Well I've been on 512 ADSl with zen for 4years now I think and it's been faultless.

Sadly owing to the crappy way BT have laid the cables I'm too far for ADSL at all technically and BT (not bt broadband retail) won't entertain the thought of me having 2mb adsl despite a faultless (line noise / issues) period with zen.

So I'm half bloody tempted to bin it for NTL 2|3mb deal...problem is I think I'll hit the 30gb cap quite frequently (latest IBM portal is or was 11Gb to download when all done). I also wonder how much I can actually do over NTL, eg I value my fixed IP address (okay fix that with a dns tracker), VPN to home etc...

So from a I'm not a numpty home user point of view, how good or bad is NTL....flip side is at 40 quid a month, a 2nd BT line on a cheap and cheerfull 1mb coupled in a load balancing router to my existing zen 512(upgraded to 1mb) is actually not far off cost wise...ok it is, but I'm a techie and like the concept

Any thoguths from other folks?

I'm currently paying 29.99 a month for 3 Mbit with NTL ( 1 year discounted).

Zen and Pipex are 100% stable, whereas NTL is not and you will loose connection on a reasonably frequent basis if you are unlucky.

I've got a load-balancing router - it really depends on what you are after though as there are some serious restrictions on what works and what doesn't work with those.

Well I am on with Telewest, who correct me if I am wrong are merging with with NTL so hopefully the service may improve, we do not tend to have any problems with Telewest service, and they also have a nice range of options even the 512 is going to be 2meg soon, also the ip is static ours never changes.

Not quite the question you asked but hopefully some help.

The load balancer was an option I considered a while back to get to 1,b before 2mb was about and so on...

it's a pie option if I combined lines, Zen is ultra stable, but you pay for it, i.e. I pay the same as I would for a 2mb NTL line.

But I crave stability, speed is nothing without control, if I start loosing packets then I'm fubar'd and have to start again. I do a lot of file transfering, so ideally while the headline figure is a good one, the upload is also key, a real shame the home adsl is capped out at 128. I think NTL rises to 256, but I'll need to check. But that is another possible good point.

Stability is key, the other factor is, there are alot of ntl wall boxes around here, so perhaps the old contention will spring up more so than my dsl, which I've never ever noticed a problem with.

The problem with NTL is that it varies county to county. Some areas are better than others, but I've not heard too many terrible complaints from NTL.

Zen only give 128 for uploading?

Well I am on with Telewest' date=' who correct me if I am wrong are merging with with NTL so hopefully the service may improve, we do not tend to have any problems with Telewest service, and they also have a nice range of options even the 512 is going to be 2meg soon, also the ip is static ours never changes.

Not quite the question you asked but hopefully some help.[/quote']

Not anymore NTL have bought Telewest.

http://www.computerweekly.com/Feeds/RS/Articles/2005/10/03/212157/NTLsettobuyTelewest.htm

From my experiance with NTL, when it works its great, especialy as there upgrading to 10MB, on the downside when its bad its dia.

Cutomer service sucks.

Zen only give 128 for uploading?

256 then...ntl only used to be 128...my mind is going....

Be are doing 24M using ADSL2...think it's only in London though.

NTL will be 384kbit/sec upload for 3M service.

Telewest service is superior to NTL mostly based on the experience of my forum members

I've got two load balancers, and it kinda works with NTL but it's nowhere near as easy to use as with static IPs.

You might get charged and a court order against you for having services that dont exist with NTL too . Then they might just decide to credit black list you, and not do their job when you ask them to

I personally would rather have no internet at all, would be active more than NTL and you wouldnt have the customer service issues

Well I am on with Telewest, who correct me if I am wrong are merging with with NTL so hopefully the service may improve,

NTL have now agreed the deal to buy telewest , so expect TW's standards of service to go through the floor soon

A few years ago they were terrible where I live, it's been pretty solid for ages though, in fairness.

Our NTL connection has been pretty much faultless, we have had about 4 hours downtime in many years of service going back to when they had 64k connections.

I am with www.nildram.co.uk

2meg at 25 per month with a 50GB cap during the day.

These were the dogs danglies on the adslguide.org site when i was looking for a supplier.

Have a look at the web nildram site.

cheers

Lee

I'm here to help!

If you get the 3meg ntl package youll have 10meg broadband before the year is out, i'll see if i can find the press release for that one. cough cough no limit usage reporting exists yet in ntl cough cough, Will be six months or more the way its going. New savings scheme just launched

Life's better when you get it together with ntl

get you a bit of a discount if you mention it, but youll have to get at least two services,

i'm sure they are still doing first month free as well

NTL 3Mbit, Pipex (single static IP, 1Mbit), Zen (block of 8 static, 1Mbit) here + two load balancers and a Zywall 10 VPN server

I'm here to help!

If you get the 3meg ntl package youll have 10meg broadband before the year is out' date=' i'll see if i can find the press release for that one. cough cough no limit usage reporting exists yet in ntl cough cough, Will be six months or more the way its going. New savings scheme just launched

Life's better when you get it together with ntl

get you a bit of a discount if you mention it, but youll have to get at least two services,

i'm sure they are still doing first month free as well[/quote']

Could be tempted...I like folk who have coughs

Arh reminds me of when not so long ago the 0800 number hit and it was great to have a free(ish) connection 24/7...and a few weeks before a 9.6 modem was a god send....10mb cable, wow. What sort of contention is on that given a neighbour hood, actually at 10mb it's not really going to matter, you'd stuggle to stream that rate all day long

I could get another service, after all digi telly is crap via our coat hanger on the roof

Feel free to acidentally drop any PR etc to me...cough

Nice inbound there WW...

And can I pick my own router for NTL?

Or at least get one with flexability for port forwarding, dmz, sip etc?

I know I'll google this lot later, but horses mouth is so much nicer than well formatted sales type.

Colin, I'm on NTL's 3Mb service at the mo (looking forward to upgrade to 10) and I've never ever been bothered for excessive use. Bearing in mind that I have an ftp server running at home 24/7/365, my full bandwidth is used I'd say 95% of the time, so hardly a "light" user. Having said that, I don't use P2P so I'm not crippling the network on uploads.

Currently 256kb upload (about 30kB/sec) (where b = bit and B = byte). An upgrade to 384kb upload sounds good too, especially if they're still not going to hassle people too much about usage.

In my 3 years with them, I've had about 1 week downtime caused by vandals who ripped all the connections out of the green box at the end of the road. I was nearly too impatient to wait and almost plugged myself back in. However, all the cables were lacking idents and it was a real spaghetti mess I give a to the engineer that can figure out what goes where :P

For NTL you basically get either a set top box or a cable modem setup. Both basically have a network port on the back. If you buy a 'normal' router rather than an ADSL-modem-equipped one, you're set.

Basic NAT router works well, you can add features and cost as you require for your use.

I've used several routers, from Netgear, LinkSys, Nexland and several others, and all work fine

Yup, I have an Linksys with an RJ45 socket for WAN connection. Works a treat, and you can even have it set up a ddns for you and all kinds of stuff

At least from that point of view, if you don't use a router, you still get a proper network connection made available with the cable modem NTL supply, unlike the majority of ADSL providers which give you a free USB-only modem :thumbdwn:

The NTL connection is also a true always on connection, unlike ADSL where you have to dialup before the connection works.

Hmm - would disagree with that

An ADSL router will auto-connect so after that it is always on.

The NTL cable modem needs to lock on & get a channel, which takes roughly 30 seconds if all goes perfect - after which it is always on.

So both effectively take a while to boot up.

If you are talking about using ADSL with a USB-based ADSL-modem you are right however, which is yet another reason (beyond the firewalling not working very well) to not use anything USB to connect to 'the net' if you can avoid it.

Another thing (not related to that in particular) is that the networking-based stack in windows is vastly more stable across all versions of windows then the dial-up-based stack. If you have a nice ethernet network card, even the cheapest stuff, it will work regardless of chipset, whereas USB used to be VERY hit and miss with a lot of the older VIA chipsets in particular.

All chipsets that have been rolled out in the past year or thereabouts though should be fine

My NTL 2mb connection vary rarely goes down although it seems to slow a little occasionally at the weekend. I think NTL is awful in some other regions though. Zen & Pipex are the best ADSL broadband providers I know of. They put the others to shame.

You'd wonder why BT can't get a measily 2Mb connection out into the country when they can allow other providers to get 24Mb over standard copper lines within city centres.