Hi there,
I'm thinking of getting Plusnet broadband as it is the absolute cheapest I can find. It also has a 1 month contract option if I figure I can't put up with them (I hear their service is pretty poor).
Disappointing to hear that's what you've been told! I'd like to think our service is pretty good.
** No promotion of business **
I only want to use it for browsing, emails, and gaming: no high volume stuff like streaming or large downloads.
My question is, if I want to PC game, is the Pro upgrade (which prioritises gaming traffic based on deep packet inspection recognition) absolutely required, or just a nice to have?
Probably a nice to have. Gaming is prioritised in our 'Gold' traffic queues for Value and Extra, whereas it's classified as 'Titanium' on Pro. Realistically though, Gold traffic rarely suffers from latency problems unless there's a massive service outage or some event that means every man and his dog is trying to get online!
One thing to consider is the fact that gaming on Value is rate limited to 2Mbps. Whilst this is sufficient for one or two people gaming simultaneously, you may suffer problems if there's ever more (the rate limit isn't applied to the 'Extra' account or Pro).
One other thing to consider is what happens to games that our traffic management switches don't recognise. These are few and far between (and we can sort it out if you tell us), however on Value and Extra you're likely to suffer problems in this situation whereas with the Pro add-on you wouldn't.
Anybody got Plusnet and want to share their pings (and city)?
To any particular server/location? I'm in Sheffield (our egde routers are in London), I have Extra Fibre (without the Pro add-on) and here's a series of pings to the BBC:
Code:
>ping bbc.co.uk -t
Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.241.131] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Reply from 212.58.241.131: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=248
Ping statistics for 212.58.241.131:
Packets: Sent = 11, Received = 11, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 14ms, Maximum = 16ms, Average = 14ms
Control-C
^C
Hope that helps!
Best regards,