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ISP Tips

29 Responses (Add) | Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 11:49pm

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I recorded a video not long ago about Bandwidth Capping from ISPs. I have a top-five list of things to look for when looking for an ISP. Here are some tips sent in by Lundberry to help you choose the right ISP for you.

  • What is there reliability in your area? While this might seem obvious to ask you would be amazed at how many people will go with an unreliable ISP because they are cheap. Is your time worth more than a few extra dollars a month to have confidence that when you go online you’ll actually get what you want to.
  • What is the cost going to be? Is the cost to add a little extra speed and confidence that it will work reasonable and how does that compare to the competition.
  • Do you get what you pay for? When you pay for a 5Mbps connection do you actually get 5Mbps or do you get 2Mbps. These things will have an effect on how you feel about your investment in internet. You need to ask yourself if your using cable how many cable customers are around here and how will that effect my connection speeds.
  • What do you need? Do you really need a 20Mbps connection to do flickr a few times a week. I am surprised at how many people will upgrade to a superfast connection for no reason. You can use that extra money you save to get better hardware which will help you just as much as that speed increase your paying for.
  • Is it Comcast? This one is pretty self explanatory. Though for me Charter is my comcast but I still get raked over the coals in terms of various different things are done to me. For instance the fact that I pay for 5Mbps internet and average about 1Mbps. Or the fact that no matter what modem I use I never can get a consistant connection to the service. Ie. I don’t even get an IP address from my ISP.

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29 Comments

IT Professionals

March 6th, 2008
at 11:06pm

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March 5th, 2008
at 7:33am

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March 5th, 2008
at 7:46am

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March 7th, 2008
at 6:52pm

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Shatonmedeek

March 4th, 2008
at 3:05pm

first. haha thumbs down to me

rollz616

March 4th, 2008
at 5:58pm

lol chris is in trouble with ponzi lol

RickArter

March 4th, 2008
at 8:49pm

Great Top 5 I got Charter 512KB connect and it does great for just Youtube and other sites.

boobyman

March 4th, 2008
at 9:46pm

I use an ISP called TeliaSonera (sweden). It’s stated in our contract that we can get “8mbit/s up to 24mbit/s”, for the same price as 8mbit/s. I usually get around 12mbit/s. Still, the connection drops frequently. The modem resets itself often. Dynamic ip address = fail. If you live in a big city here in Sweden – 100mbit for $30/month.

XxMissionaryxX

March 5th, 2008
at 12:05am

wow your lucky, i live in rural part of ontario canada, near ottawa, and the only interet i can get is Rogers Wireless Portable modem. I pay 49$ a month and my max download is 1.5mb and 256kb upload…i have only one other choice and its for 6mb download in our area, its 70$ a month and i dont have that kind of money.

Floker2004

March 5th, 2008
at 12:16am

makes me want to go to sweden

RedMclaren

March 5th, 2008
at 3:47am

Ah, the beauty of Sweden

HellTonicGooseII

March 5th, 2008
at 5:37am

Don’t forget Lund gets 1GBit download too. ;)

boobyman

March 5th, 2008
at 5:44am

That’s partially because Lund is an academic city -> Schools need faster broadband -> Same speed available to the rest of the people :)

SyncroFei

March 5th, 2008
at 6:34am

We subscribe to a premium DSL connection and pay extra, for about $80 a month, we get guaranteed 10mbit for gaming. I also run a P2P client 24-7 and have no problems with unstable bandwidth, or interruption in service. I run a speed test regularly, since our old Cable ISP slowly multiplexed out bandwidth down from 5mbit to around 1.5mbit over the course of 5 years. DSL is definitely better in this case.

randy_nacol2022

March 5th, 2008
at 1:19am

Chris I do know the frustration your going through since my DSL is thru ATT Yahoo. It’s worse than what your getting with Comcast. But like yourself I can’t get any other D S L however I could get cable . I’ve had it for the past 4 years and with the same modem .which after upgrading I would have thought I would have gotten a much faster setup but after talking to a rep that was futile since it still worked. I think they are all bad in their own way.

Hummerwar921

March 5th, 2008
at 9:06am

I use Comcast, and I constantly have 56Mbps.

I am connected to a router wirelessly, and the main computer is connected through CAT5, with 100Mbps.

I use a download accelerator that lets me download at over 2GB/s.

tghbenz99

March 5th, 2008
at 10:09am

Charter is my Comcast too. I get the full 5 Mbps that I pay for but the connection is comes and goes and it is hard to download anything that takes longer than a few minutes because the connection will drop temporarily and the download will time out forcing me to restart it. The same thing happens with uploads. I havent been able to succesfuly upload a video from this connection for months.

chapstick285

March 5th, 2008
at 10:31am

LMAO Hummer your an idiot! how the fuck can you download files over the internet at 2GB/s if your only have a 56MB/s connection? You cant download files faster than what your connection is… idiot

nelson1tom

March 5th, 2008
at 10:41am

dude i got almost the same set up
my wireless is a lil faster

nelson1tom

March 5th, 2008
at 10:42am

my internet has been down in 2 years

pandaSmore

March 5th, 2008
at 10:52am

You could if you split the downloads.

InfamousGuZ

March 5th, 2008
at 2:42pm

I might end up using this information fairly soon. I’ve been stuck with comcast too for awhile, and I might be switching off soon. Still no FiOs around here, but I’m hoping for something better then comcast.

One thing I would say is to watch for the Upload speed too. I pay for 7Mbps connection but heres the kicker. I get 500 Kbs upload. Note the K. This was fine for awhile. At the time i was the only one using the internet, now, theres usually 3 people on at the time. One person on Xbox Live, one downloading and chatting, and another doing eBay stuff. Immedietly when the downloader (me) starts to upload something the Xbox Live user is crippled.

Anyways. I’m gonna try to get away from comcast but I’m most likely going to have to go with the Powerboost.

D0M1N8R1x

March 5th, 2008
at 11:30pm

I will relocate for good ISP. There is always choice =)
I will be moving 1 state north if Verizon Fios isnt offered in my area by mid summer. I want that 20 down 20 up!!! Still close enough to family for weekend visits.

christm3

March 6th, 2008
at 12:32am

lol that would suck

christm3

March 6th, 2008
at 12:33am

where do you get screensavers for OS X from ?

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