Page 1 of Broadband/ ADSL- Any reports on either would be appreciated

Having been rather sniffily told by a poster on www.adslguide.org.uk to check the FAQ`s, all I need to know is whether there is any difference in speed/quality of service between broadband and ADSL. As I currently have a non BT line I`m thinking of changing telco supplier in order to try ADSL as I`m limited by my Telewest line.


Thanks

I have just gone over to Pipex. I bought a modem for £90-00. Luckily my two computers were networked so I can use both at the same time. Downloading files is so fast, BUT...I was amazed at how slow some sites are at busy times. For instance DVD Reviewer on Sunday night I had to wait ages for it to load & it seems other sites when busy are the same, so not all great. Pipex is now £22-50 with no connection charge & buy your own modem. Some are a little cheaper but have connection charge.
I was on NTL (NEVER AGAIN) & had to have a BT line re installed. This was done in just over a week & in the meantime the Pipex paperwork was going through, & a day after BT line was put in I was on ADSL.
Hope this helps.

This item was edited on Wednesday, 20th March 2002, 09:06

Sunday night is the least busy night for us, if your experiencing slow usage then it is far more likely to be either routing between your ISP and our server, or their transparent webcache.

Even on our most busy nights our server should be rendering pages in well under half a second.

You`d be amazed how many ISPs these days insist on using transparent webcache proxies to cut down on their bandwidth usage. Although I`m not against the practise if its advertised, it rarely is, they just do it.

Although totally lost!!! I think I have your drift. Many times it can be a minute to download. Others a second or so. What can I do?

This item was edited on Wednesday, 20th March 2002, 12:46

A lot of it is down to luck. I have ADSL with Eclipse and it has been great so far. My boss has broadband cable and it has been great so far (both of us have had our connections for around 3 months now).

But then I have also heard horror stories from both ADSL and Broadband users. I preferred the self install process with the new ADSL Wires Only service - didnt fancy waiting around for a Cable engineer to f**k things up (bad past experience with Cable companies). My boss has had no probs with his cable company and so he chose the cheaper Broadband option.

I have my ADSL ethernet Modem router plugged into a Wireless Access Point for wirefree ADSL around the house!

I have had pipex for about 3 weeks now and it is fantastic. Of course now I am used to the speed i want it to go faster still. All my favourite sites load very quickly. Anyone else find that the BBC news site is quite slow though? Downloads can touch 55-60K/s, but around 30K form other DSL or cable users. Just downloaded a 5Meg file in 1:35s from Tucows, at about 50K/s. Best I ever got on 56K was 4k/s.
I went for the self install too and bought a modem/router for £190 to serve 3 PCs and very easy to set up. Wish I could afford wireless too. maybe next year. I have also had 2 pcs downloading large files and the other playing games without any problems. And with two of us sharing the cost it is cheaper for me than Freeserve anytime was.

I have a friend with NTL cable and he has had all sorts of outages for up to a week at a time in the last year. I have heard that NTL are going to offer 1Mb links, though at a price, around £40 i think

And yeah the guys on ADSL.org can be a bit off, just pointing you to the FAQs which more often then not dont answer the question you have.

Pipex did experience some problems for about a week starting around 10 days ago, but this has all been sorted out : there were problems on Sunday nite too if I remember correctly.

Pipex is what they call "wires only" ADSL - essentially self-install and not actually connected all the time like true broadband - it only connects when you tell it to. Personally this suits me, and it`s not as if you have to wait three minutes to dial up - it generally takes a few seconds.

Much improved browsing, although moving threads/deleting threads here that involve sending an e-mail can be a bit slow : RJS you may want to note that, although it`s no more than 20-30 seconds (an age in ADSL terms !).

Otherwise, all tickety-boo. Pipex seem a bunch of cool guys to do business with and apparently are the first ever UK ISP as well. In addition, they are planning ahead and installing new pipes (I`m currently sharing their newest one with about 1500 other users at present) before demand outstrips capacity : good forward-thinking.

Thorough recommend it : when you consider you can pay up to £15 for some ISPs, £23.50 is small potatoes when you realise the time-savings you make : go for it, you know you wanna :-)

Thanks to everyone for the replies- got more sense about this subject from a DVD site than a dedicated ADSL one! ;-)

www.digitalspy.co.uk

Probably the best site on the net for telecoms / television advice.