UTV vs IOL vs Eircom

Erfrun

I'm getting Broadband and trying to choose which ISP.
Heres what I see as Pros & Cons for each of the 3 available to me:

UTV
Pros:
-Cheapest package
-16 Gb download limit available
-Cheapest excess charge
Cons
-USB modem

Eircom
Pros
-??
Cons
-Most expensive
-8Gb download limit


IOL
Pros
-16Gb download limit available
Cons
-No Static IP (may not be seen as a Pro by most people but its nice to have the choice)
-Have to spend Eur25 per month on telephone to get cheaper DSL rates.


What else am I missing here?

What about Service/Support provided by each ISP?


I'd like to hear from people who have had accounts with 2 or more of the above ISPs and can provide comparative feedback.


Erfrun

Praetorian

Eircom dsl lines have superior response times (ping).

sceptre

You have to switch your calls to UTV if you go with them for BB (not sure whether that's an advantage or disadvantage though - compulsory but cheaper)

seamus

Hi,
Gonna move this to Broadband, you'll get more subjective views there.

Gonzo

utv is rubbish for gamers but fine for downloaders as long as the service is working, utv was unusable in all cases for about 2 months but at least they have fixed it for the moment. Eircom is the most reliable offering great pings and downloads but the price and particularly the cap puts a sting into it. Surprising Eircom Broadband is the only area in Eircom where the support is actually good. IOL is possibly the best, nice decent cap, good performance and almost as good as eircom for gamers, only downside to IOL is that it can take ages to get activated and the accounts department are a joke.

If your mainly gonna be gaming and pings are a major priority then go for eircom, if your a casual gamer but like downloading with a bit of leg room then go for IOL, if all you want to do is download/surf/msn and are not a gamer and you want the cheapest offer going then go for UTV.

Eurorunner

Its in all of our interests if you stay away from €ircon. Choose from UTV/iol/netsource.

Valentia

A router is available as an extra from UTV.

MarVeL

As far as UTV being crap for gamers go it does depend on the game to a large extent. I'm using it for neverwinter nights and it works fine. Of course different games different demands

BKtje

Low latency games it would suck as the lower the better.
ALl you need for rpg's is a ping of around 200 and stability.

Gonzo

dsl is meant to give great pings to games like cs, quake3, ut2004 etc at pings around 35 being average but once the pings are above 50/60 ingame thats more like ISDN and not so hot. Even eircoms pings are not as good as they should be because of that damn interleving.

Mutant_Fruit

you can expect an ingame ping of about 50% higher than the ping to boards. i.e. if you ping boards in 30ms, expect ingame pings of 45ms.

Generally for games like counter-strike anything stable and below 70ms is good. i.e. you should be able to ping boards in under 40ms!

Xcellor

What ISP to choose really depends on your requirements. They all have pros and cons.

Eircom offer stability good ping but low download. Great if you just wanna game all day and all night. (gaming takes relatively small amount of bandwidth from my experience... latency is most important)

UTV... crap for serious gamers, good download specs.

IOL. Good for gaming, good downloads...

If its just for gaming you want BB then Eircom wins but if you want an all round good service with relatively good gaming IOL is good.

X

Kobie

I play plenty of games on UTV and really can't complain : 70 - 80ms pings are pretty standard, even when people were having all the trouble a while back I only had high pings for a couple of nights here & there.

Gonzo

Local pings of 70-80ms are far from standard for dsl, most people expect dsl pings of between 25 and 45ms to local servers throughout the world wherever you live, anything higher than 50-60ms is no better than plain old isdn, many ppl get broadband for gaming alone and for them a steady low ping is all that matters.

Borris

um you do realise that utv is owned by iol bb lol

Kobie

Local pings of 70-80ms are far from standard for dsl, most people expect dsl pings of between 25 and 45ms to local servers

Yes but I'm not talking about local servers, I'm talking about the in-game pings I get when connecting to games in Europe & the US. 70-80 is pretty good & certainly doesn't hamper game play.

Cryos

We are on the Eircom Business Starter (8 gig download, unlimited upload, ethernet modem and 24:1 ??? connections)

I have to admit 3ircon have an good product apart from the price but i suppose its ok. Ive played cs on dads dsl and it gets nice pings of 30 to irish servers and 40-50 on europeans.

The downside is that bloody support, they cant fix a thing!!! it took them years to figure out that they had given us the wrong password "That username: Eircom, Pass Broadband1" Cr@p, they have solved none of our problems we had!

on the other hand they are ok if your bb is deactivated for some reason (with an small helping of shouting down the phone)

Stephen

Originally posted by Borris
um you do realise that utv is owned by iol bb lol

Borris...
what the fúck are you talking about?

Cryos

I think he means that IOLBB is better than utv