OMG! Teh spamz0r! It tastes GOOD!!!?

[Pug]

Sifting thru a bundle of junk mail in my inbox today, I came across this little gem....

Subject: Broadband in your area from 30/6/2004
As someone who has already shown an interest in broadband, you'll be pleased to know that you will be able to enjoy BT high-speed broadband Internet access from 30/6/2004.


*thinks... (takes a minute)*
http://www.wizdforums.co.uk/Pug/WTF.jpg
WTF?... Woohoo!!!
(me is a happy bunny... :D)
*starts constructing funeral pyre for 56K modem...*

[adwhitworth]

Wahay. Good 'ole BT. (Shame they suck though. Having said that NTL aren't much better...) Which supplier are you going with? I can recommend some if you want.:) Then again, we are getting an upgrade to 1.5mb from 1mb.

http://www.slackworth.co.uk/untitled.PNG

[Psykotik]

Lucky you Pug, I gotta wait until end of July for it here, and have been told this week that I can only get 512, where as my mate (5 minutes walk away) can get 2 Meg :mad:

[Starbuck3733T]

Adam, that picture is frickin hilarious!

(sneaks out of the room, having had 4Mb down@home since 1998)

Congrats. Prepare to suffer through project updates that make your ethernet card wimper!

[Pug]

Hahaha! Nice one Adam. Summed it up completely. :D
Don't know which supplier yet - it's still sinking in atm. Possibly my current ISP as they've been ok with me for the past few years.

According to BT's site - it may well be 2mb available but c'mon... any ADSL is gonna seem like lightspeed by comparison to my current setup (with 3 machines on ICS through one modem :blech: )


Psy - I do feel lucky. Until today, I'd resigned myself to 2006 unless I moved house (which is in the pipeline anyway, due to the absence of today's news until I got this mail).
Soon come tho'. :)

Star - Sneak quieter! I heard that... :rant:
and Psy's calling me lucky... <_<
;) :D

[adwhitworth]

Hahaha! Nice one Adam. Summed it up completely. :D
Don't know which supplier yet - it's still sinking in atm. Possibly my current ISP as they've been ok with me for the past few years.;) :D
Freeserve?

[Pug]

Ahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! :lol:


No. <_<










Just kidding ;)
Fast24.net (http://www2.fast24.net/), actually. :)

Saying that, I'll shop around and am completely open to suggestions/recommendations from anyone who's already done the hard work before me. :)

[adwhitworth]

Thank god for that.;) :p

Fast24.net aren't too bad as regards to ADSL. Basically, there are two types of ADSL you can get in the UK. DataStream or IPStream. Fast24.net are DataStream. If you can, you are best getting IPStream as these offer the best service out of anyone. Basically, you always get a constant speed.

On DataStream however, it differs slightly because it depends on which area you are in. If you are in an area where the whole town/city is constantly using the service non-stop, you are liable to get slow downs. Then again, it can also work in your favour because if it is a town/city which has hardly any users on it, you will get a good speed.

The negative part about IPStream is of course the price. The 3 top ADSL suppliers in the UK are Eclipse Internet (I have a friend who is on these and it owns our NTL connection) Zen Internet and Nildram. Plus.net are also following closely behind. However, on Zen, Nildram and Eclipse you are looking at £37.99 a month for 1mb. On Datastream you can have 2mb for that such as Fast24 and 1mb is only £27.50 pm.

My only other advice is do not go with BT themselves. There service sucks! Secondly, ADSL suppliers have usually 3 month or 1 year contracts or an option for both. Try and get someone with a 3 month contract (especially if you go on DataStream) as it means if the service becomes incredibly crap, you can get out and move to another supplier.

Obviously, watch out for people who offer the whole kit and kaboodle (Activation, Modems etc etc) for free as they don't always have the best track record. You are usually better paying for a little of it if possible.

http://www.adslguide.org/ - I suggest you take a read of that as it has all the information you need, price guides for 512k, 1mb, 2mb and has an ISP comparer which has information on service, speed and reliability.

If you want to go on DataStream, I could recommend Bulldog ADSL. http://www.bulldogdsl.com/ - In there Special Offers section, they have Primetime 2000 for £25pm or Primetime 1000 for £20pm. Basically from 8am-6pm you are on 512k. Then between 6pm and 8am you get 1mb/2mb and you also get the fast speed at weekends, bank holidays etc etc...:)
The only thing about Bulldog is that they have a very mixed customer service record, mainly due to the fact they are on DataStream. Some customers are incredibly happy with the service and for 2mb @ £25pm who can complain but then in certain places, people are getting quite poor service.

Have a butchers at that and you can't go wrong. :)

[Pug]

Wow! You have done the homework haven't you Ad? :o

Bloody impressive post, thanks. :cool:
I'll definitely follow your advice. :)

[fillip]

I've play tested both NTHell and Blueyonder now (the latter we have had @ home for 2yrs)
Must say, i think more of blueyonder than ntl but not much to choose. NTL was 1mb - unfortunately i'll miss out on free upgrade as we are moving out of our uni house end of this month! :rant:
but no matter, blueyonder just upped my 512 to 768 for free!! yay for blueyonder.

@ Star 4mb?!?!?!
*the following sentence has been edited due to the nature of extremely abusive language directed at Stars 4mb BB
" you ****** **** I ****** **** *** ***** little pixies ****** ****!"

[Starbuck3733T]

lololololol.

The dude I lived w\ at the time and I were beta testers for Susquehanna Communications rollout of cable modem service. They may have said 4mb, but there were some very, very harsh times that bookend them being bought and then dropped by @Home that yieleded very, very slow speeds. Like 28.8 speeds. Now I'm on adelphia at home, which is VERY fast but at the price of having inbound port 110, 25 and 80 blocked. I miss running my webserver. The upstream speed was recently upped from 128Kb to 256Kb.

My personal record for speed, when they accidentally uncapped the bandwidth late on night (or early one morning) on Susquehanna was 756KB/s. Siiiiiick.

That and I miss napster a LOT.

[furious trout]

just to chuck my 2p in, i've heard only good reports about bulldog, and thier prices do seem to be pretty good.

Now i'm on 768kb too Huuzzah for free stuff :)

[adwhitworth]

just to chuck my 2p in, i've heard only good reports about bulldog, and thier prices do seem to be pretty good.

Now i'm on 768kb too Huuzzah for free stuff :)
You'll find that most people generally are happy with them but when you don't get good service, the people are extremely pissed off!:(

[Edd]

For bandwidth testing, I've found the best thing to do is go and download some ATi Catalyst drivers off their site.
At Uni I get a transfer speed of 1006 KB/S+ :blink:
No other download location comes close to that speed, and the actual bandwidth testers are always a bit bizarre in their readings.

[fillip]

yeah, my uni' has an insanely quick connection. god knows what but the download speeds are nothing short of incredible. Only prob is that uni' bars the use of p2p - so no winMX for me *sob* and i've never had any joy with bit torrent - not managed to get a single download started even. :rant:

Ohwell, looking foward to setting up a mini wifi network in my uni' flat nxt year so i can use my imminently new toys ( HP ipaq 4150 and maybe a laptop if money permits!!)

[Edd]

Ours allows anything - Kazaa Lite, etc.
Bittorrent always sucked for me, but IRC is the best thing on the planet (as long as what you're looking for is new)

[adwhitworth]

The best bandwidth tester I know of is the one on www.adslguide.org (http://www.adslguide.org) - Many people use it including myself and it is very accurate.:)

[Knipex]

mutters about 512 /256 uncapped for €90 + VAT a month.

[Psykotik]

Wooo! Been talking to Eclipse about 1 meg, and it seems that its doable on my line after all!

Roll on July!

[mrplow]

If you want to go on DataStream, I could recommend Bulldog ADSL. http://www.bulldogdsl.com/ - In there Special Offers section, they have Primetime 2000 for £25pm or Primetime 1000 for £20pm. Basically from 8am-6pm you are on 512k. Then between 6pm and 8am you get 1mb/2mb and you also get the fast speed at weekends, bank holidays etc etc...:)
The only thing about Bulldog is that they have a very mixed customer service record, mainly due to the fact they are on DataStream. Some customers are incredibly happy with the service and for 2mb @ £25pm who can complain but then in certain places, people are getting quite poor service.

Bulldog = amazing. Been on primetime 2000 for about 9 months now and it's been excellent. I've only suffered one extended (2 days) outage which was caused by a database upgrade mixup or somesuch (basically I think they lost the data saying that I existed) and after waiting patiently for one day (silly me) I phoned up and was greated with excellent customer service. Granted the first guy I talked to was a bit thick and just said wait, but when I phoned back I called finance who said that my billing was all fine and then actually put me straight through (no "sorry, please phone back and talk to tech support" and so no extra queuing) to the most helpful bloke I've ever talked to who told me he'd sort it out by the next day and even gave me his direct number. He then PHONED ME back at about 8pm saying they'd managed to fix it! I was amazed, truly.

I feel I have to share it since we only ever really share bad experiences with companies, never the good ones. They scored big brownie points with me, I tell everyone to get bulldog now :)

[Pug]

Bulldog came up as average speed on the adslguide site but all the faster ones were more pricey for what you got.
Their special offer on the Primetime1000 ends in a week & I don't know if they'll let me book now before my exchange is activated but I've posted my interest, so we'll see what they say. :)

Thanks again guys.

[adwhitworth]

Bulldog came up as average speed on the adslguide site but all the faster ones were more pricey for what you got.
Their special offer on the Primetime1000 ends in a week & I don't know if they'll let me book now before my exchange is activated but I've posted my interest, so we'll see what they say. :)

Thanks again guys.
They probably won't. The reason being is when you order, you put your phone number in on all of the ISP Sites and it knows which services you have.

[mrplow]

Bulldog came up as average speed on the adslguide site but all the faster ones were more pricey for what you got.
Their special offer on the Primetime1000 ends in a week & I don't know if they'll let me book now before my exchange is activated but I've posted my interest, so we'll see what they say. :)

Thanks again guys.

Can't hurt to ring 'em and ask. In fact they'll ring you if you use the "ringback" thing on the website.

[Pug]

Hmm. Thought as much. I'll leave it until nearer the date & see, eh?