Should I still get Netsource DSL?

ixoy

I've been reading these posts, and seen an awful lot of bitching at Netsource recently, particularly regarding their pings.

I'm assembling my new PC this weekend, so want to go and order my DSL (probably on Monday). I was heading for Netsource until I see it trashed this week. So should I still get it?

Principaly reasons for getting it, for me, are downloads and faster web access. Which leads to:

1) Do bad pings affect download speeds? I mean theoretically they shouldn't, right? The data packets might take a long time to traverse the 'net but once they're coming in, the bit rate should remain unaffected. Or is this hypothetical only?

2) Are these pings bad everywhere? Is it a problem at Netsource's heart or a contention issue limited to certain exchanges? I'll be linking into the exchange in the IFSC [Custom House, I think] so I'm not sure how busy it'd be for DSL....

Gaming shouldn't take up much of my time. I might dabble at Counter Strike but it's not a major requirement. Are all the people irritated with Netsource over its pings for gamings or for slow web pages or for download speeds or ...?

I really prefer the idea of uncapped as, come Autumn, I'll be looking to see all my favourite American shows. However if I'm going to want to smash my router with a hammer, I'd like to know in advance

BKtje

Apparently they are annoyed over ping times which wouldn't affect your downloads at all. (maybe that 1/4 of a second longer to begind downloading each file). Same with browsing.

Pings (latency) are really just gamers issues.
As far as contention goes i don't think that thats the problem and your gonna have the contention problem with each of the ISP's so either pay extra for business or live with it.
Choice is yours

²°°³webkev²°°³

well i dont even know what a ping is to be quite honest.. something about a packet of data or something?

but I'm delighted with netsource, speeds always seems to be consistent, they have fairly good support, I have no trouble downloading movies, playing bf 1942 online or streaming data.

They seem to be having some router issues at the moment which is leading to disconnecting, but its only happened to me once in the last 24 hours, so they must be sorting themselves out.. and I even heard IOL BB customers moaning baout disconnecting so it may just have been something else.

But the main thing is uncapped.. I cant imagine using broadband with a cap after using netsource. I'm not sure that I even reach a 5gb quota a month, but peace of mind is worth paying a little extra for..

DeVore

Ping time is a measure of the time it takes for your computer to communicate a single packet of data to the target computer.

The packet isnt processed and is simply returned to your computer (afaik).

The time is measure in milliseconds and is (afaik) the record of the roundtrip (ie from you to target to you again).

pings to Ireland on BB should be in the 30-80ms bracket. ISDN has similar latency (ping) characteristics. Dialup is in the 120-200ms range. Fibre and Cat5 (ie: lans etc) are in the sub 10ms range.

Latency (ping time) has little or no effect on download speeds but greatly affects online interactive games which require any kind of split second reaction (ie: Quake, CS etc... Chess is obviously not affected )

DeV.

fatguy

Well everything else is capped, so if you can put up with occasionally poor performance, go for it.

Venom

I just got Netsorce DSL in and am very happy with it. The lack of a cap is awsome and peace of mind with a fixed bill is well worth that extra couple of miliseconds to me

PlanetSide which is known to not have the best netcode run's perfectly and anything Iv downloaded has done so at a good pace. I would recomend it.

Not to mention that I dont have to pay Eircom anything more than my line rental just add's to the goodness

The rat can go to hell, go to hell and die.

BigEejit

If gaming isnt high on the original posters agenda then go for netsource .. I dabble a bit with online gaming but its mainly for downloading, static IP is a big plus .. and of course the peace of mind of not getting a bill for €1800 because you went over the cap (it did happen, see answer from eircom here .. dunno where the original thread is/was ... and it is all sorted and was a programming error or something, but can you imagine that bill landing on your lap ... that would just ruin your day)

And of course what Venom said is true too:

The rat can go to hell, go to hell and die.

(well actually eircom still make money off you, but not as much as if you were actually subscribed to them for broadband)

MrPinK

I've no regrets. With these speeds, a 5 gig cap would have been unbareable for the last 2 months. With regards to latency, unless you're a hardcore gamer it's not that much of a problem. I can still play games online before 7:00 with incrediable pings. At the peak times it's not as good but it's still better than 56k.

ando

Originally posted by fidel
and

since i got it 2month ago i downloaded

92GB and countin....

well there we go, all our gamers can blaim him!

What on earth do you be downloading ???

BKtje

Terra Patrick and the Giant C.....

you get the drift im sure

CyberGhost

when i get netsource, i'll try to download full will, without thinking about limit, downloading everything i want, it's interesting in how many days, i'll exceed gigs

i probably download a lot the first 2 months too, but then... you can't always download, i'll probably won't go over 5 gigs but it still feels good that you know you can max out!

Jorinn

Originally posted by fidel
YES DO GET IT!!!!
goos service,friendly staff

and

since i got it 2month ago i downloaded

92GB and countin....

thats

35month downloadin on utvip 56k!!!!!!!!!!

Yikes, 92 gigs, you ca't possibly be using everything you're downloading. I'm at 5 gigs for the month an I though mine might be a bit excessive, figured I'd want 8 gigs or so a month, but mainly it was for peace of mind and impatience with UTV..

rymus

92GB? thats outrageous! The man will never have to go to the cinema again!

That's quite reassuring though that even if the pings are complete balls most of the time, the download rates are still up there with the best of them.

It's almost worth paying eircom the line rental charge to have that kind of service.

Almost...

adnans

Originally posted by rymus
That's quite reassuring though that even if the pings are complete balls most of the time

pings are only affected between 7pm and 3am. other times they are perfect as pie. why are they affected? no one knows. download speeds dont suffer during this time, and it just plain boggles the mind since it cant be contention or massive leeches like our friend 92 gigs over there.

ixoy, i'd recommend it any day but when you do order it, ask them nicely if they have sorted the ping/latency issue that many customers have been complaining about recently in the past two weeks. i wonder what their sales people will tell you

adnans

ps. fidel, thats a lot of porn

rymus

Originally posted by adnans
i wonder what their sales people will tell you

probably the same thing they told me when I rang up for info on it. The hard sell started straight away from a rather uptight/aggressive employee and I got "minor problems, IT manager on holidays" It is a dilly of a pickle tho.. (but as Im not a massive gamer I wont let it worry me)

ixoy

What a scary board - quick replies

Right, that seems to settle it. Netsource it is. Now all I have to do is build the computer to access it...

How quickly can you get it from them by the way? One guy said he was waiting a year with Eircom (or The Rat, as they seem to be called here) but then I saw someone else say 2 days with Netsource. I'm near an exchange ('bout 500m) and city centre but I'm not sure if it'd make a difference. And obviously it'd be the self-install option....

MrB

Plan on 2 weeks from ordering, but you may get it a lot quicker

bizmark

Jesus H crist 92 GIG! you my friend spent to much time online

i dont like netsources because of bad pings (me a gamer) so i wouldnt touch them.Though if your into d/ling 92 gig of games and films (which is of course not against the law ) im sure netsources will do you well

bk

Hey, I just had an idea, if a person wanted big downloading AND good pings, then they could get two lines into their house and get Netsource on one line (no cap, bad latency) and Eircom/UTV on the other line (cap, some latency).

With two DSL routers you could route different types of traffic over the different connections.

It would cost you roughly the same as Esat LLU product, however if you could get Esat LLU you should.

WARNING I just thought of this, I haven't tried it and I'm not sure it would work. What do people think?

MrPinK

Works in theory, but it'd cost a fair bit. It'd probably be cheaper to just go for a business package, they are uncapped and have very stable pings.

You can have big downloads and good latency with netsource. All you gotta do is play your games before 8:00 and schedule all your downloads for after 8:00. Not ideal solution, but hey, better than nothing.

bk

Originally posted by MrPinK
Works in theory, but it'd cost a fair bit. It'd probably be cheaper to just go for a business package, they are uncapped and have very stable pings.

But the Eircom/Netsource business packages have high interlacing on, which causes stable BUT relatively high latency.

As for the cost:

UTV Install: e69 (xcluding modem)
Netsource Install: e99

Total Install: e168

Router x 2 ~ e250

UTV Monthly: e47
Netsource Monthly: e66

Total Monthly: e113

Eircom Business:

Install: e199.65

Monthly: e110.89

Router: ~ e150

And remeber Eircom business has relatively high pings due to interleaving and it has a 6GB cap (you could go with Netsource equivalent with no cap).

So the price is about the same.

Of course the best option would be to go for Esat LLU if you are on an enabled exchange, no cap and sub 10ms pings

SkepticOne

Originally posted by fidel
1. i have 60 films and not a single 1 downloaded,i rip them better quality myself!

2.i listen a lot radio and webcasts

3.only 6gigs of porn downloaded,girlfriend wasnt to happy.

4.70gigs are tunes and music videos

rest is software and games...,most of the stuff was uploaded onto my filesharin ftp by other people,i work 42hour week i dont have that much time to go online[/SIZE]

What exchange are you on? (if you don't mind me asking)

MrPinK

Originally posted by bk
But the Eircom/Netsource business packages have high interlacing on, which causes stable BUT relatively high latency.

You've still got great latency. You're not likely to notice the extra 20ms or so. The only reason you'd want better is if you get into a pissing contest with other gamers about have fast your pings are. And when the exchange starts filling up, the business package will still have the rock steady pings. The residential package won't.

As for pricing, you're right, it's not too bad. You would have to get the second modem tho, and there's also rental for the extra line. Think that's about €15 a month or so.

BKtje

You've still got great latency. You're not likely to notice the extra 20ms or so. The only reason you'd want better is if you get into a pissing contest with other gamers about have fast your pings are

You obviously aren't a gamer if you make that statement, 20ms is a fair amount, especially 20ms as a DOS pint.

muffen

With two DSL routers you could route different types of traffic over the different connections.

WARNING I just thought of this, I haven't tried it and I'm not sure it would work. What do people think?

I have netsource and eircom. I currently use two routers (just because I happened to have them) but a linuxbox with three network cards would accomplish the exact same thing.

Currently, I use netsource for downloading, and eircom for playing games.

It's difficult to get protocol based routing, but you can route based on ports. Basically, in the linuxrouter, you set everything to go through netsource. Then you figure out what ports are being used by the games you play, and you map those ports to eircom.

Another way of doing it, which is currently my setup, is to have two default gateways (this is because I'm lazy and I have two routers). That way, when you want to swap providers, you just change the default gateway.

Works really well...

I can add that we are three people in the house using it, which is why we can afford it. It also makes more sense to have two 512Kbit connections instead of one 1MBit, as downloading will (without special apps) try to use as much bandwidth as it can and thereby prevent online gameplaying.

BTW, at the start of this thread, most people thought that the guy that downloaded 92gigs downloaded alot, and was a bad person because this affected other peoples pingtimes. In my opinion, if you have an uncapped service, you should be able to download as much as you want. You paid for an UNCAPPED service. If it affects other people, the blame should be with the ISP, not the person that is using a service he paid for.