Broadband in practice ...

**AtW** · 3 August 2003, 22:03

it sounds like one of those crappy small ISP wanna bees that die shortly after they offered service - by no means pre-pay whole year. 50:1 does not sound any better than what you should get from proper companies - not worth saving a quid and getting poor pings, crappy services

AtW
2mbit blueyonder cable user

**DimPrawn** · 4 August 2003, 07:36

I use NTL (600K line) and the actual internet connection is superb. Have run it solidly with full download speeds available over the last 2-3 years (I was an early broadband starter

).

The NTL email service however is pants.

I would rather pay more for reliable service.

**jason986** · 4 August 2003, 09:56

I use the BT business 500. Excellent internet service but again the email service is c**p (too often the pop server is down). Also the email spamming on BT accounts is now ridiculous.

**roger rabbit** · 4 August 2003, 10:09

Fiddle -

you have a choice - remain in the quaint countryside where you get woken up by Roosters crowing in the morning or move to somewhere civilised where you can get 2mb Telewest service - great for, ahem, videos.

**fiddleabout** · 4 August 2003, 10:25

I prefer to find my car where I left it and in the same condition I left it in the mornings.

I can't wait to take a look at the 'ahem videos' you recommended in another thread - I was working Sunday and thought I'd take a look through the very broadband connection here but sadly a piece of software called "Web Washer" blocked them.

Regarding Freedom2surf - they get good ratings from visitors to www.adslguide.org/ and it is not a saving of a few quid - they are £130 cheaper over a year than BT and consistently better ratings on all counts. Anyway there is a 1 month minimum contract with most.

**EddieC** · 4 August 2003, 13:14

I've been using Zen for a while now with no real complaints. They will also give you 8 static IP addresses for free. The 50:1 contention is fine most of the time, but some evenings it does slow down a bit.

Under no circumstances go for the BT offering, I know too many people who have and who have suffered.

www.zenadsl.com

**fiddleabout** · 4 August 2003, 14:10

Yes - somebody here recommended Zen - they get slightly higher speed and customer service ratings but are a couple of quid or so a month dearer.

What I really want to know is if anybody thought it worth paying more for 20:1 contention or higher bandwidth.

It seems they all offer the same BT wholesale package with differentiators being mostly on webspace and webspace features. I'm only interested in wires only static ip offerings. I may have some use for webspace as an image server to cut bandwidth usage on KwikBreaks which uses quite a lot during the summer - depends how reliable/fast the freebie space is - I suspect not very on both counts.

**Kelvin99** · 5 August 2003, 15:03

What I really want to know is if anybody thought it worth paying more for 20:1 contention or higher bandwidth.

Personally, I don't think it's worth the money.
I have Zen ADSL 512Kbps 50:1 and get around 470Kbps of data on average, really quite close to the 512 with overheads.

It all depends on the bandwidth of the path from the exchange and the number of users on the path.
In my case and based on experience there're not enough users for contention to be an issue. And I would say the same goes for most users with most ISPs.

It would be nice to know the bandwidth of my path, but say it's 2Mbps, to pitch it low. It would take 200 people sharing this path at 512Kbps to get 50:1. Or 80 people for 20:1.
From what I've read, you normally get on average 30-40 concurrent users on a single path, so contention is not an issue.

This is likely to change in the future, as more and more people get connected.

**roger rabbit** · 5 August 2003, 15:15

"This is likely to change in the future, as more and more people get connected"

I agree completely with you there. I dread the day when all the riff raff in my area are on-line. Goodness knows what unspeakable things all the unemployed and home-workers will do with the freedom to gab all day. Probably argue about football and knitting and other working class pursuits.

God knows what havoc it's going to play with my educational downloading.

Broadband in practice ...