Bye Bye NTL..........

[mixteus]

It looks like my relationship with NTL has finally come to an end.

First I had their Digital Tv/Telephone service,then as charges went up but functionality stayed the same, I moved to Sky and then back to BT.

Second, I stayed with their stand alone cable modem service going from 1MB connection down to 750kb when the charges went up, however other companies with similar services have managed to supply at a cheaper price.

Hence ADSL here I come!

Even though I am moving away from NTL I am glad I found this forum and the help and support its members have given.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New year to all.

[Ramrod]

Merry Christmas to you as well m8

[Mauldor]

He he - good on you mate.... I dropped NTl phone line myself + tv box when they first introduced the Cap and when the prices went up i tried a few times to leave and they kept offering me half price...

I have a sneaky feeling that 2005 will see ADSL on my doorstep with the plan NTL have up there sleeves...Imagine that eh, 256K upload - whoa...

[daxx]

Originally Posted by Mauldor

...Imagine that eh, 256K upload - whoa...

already got that with NTL

256 up is a bit slow at the moment

[mixteus]

Managed to get ADSL connected yesterday,upload speed is definately a plus point as is their reliability for connection to some of my regular visited sites.

Time will tell how reliable the connection will be.

[banjo]

Originally Posted by mixteus

Managed to get ADSL connected yesterday,upload speed is definately a plus point as is their reliability for connection to some of my regular visited sites.

Time will tell how reliable the connection will be.

If you don't mind could you let us know how you get on with adsl, what speed you are on who is your isp and the cost as with the upcoming changes I might have to move also, thanks.

[Mauldor]

Originally Posted by daxx

already got that with NTL

256 up is a bit slow at the moment

To get 256K up you have to be on the 1.5Mbit which costs £37.99 a month. ADSL though has this Upload Speed as standard and there is some offerring 400K up (bulldog etc)...

Why cant I have 750/256 for example - thats my point.

[Tristan]

Originally Posted by Mauldor

Why cant I have 750/256 for example - thats my point.

I little bit of searching would find this answer very quickly. It's to do with the technology that cable companies use to deliver broadband, called DOCSIS. It was designed many years ago, before the rise of P2P and the like, and so is very, very asymmetric.

I don't understand why people moan about it quite so much though. After all, you get 750k download with NTL for the same price as most "big name" ADSL ISPs do 512k -- and rising to 2Meg next year!

[SMHarman]

It really depends what you do with your connection. If you game and the game has a 20k data stream, then you can host at most 6 external players on 128k with little spare capacity, on 256, you could host 10-12.
If you run a small business, use your connection to timbuktu into work or vpn then the slow upload means that you do feel remote when it comes to saving documents etc, uploading new images for products etc to the a website takes longer.

I've just downgraded to 750k, I noticed that uploading photos to shutterfly (4MP / 2Mb + images) was sufficiently slow for me to go get a coffee and it had not completed.

The internet is moving to a point where many legal activities would find a higher upload speed beneficial.

[Tristan]

If you run a small business, you should be on a business tarriff

But I can see where you're coming from, with hosting games and so on. But my point is that I find the extra download capacity *much* more useful than I would find an extra 128k upload -- which is something most people forget when they're whining about the lack of upload speed on cable.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Tristan

If you run a small business, you should be on a business tarriff

But I can see where you're coming from, with hosting games and so on. But my point is that I find the extra download capacity *much* more useful than I would find an extra 128k upload -- which is something most people forget when they're whining about the lack of upload speed on cable.

Yes I should, but have you tried contacting NTL business? I contected them for an 0845 number I wanted too, it was set up and running (with another supplier) before they returned my call.

I don't need a static IP, I have dial up (ISDN) backup and my usage is not heavy as I use an ISP to host.

My host on the other hand on a quiet day sees this.

Statistics for 17 December 2004
Total of 45,036,646 bytes transferred on 3987 hits.
and a busy day
Statistics for 8 July 2004
Total of 152,828,114 bytes transferred on 14728 hits.

[Mauldor]

Technical Aspects Aside, everything on computers is Symetrical apart from comms - why is it always harder to supply upload speed vs download speed? I can understand why this is the case on Cable as the equipment put in at the time was designed for TV, you are always sending data (from NTL) but have no real reason to grab data from the customer - so BB was a bolt on if you like.

Of course the real answer to all of this is Money to put into the ground the required cables for it all to work - China is a tad bit bigger than UK - I keep hearing how they have 10mbit and 100mbit lines, this of course is only inside china, once it goes outside it a tad slow (very).

I would even be happy with Faster Speeds inside the ntl network Only, a bit like there phones if that was possible (though it probably isn't), so User To User transfers / game hosting etc would be a lot faster....

Maybe in 10 years time we may well look back and laugh at a 1mbit line with 256K upload....