Broadband Internet Connection Opinions..

S

ST Dragon

I’ve been using a 56K modem dialup connection since 2000.

When I first used the Internet in 1997 I had a 14400 modem, but sites were a lot “lighter” back then.

I'm fortunately, the 56K is getting just way too slow for my demanding downloading needs, so I’m thinking about upgrading to a Dynamic IP, 512K / 128K ADSL Phone broadband connection.

This ADSL Phone package includes a 512K / 128K unlimited ADSL broadband internet connection & 2 telephone lines (+500 hours of free telephone per month)

For a total of 52.83 Euros / month ($ 62.50)

They also offer:

384K / 128K & 2 telephone lines (+500 free hours) for 43.79 Euros / month ($ 51.86)

1024K / 256K & 2 telephone lines (+500 free hours) for 78.30 Euros / month ($ 92.73)

This is the best offer I could find, as telecommunications are still very primitive in this part of the world...

But I think this specific 512/128K, is the better offer to go for.

So, what type of internet connection do you guys have and how much are you paying per month?

Any opinions will be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.
 
Whoa, that sucks. I thought the US was crappy as far as broadband goes. I'm currently paying $44USD/mo for 1.5mbps down / 1 mbps up (static IP) + phone line.

Anyway, if I were you I would probably go for the cheapest option. $10 is a big difference to pay for 128k, and even though 384kbps is slow, so is 512, and I don't think you'll notice much difference between the two.. not $10 a month worth of difference anyway. Also keep in mind for bittorrent dls and such, your download is going to be crippled by your upstream anyway.
 
I've got a 6 Mbit connection with dynamic IP for 45 dollars... they want an extra 20 bucks for a static IP so I didn't bother.
 
Originally posted by it290@Sat, 2005-12-31 @ 01:42 AM

Whoa, that sucks.  I thought the US was crappy as far as broadband goes.  I'm currently paying $44USD/mo for 1.5mbps down / 1 mbps up (static IP) + phone line.

Anyway, if I were you I would probably go for the cheapest option.  $10 is a big difference to pay for 128k, and even though 384kbps is slow, so is 512, and I don't think you'll notice much difference between the two.. not $10 a month worth of difference anyway.  Also keep in mind for bittorrent dls and such, your download is going to be crippled by your upstream anyway.

[post=143060]Quoted post[/post]​
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Very interesting suggestions.

Basically, what they told me is that with the 512/128K ADSL, I’ll be able to download at 55-58Kbytes/s from http / ftp servers and at 42-44Kbytes/s with the 384/128K ADSL connection. (The maximum theoretical download is 48KB/s for 384K & 64KB/s for 512K)

Why do you say that it will be crippled by my 128K upstream?

Will it restrict me to only be able to download as much as my upstream is?

I've never used any peer 2 peer other than Emule at work where I have 1Mb DSL, but I didn't notice any restriction to tell you the truth?

One other important factor that worries me, will I be able to play Online Deathmacth games like Quake4, Unreal 2003/4, Doom3, Command & Conquer, etc (When Connected to EU or USA online-game servers), at a good speed with no lag and what ping should I be expecting if I was to choose the 512/128K offer? Would the 1024/256K line be a better choice perhaps?

Thanks in advance.
 
Using Bittorrent, your download speed is limited by your upload speed.. this is done to prevent people from just leeching and not seeding at all. It's the only p2p app I know of that works that way. Of course with other p2p apps, if your upstream bandwidth is totally saturated, you wont be able to get decent download rates either, because connections will time out from you not being able to get ACKs out in time and such.

For gaming, most broadband speeds will be fine as long as you aren't planning on hosting a server. I doubt you'll see much difference between 384 and 1mbit as far as that goes. Games are getting more demanding on bandwidth, but I don't think any of them will max out a 384k connection. The 256k up on the fastest option may help a bit for gaming, but more importantly, just make sure you aren't using the network in any other way when you game. This means closing browsers and p2p apps, and disabling automatic update services.

What does matter is latency (ping), and generally ADSL is good for that, usually equal or better to a fast cable connection and certainly much better than satellite or the like. The network infrastructure that you're connecting to is going to be critical for good latency, but there's not much you can do about that short of trying different providers. IIRC you're in Greece, so most likely you generally won't get ping times as good as someone in the US, Western Europe, or Japan, but again, nothing you can really do on that point. Also, for gaming, you're better off using a wired network vs. wireless.
 
No, I’m not going to host any online games like a server & I would always close all unnecessary background applications/services when using any resource demanding service.

Basically what I want, is to able to play online games at decent speeds & leech all day long from peer 2 peer like Emule & Shareazza, etc…

I’ll be probably leaving my PC on, through out an extended period of time every day, downloading stuff n such...

So I’m seeking for the best possible solution for this task.
 
Eh, there is only one option for high speed in my area (middle of nowhere in the US), and the cheapest it goes is $50/month for 256k/256k DSL + Phone.
 
Basically what I want, is to able to play online games at decent speeds & leech all day long from peer 2 peer like Emule & Shareazza, etc…
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Well, don't plan on doing that while playing online games, that will send your latency to hell no matter how fast your connection. Heck, even browsing usually isn't pleasureable if you have a p2p app going full steam.

If you plan on doing all that much downloading, it may be worth it to get the fastest connection you can, although obviously it depends on other factors like how much money you have to spend and how big the files you plan on downloading are. Anything iso-sized or bigger will take a pretty long time on a 384k connection. I know I definitely wouldn't pay $92.73 a month for a 1mbit connection (and a few years ago you would have had to pay that much here -- and so not many people had that kind of speed), but it may be worth it to you.

One thing you might want to look at if you have neighbors is getting an even bigger and more expensive connection and leasing bandwidth out to your neighbors. This may be of questionable legality depending on your service agreement, but if you put everything behind a router the ISP can't really tell without physically seeing your setup or doing some snooping that they shouldn't be doing. If you use a Linux box as the router you can even allocate them a certain portion of the bandwidth. Actually, for your purposes I might recommend setting up a Linux machine to act as a router if you have a spare PC anyway, since you can do QoS/traffic shaping on your outgoing packets and thus optimize your ability to do things like play games or surf the web while using p2p apps (by assigning a low priority to the packets on the ports used by the p2p apps). Your ability to control incoming packets is obviously limited but its possible to do some shaping on them too.
 
I'll be mostly downloading game CD/DVD-Images.

I know other people setting up an illegal internet sharing service with their neighbours and have even made some money from it. But my neighbours are far too old to be interested for high-speed broadband internet connection.

Besides, some of my other neighbours are well known pimps and would probably nail my ass to the spot!

It might even be interesting to use a Wi-Fi bridge and give internet to a neighbour across the street without the need of physical wires/cables.

Yes, I was going to setup a Linux Router / Firewall on an old PIII 500MHZ, 576MB PC that I have lying around the house somewhere. I think that would be more than enough.

Right know my budget allows me to pay 52.83 Euros / month ($ 62.50)

for 512K / 128K unlimited ADSL broadband internet connection & 2 telephone lines (+500 hours of free telephone per month), especially if you consider that currently I’m paying about 70 Euros ($ 82.90) monthly for 56K Dial-up and my PSTN telephone costs!

By the way, what's the most reliable way to test your ping as you would test your down/upstream at http://www.dslreports.com/

When I use the command "ping www.google.com" from dos prompt whilst connected with my 56K dial-up, I get an average of 187ms and 117ms when I ping www.ote.gr and 108ms for www.otenet.gr which happen to be the largest telephone service / ISPs in Greece (Which I’m currently using).

Where as, I get a 121ms when pinging www.vivodi.gr which is the other Greek Telephone / ISP that offers the above said ADSL connection that I'm interested in.

So what should I expect with a 512/128 from them?

Thanks in advance.
 
I have 512/128 ADSL unlimited I pay 48 Euros for it, in P2P I have to cap the upload from 6 to 8 KB in order to download at full speed. The max you'll get from a 512/128 connection is 53KB and 12KB for upload.
 
I don't know the specs, but I'm very happy with my $30 Comcast cable connection.

Fastest downloads I've ever had -- including a shared T1 at all my last 3 employers
 
By the way, what's the most reliable way to test your ping as you would test your down/upstream at http://www.dslreports.com/

When I use the command "ping www.google.com" from dos prompt whilst connected with my 56K dial-up, I get an average of 187ms and 117ms when I ping www.ote.gr and 108ms for www.otenet.gr which happen to be the largest telephone service / ISPs in Greece (Which I’m currently using).

Where as, I get a 121ms when pinging www.vivodi.gr which is the other Greek Telephone / ISP that offers the above said ADSL connection that I'm interested in.

So what should I expect with a 512/128 from them?
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It's impossible to say. You can't really test ping other than to a specific host. You could test for basically how much latency your actual connection is adding by figuring out the nearest hop from your PC (using traceroute), pinging it w/your 56k line, and then figuring out the nearest hop when using your DSL line and comparing these two values.

In practical use, though, your ping is going to depend on a number of factors such as network congestion, physical distance, overall ISP quality, the speed of the host you're connecting to, and number of hops to that host. Essentially, in your situation, I would say just be happy with whatever servers you can find that give you sub-100ms ping times.
 
I have bluyonder Cable Broadband in the UK, 10Mb 😛 down / 384kb up for £35GBP a month

When I lived in Cyprus I had 1024kb down / 128kb up and to be truly honest i wouldn't rate it even as gd as dial up in the UK. :damn: So be warnded, if you get a crappy ISP like Cytanet :puke: , broadband won't be too much fun :angry:
 
Gaming (I think) depends as much on how many people are on your line and how far away you are from the server as your download/upload speed.
 
Cable is a shared connection and so that's true, but with ADSL you have a direct line to the CO so there is no additional congestion from other people in the neighborhood.
 
Originally posted by it290@Mon, 2006-01-02 @ 08:35 PM

Cable is a shared connection and so that's true, but with ADSL you have a direct line to the CO so there is no additional congestion from other people in the neighborhood.

[post=143129]Quoted post[/post]​
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I think that all phone signals for a phone region (e.g. all those (01964)527***) go through a fibre-optic cable (in broadband-enabled areas) to their phone provider (such as BT).

I think when they enable broadband in an area, they add the fibre optic in to replace the old metal wires. When they upgrade the top available broadband speed, they increase the number of fibreoptics.

I cannot say for sure if this means more people using the cable affect the speed, but I connect at 1.1 MBPS not the ordered 1 and my friend got 2M not the 768K he payed for when few people in his area used broadband.
 
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