So my contract is almost up for my broadband so I'm looking at my options. I currently have business ADSL2+ from Timico I won;t go into the details as to why I choose them but essentially I get static public IP and unlimited broadband and never have any issues with them blocking access to pirate bay etc, or traffic shaping my netflix etc, all in all I'm really happy with the service, however ..... I only get 3mbps! There's no fiber to cabinet in my street My other option is virgin 50mb although I hear (anecdotally) that there service is unreliable and there system is heavily congested at peak times, theoretically even there "traffic shaped slow speed" is faster than my current ADSL if I go with virgin I loose the public IP, access to pirate bay (without TOR) and my home phone, all of which I'm okay with but the cost saving over the first year is only £12. Now do I stick with what I've got that I know works or risk changing to virgin for hopefully higher speeds???
It all depends if your area is over-subscribed or not. I seem to be lucky as I hit 120 meg all the time on my connection and they've recently scrapped download limits which is nice. Apparently P2P and newsgroups are throttled at "peak" times but I can't say I've noticed. Even if you did get hit with slowdows I doubt it would go down as far as 3 meg. There's plenty of proxies for pirate bay so access is not a problem. Maybe I've just been lucky but I could never see myself going back to ADSL. Even when there was a problem with my phone they came out within 2 days and had it fixed in half an hour.
As above. You'd never fall back to 3Mbps on such a service. You may slow down a bit during peak times but not that drastically.
If you're really happy with the service, is the speed thing that big a deal? I know people with stability issues with Virgin, but everyone is different. The traffic shaping won't be an issue, TPB being blocked won't be a problem there are plenty of proxies and TOR too. All in all, I highly doubt Virgin will be slower even being throttled but stability might well be an issue, especially if Virgin are the only ones offering 'faster' broadband speeds in the area.
The choice on virgin is 50mbps, 100mbps or 152mbps.... seemed a little odd to me does that mean its likely to be over subscribed? to put it in context I live on a pretty densely populated "council" estate, virgin cable has been in for 15+ years (with several names but the same cable) there's BT fiber to cabinet pretty much everywhere near me just not on my estate and its been like that for at least 18 months so I'm not holding out any hope that they'll bother running fiber into the estate anytime soon
Are those not just it's standard packages? If you know people on the estate with virgin, your best bet is to get as much feedback from them.
Not sure but with virgin alot depends on your area, im in south bristol and getting 54mb and no problems with anything
long time VM user here on a 150mb connection on the edge of the Midlands, in 6 years I've had 4 outages that have lasted for a few hours, the so called Throttling issues is only really applicable to people who take the piss with their connections between certain times, they get throttled back by 75% for i think its 5 hours? either way its still silly quick but as most people have said it depends on the area. VM block things like TPB and other torrent sites but tbh if your hammering naughty things over torrents then you're not doing it right.
Id always ask around if people you know have virgin and can say how good or bad it is. Pirate bay really find a private tracker much safer and secure than pirate bay ever will be. It will be faster naturally but I stuck with BE till they moved to sky because my ping from BE never went higher than 38ms yes my download speed was stuck in the 10/2 range but it was still fast enough for my liking. I recently went to skys fiber get 80/20 connection now would I say my ping is any better for it not really it went up if anything in certain titles. The patches download alot faster now but still theres a price for stability and one id of happily continued paying.
Personally, using VM (currently 120Mb as they've not done the latest upgrade here), then even using a non-UK VPN then i'm getting a pretty consistent ~115/11 connection - with ~125/11.75 without the VPN... ...& my bit of Sheffield has previously consistently been slower to get upgrades & been prone to oversubscription - partly d.t. legacy issues with Telewest's equipment - though the latter seems to have been resolved over the last couple of years. Tbh, if i was only after broadband though, as upload speed's what matters to me then, given a free choice i'd switch to an alt fibre connection, as that's the biggest comparative limitation... (obviously i appreciate that you've not got an alt fibre connection in your area) ...much as, for example, Sky gives more options for TV... ...however as i buy other stuff from Virgin (well, multi-room TV w. TiVo & a landline w. call package) then it's by far the best overall deal, money not being infinite of course, that accommodates my needs. Well, by ringing up prior to each of the price increases (having been a customer for years), i paid a significantly reduced amount on the previous one & nothing at all with this year's; indeed they actually reduced my bill for 6 months this last time, before going up to what i had been paying... (Doing a quick comparison, using my post 6 month cost, switching everything to Sky for a couple of extra channels & less than double the upload speed would cost £400 upfront - & then >£30 more a month for 6 months/almost £40 after that.) Otherwise, with VM's traffic management policy, if you're likely to fall foul of it (again, uploads for me), i find that it's worthwhile using NetLimiter to create rules for specific s/w... ...that way stuff that's likely to be transferring constantly won't take you over &, setting up a bit of leeway, there's also flexibility for stuff you might want to use during those time periods.
Thanks for the feedback everyone..... since I made the original post my life has changed somewhat, On Saturday morning my girlfriend (and I) had a little baby boy, which was a complete surprise to both of us!!! So with that in mind I'll stick with what I've got for the time being as the less I need to deal with at the moment the better....
Congrats! Personally, I'd not be happy with Virgin Media's upload speed. I regularly access my home server, so a fast upload speed is essential. After some research in to ISP for my new house, I've gone with Zen's top Fibre package. They have said they will not monitor, filter and block websites. From what I've read, only large ISP's are required to do Cameron's nanny filter and block piracy websites. Alternative is A&A, which have spoken publicly it opposes such internet censorship, but their price is ridiculous.
I've used VM ever since I've been old enough to have my own internets. It's alright, have had some outages since living in brighton (last 4 years) that have lasted a few days, the worst being about a week - I think there has been 3 in the 4 years I have lived there, well, 3 that are significant to remember. I like it though, IP is basically static, mine only changes really when the service goes down, and even then it doesn't always. I have all my traffic going out on some vpn or another, I always have, but I now have a decent paid for service, and I don't get any throttling at all. Zen are good! We only sell Zen service at work. Congrats on the baby boy!
Just as an info: VM throttle any connection with any P2P network traffic and its now for a much longer period. (last I read a while back was 3 months) this includes WOW, SC2 and companies that deliver drivers over their own P2P network, also Linux distros are mostly on P2P networks.
it is only during their peak hours &, whilst it obviously counts towards the usage limits before being throttled, using p2p doesn't throttle other usage. if you wanted to optimise p2p speed during peak hours then it'd be a reason for using a VPN & something like NetLimiter to create upload limits for their peak times (i've never been able to fall foul of their download limit)... ...& i did give the comparative speeds that i get either with or without using the Swedish VPN that i use.
Nope P2P is the exception if you hit what ever level they set they will limit you connection for (I think it was) 3 months. This has nothing to do with peak times, which is a different "condition" in you contract. You can find a load of information on this on WOW and SC2 forums. Though THB I think they have after much pressure from gamers made exceptions for those 2 very popular games. As I play a lot of SC2 (well did back then) I use a VPN service and since then have no more "traffic shaping" (I work 10 hour shifts so I am never home for peak times)
So if I access and even stream large files from my home server. I would not be throttled, as long as I am not doing P2P? I initially dismissed VM mainly due to their upload speed isn't even written on their website! Talked to VM staff in their shop selling this and yet they still can't answer the simple question "what upload speed will I get?". All they are interested in pushing is "so-so times faster than standard broadband". News flash: download speed doesn't matter!
Welcome to the Internet Where people like to take things a little to literally. I am sure it more a case of early labor then not realizing she was pregnant.
