies rent the lines and equipment in the exchanges off BT.But some companies decide to only rent certain exchanges(more so in the cities) and not bother with others, to cut costs and they can still serve that area off another exchange by switching wires at the cab + exchange.

now as a rule of thumb, the longer the wire from the exchange to the cabinet, and from the cabinet to the exchange, the slower the speed.

what this means to you, is if you go with ISP A, who have chosen to rent lines and equipment from the exchange one down from yours, you may get slower speeds than off ISP B, who rent lines and equipment in your closest exchange. (but if you check on the BT website your line still says capable up to 8mb). for the general public in most instances this makes sod all difference for watching youtube and ebay, but obviously to yourself 3mbps - 8mbps is a big difference.

for example my mate lives in an apartment complex in manchester, with a canal running parallel to it, cutting the 2 suburbs in half, unfortunately the only 2 companies who used his tiny exchange were bt and sky. the company he wanted to use (o2 as it made it super cheap with his phone contract) use the exchange on the other side of the canal, which is quite a distance due to the way its routed round the canal, and could only give him 0.5 mbps, as opposed to the 8mbps bt/sky would offer him.

[JD™]

As a slight hijack, and only because you mentioned me.. I'm with BT getting that (at best) 1mbps - that means it wouldn't be any better anywhere else because they own the lines, right? They're putting the fibre optics in now for 30mbps or whatever infinity is...

[Fish-Finger-er]

As a slight hijack, and only because you mentioned me.. I'm with BT getting that (at best) 1mbps - that means it wouldn't be any better anywhere else because they own the lines, right? They're putting the fibre optics in now for 30mbps or whatever infinity is...

yea, pretty much, most likely be down to old copper cable supplying way more houses than it can handle. infinity is 40mbps, and like 4 years away for me:(

[Revolver]

My vote is for Virgin, although I get the impression they're not the best over the phone to deal with, but their internet has been more reliable than sky's, which is the other one we've had.

[Muel]

Feck, lots to read lol.

BT reckon the max my line can yield is 17mbps, with the estimated average being 13mbps. No point getting anything more than a 10mbps package then I guess?

The other thing is that I can't sign a contract longer than 12 months, because I don't know how long I'll be in the flat, so Virgin is out because they only offer 18 months minimum on the packages I can afford.

If I do go with BT, do I have to use their home hub thing? I've got a posh router of my own that I'd rather stick with really.

[LukasMcNeal]

If I do go with BT, do I have to use their home hub thing? I've got a posh router of my own that I'd rather stick with really.

For initial set up maybe, but after you can use your own I think. I say that because our home hub broke and we used a random netgear one.

[Muel]

Looks like O2 offer the cheapest deal for me. Broadband I'd be happy with and the line rental for £25 a month.

Anyone with them? Ever been cobbled for downloading Top Gear?

[MadManMike]

Seems to be luck of the draw, I'm with Sky and I get 18mb download speed, never capped or anything. Not had a day without internet in 3 years.

However, other people in my town have nothing but problems with Sky. I guess it's down to the line itself, I must be lucky in the town centre.

[Revolver]

Our sky here was toss, it's only better now because we rang up a few times complaining that it was toss. I think they ended up upping the power at their end for free. I didn't get the whole story though.

[Fish-Finger-er]

Feck, lots to read lol.

BT reckon the max my line can yield is 17mbps, with the estimated average being 13mbps. No point getting anything more than a 10mbps package then I guess?

The other thing is that I can't sign a contract longer than 12 months, because I don't know how long I'll be in the flat, so Virgin is out because they only offer 18 months minimum on the packages I can afford.

If I do go with BT, do I have to use their home hub thing? I've got a posh router of my own that I'd rather stick with really.

nah you dont have to use the bt router,however supposedly the new homehub3 is the dogs bollox(according to a bunch of reviews) i couldnt tell you cos i got a homehub 2, and its been pretty faultless

yea you can use whatever router you want though. just have to ask bt for the settings(or find them on the web)

[aener]

Been with them before and they were fine, but in student house this year I was with Virgin, and they were a f**king nightmare.

First few weeks were fine, got pretty decent speeds most the time. But we got capped, disconnected and cut off alltogether at several points. Pricing was massively inconsistent as well. Supposedly unlimited bandwidth, but got charged for going over. Sometimes quite heavily.

Worth mentioning I was in a student-dense area, so that was likely the main issue - but even so. I'll not be going with them ever again.