For those of you that have DSL Broadband..

jimbob

I was just wondering if it was worth getting?

Is it really ten times faster(512k) than normal dial up 56k modems (46-49k)?

Do you get 40 - 50k download speeds?

You opinion is extremely valuable.

Bass.exe

Very Bad

Yup. They can't really lie about that stuff.
I'm on Eircom's Broadband Home Starter whatever package... and I frequently get download speeds of 60+kBps

The only problem with Eircom is their woeful download limit. The cheap package is 4GB download limit, 1GB upload limit.
Fortunately, they don't seem to charge people for exceeding cap.... yet....

Oh, and Eircom's latency is fine. 40-60. Plus I've only had about 2 days of downtime all year.

jimbob

Cheers Bass.

And i was told a few weeks ago by, now a former Eircom telesales employee, that Eircom don't charge for exceeding the 4 gig limit. They just don't tell the customers this. Probably so the customers don't clog up the lines.

Bass.exe

Very Bad

Yeah, I got that line, but what he acutally said was Eircom aren't charging for excess downloading. It could change in the future. It would really suck if it did, as I tend to exceed my cap.
As for line cloggage..... I'm the one doing the clogging on my line

I've heard good things about Irish Broadband's Breeze package. 1mb line for €48.40 a month.... and good latencies (20 avg.)

Check if you can get that first. www.irishbroadband.ie
I'm going to try and switch after I serve my 12 month sentence with Eircom...

greglo23

OK

i`ve got iol broadband plus and it`s good. on a large download i get a constant 53 Kbps . online games i get a ping of 30 - 50 most of the time. recently the speeds went way down for about a week but its now back to normal. i`ve had it for about a year and a half and it`s the only time i`ve had a problem. i`ve never gone anywhere the sixteen gig cap and i use it a lot. i`d definitely recommend the iol service as i would`nt believe eircom if they told me they were lying or p*ss on them if they were on fire.

UNIFLU

Good

am on eircom broadband and getting 80+, am real close to major hub thus the speed, not hada problem with exceeding and cap to date

jimbob

Irishbroadband looks really good, but i don't live in Dublin.
Not even Digiweb.ie are as competitive as that.

Bass.exe

Very Bad

UNIFLU wrote:

am on eircom broadband and getting 80+, am real close to major hub thus the speed, not hada problem with exceeding and cap to date

Does that mean you've never exceeded your cap, or that they've never charged you? There is a big difference. Any serious surfer (and by that I mean someone who is online 24/7, usually downloading), will end up going over his/her cap many many times over.

SantaHoe

Not so Good

I'm on Esat broadband with the 16gig cap and decent contention ratio deal... my downloads always peak at 52KB/sec from a good server... I've never ever gotten over 60KB/sec though (or even above 55 for that matter)... but some things are out of their control I guess.
The ping times on Esat are erratic though, which sucks if you do online gaming.

Marcopolo85

Not so Good

Hello there.

I had UTV for the three month trial and they were excellent. Don't believe that it's always 512. I clocked mine on www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/
and it clocked 385 Kbps - that's almost 25% less than claimed!!

Yet I'm shown a constant 512 in the taskbar. However, considering that my dialup had dropped to 29 (yes - 29) Kbps than, technically speaking, its ten times faster!

John R

Marcopolo85 wrote:

Hello there.

I had UTV for the three month trial and they were excellent. Don't believe that it's always 512. I clocked mine on www.bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/
and it clocked 385 Kbps - that's almost 25% less than claimed!!

Yet I'm shown a constant 512 in the taskbar. However, considering that my dialup had dropped to 29 (yes - 29) Kbps than, technically speaking, its ten times faster!

The figure shown in the taskbar is not an indicator of your actual limit, to get an accurate reading use a speed monitor such as DU Meter. Failing that the windows task manager (Windows XP) Ctrl-Alt-Del will show you how close to 512 you actually get.

Because of the method those speedtest sites use they tend to underestimate connection speeds.

My UTV connection maxes out at 460 Kbps and will hold 450 Kbps constantly that gives average downloads of 50-52 KB/s.

okcomputer

SantaHoe wrote:

I'm on Esat broadband with the 16gig cap and decent contention ratio deal... my downloads always peak at 52KB/sec from a good server... I've never ever gotten over 60KB/sec though (or even above 55 for that matter)... but some things are out of their control I guess.
The ping times on Esat are erratic though, which sucks if you do online gaming.

I have the same deal. Do yu know if Esat would charge us if we went over?
and what about NTL?, i want to switch to NTL (with their 1.5 mbps downloads) but i am tied to my Esat contract until May 2005