Good news that Be will be available in Aberdeen. They seem to be the best service since we're mostly just wanting a decent internet service. £27.49 inc. line rental for an unlimited 24meg connection seems pretty peachy. Now I've just gotta hope a neighbours left their wireless unsecured for the days I'll be in the place before the 30th hits.
I'd recommend Be again, been with them a year now and they make poopex look like amateurs. Customer service is good, tech support actually seem to have a clue and the static IP is a bonus. As for dynamic IP's doesn't it depend on the lease time from the DHCP server for how long it lasts?. If they set a long lease time the IP isn't going to change often, I know on my routers DHCP server I have the lease time set to an obscene length of time.
I'll also recommend Be, they've been really good and given me the fastest speeds (albeit I am nowhere near the 20meg as line length here is 5.50km ) from the ISPs I've tried. I can also blow the static/dynamic IP thing out of the water as I've had a number of different IPs with Be when coming back from maintenance. I'd prefer a static one tbh, but DynDNS/No-IP sort it for me.
Plenty of people on both Be* and O2 have forced a change in their IP by changing router and/or spoofing a new MAC address on their existing router. So you're saying that having a static IP is unsafe but you're not saying that having a dynamic IP improves security?? If someone wants to find you they'll do so regardless of whether you have a dynamic or static IP. Chances are if you're under that sort of attack it'll be related to something you did online, whether it be on a website, forum, irc etc, and the second you return with a new IP address the attacker will just learn that one. Not to mention the multitude of malware that is programmed to send IP addresses back to the attacker so they can keep track of you. And if you think that having a dynamic IP somehow makes you safer from getting your IP logged when downloading from bit torrent trackers, private or otherwise, and then used by the copyright holders to take legal action then you really are deluded about online security. Be* and O2 don't require a username or password to connect to their ADSL2+ service. There's no username or password hidden anywhere within the routers they provide for the ADSL2+ packages. The only package provided by Be* or O2 that does require a username and password is O2 Home Access which doesn't use the O2 network and is instead provided using BT's ADSL implementation. No, having a dynamic IP means that the IP is assigned by a DHCP server. The frequency with which it changes has no bearing on whether or not it's a dynamic IP or not. And as I pointed out above there are plenty of people who have forced their dynamic IP to change. Again this doesn't mean you don't have a dynamic IP. It just means your intepretation of a dynamic IP differs from what it really is. On Be* and O2 it depends on both the lease time and the MAC address of the equipment connecting to the network. The DCHP server uses MAC addresses to attempt to assign the same IP details to equipment that has previously connected to the network, this only changes if the IP address has since been reassigned to another router/computer. However given the long lease times and the minimal turnover of IP addresses this happens rarely so it is usually the case that the same IP address is reassigned each time you connect. At the end of the day ISPs provide dynamic IP addresses to ADSL customers purely as a means to ease configuration. Much easier to have your equipment provide them with IP details than have to walk them through setting up static IP details in whatever router they wish to use. They're not provided so people can change IP at a whim, which from what i've seen they usually want to do because they've been banned or are trying to get round things like an IP based download limiter.
Ok not gunna bother replying because you clearly don't know much more than what you've been told from bias internet articles and crappy tech support. The bit about o2 service doesnt use a username and password hidden in the router sums up how little you know. It's just easier to let you be ignorant and go off in your own little world of ignorance is bliss. 9/11 was an inside job btw if you want something else to rant about Oh it's just 2 easy I forgot how little some people are clued in. All your doing is turning everything i say into something else and then later on say that i've said it when i havnt. And about the IP thing, it depends what you use your connection for. Ignorance really is bliss. oh and you should know, i never said having a dynamic ip would make you safer. That is for the people who really want to know whats going on instead of listening to this bias internet article reader. I'm in the business mate and i know how IP tracing works.
No, I know what i'm talking about from having used Be* for 3 years, knowing people who have O2 and Be* and having helped numerous people on the Be* forums deal with technical issues with their service. As I said before the only O2 product that uses usernames and passwords to connect is the O2 Home Access package. Their ADSL2+ packages which use their own network do not need username and passwords due to the method by which the connection is established between the DSLAM at the exchange and your router at home. If you think that's what i've done then that's your opinion. To be honest I've got no interest in trying to turning things you say into something else or claim you've said things you haven't, i'm solely interested in correcting the incorrect claims you've made about Be*/O2 and the products they provide. In extremely rare circumstances an IP that regularly changes may, and I stress may, have a small beneficial impact on online security but for 99.9% of cases there is no security benefit of having a changing IP over a static IP. Claiming that a changing IP makes you less open to attack or somehow protects you from having your IP logged when using bit torrent is just nonsense. So what were you saying when you said that having a static IP for a home user was highly unsafe? Were you not implying that a dynamic IP was a better choice for remaining safer on the internet?
Having worked for o2 support myself, Krazeh is spot on. Each of the arguments he has made are true so much that you should just be quiet Hellblazer and consider yourself told. Hoorah for Krazeh!!! As a customer of o2 I've had no issues with the service and it truly is unlimited, fast and cheap which were my main criteria.
Virgin were a bit rocky just after they took over from Telewest (which was a decent service), but they appear to have settled down now. I never have any problems with them. They offer an uncapped service also.
Can I recommend Virgin Media...or is that Taboo in these forums? EDIT - oops I didn't read the last two posts They are excelent as their year on year service is incredible. I don't this exists on other ISPs but each year when they bring out new speeds all previous lines are upgraded for the exact same price for free. I've been on cable since blueyonder when I got 256kb - had year on year upgrades to 4Mb, whereupon we moved home and found a great deal on a 20Mb cable connection. Cable has a much better connection that ADSL ISPs and the ping is always far superior, not that ping actually means much. If all four of you guys play online and wanna play at the same time you'll need an ISP that can provide all four you good pings otherwise many games servers these days kick you for having a crappy ping. Also, the upload needs to be decent. With poor upload speeds on some ADSL ISPs you'll have trouble getting more than 3 of you to play even on the faster connections during peak times. I'm currently on 20Mb connection with 3 gamers and one heavy youtube user online simultaneously quite often. No problems and ping is still at 20 - normally I average around 15. Virgin also has lots of features offering TV and phone services combos, but they keep changing so you'd have to check them out carefully. PS. As you know virgin has 200Mb connections getting ready/tested, as well as the 100Mb connections. I hear a 50Mb will be introduced soon if it isn't already out (sorry been to Egypt and only came back a few days ago...). When I was getting my 20Mb connection I was told it's likely it'll be upgraded free to 50Mb, but at that point only the 100Mb was rumoured about. Now that the 200Mb is soon to follow who knows maybe I can get an upgrade to 100MB
For pings etc, it's the same deal for most broadband of a similar speed. I get continuously awesome pings all over the place, even at peak hours.
The 50 meg isn't available in my area yet I think there is a charge if you up grade to 50 meg for the new modem and wireless router.
They do? did something change recently? personally, i wouldn't call 768k upload on 20mb cable decent, it's barely adequate at best, and that's without mentioning the 256k you end up with if you do hit the daily BW cap by accident. i have friend's on O2 ADSL with much higher upload rates than that... Think i will end up moving to O2 when i get my own place this autumn/early next year.
IDNET. Customer service is second to none. Very happy with them. Most of the community at overclock3d.net use them. Excellent for gaming apparently. Here's the user forum at think broadband; http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/idnet.html
They do offer an uncapped service, however they slow your line if you go over certain traffic ammounts at peak times (which I will admit are getting longer) I'd reccomend Virgin though, had loads of problems with a BT ADSL2 line and swapped to virgin who promptly made everything work spiffily. And I've got 20Mb cable at my uni house which is also pretty reliable. According to my mum, if you do have connectivity problems, they don't bill you for that month - which I find hard to believe, but does appear to be the case with her. YMMV. As for the static vs. dynamic IP issues above - Krazeh is spot on with every comment. We have a dynamic IP which hasn't changed once in two years. Doesn't make it a static though. RwD
O2. No cap,decent speed given my distance from exchange,customer service has been excellent,and best bit,£7.34 a month.
I'm on VM. Great for general browsing + downloading, not too hot for PC games though as there is a fair amount amount of packet loss leading to higher pings and some lag... have no issue with Wii/PS3 online though. Obvious advantage is that it doesn't matter how far from exchange you are - you get what you pay for (on the whole) Of the people I know on Sky, over 50% of them have had problems (mainly installation so once sorted aren't too bad - just a couple of cases of dropped connections. Never really heard a bad word against Be/O2 although clearly the benefit of Sky/VM is that they tend to offer better packages if you want to make use of their TV and phone service. Currently paying £32 a month and that inclues phone line rental, unlimited off-peak calls, XL TV (all chans except sports/film, setanta, and on-demand), HD, V+ and 10Mb bb. Can't complain on that front.
O2 here. Was on fast.co.uk but the prices are ****ing insane regardless of the fact the service is decent.
