ISP for 10 person house

Soldato
Joined
7 Aug 2004
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As title ! A difficult one this..... Large 10 person student house, couple of 'nerds', half women (thus streaming E4), couple of gaming geeks etc, which ISP ?! :confused: :confused:

Of course an esnet reseller gives best reliability and performance/cost terms, usually 45gb a month limit however for £35, and most of them 'wont get' not downloading in daytimes and do it anyways.

Any 'unlimited' ISP packages from any companies (i know its fair use, but there are just too many people to keep everyone agreed and sensible about it, so im not sure an esnet reseller would be much use)


PS: I cant get cable, ADSL2, 21CN etc, its an 8mb line limit, probs on BT's old networks.
 
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surely your better off having maybe two isps for that amount of people and only being able to get adsl not adsl2 or cable?
 
surely your better off having maybe two isps for that amount of people and only being able to get adsl not adsl2 or cable?

I'd say 3 lines. Put the 2 gamers on the same line and then share 2 between 8.

BT Option 3 (300GB fair use) + telephone line = £24.99 + £9.49 (where using line rental saver)
 
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I wouldnt be so concerned about the ISP personally. I'd focus more on getting a decent router with QoS and setting some houserules that everyone agrees on. If your budget would stretch (and with 10 people contributing) I'd go for something liek a Draytek 2820.

If they dont agree, tell them to get their own line.
 
A good QOS router is also a good solution.

Whatever you need a decent connection, can't believe gamers would live with 10 people in a non VM area.

It depends how hot the women are...;)


Seriously though, I'd back the good router with QOS if not at least a second line, I can imagine the gamers not being overly amused if the others are watching TV or using a lot of things like skype on the line.

Having said that it's probably just about workable as long as no one is a P2P'er, and they can agree to do things like downloads when they are asleep/out.
 
It depends how hot the women are...;)


Seriously though, I'd back the good router with QOS if not at least a second line, I can imagine the gamers not being overly amused if the others are watching TV or using a lot of things like skype on the line.

Having said that it's probably just about workable as long as no one is a P2P'er, and they can agree to do things like downloads when they are asleep/out.

Gamers sleeping, what? I live in a house with 4 gamers and there is always someone awake. P2P is the killer, but its going to happen isn't it, I've banned it in my household (apart from their WoW patches...)

Be* is pretty solid from what I have heard..
 
Yeah definitely gonna need some QoS/traffic shaping or you'll have someone murdered with a keyboard...

Infact if you have more than 1-2 people streaming at the same time your probably going to need 2 lines...
 
Bonded BE connection. Fast fast fast and unlimited, cisco router and traffic shaping.

That. Spare (quiet) pc running smooth-wall would be next, followed by an RT-N16 loaded with tomato (superb qos), if cisco isn't an option.
 
Post office broadband, have a look. it run with BT but price wise for unlimited are great.
The fact is I could write all day on this subject, if you have an O2 phone the O2 broadband is just as good and cheaper.

Im with the post office and its been a dream with them vs talktalk (I was with) but my brother uses O2 and downloads in excess of 100G a month he has had bills in for £5.80 after that because he topped up his phone with £20 that month. His fair use policy seems better than mine as well.
 
With that many people it might be worth running a proxy server with caching. Also means you could run pfsense or something to handle the firewalling etc.

I would probably say Be / Bonded Be or VM 50mbit. Or both.
 
Central media server, updated VERY often. Get everyone to use this

I managed to game ok in a house of 6, when we had 4mb Ntl
 
That. Spare (quiet) pc running smooth-wall would be next, followed by an RT-N16 loaded with tomato (superb qos), if cisco isn't an option.

First decent suggestion, though I would choose PFSense, but smoothwall is good enough. With either you can schedule rules and QoS, I'd also put in a single box for downloading to - running uTorrent with WebUI and SABnzb for usenet.

Two old P3 class machines and you'll be sorted, schedule the downloads etc... and share files you'll all be fine. Prob need about £200 outlay for two old p3s with some decent nics and a few big disks for the file server one.
 
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