Broadband for gaming.

todd10k

Hello. im new to boards.ie, i came here because i heard from someone else that alot of people have the same problems as me.

first off, i live in blanchardstown, dublin. i am an irish broadband customer, and i am at the end of my tether. since moving to irish broadband, i have been getting consistent, horrible latency of 150-200ms regularly. packet loss in the 30-40% region, and horrible, almost non existant download speeds. i have called many, many times to their customer support. nothing has rectifyed the problem. i have sent numerous tracert's, screenshots, etc. to their support, and nothing. yesterday, i reached the end of my tether. i sent a strongly worded email to their support team, only to recieve a "your e-mail has been blocked because the subject line was too long".

...

I have had it with irish broadband. a friend recommended them to me and, while the service is quite good sometimes (low latency, high download speeds/upload speeds) this is barely 20% of the time. i am a hardcore halflife/bf2 player, and i cannot play any games on this connection anymore, barring world of warcraft.

At the moment, i have 2MB Breeze, at an 8:1 contention ratio. if only they would fix their latency issue, i would be happy with their service. however, for the forseeable future, i have decided that i wish to depart from them.

now, this is where i ask you guys. i have had some pretty bad experiences with eircom. i dont wish to go back to them, but it looks like it might be my only choice. which broadband company would you guys recommend? what package would be best for me, a man who wishes to use his connection for mostly gaming? what i want is: something which gives good latency, but with a decent amount of bandwidth (512 and up) atm i pay 80 euro a month inc vat. any help would be appreciated.

Ishindar

im also a gamer from blanch and an electronic engineer. I had irish broadband at one stage and they lied continuously to me. they can give u a good service but they chose not too. dont believe their bull****. I was in a contract with them and i rang them and told them they were steeling my money and i could prove it and i was not going to pay them anymore and if they persue me i will sue them. Needless to say i never heard from them again, they didnt even come for the ariel.

I have good experiences with eircom BB and would recommend them to gamers although they r a bit more expenive but not a moments down time in over a year.

todd10k

i used to be an eircom customer. had a 1meg dsl line. musta been about...3 years ago, give or take a few months, when i got it. cost me round about 800 to install. 200 for the install, 250 for the modem, then they made me pay for the first and second months. then slap vat on at 21%. needless to say, i was living of bread and water for that month

thing is though, my eircom dsl line had bad latency. best ping i could get to any server was 70, due to interleaving. what eircom package would you recommend? are there any other broadband companys in our area? also, what do you mean by "they were stealing your money"? i am currently under contract, and if there was a way to get out from under this weight, and get to a different broadband provider, id like to find out how.

Gonzo

I would recommend the eircom plus package altho it is kinda expensive it gives you the best ping outside of ntl bb and smart bb. my pings below are using a usb cable, with the ethernet cable you could get slightly lower again. Ive never really had a problem or downtime with eircom over the 2 years except for yesterday when it went mad for about an hour. Only thing thats bad about the eircom bb is the really crappy uplaod speeds of 128k which make stuff like xbox live very laggy indeed sometimes.

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.136.36] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 82.195.136.36:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 22ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 23ms

Pinging www.jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=59

Ping statistics for 82.133.85.65:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 30ms, Average = 29ms

zuma

Well at 1.3 times the price of the BT equiv with 66% of the downlaod CAP its a damn expensive way of shaving a couple of milliseconds from your pings.

BT 2Mb wrote:

>ping www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.136.36] with 32 bytes of data:

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.136.36] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=28ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.36: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 82.195.136.36:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 27ms, Maximum = 29ms, Average = 28ms

Ive tried out both Eircom Plus and BT Plus(on the same line) and can tell you that there was no noticeable difference in terms of performance between the two...except of course for the current startling price difference!!!!

steve-hosting36

Best DSL pings are to be had from Smart...

todd10k

so with my current 4 port zyxel modem, i could get a good deal with smart telecom? ive been reading about, and i heard that you must switch over from eircom completly to avail of their broadband package.

tell me, does smart have download allowances?

chorus techy

steve-hosting36 wrote:

Best DSL pings are to be had from Smart...

I second that!

todd10k wrote:

so with my current 4 port zyxel modem, i could get a good deal with smart telecom? ive been reading about, and i heard that you must switch over from eircom completly to avail of their broadband package.

tell me, does smart have download allowances?

Well the basic 2mb smart package gives you a free 4 port router for free.
Yes you do unfortunately have to move everything over to smart and get a new number (and lost your old one).

And they don't have download caps as such, just "fair usage policies".

bk

I recommend in order of preference:

1) NTL Cable BB (1m @ €25, 2m @ €35, 3m @ €45)

2) Smart Telecom, 2m for €35 including line rental

3) BT Ireland BB, 1m @ €40 including line rental

todd10k

thanks alot so far guys. unfortunatly, smart telecom is not available in my area. i have yet to inquire about ntl, or bt ireland broadband. ill have a look at them.