fast4 or adsl24, thoughts?

**mc.dodd** · 20th February 2007

hi
I'm at present looking at some new ISP's and my shortlist so far is..

UKFSN
Fast4
adsl24

I think they all use Entanet ads their provider, any thoughts on these ISP's please..
thanks

**marcode** · 20th February 2007

adsl24 are wank and are infact owned by a member of this board who is a complete numpty... stay well away.

fast 4, never heard of.. so ill assume for now they are also wank.. plus im very very wary of sites that dont give you further details regarding a package and its specifics such as aup/fup.

them saying unlimited bandwidth means nothing in real terms.. says "NO 12 month contracts" but doesnt actually tell you how long the contract is? could be 11 months for all you know.

and at 15.95 a month.. if they are truely unlimited (which i very much doubt) they will go out of business pdq.

ukfsn on the other hand i have experience with and are who i currently use as my isp. ive recommended them countless times now and they rock. if youve any sense you will go with them.

**Nibb** · 20th February 2007

Yep I can confirm that I switched from AOL to ukfsn in Jan (on Marcodes recommendation) and they have been fine.

Some shaping now and then at off peak times where my DL speed is lowered to 2-3MB from 6.5MB speeds, but it doesnt affect what I want to download just schedule them for overnight and they are normally finished by the morning.

**marcode** · 20th February 2007

Originally Posted by Nibb

Some shaping now and then at off peak times where my DL speed is lowered to 2-3MB from 6.5MB speeds, but it doesnt affect what I want to download just schedule them for overnight and they are normally finished by the morning.

what are you on about? thats not shaping..

shaping is when the ISP intentionally (eg, at their end) limits your speed (or specific protocols (nntp/bit torrent)) for significant periods of time.

what you are experiencing is simply contention when many people are tyring to use the bandwidth and it has to be shared between contended users.

you are sharing your bandwidth with up to 50 other people. although technically on adsl max its not quite the same as adsl, but has the same effect.

Originally Posted by example explanation

This contention is applied within the BT network - both locally with other users on your telephone exchange and within the BT network as it connects into our network.

What this means in the 'worst case' is that you could be sharing a 500 Kbit/s connection with up to 49 other users. So if they were all using it at the same time 'theoretically' you would only get 10 Kbit/s (not very fast at all - in fact quite a bit slower than a normal modem).

However, 'in reality' this scenario is very unlikely to happen and you should usually find it to be far faster than a modem connection.

ADSL relies on individual users not making unreasonable traffic demands on the network to provide fast access speeds for all - please see here for further details.

Remember if you are not getting the speed you expect it can be due to the contention ratio but also to many other factors including the capacity of the remote site you are accessing, the quality and length of your telephone line from the local BT exchange - see here for more details.

so dont be talking rubbish and giving people the wrong idea if you dont know what your on about pls.

**mc.dodd** · 20th February 2007

Marcode, thanks for your reply, I'll be following your advice and going with UKFSN, u should be getting referrals!
thanks again, just waiting on that piss poor company tiscali to give me my MAC..they have four days to comply!!

**Nibb** · 21st February 2007

Marcode it amounts to the same thing in the short term.

Perhaps the Thinkbroadband site doesnt know what its taking about then? Thats where I took the info from!

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2...h-a-twist.html

**marcode** · 21st February 2007

hardly..

that story title is very misleading tbh..

enta were just reaching capacity limit when i joined them and shortly after they got another central pipe.

as the story says

Entanet have a fourth BT Central Pipe on order which is due to come into service in 3-4 months with the next segment of an existing 622 Mbps pipe scheduled to go live in two weeks' time.

they are about to light up some more bandwidth so this sounds more of a stopgap solution than anything.

shaping is more to do with slowing down usage on particular protocols so they can stop all the high bandwidth utilisations..

the story sounds more like they are trying to keep just below peak capacity across their network to avoid massive packet loss for everyone.

they arent specifically trying to stop you downloading off newsgroups and torrents, just keep the network running smoothly. whereas others aim to have a direct detrimental effect on your (or specific high traffic users) usage.

theres a big big difference m8. ive not noticed any significant impact, thats for certain, id have requested my mac if i did.

**lloydi** · 22nd February 2007

im with UKFSN also and have reccomended them to others, its definitely not shaping becuase thats what i suffered on eclipse. for example everyday at 8am my usenet speed would drop from 500k/sec to 50k/sec on the dot and then return to 500k/sec at midnight

with UKFSN my connection is very stable and my speeds are a solid 500k/sec 90% of the time, i only experience a slow down in the evenings at peak times and that is usually down to abot 300k/sec but this is not concistant and varies from day to day, I would put this down to contention as marcode explained. If it was shaping/throttoling it would be concistant.

very happy UKFSN customer

**mc.dodd** · 23rd February 2007

I'm off! migration to UKFSN is underway!!! can't wait for a decent service!
thanks to Marcode & lloydi for your advice

**Nibb** · 23rd February 2007

Originally Posted by lloydi

im with UKFSN also and have reccomended them to others, its definitely not shaping becuase thats what i suffered on eclipse. for example everyday at 8am my usenet speed would drop from 500k/sec to 50k/sec on the dot and then return to 500k/sec at midnight

with UKFSN my connection is very stable and my speeds are a solid 500k/sec 90% of the time, i only experience a slow down in the evenings at peak times and that is usually down to abot 300k/sec but this is not concistant and varies from day to day, I would put this down to contention as marcode explained. If it was shaping/throttling it would be concistant.

very happy UKFSN customer

Did you read the link I posted above?

OK its not shaping but neither is it contention!

Its a specific "anti-loss" tool that Enta have introduced to ensure that when the off peak downdoaders kick in the whole system doesnt crash down around their ears, and as this demand eases speeds come back up!

It also depend which central pipe you are on at the time as some are not affected as much as others. you can check the status of the centrals at the ukfsn website in your account settings.

I experience it most nights (not every night) my speeds drop from 6MB to around 3MB and then come back up by about 2am - 3am.

It doesnt cause me a problem tho (9GB easily downloaded last night) and I am very happy with Enta at the moment.

**marcode** · 23rd February 2007

Originally Posted by Nibb

Its a specific "anti-loss" tool that Enta have introduced to ensure that when the off peak downdoaders kick in the whole system doesnt crash down around their ears

for a couple of weeks till they can light up new capacity.

its a temporary thing. and it affects ALL traffic, not specific protocols, so its not shaping in the traditional sense.

they have absolutely nothing to gain from protocol (or traffic) shaping. they sell capped packages so it really wouldnt help them.

ISPs who claim unlimited packages are usually the ones who use it to ensure people cant actually get unlimited downloads.

anyway, if it doesnt affect you, whats the problem? i hadnt even noticed any issue so i cant say its affecting me in any way.

**Nibb** · 23rd February 2007

Marcode, I agree with what your saying mate, its not a problem as you say, its just I have noticed it so I am just trying to pass on my experience to other people when they ask for advice about UKFSN (Enta).

Its a supply & demand thing anyway, they will bring on new capacity and from my experiences here, a lot of people are jumping ship to UKFSN from AOL and Pipex etc. so it`ll probably happen again when capacity is almost reached.

No ISP can continue buying capacity ad infinitum, something will have to give sometime somewhere IMHO...until then I am happy where I am.

Just my 2 penneth!

**elephantsoup** · 26th February 2007

Just had the dear elephantsoup please fu*k off from our service heres your migration code. So based on the recommendation here Im going to give ukfsn a go.

**mc.dodd** · 9th March 2007

just to update, migrated to UKFSN on Marcodes advice and it's the best move I ever made ISP wise! absolutely spot on service..cannot be faulted!
many thanks Marcode!

**DJ OD** · 12th March 2007

Just out of interest, when you migrated from Tiscali to UKFSN, did you have any charges or set up fees?

My Bro-In-Law is getting fed up with his connection disconnecting and wanted a recommendation.

DJ OD

**mc.dodd** · 12th March 2007

nope,free migration no set up fees

**MajorFU** · 20th March 2007

couple of things here from someone who has worked for an isp for 3 years now and has alot of expreience outside of my job in dealing with plusnet

tiscalli is a LLU service and if they are not taking part in BT's LLU Migration program then you may need to cease and reprovide the broadband service on that line

as for contention there are 2 places where you are likely to exprerience contention the exchange (usually overuse of the ATM pipe from DSLAM to BT core) this is usually a reduction in speed at busy times of the day, the other is BT centrals which is how ISP's get traffic routed to their network from BT Local Hardware. THe main difference being is thatr if its a problem with the central you will almost certainly suffer from high ping and packet loss because the routing used over centrals is not designed to multiplex at capacity like adsl at the edge is.

Also if you play games or use voip then plusnet is a good choice as they prioritise these packets accross the centrals and the rest of their network. bit pricey right now but a little bird tells me that new broadband packages will be released in the next couple of weeks

**elephantsoup** · 20th March 2007

Just had my migration from ukonline to ukfsn.. went from 2mb to 6.8mb line speed and for �5 cheaper a month.. just did a quick test and was pulling stuff from giganews at 5.8mbs

Excellent

**dvdwhizz** · 11th April 2007

I am on demon at the mo but they have brought in a fup, also cos i dloaded 90gig in a month when i only get 60gig they have capped my dload speed to 12.8 kbps for 30 days. 30th of april i also will be going to ukfsn. thanks marcode etc for the recommandation.

Steer clear of demon !