UK Broadband help

Hey,

I am probably going to migrate my broadband connection in the next week.

Im interested in who people have an excellent average ping in guildwars at least to euro servers, who they are with and if they use a different router than the one supplied.

Joe

Im with Be* https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage and they have provided a faultless service for the 2 years ive been with them. They dont do any bullshit traffic shaping like most other providers do so the service really is unlimited.

Im with Virgin media (NTL before Virgin bought them)and i have to say they are pretty good, in the 3 years we have been connected to broadband it has been down maybe 2 times ,as far as ping goes i only play on the US districts but my ping dot is green 80% of the time, the rest it is orange, i have never really suffered any terrible lag either although like most people i do occationally rubberband.Oh and i use the standard modem they provided although i beleve they have other options if you would prefer a different one. http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ervice.do?id=2

Im with Eclipse and have used them for 5 years now, never once has the connection dropped out, cant beat there unrestricted service.

You should check to find out who is available at your local exchange, most of the big providers, aside from BT, only cover about 70% of the UK, if you're outside that area it doesn't matter who you're with you'll be running through BT equipment.

Question to the virgin guy - whats your ping when you play pvp? and is your connection all wired?

I'm also Virgin cable, 20Mo/s now, and it's very reliable. I get pings from 50ms to 500, with a rough average in the 250ms, and high pings whenever routing to GW servers is bad (which happens from time to time). They apparently have a new traffic management policy which is not so clear cut as the old one but I had no problems at all with that.

I am on the Virgin 20 meg service and its been good and bad over the years.
Good in that their up to 20 meg service means around 18 to 19 meg most of the time.
Bad In that their customer services is a little hit and miss so they need more work there.

Ping is excellent 90% of the time only dropping when work is done in the early hours of the morning or when I am in a crowded town during a festival at peak time.
So Winterfest in Kamadan around 7pm you might get an average ping.


The other Broadband option would be to use a BT line and run with BT Sky or one of the smaller companies.
Signal strength depends on your distance from the BT box in your area.

Bt have said if your within one mile of the box you should get near max signal.
1 Mile to 2 Miles and your up to 50% of the strength, after 2 miles your probably wasting your time.
Based on their ratings I will stick with fiber optic cable internet and Virgin.
Paying for 20 and getting 18 is miles better than paying for 20 and getting 10 or 5 all the time.

IMO If your prospective company can test the signal they can give you and are prepared to put it in writing go for it otherwise go Virgin.

edit my Ping right now is around 110 to 125

I personally use Fast.co.uk. I have a 20Gb package which is plenty enough for me, higher/unlimited options are available. Ping is usually around 150ms, a little more for US servers (~400ms). They're a small company so the phone number for sales and tech support is the same and you actually talk to the engineers who are based in the UK when you call. I've only had to call them up twice in the year I've had them (once due to a black out their end, the other to help me track down a fault in my system) and both times they were very helpful and friendly, even though the second time it was nothing to do with them at all. They don't supply a router with the package, so I use a Linksys wired/wireless router. Their contracts are month by month too, just need a month's notice to switch.

Couple of bad points Virgin is that it requires cable (Good if you're in a city, not available in the countryside), and you're tied into a long contract, with the possibility of bad customer service. Got a good friend who is on their 50Mb service though and loves it to bits.