Mac-friendly broadband?

luckat

I may switch my broadband provider. I'm in Dublin - what's the most Mac-friendly broadband provider here? I'm currently with Irish Broadband, but keep having problems with speed, which are temporarily fixed and then recur, so I'm reluctantly thinking of changing.

ZENER

Probably should be posted in the Nets/Comms/Broadband forum but basically any provider that provides a "modem" with an Ethernet Port rather than a USB port. The Ethernet port will prove to be much simpler to configure with the Mac with a suitable cable which is usually provided with the "modem". Eircom and UTV I think offer this type of modem with their package.

I'm sure there are others who will have more experience in this area who will put you right on the various providers. I use IOLBB who provided me with a Zyxel USB modem of some description that's still in it's box here. I use a router/modem combo with my macs plugged into ports on a switch. At the time there were no drivers available for the mac so I had to supply my own. I think things have improved now though !

ZEN

Yoda

Even easier is a router; that's what I had when I was with UTV.

RobertFoster

Zener: I got IOLBB back in May and they provided me with a dual USB/Ethernet modem, a ZyXEL Prestige.

ZENER

Zener: I got IOLBB back in May and they provided me with a dual USB/Ethernet modem, a ZyXEL Prestige.

I thought they would change from that other abomination, I got IOLBB back in July '03 so I was basing my answer on my experience then - thanks for the heads up though !

@YODA: Yeah thats what I meant to say, I think most of the supplied modems now are capable of routing and even have Firewalls, NAT and DHCP facilities built in.

ZEN

luckat

IBB do supply an ethernet connection. Weirdly, I was just talking to their support guy (very nice, very helpful) and he said he was able to push 220k/s through my system, though I'm getting snail-like speeds at this end.

Gyck

I've got IOLBB, works fine with both the mac and pc, though I'm using a router between the two machines and the modem (ZyXEL Prestige)...

Yoda

I have a friend who's just signed up with UTV and is having trouble getting the ZyXEL modem to work.

David Stewart

I'm using Eircom's broadband service and so is my father. I'm using slightly different equipment to his. I have an Alcatel Speed Touch Pro Ethernet Modem while my fathrer has the newer Netopia USB/Ethernet modem. However, when I visit him I'm able to plug in my Powerbook using the free Ethernet socket (my Dad uses USB) and it works fine.

flywheel

running with IBB here - had their Ethernet cable plugged straight into the iBook initially running OS 9 and OS X with no problems - then into an Airport Base Station and it also ran fine

although... have been with Irish Broadband for over a year and a half and the occasional slow period has been occurring more frequently lately - also found their direct debiting system wasn't great - mainly sporadic debit dates and billing for incorrect services - set up a standing order in the end

going to order one of the ADSL free-trial accounts on offer at the moment to compare

BrianG

RapierX

if you have a router, any DSL provider should be fine, otherwise if you plan on using the modem that comes with the particular providers package, find out the model name and do a quick google search to make sure they cater for macs (90% do nowadays), if they dont theres a good chance of getting it working anyway

luckat

I'm now pretty sure I'm leaving IBB. I'm getting the "Well, we're seeing much faster downloads than you're getting - it must be a problem with your Mac, frankly" line. When my experience as a customer varies drastically from the seller's experience of the service I'm getting, I tend to walk. And currently my experience is dialup speeds at broadband prices.

So apart from Irish Broadband, what's the best for price, service, speeds and download caps? Actual experience, not promises?

RapierX

luckat wrote:

So apart from Irish Broadband, what's the best for price, service, speeds and download caps? Actual experience, not promises?

IOL has 8 and 16 gig caps resp. Eircom has 4 and 8gig caps, eircom is the most reliable as regards speed, ping times, up time etc. but is slightly more expensive by around 55 against 48 euros a month for the higher cap packages.

As much as i hate to say it, eircom dsl is the best overall. However if you dont care about ping times the 16 gig iol package could be for you.

shabbyroad

luckat - what sort of ethernet does your mac have ? is it a 10 or 100 ethernet port ?