Broadband - my eye

have to run single channel (home highway) at 64k because i cannot find a resonably priced 128k 0800 24/7 provider (they want about £80 pm for this on top of BT rental of £26!!!)

i cannot get cable or ADSL because i don't live in a concrete jungle

so does anyone know of a decent 128k service for about £40 pm ?

(ISDN sucks at 64k! - downloads of 7.7k (ish) on single channel 64k - barely better than a good 56k modem and it costs 2x local rate calls to dial up at 128k!!)

 

Yeah but you cant half have a blast on CS these days on 64k

 

This topic has been done to death. Have you tried a search?

The nutshell answer is no.

As you know unfortunately using a "multi link" ie 128k connection doesn't always produce the benefits you'd expect, unless the connection you multi link to has the same facility.

So you don't get twice the download speed, you're often paying for a dual phone call and barely noticeable and usually worse d/l speed.

Sorry old bean.

Have a look at Satellite, it makes ISDN look like 0800 prices!!

 

www.tele2.com

£40 per month 128k upload 512k download, an xtra £10 to change the upload to 512k as well......

Dom

Edited to say the contention ratio on this is 15:1 i think

[Edited by DominicA - 11/27/2001 2:13:58 PM]

 

Sorry, you're out of luck.

I've been on a few multilink betas and for already compressed data you will often get 12k/sec (or more) but mostly I found that normal stuff (email, web pages etc) really didn't benefit a great deal.

It seems that a lot of the compression has problems with multilink.

On some test files, I was getting 119k/sec with a single channel and 116k/sec with both!!!

 

My mate is to use Pipex for 128k

David

 

Dom,

That should be www.tele2.co.uk

 

...and not in my area yet

 

Am I missing something here?

I get 512k - sometimes higher, e.g 60k a sec from BT - downloads whole films in a few hrs or less! (not that I would encourage Copyright piracy)

Cost was £75 to install and is £40 per month for their service. Internet is free and I pay for phone calls as usual...

I guess I've missed the point of this thread - being non-computer literate

 

err "i cannot get cable or ADSL because i don't live in a concrete jungle" I think is the point

 

Neither can I, but I do live in a concrete jungle - a road a few hundred meters away has cable, our street does not - go figure!- hence ISDN with BT

 

i dont know if they are still as good but when i had isdn2e (slightly different to gome highway) and was running 128k ALL THE TIME to play quake and quake2, by using Nildram as the Isp i was getting max pings of around 30 with average downloads around 17kps.

the cost is £30 per quarter for this service (plus calls at local rate)

might be worth looking at http://www.nildram.co.uk

from there site :-

The standard user account is a fully functional Internet account, with unlimited online time available per calendar month. Call charges not included. Internet calls (0845) are charged at local rate.

Who is it best for?


The moderate to heavy Internet user.
The business user who relies on email and other services as an integral part of their business.
The online games player, where one game is never enough!
What do you get?


Local call rate access from anywhere in the UK.

Unlimited email addresses.

Unlimited access to newsgroups.

25MB of free webspace.

Modem access up to 56k using v.90 or k56flex technology.

Both 64k single channel and 128k dual channel ISDN access.

No hidden charges.

Free setup software for both PC and Apple Macs.

A free subdomain name.

Technical support 9am - 11pm 7 days a week for both PC and Mac

Unrestricted use of the Nildram Quake,Quake2,Unreal and IRC servers

 

I use ISDN with Netcom. OK, I pay a tenner a month plus call charges, but I do get the download speeds when both channels are bonded.

I use a Cisco ISDN Access router my end against their Cisco racks both of which use STAC compression so quite often get what is promised, i.e. double the download speeds plus a little extra

Mind you, work pays, so if I had to pay myself, then I would be looking for a cheaper option.

Cheers

Ian

 

Steve,

512k on ISDN , thats just not possible..................is it ?

 

Not on Home Highway, Norm. Get you cheque book out.

 

Barry,

How's your ADSL line???

I was going to get mine free but they screwed up. Four weeks on a couple of e-mails and guess what, not a reply.

Is it actually quicker?

Also what is teh contention ratio and what does it mean?

Dave

 

Barry/Norm

What dya mean - not possible?

Perhaps its not ISDN then - I aint at all techy

I pay £40 a month and paid £75 for installation of the extra line
All internet calls are free (repeat free) - none if thsi pay for your local calls rubbish - not much use if I'm downloading say 500MB.

I olny pay for BT calls which I can do at the same time as using the net

Well I thought it was 512k - on Morpheus download speeds it can show up to 60k a second being downloaded? But can vary and is usually lower than this - but never below 17k a second!

I can download a film in no time at all

So I must have a good deal.

Thats why I asked if I was 'miising the point' of this

 

Steve,

The monthlies & installation sound like ADSL mate!

ATB,

Dean

 

Doh

Whats the difference between the two

I thought that ADSL was where the ISP gets access to the BT exchange...... and then they decide as an ISP what the terms are gonna be and then give you a leased box, or something like that

Erm... I have'nt got a clue - how informative of me

All I know is that I use BT - seems good to me - much cheaper than paying call costs anyway, 3 nights worth a month and I'd be up to the £40, and I dont have Cable

 

lol steve - you have ADSL. this is not available in all BT exchanges and requires a BT upgrade to the exchange - this is very unlikely to happen in my village

i have found the holy grail - with a few drawbacks.

pipex do a dial up service

£30 - for eves and weekends 128k isdn access.

the drawbacks being that
1) £30 and £26 to BT mean that £56 a month is pretty steep considering it is 4 times slower than ADSL!
2) The benefit of 2 lines will disappear - e.g. people ringing up will get the engaged tone and the missus won't be able to rabbit on to her mates.
3) 2 hour cutoff (currently on 4 hours)
4) Any usage outside eves and weekends will be chargeable! (0845)
5) Not sure if 128k access is available yet - have heard it might not be available to the end of december.

p.s. when multilinked - you can download at 15.5 (ish) k as second. i have tried it with 0845 on freenet and as long as the slowest point of the route can support 15k (which is most of the time unless trying to download from other people or from dodgy foreign servers - or busy servers).

 

& we'll see what your ping drops to

[STi] ers

Notice how Steve "[moan]I hate lpb[/moan]" Perriam hasn't contributed to this thread!!

LOL

 

Oops

Sorry - its becoming a bit clearer............

My dad said he can get a better dela than me with his local cable company! - so I was a bit miffed

 

Hahaha!

I was on several of the pipex 128k betas 18 months ago, for the service which was going to be available 'in a month or so'.

I currently use Demon: 20quid/month plus the same to BT. If I want 128k I can use 0845. I don't bother.

 

I wouldn't bother with ISDN. Its rubbish.

How much is a Satellite connection these days ?

Why not go the whole hog and get a T1 put in ?

-DV

 

jjones - I have a 3COM ISDN router that can channel bond to 128k or just run single 64k.

You would need to set it up yourself, but you could have it for £40 if you wanted it.

-DV

 

kryten,

you can get a fairly reliable 24/7 0800 isp for £7.99 so £40 is a bit steep!

yes i know ISDN is rubbish - compared with broadband - but where i live broadband IS NOT AVAILABLE EITHER CABLE OR ADSL!!! - satellite gives unusable games performance (800ms pings) and is very expensive.

therefore ISDN is better than 56k for gerneal use and so i am happy to pay the premium for the service - however, it has the ability to be used at 128k i am just a bit miffed as to why so few isps offer this service (0800) and why when they do it is so expensive - i would be willing to pay double the charge that i pay for a single connection. if they are worried about contention ratios then slap anohter £10 on the charge.

oh - you can now sign up for and use the 128k pipex option. check out www.ispreview.co.uk

thanks.

 

thanks for the offer of the router

but my terminal adpater can multi link

 

The problem with bonding channels on large platforms is that the two calls may not terminate on the same physical kit - so you have to run various protocols across all the boxes at the ISP end to put the two calls back into one "ip" pipe. The overhead and complexity involved rises exponentially with the size of the platform. A few boxes at one location is not really a problem (we run 128K on a 7000 channel/ 4 NAS dial platform).

The problem is that so many ISPs use the national BT web port etc offerings. To enable bonding across the entire national platform of ISDN NASes would (if technically possible - which I doubt) be a major and expensive exercise and drastically increase the overhead which is why it isn't done.

Also although there *is* a standard for it, it is only 100% reliable if the kit at both ends is well behaved. To cater for every ISDN TA/ PC-Card in exsisitence is bound to cause a few "challenges"

ISPS who run their own dial platforms can do it easier (e.g. Demon etc.)

Deano

 

cheers deano

that's why isps who use FRIACO are not so willing to offer 128k access - what your saying seems to make sense - although i know as much about telecoms as i do gynaecology - i have a basic working ,knowledge but on the wider scheme of things am an amateur (but willing to learn)

 

maybe, however, I work from home and need net access for my business.

20 quid goes to demon, 20 quid to bt for surftime.

Aside from a few problems last week, its been virtually 100%. And I'm a HIGH user.

The connection is up for most of the working day and I've never had any problems being told i'm online too much.

I also get a static IP so it means that when I want to test a server, before it goes to telehouse, I can. Kept the last one with a nailed up connection 24/7 (ie over 168 hours straight) - I think the cheapie providers would kick me off!!

I'd love ADSL/Tele2 etc, just live in the wrong part of the town