Sorry... it's your avatar that scares me away from your posts!!Sput wrote:cdd wrote:By the way, you know they have recently been bought out by Pipex? Hopefully the standard of service we are used to won't decline!Scroll up from your last post.
Best broadband provider
A number of possible answers as to why they consume so much data [one or more of the below]: -Dr Lobster* wrote:somebody who uses 150gb a month must have their connection tied up pretty much 24x7, i do wonder what on earth they must be downloading
- They have others on their network at home, in particular teenagers or children.
- They love porn and just can't get enough of it or use bandwidth sapping applications like Bit Torrent
- They've got the latest fandabbidoozie wireless device and haven't bothered to secure it. Someone in the vicinity is using it to syphon off large quantities of data or send out spam.
- They run servers of some description.
- They work from home, or frequently transfer large amounts of data via the internet connection, such as files between 2 locations.
I don't think I use anywhere in the region of 150Gb, but I would roughly guess it's in the 30-40 Gbs at most. I am with Pipex and have been for a number of years, but the jiggery pokery with their F2S division sounds worrying.
I have a feeling that they've already had the shaping gear in place since BT did the regrades across the network to the highest speed your line can support - this throttled 1Meg connection doesn't feel as nippy as the proper 512k clean connection, which I would happily go back to so long as there was no cap and no jiggery pokery.
As soon as there is some sort of download limit imposed, or anything which requires me to actively monitor how much data I use - that's it, I'm off. I don't want the hassle of having to check how much I use. Another thing that'll get me out the door is traffic shaping in any form which is as complicated as Plusnet's.
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Neil Jones
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Thu 11 Sep, 2003 20.03
- Location: West Midlands
None of them, they're all crap according to ADSLGuide.org.uk's forums.jay wrote:Who would you suggest is the best broadband provider, in terms of cost and value for money?
AOL: Non standard settings. Plus pain in the arse to just generally do anything with. The broadband is supposed to be quite good, even if you do have to change a few settings
Actual forum topics spotted:
Blueyonder: Slow speeds.
BT: Speed Woes.
Eclipse: Speed Issues.
F2S: HTTP throttled.
Tiscali: No service.
Wanadoo: "Such Poor Service"
Pays your money and takes your choice. Could have done far worse than BT though - AOL! What fun you'd have with them.I've just signed up with BT Broadband as I'm moving to a non-ntl area - did I make the right choice?
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Dr Lobster*
- Posts: 2123
- Joined: Sat 30 Aug, 2003 20.14
ironically though the reason why a lot of these isps have speed issues is because they aren't doing enough to stop people abusing their service.Neil Jones wrote:Actual forum topics spotted:
Blueyonder: Slow speeds.
BT: Speed Woes.
Eclipse: Speed Issues.
F2S: HTTP throttled.
Tiscali: No service.
Wanadoo: "Such Poor Service"
i think anybody who leaves their pc on 24x7 downloading or using it as a server disserve to be booted off the service. businesses have to pay extra for that sort of bandwidth so i can't see why the consumer shouldn't. personally i think throttling is the only way forward for some of these troublesome users.
Upload service: http://www.metropol247.co.uk/uploadservice
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Neil Jones
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Thu 11 Sep, 2003 20.03
- Location: West Midlands
Yes but I would also argue that the providers issue major advertising campaigns without having the necessary infrastructure to be able to cope with the extra demand.Dr Lobster* wrote:ironically though the reason why a lot of these isps have speed issues is because they aren't doing enough to stop people abusing their service.
Forget ye not that the average broadband contention ratio for home users is 50:1 which, for anybody not up to speed, basically means you can have up to 50 people connected to an exchange and the amount of space available for downloading is allocated dynamically. Therefore if you have all 50 people downloading something big at the same time, everybody gets a crap download speed until somebody gives up, logs off or whatever. However this could also be an internet provider issue, not necessarily an exchange problem.
From the exchange it routes to the internet provider which is often where the problems lie, especially during school holidays and evening use and weekends and other peak times when every man and his dog logs on. Same sort of thing that happens every Dec 31st/Jan 1st when everybody starts texting new year greetings and your mobile can't log onto your provider because its overloaded.
Broadband has always been advertised as an always-on connection which of course makes it suitable for servers and so on. In fact most computers when they are connected to the Internet act as servers in one way or another. When you're logged into MSN Messenger for example it technically makes your computer a server to be able to send and receive messages through the MSN service.i think anybody who leaves their pc on 24x7 downloading or using it as a server disserve to be booted off the service. businesses have to pay extra for that sort of bandwidth so i can't see why the consumer shouldn't. personally i think throttling is the only way forward for some of these troublesome users.
Most ISPs don't specifically disallow servers on their connection although it would come down to fair use. Same as when they say they don't prohibit connection-sharing (via a router) but they won't provide any support on it.
Small fry traffic such as MSN Messenger is plausible, though most providers are now clamping down on the usage of P2P programs. I reckon somebody's going to set a precedent one of these days that makes the ISPs liable for copyright infringement by allowing P2P traffic on their network.
I've been with Plusnet broadband since September, and only once have I experienced downtime - and that was at 5am one morning while they were doing routine maintanence.
I was greeted with a BT Gateway error page telling me that services would resume shortly, so I didn't bother faffing around rebooting my modem.
I must say, in terms of modems, I've found my Creative BroadbandBlaster to be superb. Far better than the BT voyager shite that I was supplied with (Ethernet is far far superior to USB).
I was greeted with a BT Gateway error page telling me that services would resume shortly, so I didn't bother faffing around rebooting my modem.
I must say, in terms of modems, I've found my Creative BroadbandBlaster to be superb. Far better than the BT voyager shite that I was supplied with (Ethernet is far far superior to USB).
User Removed
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Neil Jones
- Posts: 661
- Joined: Thu 11 Sep, 2003 20.03
- Location: West Midlands
USB modems get the job done but are cheap racked off pieces of junk that eat every piece of USB bandwidth going. Plus everybody with 98SE or later is almost guaranteed to have a USB port or two; can't always guarantee an Ethernet slot on the older systems.Jamez wrote:I must say, in terms of modems, I've found my Creative BroadbandBlaster to be superb. Far better than the BT voyager shite that I was supplied with (Ethernet is far far superior to USB).
