are there ANY isp's that don't traffic shape?

Blinkz · 25 Jul 2007 at 10:51

Hey guys.
Am currently on 2meg BT, which is generally awful in every respect. We're paying £22 a month for 2meg, 20gig cap and traffic shaping!

Am going to be leaving as soon as I can find a decent ISP but it seems a near impossible task! Our line isn't amazing, about 40 attenuation and 15 margin but I think it should be able to take at least 4meg or so. However I can't find any ISP that does this so I think am going to have to go for 8 meg and just get the best speed the line can. There are 3 people using the connection, so am also looking for unlimited usage. I saw Pipex and thought they looked pretty good however on further research it seems they are as bad as BT for traffic shaping p2p stuff. Ideally don't want to spend more then £25 a month. The only ISP I've found that doesn't have traffic shaping is UKFSN but they cost a fortune!

Does anyone have any advice on who to go for? My exchange doesn't have ANY LLUs so can only get ADSL or ADSLMax. Any advice would be great as am tearing my hair out trying to find a decent ISP!!!

HomerJ · 25 Jul 2007 at 10:57

I beleive Be do not traffic shape and have got a good reputation

Blinkz · 25 Jul 2007 at 11:16

Be need LLU and my exchange doesn't have any LLUs at all

Thanks tho

mike1210 · 25 Jul 2007 at 11:21

Off the top of my head

Zen, IDnet, Newnet and the Enta resellers

they do have download caps though unless you pay mega $$$$ for unlimited. For example Zen's unlimited max is £93 IIRC

lsg1r · 25 Jul 2007 at 11:21

Blinkz said:
The only ISP I've found that doesn't have traffic shaping is UKFSN but they cost a fortune!

There might be a reason for that :rolleyes:

And Unlimited broadband costs the isp something in the region of £300 (could actually be higer) per connection on an 8meg line iirc so you would be costing the company in the region of £150 if you fully utilised your potential 4meg line.

Do you mean traffic shaping where the speed slows during certain times, limits to how much you can download or traffic shaping by limiting the ports which you can use.

Blinkz · 25 Jul 2007 at 12:01

well our household currently downloads around 50gig a month, as their are 3 or 4 of us online at once.

When I say traffic shaping I guess I mean all of that. I'd rather not have a peak period where all downloads drop to 5kb and I can download what I want without worrying about limits.

marc2003 · 25 Jul 2007 at 12:11

Blinkz said:
The only ISP I've found that doesn't have traffic shaping is UKFSN but they cost a fortune!

how did you work that out? :confused:

19.99 for 30gb allowance during peak hours and 300gb off peak. is that not enough for you?

edit: they have to slow speeds down around 10pm -12am in the evenings because 10pm is when the off peak period starts. but even then you're not shaped. whatever the max speed you get is (which is normally at least 2mb during this time), you're free to use whatever protocol you like.

between 12am and 10pm you'll pretty much get the max speed your line supports.

LoadsaMoney · 25 Jul 2007 at 21:49

Enta resellers as said above, im on UKFSN's MAX 60, only £30 a month.

marc2003 · 25 Jul 2007 at 22:00

LoadsaMoney said:
Enta resellers as said above, im on UKFSN's MAX 60, only £30 a month.

i've just signed up for the max 30 myself. 19.99 for 30gb peak/300gb off peak. i just don't see how it's worth 50% more money to get 60/330? :confused:

and my line goes live tomorrow. woot - no more bt.

bigredshark · 26 Jul 2007 at 15:03

I know it's just willy waving but I get my broadband free, no traffic shaping, no capping and a /29 of public IPs from work.

On a more helpful note, I know that in general we still don't traffic shape connections and there must be a few small ISPs out there who don't either on the grounds of cost.

Zefan · 26 Jul 2007 at 15:05

I thought Virgin Media don't have any caps?

They have bandwidth restrictions when you exceed a certain amount during peak times, but as far as I know there is no bandwidth limit as such.

mcwildcard · 26 Jul 2007 at 15:48

Blinkz said:
well our household currently downloads around 50gig a month, as their are 3 or 4 of us online at once.

I'd say Nildram would be your best bet, I never encountered any shaping with them. They do have a 50GB cap, but that only includes peak usage, so if you do a lot of downloading overnight, then you're unlikely to go over.
Oh and any unused GBs roll over to the following month.
£26 well spent.

I'd still be with them, but I've just started the migration over to Be*.
I guess I'm just greedy for Speeeeeeeeeed!!!

1337z0r · 26 Jul 2007 at 15:57

Zefan said:
I thought Virgin Media don't have any caps?

They have bandwidth restrictions when you exceed a certain amount during peak times, but as far as I know there is no bandwidth limit as such.

It's not that bad for one user, but browsing goes very slow and with 3 - 4 users on it at once the connection will just die as my virgin connection in pretty unstable now.

Morfik · 27 Jul 2007 at 10:41

Zen doesn't traffic shape and has excellent performance that's highly rated by most of their members.

Unfortunately they do cap at 50GB, even in their LLU Enabled areas and they do charge more than most ISPs (but it's worth it if you want a reliable service).

Blinkz · 27 Jul 2007 at 10:49

Have to say that I really like the look of the enta resellers having actually looked at them properly. I think the Max 30 plan looks to suit me well. Is there any major differences between the resellers? Am currently looking at Adsl24, does it matter between them and say UKFSN?

marc2003 · 27 Jul 2007 at 20:51

Blinkz said:
Am currently looking at Adsl24, does it matter between them and say UKFSN?

not really. the connection is the same. from what i've read the support is great for both of them. i'm with ukfsn but can't really comment as i've only been on it for a day. adsl24 do have a slicker website and forums though. ukfsn's site is pretty basic and there are no official forums. you can't go wrong with either of them tbh.

HighlandeR · 27 Jul 2007 at 23:00

Just got a lovely letter from AOL saying your service is gonna be TERMINATED.

Looking at ADSL24, looking hot.... even the 2meg totaly unlimited options interesting @ £35 quid per month.

But im looking and staring at the 67 quid UNLIMITED service currently

Is ADSL24 any good?

therubble · 27 Jul 2007 at 23:02

Morfik said:
Zen doesn't traffic shape and has excellent performance that's highly rated by most of their members.

Unfortunately they do cap at 50GB, even in their LLU Enabled areas and they do charge more than most ISPs (but it's worth it if you want a reliable service).

I use Zen and to be honest 50gig is quite a lot. I;ve never hit the cap in over a year and there's 2 people using the line, both with pc and and a 360.

GSDog · 28 Jul 2007 at 11:20

HighlandeR said:
Just got a lovely letter from AOL saying your service is gonna be TERMINATED.

Looking at ADSL24, looking hot.... even the 2meg totaly unlimited options interesting @ £35 quid per month.

But im looking and staring at the 67 quid UNLIMITED service currently

Is ADSL24 any good?

ADSL24 is great

I have been with them for over a month now and the service is excellent.
The centrals can get hammered sometimes between 10:30pm and around mid-night, but they soon pick up. You can check their performance here: http://noc.enta.net/?page_id=166

Squarehed · 28 Jul 2007 at 11:52

Nildram most certainly do shape P2P traffic don't they? I'm getting awful speeds downloading over Azureus before midnight and after sometime in the morning. I have turned off windows firewall and my router's firewall but to no avail. You get maybe 2% of a Linux ISO done in the daytime then the rest comes at night it seemed very odd till i realised it was nildram doing the throttling.

I'm migrating away after my holiday to adsl24.