best adsl for 8 people to share?

[Moo]

Since im just finishing my first year at uni - next year we've got a student house which is in a broadband area (altho does not have broadband installed yet), it's an 8 person house and my idea was since most people in there have wireless enabled laptops or desktops (gaming around halls used wireless) to get broadband and a wireless router and share out the internet connection via a wireless house lan.

What im trying to find now is a decent broadband internet connection for 8 people to share, ok its doubtfull that all 8 will be using it at any one time however it is possible. I thought of a 2mbit adsl connection (it's gonna have to be ADSL rather than cable i think, since atm its a BT phone line in there) however will 2mbit/246k upload be sufficient? i was hoping more for 2mbit/512k upload but no one seems to have that kind of package. Also a lot of places seem to have limits on total download transfer GB per month - which we also don't want.

Any ideas?

ps: at the moment my only experiance of adsl is my home connection which ive had since adsl came out in the uk - Btopenworld 512k home jobby, which had teething problems a few years ago but has been solid as a rock since, however bt dont offer 2mbit connections.

 

[cHodAX]

Try Central Point at http://www.cpbb.co.uk/index.htm

If they cover your area then you may be in luck, if not then take a look at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ as you may find a provider there.

 

[[SS]Gamblor]

not sure what provider to go with , but deffo get a 1 mb line.


if you do go BT , go with the gamer package.
u will have to get a hub , well if you go with the Voyager 2000 ( wireless)
seems to be a popular choice :touch:

 

[yaruar]

2mb is more than enough for 8 people, i've had offices on 2mb lines with 100 before

1mb should be more than enough for 8 people anyway. Depends on what you want to do.

 

[Daedalus]

DAoC isn't that much of a bandwidth consuming whore, so if you'd all be playing DAoC there wouldn't be a problem. However, if someone starts downloading and hitting the cap, then yeah, you'd notice it.

Best would be to cap the computers with just a bit so that there's always enough bandwidth to go around for the other PCs.

 

[Tilda]

I'd check out to see if BY do it in your area.

 

[Serbitar]

i heard that an isp called Bulldog were going to be releasing a 20mb pipe for home users <grins>

 

[cHodAX]

i heard that an isp called Bulldog were going to be releasing a 20mb pipe for home users <grins>

Bulldog only really serve central London with the high speed 2mb+ setups, add to that the service only delivers high speed adsl at off peak hours and not 24/7, plus they also have silly restrictions on use if I remember rightly.

 

[Delket]

Simple fact is no matter what connection you have 8 people wont be able to simultaneously use it withhout it lagging, as for bandwidth it should be adequate if you dont all download too much.
A bit of latency doesnt matter unless your a crazy CS freak anyway

 

[yaruar]

Bulldog only really serve central London with the high speed 2mb+ setups, add to that the service only delivers high speed adsl at off peak hours and not 24/7, plus they also have silly restrictions on use if I remember rightly.

They currently service central london (and a few other london exchanges (i can get the full list) and manchester

Bulldog have recently been taken over by cable and wireless. Expect at least 50x the number of unbundled exchanges all round the country in the next year. They will be the biggest provider of unbundled adsl by this time next year rapidly outstripping easynet.

There are no restrictions on the service and they offer a full range of different dsl options from bog standard 512mb adsl through to the bonded sdsl which they are currently trialing.

they don't offer 20mb to home users, as far as i know they are only trialing bonded sdsl which is way out of the reach of home users in terms of costs and is still a trial. + only option 1 and 2 exchanges can get over 1mb.

 

[cHodAX]

They currently service central london (and a few other london exchanges (i can get the full list) and manchester

Problem is that thier Manchester coverage only has standard 2mb available which is pretty much the same as the other areas they cover. Only central london gets the 4mb and 6mb services but Bulldog don't tell you that till after you put your telephone number through the availabilty checker. They use the 4/6mb packages but the truth is that those services are only available to a small percentage of the population. That said, the 2mb service does seem to be good value for money. If they don't limit downloads or use port throttling to combat p2p use then I might consider them when I upgrade to a faster connection this year.

 

[Ezteq]

pffft just buy connection for one person and a shotgun, you know it makes sense.

 

[Nxs]

Moo,

Remember that these speeds you see are typicaly download only, the vast majority of CABLE services only offer 128k upload speed, and majority of ADSL is 256k upload, as you may have 8 people youll need to check this side of things too.

One fancy way out would be with bonding (ohh err) www.nildram.net offer this as a service, its pretty simple.... rather than having a 1MB line (with 256k upload) you have 2 x 512k lines (256k upload each) both of these lines connect to a router (black box provided by the ISP) and you get the combined bandwidth, in this case 1MB download and 0.5MB upload.

The downside, you need two lines and two adsl models - but the price isnt that much higher, hey if you are splitting the cost 8 ways its still gona be cheap

Anyway thats the avenue i would go down to serve broadband to 8 people.

 

[SilverHood]

A 2mbit line is fine - I shared four 2mbit lines with 120 other people, and I could play FPS'es online most of the time. Atleast until the network got infected with the Blaster and Nachi worms. Still get the bandwidth, but no latency :/

If you're all going to be playing CS online, then it might cause some latency problems. At my parrents place, we could have 2 instances of DAOC running, a UT online game, and 2 web surfers, all at the same time, with no problems - and that was just a standard 512k line.

If you're going to split the cost 8 ways, then go for the maximum you can get... no point in saving a pound a month and only getting half the connenction you could have

 

[yaruar]

Problem is that thier Manchester coverage only has standard 2mb available which is pretty much the same as the other areas they cover. Only central london gets the 4mb and 6mb services but Bulldog don't tell you that till after you put your telephone number through the availabilty checker. They use the 4/6mb packages but the truth is that those services are only available to a small percentage of the population. That said, the 2mb service does seem to be good value for money. If they don't limit downloads or use port throttling to combat p2p use then I might consider them when I upgrade to a faster connection this year.

As far as i'm aware there is no throttling on the service, although i could easily check as my girlfriend works for them. Never had any issues with download. THe main reason you can't get higher speeds is bt. most exchanges aren't currently capable and it costs too much to unbundle them (although the c&w buyout has given the capital to do a lot more)

+ no one at home needs 6mb.. there is only so much porn you can download.

I'm happily running 1mb here for 6 pcs shared between 4 people. and as i said have run offices of 100+ people on a 1 and 2 mb line before.

 

[cHodAX]

As far as i'm aware there is no throttling on the service, although i could easily check as my girlfriend works for them. Never had any issues with download. THe main reason you can't get higher speeds is bt. most exchanges aren't currently capable and it costs too much to unbundle them (although the c&w buyout has given the capital to do a lot more)

+ no one at home needs 6mb.. there is only so much porn you can download.

I'm happily running 1mb here for 6 pcs shared between 4 people. and as i said have run offices of 100+ people on a 1 and 2 mb line before.

Sounds good. Btw the pron comment is way off, you would be suprised how much of it I can download

 

[Chilly]

Thought u were moving in with 5 ppl moo? Obviously not anymore 2mb should be fine, me and owen are getting a 2mb line that is basicly just for us, but the girls pay 1/5th each too

 

[Moo]

Thought u were moving in with 5 ppl moo? Obviously not anymore 2mb should be fine, me and owen are getting a 2mb line that is basicly just for us, but the girls pay 1/5th each too

no m8 was me and 5 (6) but that house fell thru and we found a really nice 8 person house, just got 2 extra people who we knew who needed a pad et voila.

yeah im definatrly getting a 2 meg line, and thanks for all the advice guys - i think central look the best tbh, i was just hoping i could get a 2 meg line with a 512k upload since im seeing 256k as a bit of a bottleneck for 8 people. Its very unlikely that all 8 will use it at the same time so doubt much problem on the download front. Plus 2 meg line over a 1 meg line because when a 2 meg line is 50 quid or so a month thats fine split 8 ways, even with the line rental on top of that it's still under a tenner each a month.