Zen, Nildram or Eclipse?

Reppyboyo

Reppyboyo

Reppyboyo

Soldato
Joined
3 May 2004
Posts
3,320
Im looking to migrate from Freedom2Surf, their service (randomly not getting any website loading etc for a few minutes) and speed has taken a turn for the worst.
ADSLguide`s isp comparison tool also mirrors my issues.

Ive nailed my choice down to 3 ISP`s.
Zen, the most expensive of the three, but known to be very very good.
Nildram, The cheapest, also known to be good.
Eclipse, Also supposed to be good, but I havent heard that much about them.

Which would be the better choice?
Im looking for 8mb, over 20gb monthly allowance (hopefully with "off-peak" hours).

Thanks for any help.
 
Zen I can highly recommend.
Eclipse I used to recommend to everyone, but after several lengthy downtimes since Kingston took over last year, followed by a deny all responsibility standpoint, then add some billing mistakes and they where no longer offering a service worthy of their premium rates. IMO of course.
Nildram I dont know about from any personal experience but they where the other one on my shortlist when switching from Eclipse last year and seem up there with the best of them.

However your off-peak 8 meg requirement only leaves you with one choice at present...Nildram. Zen 8 meg is 50GB per month on top package off or on peak usage, but includes only downloads not upload traffic (ideal if you are a P2P user). Eclipse have no 8 meg product available yet but should do by the end of the month IIRC.
Nildram matches your requirements I would say mate.

Edit:
Actually Nildram seems a good deal for the price. A tenner cheaper a month than Zen product. May have to look into that ;)
 
Last edited:
Haveing only downstream being counted for your useage is a good trade off, even though my upload is mostly for gameing.

I allways hear good things about Zen, but what puts me off is the price.
I barely hear anything from users of Nildram though, even though it has a good reputation.

You get what you pay for perhaps?
 
Nildram's more expensive if you want static IPs, versus the /29 you get free from Zen.
Other than that, there isn't much in it.
 
I'd reccomend Zen - yes they aren't cheap but since I migrated from Eclipse in Novemeber my connection hasn't missed a beat. I'm currently on their Home 2mb package but my exchange has just been upgraded for (up to) 8mb so I intend to move to their £24.99 8mb service as their tech support tell me my bandwidth usage is only about 10Gb a month.

With Eclipse I suffered a couple of lengthy outages and fluctuating speeds with the connection grinding to a halt at some times. I was with them for 3 years but the last 6 months the service really went down the tubes.

I don't mind paying an extra fiver a month for a quality service.
 
I would suggest Nildram over Zen. Nildram 50GB/month caps are only enforced during peak times of 8am and 12 midnight and unused quota is carried over to the next month. Zen have recently introduced caps to new members and existing members switching over to MaxDSL. There is no non-peak quota and month to month carry over with Zen from what I understand.

I've been with Nildram for nearly 3 years now and I've not had any complaints. Download speed is excellent and my ping to UK game servers is usually around 30-50ms.

Best advice is to head on over to http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ and read the different forums for each ISP to see how happy the members are.
 
Zen it is.
Cant seem to find any faults with it really apart from a touch more expensive, but if its as good as people say it is then it will be worth it.

Ta for the help.
 
Reppyboyo said:
Zen it is.
Cant seem to find any faults with it really apart from a touch more expensive, but if its as good as people say it is then it will be worth it.

Ta for the help.
Click to expand...


IMO having been a subscriber of all 3 of those ISPs, currently Nildram, I can honestly say that Zen are not any differant connection wise than the rest. They charge more but you don`t get anymore for your money, your always limited by exchange contention and whatever happens with BTW. Zen claimed no contention on their network but i think that was being put to the sword last month or so as things were certainly not speedy. Their CS is top notch however and that to me is where your extra £10 is going, if your happy to pay that much more fine, personally I really don`t think it is. I`m with nildram now but since i`ve only just migrated i cannot give a very honest opinion but so far its quite good.
 
no_1_dave said:
Has Nildram got any traffic shaping or can usenet go full whack?
Click to expand...


No traffic shaping that i can spot yet !! However usenet from Nildrams own server ( which is a giganews feed ) is limited to 20GB and two threads of 30K each. However if you subscribe to say newshosting for example, you can max it do what you like no limits other than the 50GB a month, oh and off peak is free albeit short !
 
Yeah, Zen's "no contention" claim was horribly misleading - "our network" doesn't cover their BT Centrals, which is where any congestion's most likely going to occur (if not on the VP from your exchange into the BT network).
 
Out of interest, how much downloaded data will you generate from a long gaming sesh? I presume its not much.

How to caps affect this? I'm on Pipex Max at the moment and its just too pricey for me :( Its either swap to Nildram for the 8Mb 20GB monthly cap, or go to Cable (Bulldog).
 
Thanks for your almost plain rude answer, just curious as to whether they ignored certain things. Oh, thought Bulldog did both, nevermind.
 
Ive been with Nildram for 2.5 years now, and moved house once. I can safely say that I am so far very pleased with the performance of the connection. I frequently play online games (such as CSS) and the pings are great.

Also, the 50gig limit per month is not as bad as it seems. If you dont use all your 50 gig that month, it gets moved over to the next (but I think they remove the additional gigs after 2 months). At the moment my limit for this month is 90 gig, as I only uses 10 gigs the previous month. Its been around about 90gigs about a month after the introduced the limit (Im not a heavy downloader, but I do download bits and bobs).

Customer service is also good, I have only needed to call them 4 times since being with them, and one of those times was to move the connection to a different home when I moved house.

Overall I am pleased with the service.
 
You are right Tolien, Zens Network doesn't include centrals but tbh we don't run them overloaded. A new gateway went in also today, if you disconnect and reconnect see if you can get on it. Do a tracert to see your Gateway, frst person to tell me the name wins. :D

Edit: I can't get on it so maybe it isn't fully working yet so don't try too long.
 
Last edited:
iamgud said:
You are right Tolien, Zens Network doesn't include centrals
Click to expand...

So the claim is misleading, though that's nothing new - everyone accepted that years ago, except Zen.

but tbh we don't run them overloaded.
Click to expand...

You certainly do have more users connected than available bandwidth, that much is guaranteed.
Got better things to do with my time than reconnect looking for a new HG ta.
 
Contention and congestion are 2 different things my friend. :D

It obviously is contended but I seem to get the same performance on them all, although there was an issue a while ago, but I think this was the load balancing rather than anything.

OK so here is The Network. I have never seen any mention of centrals on there.

http://zen.co.uk/about.aspx?page=43

Meh, if you don't want to try and get on the new gateway then you don't have to, I just think the name is funny. :)
 
Last edited:
iamgud said:
Contention and congestion are 2 different things my friend. :D
Click to expand...

I'm well aware of that - the former's the practise of running with more potential demand than supply, the latter's when actual demand outstrips supply.
Given speeds are (on average) tripling, and (assuming everyone's on the highest priced home tier, which they ain't - there's presumably a good chunk on home250 and the lower Max tier, as well as on the Office pricing) you need to pack 1700 users onto a 155Mbps Central just to break even, it isn't going to be long till the latter becomes pretty obvious on every BTw-dependant ISP, caps or no. The difference will be in how well the ISPs handle it.
Especially given the dodgy load balancing between Centrals (which it's been claimed before only really becomes apparent at IIRC about 80% load).

It obviously is contended but I seem to get the same performance on them all
Click to expand...

Previous experience shows performance certainly can be variable (outside normal BTw exchange issues), and posts on the ADSLguide BBS confirm that.

OK so here is The Network. I have never seen any mention of centrals on there.

http://zen.co.uk/about.aspx?page=43
Click to expand...

It doesn't get round the fact that Zen's claim of "No congestion on our network" is utterly worthless, especially given there's not been an ISP yet with congestion occurring on their network (if you ignore Centrals) outside fault conditions (and during the last fault within Zen's "network", performance certainly was impacted).
Of course, there was the issue of "worms" crashing Zen's Redbacks in the dim and distant past :D

Anyway, I'm not here for some kind of anti-Zen thing. May the salesdroid activity continue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom