Best ISP For Gaming And Torrents?

[S.Cope]

BT aren't allowed to charge you if you're out of contract as it would violate some consumer protection legislation I hope. I am currently locked into a BT contract because I stupidly accepted their Home Hub offer and have no end of problems with it. I want to go with Be because I had them for a year at Uni and had zero problems with them, top notch service, 20Mb down 1.3 Up where I was and you can get up to 2.5Mb up now if you meet certain criteria on connection quality. Also only 3 month contract with Be so you're not stuck with them if you don't like them.

Done exactly the same thing here, stuck with BT for a fair few months more. The traffic shaping on BT is just dire, it's like a dial-up in the evening, with especially bad speeds on torrents.

Have heard good things about Be, might have to go for their unlimited option as soon as I'm free from BT.

This site is quite interesting: http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php

 

[Robert]

We've got Virgins 20mb service at our uni house and it's excellent as regards downloading, upload isn't too bad but it's not the fastest.

The only downside is their policy regarding useage at peak times, meaning we often end up getting chucked onto a far slower line if we download more than 300mb between like midday and 4pm or something like that ...

3gb you mean. Oh and it's 4pm - 9pm.

So not really "something like that"

 

[agnes]

im on Be unlimited, here are my stats

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,291 / 13,216

and yet i get really bad ping, mostly on the lines of 40ish... where as on BT 2mb service i was getting 9/8 lol

ags

 

[Senture]

Wasn't "be unlimited" taken over by o2? I dunno but if the fair usage is the same its pointless on a 20mb connection

One of their techies told me you'd have to do 3.6TB in 2 months for us to notice. Good luck doing that

 

[KevinCB]

Used to be on F2S, they got taken over and introduced a Fair Usage Policy and traffic shaping as well, so I left. Don't know what they are like now though.

I'm currently on Be and although I can't get anywhere near 20Mb, I find that my speed is now slightly faster than when I was with ISPs providing ADSL Max.
I have read that some people even download 300GB a month.

Another thing to look out for is termination periods.
Be's termination period is 3 months for their unlimited and pro packages.

 

[krooton]

Happy Be customer of over a year.

7MB download (far from exchange), but no limits, shaping, and only £14 a month

 

[Damien.]

Well ive just requested my MAC code off my existing provider. Im thinking of going with ADSL 24, good choice ?

 

[matt0r]

try coming to south korea!! lol

i moved over here from the uk and i am in the slowest area in the country for internet and i still get guarenteed 50mbps up and down

realistically though, when i was with 'be' in Liverpool the service was rather rubbish and the service kept going down every 2 or 3 weeks for like 2 - 4 days .... but they might have improved since i left.... or been bought by o2 as someone else mentioned .....

there are loads of teaching jobs here though .... if u want the fast internet

 

[TheOtherOption]

3gb you mean. Oh and it's 4pm - 9pm.

So not really "something like that"

Well ok so I wasn't correct, we do manage to get through the 3gigs very easily some days though and end up crawling later on ... but otherwise it is a very useful service

 

[Phoen1x]

Another vote for Entanet here - I am with ADSL24 and they are absolutely brilliant, small isp, great service, zero downtime in the last 6 months, £19.99 for 30gb peak and 300gb off peak.

 

[Damien.]

Just had a phone call of my existing provider. Ive only been with them for 5 days and am totally disgusted with there service and they have the cheek to ask for a £69.99 cancellation fee.

Any way of getting out of this ? Even though ive been with them for 5 days, id say we've had about 1 hour in total of internet connection.

 

[elkdanger]

Try Plus Net www.plus.net

Please for the love of god do not use Plus.net. I was with them for a year and had no end of trouble with online gaming, because they shape their traffic. To be fair, recently they've released a new gaming package which manages traffic much better, when you look at the bandwidth options and such compared to UKFSN (who I migrated to from Plus.Net) they lose out big time. UKFSN will offer 30GB peak / 300GB off-peak and 8 free static IP addresses for £19.99 (as Bean0 already said), whereas Plus.Net offered 10GB peak / "unlimited" off-peak and 1 static IP address for £21.99, plus a host of other options I (personally) would never use.

Also the customer support at UKFSN/Entanet was much better.

 

[Supercow]

Be there - end of discussion

 

[Tripnologist]

I'm with Be. Current stats:

Bandwidth (Up/Down) [kbps/kbps]: 1,317 / 18,230

I'd be able to get a few Mb higher if I were on fastpath.

 

[Hen_Dawg]

Although im not one to recommend adsl max, pipex adsl max unlimited £19.99 upto 8mb (realistically 4mb with 386kb up, enless your in a LLU area), I dunno what fair usage is but its better than some that take the **** (o2 20mb broadband "unlimited" is 40gb wtf ???). Ive never been warned and I used to use it a lot and if you use encription on utorrent (automatic now anyway) they can't throttle torrents. Ive always had cracking pings with them and im about 300miles away from london servers, usually around 30ms.

I'm with Pipex and they are terrible for me. A few disconnections every night. Definite throttling, torrents don't work more than 5kbps, even with encryption.
Changing at first opportunity.

 

[RobH]

Be also give you a nice router (Speedtouch 780WL) when you join, plus they have a pretty good support forum and actually listen to their customers unlike my ISP (BT). Whilst my ISP have done everything to lock down my router such as disable telnet, remote assistance, backup and anything that is slightly advanced (oh yeah and they bricked my first one via a remote update which I had no say in), the Be router is fully configurable. Last time I checked they were also fine with you using the DMT tool which allows you to change the SNR margins of your router to get a better connection speed in some cases.

 

[Dup]

Im with Freeola who resell Entanet products.

Their offpeak time starts at 10pm and finishes at 8am. There is no peak time on weekends.

I have never had any downtime and they have no contracts etc. Can cancel whenever. Also get a £10 month trial or something.

 

[mrk]

not virgin

Well I'd say virgin based on my experience. Even if you download 3GB between 4 and 9pm and get limited to 5MB for a few hours down it's still 5MB which is NOT slow by any means and regarding gaming regardless of what speed you're at gaming pings and performance remains unchanged. You actually get what you pay for on cable instead of an up to service.

 

[krooton]

Be also give you a nice router (Speedtouch 780WL) when you join,

Actually, it's very average.

I have my own phone line, so I have it wired to my pc, but the wireless capabilities of it are terrible.

Awful, awful, my housemates have endless issues with it, so much so that we now have 10m cables running to each of their rooms, lol

 

[gizmoy2k]

Another vote for ukfsn, me and all me mates are on it, best service about, i switched from Zen