Are you seeing large ping increases? I've put my example in another tech assistance thread. It's be useful for me to compare my master browser pings with yours.

Thinking of joining Eclipse in the next month or two when I move into my own house, so I'd like to hear how you're finding it Shaun and Dean (and whoever else has experience with them).

Still all good on our backup lines running eclipse. I've briefly had LFS running off one of them without any problems either.

Quote from tristancliffe :

Thinking of joining Eclipse in the next month or two when I move into my own house, so I'd like to hear how you're finding it Shaun and Dean (and whoever else has experience with them).

I am back with Eclipse at my new house, was with them at my old house for about 4 years, way back in the dial-up days.

Never had any problem with them, sure, you could probably get a bit of a better service through Zen, but they are more expensive and have tighter bandwidth limits.

Eclipse are VERY good IMO

I recommended Eclipse for my parents, unless you're a download-a-holic (like myself) they seem pretty good.

The "base" package has a 20GB a month limit during peak hours, so as long as I limit my downloading to outside of 6pm-11pm then I have a thoeretically unlimited cap. TBH, you must be pulling some SERIOUS downloads to do 20GB within the 5 hour period over a month.

At least they are up front and tell you what you can get away with, unlike other ISP's

If you're on plus, you can request specific server IP and ports here:

http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48623

Supposed to be actioned once a week.

So to conclude, who would be best to 'swap' over too?

I've been looking at Pipex and Eclipse as they have been mentioned on here, but are there any others?

I download big files so a decent usuage allowance is needed and I enjoy playing games online so a high speed is needed. I don't mind paying around the £20 - 25 mark.

Any help would be much appreciated

Thanxs
Andy.

I have been having the same problem with metronet (unfortunately bought over by plusnet). Reported it a few times but they never really answered why it was happening. Anyway I stuck with them in the hope it would get better, but that was a bad mistake. I am now going to miss the first race in the OWRL as the servers have a ping of 2995ms.

I was going to change to Nildram but after I googled them for I found there are some people complaining that their service has deteriorated in the past few months since they where bought over by pipex.

In the end I plumped for Aquiss (hopefully they wont get bought over any time soon)

Quote from AaronDev :

I was going to change to Nildram but after I googled them for I found there are some people complaining that their service has deteriorated in the past few months since they where bought over by pipex.

I have been with Nildram for over 4 years and they have always been a subsidiary of pipex, I have found them to be, and still are, very reliable and very fast.
I am still waiting to hear what dUmAsS had go bad with Nildram as I know a few people with them that have no probs to date.

SD.

BT have just bought PlusNet if you're interested

Quote from SparkyDave :

I have been with Nildram for over 4 years and they have always been a subsidiary of pipex, I have found them to be, and still are, very reliable and very fast.

Yea your right, sorry. Just read that on another forum and didn't check it out. There were a couple of negitive comments but on the whole Nildram was recommend as a good ISP for gamers. Too late for me though, I already signed up to aquiss (who are more expensive and have less included bandwidth:shrug.

right, I am now having severe problems with my ISP (Pipex). Bad lag in servers, i keep getting kicked, probably due to port throttling at the higher end.

So, I'm going to change ISP now. I would like to know of one that (if possible) doesn't do packet shaping/port throttling/whatever it is, and if they are any good. I download alot, mainly through torrents, so I'd like to avoid the silly limits, or get a decent limit. Also got 4 other computers in this house connected, my dad and sister use Napster alot.

Eclipse has been mentioned a few times in this thread, but I've heard bad things about them aswell. So if anyone has recommendations, please let me know.

I'm using Enta through the UK Free Software network.

http://www.ukfsn.org/home/internet/adsl/maxallowance.html

cheers Bob, reading their site it looks very tempting indeed, I particularly like the fact they say they don't block ports at all.

But my main concern is the peak and off peak times, I'd have to go with the 30/300GB package, but with 5 computers and laptops connected on the network I'm a bit concerned as to wether that would be enough. I think it will be but not 100% sure.

We're on the 90/360GB package with 4 people on the net and to be honest we could downgrade one step and not really be affected. We're all quite heay net users though. It doesn't help that all serious downloading has to be done overnight, but I'm never up by 8am to stop it.

OT:

Is anyone on Tiscali having problems connecting to the LFS master server and/or Limewire after 5.30pm? This has been happening to me for weeks!

I fear traffic shaping, but I haven't got a hope of changing ISP...

Quote from BigFatCat :

If you're on plus, you can request specific server IP and ports here:
http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewtopic.php?t=48623
Supposed to be actioned once a week.

And it's a totally useless system.
Myself and another guy have been requesting that Plusnet open up the ports for the STCC servers. Ports and IP have been provided but Plusnet say "theres insufficient evidence that the servers run on those ports" what a crock of shit!

While we're at it, speeds have nose dived, nearly all gaming is laggy during peak hours and theres mutiny on the forums.
From probably the best ISP in the land 2 years ago to a complete shambles that looks to be imploding completely.

Thank god i'm outta there in a few weeks. I might actually be able to race on the STCC servers with ADSL24 (Entanet reseller).

Hmmm, sounds like the response I got from plus, pretty much verbatim

I've got my MAC and have signed up with Newnet. One day, the bandwidth will be mine: All mine.

Aha, hi there BigFatCat, (or "the other guy" )
That was indeed PN's response to you that i quoted , which was more of a response than i got. I was just told that changes wern't being made at the moment and they would look into it.
In case your wondering..i am in fact the 'so frustrated with PN they banned me from the forums' Ahoids.

Dont worry guys n girls...i wont be causing any trouble here, it's only lying,thieving, incompetent rip off merchants that really wind me up

And today, my connection with Newnet is live. Already seems a damn sight faster, like getting out of the UF1 and hopping into the XFR.

They sponsor a formula ford racer too, gimme a discount for carrying logos guv?

And plus never got round to opening the ports up for the STCC either!

Nice to hear you've got a good ISP now....Enjoy
i've still got 3 or 4 weeks of hell before i can escape.......

Right, now my next problem...

My dad now won't go with UKFSN because we get our phone calls through Pipex aswell (phone calls plus internet are £25 per month) and he won't switch unless we get an internet and phone deal under £25.

I do download through bit torrent, so port throttling and packet shaping are 2 things that i don't want at all if it's possible (it's the packet shaping that's giving me problems with Pipex now - mainly causing me to time-out of LFS servers).

So, anyone recommend a decent ISP who does 8mb broadband and phone calls for £25 or under per month? Looking on Google didn't help at all and i prefer to go with other people's recommendations for things like this!

Hmm.. well the first thing to be clear on is that torrenting while you're playing online with other people is one of the most irresponsible things you can do on LFS.

You cannot race reliably with other people while you're torrenting, no matter what standard of connection you've got, and if you're going to try then I think you should expect to be ejected from servers as a consequence.

I probably ban one person every day from the STCC servers for lagging like mad and refusing to fix the problem. If I see someone torrent lagging - and torrents have a very particular looking lag issue in LFS - they're removed from the server until they've fixed the problem. If it happens more than once, the 2nd time will be a much longer ban. You have a responsibility to the people you're racing with.

....where in that post did he say he was torrenting WHILE LFS'ing?