Broadband

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ANK

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I am thinking of getting broadband at home, the only reason i want it is so i can play online on the XBOX 360. I am not bothered about it for the PC as anything i want to do on them i do at work. Has anybody any ideas on what package i should go for.
 
Well I think this should go in the "Computers" forum, but then again I don't like to judge.

It depends on wether you want speed or value. I would recommend either Bulldog or BT.

Do not go for Toucan or AOL.
 
NTL does a great deal aslong as you have a landline already.

What kind of usage will online gaming give? I was just wondering if limits were any concern.
 
I've moved this to the Computers forum, although I guess it could also go in the Gaming category too... (redirect in The Rumble Strip)
 
Tiscali 👎

I've had a reasonable service with them, but i know a lot of people who haven't. I wouldn't suggest getting it at all, despite the low price.
 
Don't get AOL, they're rubbish.

I'm on NTL, and it's a cable connection. Hasn't let me down so far.
 
Dont use BT BT is poo even though they supposedly are the main providers for the likes of aol freeserve (or whatever theyre called now) and other companies. With BT if im donwloading stuff at around 100kb I cant view web pages even though Its ment to be 1mb. With aol I used to download at 800-900kbps and still be able to go on sites. BT is poo.
 
Young_Warrior
Dont use BT BT is poo even though they supposedly are the main providers for the likes of aol freeserve (or whatever theyre called now) and other companies. With BT if im donwloading stuff at around 100kb I cant view web pages even though Its ment to be 1mb. With aol I used to download at 800-900mb and still be able to go on sites. BT is poo.
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That could have something to do with your upload. Umm...800mb...yeah
 
Young_Warrior
Dont use BT BT is poo even though they supposedly are the main providers for the likes of aol freeserve (or whatever theyre called now) and other companies. With BT if im donwloading stuff at around 100kb I cant view web pages even though Its ment to be 1mb. With aol I used to download at 800-900kbps and still be able to go on sites. BT is poo.
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Um no. I think you're thinking in bytes for BT and bits for AOL. Read on*:

With a 1 mega bit connection you should get around 125 kilo bytes per second in download.

Let me explain. Bits and bytes aren't the same thing although you might see 1 Mb/s which is megabits and 1MB/s which is megabytes which are pretty similar looking and easy to confuse. Bits are smaller than bytes, 8 times smaller in fact. They are related by the fact that 8 bits make up 1 byte. Your internet connection speed is usually measured in bits not bytes even though we define all of our data in bytes.

Basically if your connection is a 1 megabit connection, you will see 125 kilobytes per second (1000/8) roughly. I say roughly because you will never get the maximum out of your internet connection, so lets say it's more like 110 kilobytes per second. If you think about that in bits again not bytes (110 x 8) you will see 880 kilobits per second.

As you see it looks like you were reading the AOL speed in bits and the BT speed in bytes. The reason i'm saying this is because i have the 1 megabit BT connection at home and getting 110-120 kilobytes/s from it is good, so don't tell people it's not ;)!

ANK: BT are good imo, unless you're after 8 Mb/s or higher.

* Everything about bits and bytes in this post was off the top of my head, it is possibly not 100% correct, but to my knowledge it is correct so there.
 
But my aol was faster? Im just confused now. As it goes my BT is poo compared to what I had with aol. So really they just tricked me with clever marketing?
 
Young_Warrior
But my aol was faster? Im just confused now. As it goes my BT is poo compared to what I had with aol. So really they just tricked me with clever marketing?
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I can't vouch for that, but a 1 megabit connection is a 1 megabit connection from whoever you get it from and they're all pretty similar. Your AOL connection would not have ben 8/9 times faster than your BT one if they were both 1 megabit connections. If your AOL connection wasn't 1 megabit then comparing it to a 1 megabit connection isnt fair is it? :p
 
Young_Warrior
lol kb. Typooooo Tell me more about my upload please.
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When you're downloading, your computer must sent back packets to the other computer, to tell it that it received the data. Downloading from a site might not be a big deal, however when you are using a P2P program and uploading, you need to make sure there's enough upload to sent back those packets. After that, you need a little to browse.
 
ROAD_DOGG33J
When you're downloading, your computer must sent back packets to the other computer, to tell it that it received the data. Downloading from a site might not be a big deal, however when you are using a P2P program and uploading, you need to make sure there's enough upload to sent back those packets. After that, you need a little to browse.
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This might be my problem. How can I higher my upload?
 
You can get SDSL i believe which allows you to upload at the same speeds that you download, but SDSL is pretty expensive. Do you really need to upload at speed?
 
No well I dont think so.

Say im using limewire and my donload speed hits about 100kb/s I cant go on any websites. And then after a while limewire will say that there appears to be no connection on my machine to download anthing and all my downloads ahve stopped yet I still cant view webpages and I wait about 5 mins and it slowly starts working again.
 
How powerful is your computer? It may seem like a stupid question but i've seen this problem occuring on slow computers. Limewire is a total resource hog. On slow pcs i've seen the program using 100% of the CPU and cause page loading errors whilst browsing the internet because the computer physically can't handle doing the two tasks at the same time. On more average spec pcs i've seen Limewire running fine along side web browsing on 1 meg connections. That's probably as far as this discussion of Limewire should go.

I've still yet to determine whether this can happen, but in some cases a slow pc with a fast internet connection will not be able to utilise the speed of the connection as well as a faster pc with the same connection.
 
Young_Warrior
No well I dont think so.

Say im using limewire and my donload speed hits about 100kb/s I cant go on any websites. And then after a while limewire will say that there appears to be no connection on my machine to download anthing and all my downloads ahve stopped yet I still cant view webpages and I wait about 5 mins and it slowly starts working again.
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Limit the total upload for all programs to a maximum of approximately 75-80% of your total available upload and you should be fine.

I don't know what your upload is (most likely 128kbps or 256kbps), you can check on the website of your ISP or you could do a speed test ( http://www.adslguide.org.uk/tools/speedtest.asp ), close all programs accessing the internet or transferring files before you test to give an accurate reading.

You should be able to limit the transfer rates of all programs in their respective options, if you can't do this you could download an application like NetLimiter which will allow you to set limits for any programs you wish.
 
Don't use Bulldog. They promise you a great connection that they're unlikely to be able to deliver. Then they refuse to accept that there's a problem and keep you hanging on while they do nothing about it.

From what I can gather, the best non-cable provider is UKOnline, but they are a LLU ISP, so not available everywhere. Of the non-LLU providers, BT is the best because you get a higher class of service since you're using their backbone.
 
Well, it depends what you're looking for from your ISP. Do you just want something cheap with a download limit and no newsgroups or would you like something slightly more expensive with unlimited* bandwidth and/or binary newsgroups available?

* Yes, I know there's no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, but most ISPs who advertise "unlimited" bandwidth will allow you to use rather a lot...
 
amp88
Well, it depends what you're looking for from your ISP. Do you just want something cheap with a download limit and no newsgroups or would you like something slightly more expensive with unlimited* bandwidth and/or binary newsgroups available?

* Yes, I know there's no such thing as "unlimited" bandwidth, but most ISPs who advertise "unlimited" bandwidth will allow you to use rather a lot...
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The trouble is i don't know what i want, i am totaly clueless when it comes to this sort of thing. All i want it for is to get online with Project Gotham 3.
Does connection speed give any advantage or disadvantage, or does it not make any difference?
 
If you're just wanting to play games on it, connection speed doesn't matter that much. In the UK, unless you pay for SDSL (which is prohibitively expensive, if you can even get it), your download capacity will be greater than your upload capacity. When playing games, it's the ping (lag) that matters most, not the connection speed. You'd get similar (if not identical) performance playing games with a 1024/256k account compared to a 2048/256k account (i.e. a 1 meg account compared to a 2 meg account. Whoever you go with, make sure they're providing at least 256k upload.

An instance where you would notice the difference in connection speed is when you're downloading updates for games or new content (or, of course, if you're using your connection to download music, surf the internet and chat on an instant messenger at the same time), but most casual users won't really notice too much of a difference.
 
Tiscali's 2 meg service isn't bad and is quite competitively priced i've heard. My brother is using it and from the contact i've had with it it seems usable. Unsure on Tiscali's customer services, BT's isn't particularly good.
 
ANK
The trouble is i don't know what i want, i am totaly clueless when it comes to this sort of thing. All i want it for is to get online with Project Gotham 3.
Does connection speed give any advantage or disadvantage, or does it not make any difference?
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Since you're specifically wanting to do one thing online, it's worth your time to peruse that thing's web site for help... Is there any kind of online support community for Project Gotham? If so, they may be able to give you pointers.
 

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