Talktalk Broadband utterly sucks for online gaming.

So I would like you folks to recommed an ISP that you have experience with who have provided a very good service and who have no qualms about allowing high gaming bandwidth, i.e. they won't throw the 'acceptable usage' policy back at me.

Note: I CANNOT use CABLE broadband, only ADSL ISPs please

So far im looking at PIPEX.

Thanks.

Eclipse

Dan,

Not any help to you but maybe someone this side of the water...

In Ireland Eircom is pretty good, i've never had a problem.
I've tried Clearwire (i think they're in america too) and they were cr@p! even on a 2MB line i couldn't race at all.

Quote from nikimere :

Not any help to you but maybe someone this side of the water...

In Ireland Eircom is pretty good, i've never had a problem.
I've tried Clearwire (i think they're in america too) and they were cr@p! even on a 2MB line i couldn't race at all.

I'm with ntl broadband never have trouble tiz a flyer

Also what makes a good isp(apart from the obvious speed reliability)?
Would it not make sense too choose the nearist isp to your location, I've no idea?

BT - here (small suffolk village wheir everyone is related not only to each other, but also the pigs) i have an 8 Mb connection, BUT it isnt oversubscibed because BT's website says the fastest you can get here is 2 Mb, yet i have seen 900 kb/sec downloads, and the router says i have 8 mb downstream, i think its just a con as my friend bought 1.1 mbit, and pays more for it than i do!

but - as some of you remember last night i was saying on some server how lucky i am to be on a decent isp (instead of my old CSB, a company born out of the lack of BT broadband in our area, it came wirelessly from the local church, cost £30 a month, was 512 k and had horrible packet loss :schwitz, when it disconnected me! it does like to do this after a few hours of LFS, but it doesnt happen for uTorrent (but then i did change the ports) so it makes no sense!

NTL are a cable provider, so they are a no go. Demon look OK, but don't really seem geared towards home users. I also noticed quite quickly that they have a fair usage policy thingy. But who knows how strict/flexible they will be...

I would stay clear of Pipex.

They now traffic shape p2p, and other things like steam updates and Sky by broadband seem to be shaped as well going by reports in the ADSLGuide forums.

I will certianly be leaving them when my 12 months is up unless they change things.

We're currently providing Eclipse for home workers, having migrated most of them from Zen lines. Other than a few niggles with setup, they are pretty good. Although they appear to do some form of priority shaping, although it appears to be nominal.

I'll agree with Bean0 on Pipex, they have gone down the pan somewhat.
With regards to Demon; they're still in business?!

Unless you're on a really tight hardly-any-usage-at-all policy, I can't see you hitting limits through gaming. It won't suck 45GB per day like Usenet can.

BT Option 3 here. Can't fault it, I live on a farm 6 miles from the closest town, and it consistantly gives me 3-4mbit speeds, with no lag or disconnect problems. Free wireless router/digital phone for a virtual 2nd phone line as well.

BT's milage does vary though, at my old house in Milton Keynes I could only get a 1/2mbit line, and it had moments where it was very touchy about disconnecting. Again no lag problems though.

It is probably worth noting that now with the up-to-8meg services available now, that the ISP will sometimes 'interleave' the connection to raise the transfer speed.

This increases latency (ping) drastically, a friend of mine noticed that his counterstrike ping had risen from 20-40 to 80-100, tracert proved that the first hop was 40ms.

It should be possible to contact the ISP and get them to turn the interleaving off, but I suppose that depends on the ISP.

I use Titan, and they recently upgraded me to 8mbit (for free, and they didn't even tell me ) at home and 6mbit at work.

But we are advantaged as my brother did some favours for the owner a few years back - you might not get the same level of 'service' from them, and I have no data on how they are to normal customers.

Ive just got talktalk in, and its not as bad as i expected, albeit not the best. If i got my way it would have been zen or nildram going in, but my dad pays for it.

Quote from Stellios :

Ive just got talktalk in, and its not as bad as i expected, albeit not the best. If i got my way it would have been zen or nildram going in, but my dad pays for it.

well, watch you LFS gaming go down the pan if you intend to use it alongside normal internet use.

I thought all these providers of 'free broadband for life' were now struggling to cope with demand. Basically you get what you pay for. I also have heard about interleaving on DSLMax services (8MB services) is bad for gaming, but DSLMax is still pretty unreliable at the moment anyway.

I get pings starting at 55ms on www.vispa.net but they certainly aren't the cheapest around

Why would a cable provider be not a good games isp?

I use Zen, and I really couldn't be happier. Reliable, good service, and no bandwidth caps

Quote from CSU1 :

Why would a cable provider be not a good games isp?

Did anyone say they weren't?

i think he meant that he cant get cable in his area

I've got AOL, never had them complain about usage and with a router its actually pretty fast but I'm moving to Sky Broadband when it gets enabled in my area, I don't know how good they'll be but they're too cheap to ignore

Quote from Leifde :

I've got AOL, never had them complain about usage and with a router its actually pretty fast but I'm moving to Sky Broadband when it gets enabled in my area, I don't know how good they'll be but they're too cheap to ignore

as much as i hate AOL, i have to ask about Sky broadband, how does it work? is it the usual system of phonelines, or is it through the dish? if so, how do they escape packet loss?

Don't worry about "fair use" policies, as gaming is one of the least ressource-hungry uses of your connection. You only use a single connection and the bandwidth needed is tiny. ISP's love gamers.

As for things to look out for, I can only recommend asking around in your area. For gaming, low pings and low packet loss is important, so the quality of the connection mainly depends on how the ISP's infrastructure in your area deals with the number of customers. An ISP can be great in one village and crappy in the next one over if they oversell their capacity there.

Thanks for the tips folks.

Vispa looks the most promising at the moment.

To be fair, I never had any problem with my broadband with talktalk on my 512 and then 1Mb connection UNTIL they release their 'free broadband' package. So I guess it is mostly down to an overloaded network and high usage users being penalised.

I guess I could probably get away with most ISPs, but im leaning towards the more obscure ISPs with competitive packages.

Quote from JamesF1 :

I use Zen, and I really couldn't be happier. Reliable, good service, and no bandwidth caps

You do know that they're changing the policy on that, and the only non-capped package will now be circa £70 - £80 (last time I checked)?