Best ISP for gaming?

fatherdougal · 15 Jul 2009 at 21:14

LabR@t said:
adsl24

+1

(Especially if you need a non-llu provider)

chrisxuk · 16 Jul 2009 at 09:10

lol Don't go with Cheshire County Council

DanMc07 · 16 Jul 2009 at 13:11

I would say go for Virgin if you live too far from your exchange.

But to all these people posting speedtest links, dont take a notice. Just look at the BS it provides for my VM 10mb line.

chrisxuk · 16 Jul 2009 at 14:09

Impressive.

Dicehunter · 16 Jul 2009 at 23:13

Cable is hands down best for gaming, stay away from BT, they get the wooden spoon award for worst overall service every year for a very good reason.

RoachycaL · 17 Jul 2009 at 00:53

Kreeeee said:
Virgin are crap! I wish they didn't buy out Telewest

Ive been with virgin 20 meg for a week now. I've had solid 20mb with no throttling what so ever. The guy that fitted my gear told me to encrypt my traffic so they cant throttle you - I've done that and Its fine.

They've been fantastic so far

So if I download too much in peak times will they throttle me permanently or just till I stop doing it?

Streeteh · 17 Jul 2009 at 01:02

RoachycaL said:
So if I download too much in peak times will they throttle me permanently or just till I stop doing it?

It's been a few months since i was on Virgin and they were chopping and changing their limitation methods quite often, but at that point it would be if you exceeded your limit they would limit your bandwidth to a certain amount for a certain period of time. While limited you could still download as much as you wanted (albeit at a drastically reduced speed) after that time had passed they would remove the limit and you could download as normal.

AngeluiMorte · 17 Jul 2009 at 07:54

Interesting reading this as I will be getting rid of AOL this year and been looking at a few different services, UKFSN was top of my list but may have to look into Be.
Has anyone here used UKFSN and if so are they any good for gaming and D/L?

orderoftheflame · 17 Jul 2009 at 08:43

DF1986 said:
Cable is hands down best for gaming, stay away from BT, they get the wooden spoon award for worst overall service every year for a very good reason.

Any particular reason behind this? Or just because you say so?

I'd have thought any connection with a low ping and reasonable bandwidth would be the same for gaming regardless of it's delivery method.

No games require anywhere near a 20mb+ download speed.

Jimothy · 17 Jul 2009 at 08:48

Kreeeee said:
Virgin are crap! I wish they didn't buy out Telewest

I've never had any problems with Virgin aside from a couple of hours of downtown during the day and early evening.

20MB cable = :cool:

nichorob · 17 Jul 2009 at 08:52

I remember reading that in a realistic scenario that a good fibre optic cable connection should have around 10ms less latency than a good ADSL connection just because of the differences in infrastructure.

antijoke · 17 Jul 2009 at 09:11

I've had both Sky (Mid package) and Virgin (10Mb package) and had no problems what-so-ever with gaming on my PS3/360 at all.

Only issue recently has been Fifa 09, but my mates on Sky, Virgin, BT have also had the same lag problems I have.

As said above any high speed connection should suffice.

pitaylor · 17 Jul 2009 at 15:34

Can anyone tell what the difference is between o2 and BE* is even though they are essetianlly the same company since their pricing structures are dissimilar. Which would be the best to choose?

Kreeeee · 17 Jul 2009 at 15:40

anticonscience said:
As said above any high speed connection should suffice.

Speed as in latency or bandwidth? The former is critical and the latter is irrelevant after a certain amount (say 2Mb).

Jimothy said:
I've never had any problems with Virgin aside from a couple of hours of downtown during the day and early evening. 20MB cable =

I'm on 20Mb virgin now, and the insane throttling (which ruins ping and not just bandwidth as it should do) combined with flaky service at best sucks

Streeteh · 17 Jul 2009 at 15:43

Best gaming connection i ever had was Blueyonder 512k (128k up!) many years ago. I used to get sub 20 pings even during peak times, as Kreeee says, for gaming bandwidth actually means very little as soon as you get over a relatively low threshold by today's standards. Unfortunately shortly after Virgin took over pings gradually rose due to oversubscribing and now i'm lucky to get a ping below 50 on the same connection.

[EDIT] Just remembered one downside though, with only 128k upstream hosting more than a 4 person server was a massive no-no

antijoke · 17 Jul 2009 at 15:49

Kreeeee said:
Speed as in latency or bandwidth? The former is critical and the latter is irrelevant after a certain amount (say 2Mb).

I forgot to add speed as in latency.

Hilly · 17 Jul 2009 at 15:52

Kreeeee said:
Virgin are crap! I wish they didn't buy out Telewest

This.

Do NOT go with Virgin. I've been with them for around 10 years or so (was with Telewest when they first came out). Currently, it's rubbish, crap uploads, slow downloads, lots of times where the connection goes down, rubbish Indian OffShore technical Support. Steer clear like the plague.

antijoke · 17 Jul 2009 at 16:05

hilly said:
This.

Do NOT go with Virgin. I've been with them for around 10 years or so (was with Telewest when they first came out). Currently, it's rubbish, crap uploads, slow downloads, lots of times where the connection goes down, rubbish Indian OffShore technical Support. Steer clear like the plague.

lol

Kreeeee · 17 Jul 2009 at 17:16

Streeteh said:
Best gaming connection i ever had was Blueyonder 512k (128k up!) many years ago. I used to get sub 20 pings even during peak times, as Kreeee says, for gaming bandwidth actually means very little as soon as you get over a relatively low threshold by today's standards. Unfortunately shortly after Virgin took over pings gradually rose due to oversubscribing and now i'm lucky to get a ping below 50 on the same connection.

[EDIT] Just remembered one downside though, with only 128k upstream hosting more than a 4 person server was a massive no-no

Blueyonder rocked!

anticonscience said:
lol

Very productive post. He's right, Virgin massively oversubscribing results in crap contention ratios and flaky performance.

Hilly · 17 Jul 2009 at 18:07

Blueyonder did indeed rock. It was close to being perfect. Latency was great, great ping times, quick uploads and downloads, webspace, up to date PC demos hosted on their own FTP, fast support through news groups. Perfect.

Virgin however, are dross of the highest order.