Do you two really think this discussion is helping the topic or original poster?

Take a time out from this thread, both of ya, or I'll just lock it.

William.... be a darling and please shut up

:sofahide: Oh dear, almost wish I hadn't asked. Perhaps I better just go to the adsl guide website that was recommended.

Thanks everyone

Not the cheapest but very good free tech advice etc.

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/broadband/broadband512/

John

Try this one -http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

If you can find the address of your router ( on XP under start/settings / network /(my case LAN)/SUPPORT ) and then type http:\\ address in browser in IE/ browser ---you can usually get into the settings of the router and diagnostics will tellyou a lot about the speed etc.

One thing i have found out about is check latency - a lot of BB providers set this to interleaved - i (and hundreds of people) had a lot of problems with one company which offered up to 8Mb over a BT line - we got 2.5 and the speed compared to 56k due to the ping time on interleaved vs fast.Very important if you're an online gamer - but it does slow down other things.

Have had a quick read through this feed, there seems to be a lot of different oppinions for specific services one way or another.

It is not always as clean cust as one is better than the other. I work for one of the major UK ISP's (previously mentioned in these posts) and it is hard to say that best one to go for.

if you are in a non cable area then its hard to be certain what speeds you will get on your ADSL connection. BT would be happy to tell you that your link can support 8MB on a DSL Max service however this may or may not be the case, depending on line length, quality, local contention at your BT exchange, Geographical position, sun spots, aliens and god only knows what else.

With regards to interleaving this is something that you can request is turned on or off on a MAX service depending on your preference / needs, just give your provider a call.

The Broadband Resource is a useful site as is ADSL guide, both will give you lots of information but in the end you will most likely have to take the plunge and see what happens.

All i can say is stay well clear of AOL !!!!!!

Depends what you want to use yer BB for.

Emails and a bit of browsing etc , and it does come down to price.

If you use your BB at all , maybe even NEED it then forget about "free" or "supermarket" BB.

In the UK the most highly regarded ADSL ( check any review site, or ask any of their customers ) is ZEN internet.

They are probably one of the most expensive ( and by that about

I just read this whole thread through thinking "these prices sound steep" then got to the end and realised this thread is a necro from 2005

Avoid tiscali!!!

they say they dont cap your rate before 11pm - and in reality they DO

they BLOCK access to torrents and torrent + limewire sites EVEN IF YOU ARE NOT AFFECTED BY FAIR USAGE POLICY

people are leaving them in droves becasue of this..... it wouldnt even allow me to connect at 0.1k a sec (on an 8mb connection) to torrents and limewire

i got my MAC and went to Virgin broadband... 8mb - 17.99 a month unlimited - suits me sir

fingers crossed you dont get hit by the issues that Virgin are having with their network

A cross between saving money and new prcing has meant more custs and less bandwidth. Also you will strugle to get them to admit there is an issue, but trust me for some there is.

However i do know that they are sorting this by installing some more links in their core network to improve things.