Sorry, not exactly software, but ISP question

[kjacko]

But to state ADSL is crap is just stupid. You may want to tell my colleague who gets almost 24mbs and a latency of 18ms on ADSL that it's crap.

Hardly stupid when nationwide companies and residentials complain about it.
I work in a 3 year old business park touted by BT themselves as a 'e' park, meaning technology especially broadband.
For over 3 years ALL BT could EVER give us was 512kbps adsl max line that was tenuous at best and dead at worst.
The only solution for any of the businesses has been leased line or bonded dsl which is costly and troublesome.
I've spent a lot of time with a telecoms engineer in the business next to ours (i'm the I.T. Manager at ours) and we eventually got NTL to put leased line in, with 10mbit cable modems as well. Sure its costly, leased line is (although loads cheaper than BT).
Unless your almost sitting on top of the exchange you won't realise anything like their max speed, not over copper. Traffic managing is also a nightmare and often kills connections, depending how far from the exchange you are.

Virgin aren't the best customer service in the world, but then in 6 years, i've only needed them twice.

BT aint gonna catch them up, even 21cn has taken a knock, they just can't get it right unfortunately.

I stand by my statement, its come from experience dealing with both sides over a min of 3 years and virgin/ntl come out winners....convincingly.

edit: oh, 2 years ago i rented a house less than 1.3km from the local exchange and had ADSL (BT wholesal iirc) i got a constant 2mbit. My vodafone usb modem gave me 3.6mbit....guess which one i used more.

 

[drummerbod]

You seem to rely purely on your own experience which in fairness hasn't been good with relation to ADSL.

I have 197 branches which use ADSL without any issue.

No taffic shaping on these or my own personal ADSL connections with Be & Sky.

Yes there are naff companies out there. I could confidently state that if there were dozen cable companies some of them would be poor as well.

So what sort of latency do you get on Virgin then? I'm a gamer and I know many others that jumped off Virgin because the latency was poor at peak times.

 

[kjacko]

You seem to rely purely on your own experience which in fairness hasn't been good with relation to ADSL.

..which is exactly what this thread is about, asking for opinions. I gave mine based on experience, not just what the news says (even though i mentioned it )

So what sort of latency do you get on Virgin then? I'm a gamer and I know many others that jumped off Virgin because the latency was poor at peak times.

Are you definietly talking about latency? or ping?
My ping certainly isn't an issue tbh. Recently i've been hammering CoD:WAW every night between 7-10pm (getting it in whilst i'm recoving from shoulder surgery, before the mrs gets me doing diy again ) get anything from 30+, but i only rarley get lag (latency) if there is a huge arty strike going on in a very full server and i game at 1650x1050 with everything on high.
Latency can depend totally on your client setup and the server setup an not purely on your bband connection. FPS in games can alter latency so its not something you can easily compare. Most servers only report ping times because the differences between client and server game configs can give misleading latency timings.

So..err....no, i don't have an issue at peak times with it.
I fully understand plenty of people like adsl....i've had it and don't like it. Simple as...
But they aint bottom of the pile for no reason

 

[drummerbod]

I was referring to latency through your provider to gaming hosts generally.

30ms is very acceptable. Most gamers would be very happy with that.

 

[djrock]

I wouldn’t call ADSL crap. It’s just that you can get a lot of problems with it.

Maybe less people would complain about slow speeds if they weren’t told and are pay for say 8Mb when in reality the max speed they can get is 4Mb. This is happening because a lot of people are finding out about speed test websites. I would be pretty annoyed if I have been pay for a service I wasn't fully getting.

 

[kjacko]

Maybe less people would complain about slow speeds if they weren’t told and are pay for say 8Mb when in reality the max speed they can get is 4Mb. This is happening because a lot of people are finding out about speed test websites. I would be pretty annoyed if I have been pay for a service I wasn't fully getting.

yep, totally agree with you mate. That is mainly why they get a bad rap to be fair. Its devious marketing. Sure they do say 'up to 8mbits' or whatever, but in truth as a proportion, hardly anyone gets those speeds.

 

[djrock]

yep, totally agree with you mate. That is mainly why they get a bad rap to be fair. Its devious marketing. Sure they do say 'up to 8mbits' or whatever, but in truth as a proportion, hardly anyone gets those speeds.

Yep using "upto" they can get away with it. I noticed Virgin are using "upto" now as well. Its probably just to cover there backs.

 

[kjacko]

yep, totally agree with you mate. That is mainly why they get a bad rap to be fair. Its devious marketing. Sure they do say 'up to 8mbits' or whatever, but in truth as a proportion, hardly anyone gets those speeds.

Yep using "upto" they can get away with it. I noticed Virgin are using "upto" now as well. Its probably just to cover there backs.

Virgin do it for their adsl products (obviously), but i guess they do it with their cable as its a tiered set of tariffs; 4mb, 10mb, 20mb and 50mb.