anyone got virgin broadband?

Ruz

I am at a bit if a loss with BT.

2 months and they still have not sorted out my phone line. What a bunch of tards. 15 phone calls

and I am no further forward.

The only viable non BT alternative seems to be virgin broadband, but I have heard really bad

things sbout them.

Anyone here got virgin broadband installed. Is it really that bad?

Out of interest what do you reckon is the average broadband useage for soeone involved in

game design area.

I know this might vary enormously - I could get the mobile broadband, but they all seem to be

limited downloads.


I do browsing and emails mostly

t4paN

I used to have a 20mbit Virgin cable last year, it was pretty good. They do cap your download and upload speed if you up or download more than a certain amount of gb per day, but all in all their speeds are worth it imo.



(edit: the reason I don't still use virgin is that I don't live in England still)

Ruz

so it was reliable ? how much down time was there. I had heard that the speeds were way short of advertised

Farfarer

Yeah, the speeds are way short of as advertised. But they are "theoretical" limits, much like any sort of connection speed, really (ethernet, usb, firewire, etc). On a really solid torrent you can be kicking 1-2mbyte a second but most http stuff it's around 200kb/s. But I've used them for years - since before Virgin bought out NTL - had very little downtime and they're pretty reliable.

One really annoying thing is that the routers (or possibly the network - I can't be sure) really can't cope with torrents, though. As soon as I start any torrent at all, the net pretty much dies on it's arse until you're done.

And as t4pan pointed out, they've introduced download throttling, so if you exceed a certain amount in a day they kick your connection down to the package below yours (i.e. 20mb becomes 10, 10mb becomes 5) for the remainder of the day, which sucks. Also worth noting, as that it's cable and not ADSL, if you max your upload speed your downloading suffers massively so be careful there.

Adam Curtis

I got it, me and my housemate really dont download much yet we still get slow speeds fairly often. Now and then the net dies for the evening as well.

I cant recommend anyone else, but I dont recommend virgin.

Ruz

That sounds ok for me Talon, I may give them a try.

you would not believe the fun and games I have had with BT

I used to be on NTL when I lived in Birmingham and they were ok on the whole.

Guriamo

i have the slowest Virgin Broadband connection, it works fine with 2 computers over w lan... havent had a connection loss yet... maybe it depends on the place tho

AshleyTayles

I recommend AOL. Good speeds, little downtime, very good service (In my experiences).

Ruz

AshleyTayles - the problem is you need a bt line to use AOL. BT have been messing us around for 2 months if you look at my first post

Marine

been with them for a bit over eight years now, and aside from the occasional outage, they've been great. started off on 512k, got upgrade to 1mb, then 4mb and then to 10mb a few months ago, and every upgrade has been free.
they do throttle your speed if you go over a set amount during certain periods of the day, explained in detail here, but it's not hugely restrictive for casual use.
speed wise, i've never had problems with them, i do all my downloading through newsgroups and always max out the connection.

vik

I have been using Virgin for 3 years no problems