Best deal in gamer's broadband

Bosco

I'm within range of an IOL enabled phone exchange and I need a consistently low ping and a free ethernet modem. What's the best deal going that will suit me?

I want to be able to play online from two machines concurrently, and I'd really like to be able to connect a third from time to time. What are my chances of achieving this with the high contention ratios associated with the cheaper packages. I'd trawl through the appropriate sticky for this info but I don't relish the thought of reading though the 350+ replies to this thread :rolleyes:

Xcellor

Well I find IOL Broadband quite good... Good pings and two people playing medal of honor allied assault is good... Quite low pings..

Never tried a third comp. would manage it but would obviously be slower.

IOL BB is cheap enough,, good download limit,, good pings (crap customer support mind).

To be honest with you, I hate IOL but UTV arent so great and Eircom... well nuff said...


X

zAbbo

Arent Eircom supposed to be the best in terms of ping?

tuxy

esat business(only avilable from a few exchanges)
eircom
iol
utv

when it comes to dsl pings thats the order with the best listed at the top

Bosco

I hear what you're saying about IOL. Everything ESAT related gives me the shivers since they charged me for flatrate internet by direct debit for 2 months after I rang them to cancel my service. I wasn't signed up to any long term contract, and I went so far as to cancel in writing. I have a feeling that if I hadn't gone into the bank to cancel the direct debit they would have charged me for another few months just to add insult to injury. I'm hoping people will post good things to the effect that Esat is a different company since BT took over.

Davey Devil

There customer service is useless. You might be waiting a while to get it too because they seem to screw up loads of orders. Once you get it though it's great. Have not had one problem.

jank

no east are the biggest bunch of wanlers ever to be involved in the telco industry
im never ever going to give them am other peeny so long as i live

yea i WAS a very unhappy customer with esat BT

red_ice

eircom = poo
esat = poo
netsource = poo
NTL = the best connection there is available for anything in ireland, fullstop.

tuxy

what pings do you get to irish servers from ntl?

ando

ntl's only available to 3 people in tallaght but

I've had no problems with eircom when playing games. Very low ping and its very stable

MickFarr

and me in Lucan with my 1MB line

Gonzo

Originally posted by red_ice
eircom = poo
esat = poo
netsource = poo
NTL = the best connection there is available for anything in ireland, fullstop.

Eircom are great for gaming i get really low pings, Esat are good also, NTL are the best but theres the slight matter that only a handfull of people in west dublin can get it so NTL dont really come into the picture for about 99% of the countrys broadband market.

melachi

Originally posted by bazH
Arent Eircom supposed to be the best in terms of ping?

Irishbroadband are the best now with their new equpiment.
At least 10 ms lower ping because of symmetric speeds (512/512 or 1mb/1mb). It would also be more solid and not fluctuate cause of the upload speeds which is important in gaming.
I've got eircom and i'd switch from the 30-33 dos uk pings to 16ish ms with ibb any day. Also faster download speeds and upload obviously, which makes life easier if you're into the dodgy downloads.

Xcellor

Originally posted by melachi
Also faster download speeds and upload obviously, which makes life easier if you're into the dodgy downloads.

Wot you mean by that?

X

RobertFoster

Originally posted by melachi
Irishbroadband are the best now with their new equpiment.

Are they good for home users though? I thought they catered for businesses...

ando

Its a hit'n miss with iBB. Some ppl get really good pings, some awful unless its all been fixed recently

-ADREN-

Does eircom have a reason to have Inter Leaving on medium setting on there 512k / 128k re selling pack thing. Or just to be a pain?

Cant they set it to low like the East Business packages.. nice 22ms and so on.

If anything it should be the other way around Business have it and home/gamers not have it on.

Gonzo

I dunno why Eircom have interleaving on, they seem to be the only company in Europe that have it for dsl, altho its low for radsl and eircoms pings are very good, they would be at least 10ms-15ms lower on average if interleaving was turned off completely, something similar to EsatBt business pings id imagine.. On Eircom business ADSL it would be more like 50ms lower coz the interleaving is high on that. If Eircom could be convinced that interleaving is not needed and to switch it off would make alot of people very happy indeed but unforunately I cant see this happening, were stuck with interleaving.

MrPinK

Originally posted by -ADREN-
Does eircom have a reason to have Inter Leaving on medium setting on there 512k / 128k re selling pack thing. Or just to be a pain?

If you have a dodgy line or you are at the outskirts of DSL range, then interleaving is important. It will prevent a lot of package loss/retransmission and give a much more stable connection. For the majority of people though, it's completely unnecessary. Turning it off completely wouldn't be a good idea, as some people will suffer and it's only really gamers that are bothered about it, but there should be the option to turn if off for people with good connections.

they seem to be the only company in Europe that have it for dsl

Most of Europe have better quality lines than us, but interleaving is still very common. They usually also offer fastpath packages for the gamers though.

-ADREN-

Whats the fast path thing about? Ive heard of it just not sure what it is. Something to do with decreasing pings?


Is it possible to have it switched on on certain users connections, or must it be done on a general connection basis?

MrPinK

Fastpath doesn't use interleaving at all. Esat (not IOL) use it, as do DSL providers in other countries, that's why their pings are about 15ms lower.

It is possible to have the interleaving on/off for each seperate port at the exchange, I've seen other ISP's do this, but Eircom either don't have the equipment or don't want the hassle.

Mutant_Fruit

IBB are the best for pings IF, and i repeat IF you get the VL equipment. And i suppose the 3.5ghz equipment wil be just as good if that ever gets released.

The standard equipment is slightly bolax, but the VL gives pings of as low as 12ms to boards. At the moment its averaging 20ms. In game pings are as low as 30ms in british/irish servers, and never over 70ms.

ando

I dunno what the hassle is. Eircom's pings (Radsl) are very good as they are, 10-15ms less would'nt make any difference to your gaming. Your talking 100th of a second difference. Anyway when I'm on English servers I'm usually getting a lower or very similar ping to the other gamers, even the guys that are in the UK.


PING clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=29.5 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=30.4 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=30.8 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=31.2 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=31.5 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=32.5 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=32.9 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=8 ttl=57 time=30.1 ms
64 bytes from clarity.jolt.co.uk (195.149.21.11): icmp_seq=9 ttl=57 time=29.5 ms

uteotw

I confirm that IBB is excellent when it's been "fixed" with the 5.8ghz gear.
I can play America's Army and still download constantly with no lag.

Gonzo

last nite my m8 was playing counterstrike on my compy on the DC server and ingame pings went down as low as 21 from time to time, averaged around 26-36. This was on eircom radsl also. Pings dont really need to be lower but if the interleaving was off it wud be sub 20 all the time and that would be really nice to have.

Mutant_Fruit

I just played a game of CS, downloading at 25kb/sec, uploading at 45kb/sec, and my ingame ping was jumping between 40 and 90ish. Usually averaging about 60.

Thats with the VL equipment with irish broadband. THats just fantastic in my opinion.