Ignorance needs fixing...

Zillah

Finally the funds neccessary have become available to break away from dial up and join the ranks of broadband. My father wants eircom but their web page has scared me off with their 'it's faster, gives us money, magic makes the internet faster..' attitude. Any help in terms of the performances of the various providers available(DL speeds, pings, caps etc)?

bk

IOLBB seems to be the best balance at the moment.

OfflerCrocGod

Well if you can get UTV they are about the same(as IOLBB - €ircon are THE worst dont touch them) except their cap is only for downloads so you can upload all you want.

BKtje

if you want good pings stay well away from utv im told.
Download rates and caps utv+iol are similar. (all 2nd hand info)

Ripwave

Originally posted by phlematic
Finally the funds neccessary have become available to break away from dial up and join the ranks of broadband. My father wants eircom but their web page has scared me off with their 'it's faster, gives us money, magic makes the internet faster..' attitude. Any help in terms of the performances of the various providers available(DL speeds, pings, caps etc)?

What's your phone bill like (excluding internet calls?) If you make more than €20 a month in local and national calls, you'd be very hard pushed to beat the new IOL/ESAT - bundles €65 for broadband plus "all you can eat" local and national calls, or, even if you don't make that many local and national calls, bundle 3 is also a minimum of €65 but your ordinary local, national, mobile and international calls all count towards that.

Technically, there's not that much to choose from between the alternative providers - the basic product is the same, but there are some differences in how each providers own network is configured. Unfortunately, there's circumstantial evidence that oreillycom don't treat all DSL users equally, and delays are more likely if you get DSL from someone other than oreillycom. (Even oreillycom customers have seen 3 week delays in getting DSL, but for most customers of all 3 main providers, this isn't too muchof a problem).

Cabaal

Simple bit of info
Eircom monthly cap - 4GB
Esat monthly cap - 8GB
Esat is also cheaper, please don't go with EirCON, atleast for the kittens sake

rymus

UTV cap - 8GB

note that your iol limit of 8gb includes traffic in both directions, whereas utv only includes downloads. Then again, if theres a woman in the house it's well worth the new iol bundle... you know how these women tend to go on for hours

*waits for a feminist attack*

jank

just a quick question there
what is the difference between pings and actual download rate(throughput)!

Ripwave

Originally posted by jank
just a quick question there
what is the difference between pings and actual download rate(throughput)!

They have almost no relationship to one another. You can download at 50KB/S on a connection with crap pings. You can get great pings and have crap downloads.

rymus

for example... I'm on UTV and although it's apparently the worst for pings, I get 50k+ while downloading. Personally I'd take download speed over uber pings though

Zillah

A ping represents the time it takes a small signal to get to a distant location and return. It's important for gaming.

Download speed represents how much information you can get at once. When someone can dowload 'faster', it would probably be more accurate to say they download 'bigger.'