What provider would you recommend? I am a gamer, so low-lag, high-speed and (relatively) uncapped?
Hard question to answer, too many variables. but as a rule of thumb…stay away from oversubscribed providers such as talktalk, tiscali (although I get decent pings with pipex who are owned by tiscali now) etc. A friend of mine… ‘big time’ gamer… who has tried a few ISPs, swears by BE
[b]https://www.bethere.co.uk/web/beportal/homepage[/b]
But this is ‘his’ opinion. ‘others’ opinions are probably going to differ greatly.
Check this comparison site:
[b]http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isp/compare.html[/b]
In particular check the results for
BE
IDNet
NewNet
ZEN Internet
As Mark says it’s difficult to answer.
General Cable broadband will have less latency then DSL delivered broadband, due to method of delivery.
But this can be impacted by Contention
Cheers
John M
For most games, as long as the latency is reasonable then ‘actual’ latency is not a problem. Typical round-trips to UK based servers run in the 30-40 ms range … however typically you’re looking to add 110 to 160ms for anyone coming in from the US, which makes most local latency irrelevant.
“Most” critical is generally reliability as this is the thing that can get you disconnected and chucked out of a game … or run through iffy spells where the connection is uncharacteristically slow which causes others to quit.
I ran on PlusNet for many years … service was “ok” but more recently I had problems. Currently I’m running on Zen which is notably better. My monthly allocation is 50G (i.e. it’s limited) however this takes a bit of using, it’s not a threshold you’re going to cross by playing your favourite game for 3 hours every night.
If you’re looking for usable cheap / cheerful;
http://www.plus.net/
If you’re serious;
http://www.zen.co.uk/
hth
Mad - Halo wars top 100
Cheers, I’ll look into those 
… So I managed to get you more into RTS’s then 
Shame you don’t have a windoze pc to play others, like C&C, supreme commander etc…
Shame you don’t have a windoze pc …
Urm, no … (!)
Best tools for the job … hence XBox Elite … 8)
Heh, RTS’s don’t run well on 360. Couldn’t get back into C&C3, too used to a keyboard and mouse
Plus, sniping is much more fun on a PC than a 360… and my 360 RROD’ed out of warranty 
Mmm, design flaw in the 360 == Overheating … lost two of them.
Elite is a re-design, much better air-flow and much quieter.
I don’t think it’s so much that it is an elite… has it got the newer jasper motherboard?
I’ve fixed (or tried to) no end of 360s with the RROD… falcon based systems were OK, but I’m yet to see a failed jasper… (think to myself, give them time )
Unless they have released valhalla based boxes yet… I’ll have to look into that… need a new one anyway, fixed my falcon twice now… only a matter of tme
I’ve even seen one person go as far as to drill holes in the underside of his early model 360, and put it on top of a laptop cooler in an attempt to keep the GPU solder cool… who knows, maybe it helped.
I’m NOT promoting this as a ‘fix’ for others though! :
More info on 360 mobos here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=901401
Mmm, I have parts for 3 x 360’s with RROD, none fixable. I also have a large external XBOX 360 case from Quiet PC that I ran for a while … airflow on the CPU was good but I eventually melted the GPU.
Elite is a Jasper as far as I can tell from the serial number, not opened it up tho’ (still in warranty).
All you have to do is listen to it to know it’s been heavily re-engineered since the days of the Falcon boards.
Falcon’s typically sounded like an aircraft carrier, or a Dell rack mount server starting up … whereas I have noisier desktop PC’s than the Elite … [which is saying something given the amount I spend with ‘Quiet PC’]
If you want to know for sure, look on the back… on the lable just above ‘Made In China’ if the ampage is 12.1A it’s a jasper, if it’s 14.2A it’s a falcon
see here:
http://www.360-hq.com/xbox-tutorials-81.html
and I know what you mean about the noise :
If you have virgin in you area i would recommend been with them for 4 months now and had no problems whatsoever i have the 50mb package and its real quick and perfect for my gaming needs
http://www.speedtest.net/result/747604124.png
- Latest Speed test result
rarely drops below 45mb only downside is the low upload speed think at tops its 2mb but haven’t hit that yet and probably wont but its not a huge problem
Prices aren’t bad either i don’t have TV with them still in contract with sky HD, but did get my phone line with them BT are a pain in the butt. BT’s customer support is really bad in my opinion, so don’t really like using them so time for a change :). cant compare customer support though never had any problems so hadn’t need to ring virgin at all, which in itself speaks volumes.
EDIT: PS3 FTW ;D
If it’s of any interest, I will (hopefully) shortly be able to supply a new broadband service which should be ideal for businesses and gamers alike. It should be moderate consumer pricing, super-low latency, 20Mbit speeds, unlimited transfer and terminating directly in Telehouse North. Might be looking for some beta testers shortly if anyone wants to help …
Over fibre or copper?.. I’m certainly interested please let me know, by email or here when you’ve worked out pricing
Now there’s a question … I was assuming copper but I know there are some fibre ideas on the horizon, but they’re likely to be in specific areas only re; the near future. Don’t know about the 20M pricing yet, but the 8M version of the product was around the £25 mark last I checked.
Currently I get 50Gb/Month from Zen, and it’s Ok, but I’m paying over £30/month and I do tend to pretty much use my 50Gb … and the limit means I have to be careful with live TV, P2P etc etc … which is a pain.
I’m on 8M atm, but get full 8M as i’m close to the exchange (i suppose) but copper here only, at least “last mile”, but BT seem to be offering 20M over copper so it’s possible… I warn you though I’m CONSTANTLY downloading… prob over 50G a month… never been warned or charged though
Every provider has a different policy … Zen charge for additional usage … many just contend the bandwidth … plusnet run a priority system, they used to just throttle your traffic back once you went over your allowance, now I think they too charge you …
Who are you using?
Was Pipex… who are now owned by Tiscalli… but the service is still LOADS better than anyone I know on tiscalli… there is supposed to be a fair usage policy, but if they’ve ever throttled my connection, I’ve never noticed… I think they originally said there was a limit and they would charge for overusage, but they never have… slipped through the net I think
Never thought of that… maybe it’s contended, but as I’m in a very low density population area… maybe I’m the only Pipex user round here
Well I’m with SKY and there connection varies. I have the 10MB package with 40GB download limit. I’m a heavy XBOX gamer and need a DECENT connection. If someone is on my connection then there is soooooooooooooo much lag. It’s ridiculous. One minute i’ll have a very good connection and then, the minute someone in my house goes on a pc / laptop bam lag everywhere. As far as I can remember SKY rent the BT landline. I also have SKY HD + along with my phone. It costs my £55 :'(. I’m also in an area where I cant receive Virgin, or get BE broadband :(. I think my area still has copper wires. It’s only a small village (center-belt of scotland). I’ll be willing to be a beta tester MP. I play litterly 18+ hours, of Xbox (not good. I know 
). Also I’ve had my Xbox 360 Elite for 4 years. No problems ever. Still going strong. Only recently ran out of warrenty. (Oh dear)
fibre is a lot faster than copper. BT use copper and have a max of 20MB. Virgin use fibre and get at least 50MB. Plus copper gets slower the further ur away from the exchange fibre is more constant regardless how far away. plus fibre can handle a lot more traffic. Most providors use the BT line and BT slows them down to make theirs look better and faster. Or at least they try to lol. Talk talk use the BT line but have found a way to make it faster than BT. Im not sure what package my landlord has with BT but he says its unlimited with a fair use policy. But think BT restricts the use as their r 8 ppl connected to it lol. The landlord owns 3 houses next to each other. He put a home hub in the middle house and the ones either side can connect to it by wireless router or cable. He only charges us £2 a month for it.