as far as i would consider it, the very 1st post holds a few points that should always be considered but many do not.
also the other point being made is..the only way to get a more reliable outcome is to ask the same amount of people on each isp the same question, regarding the same point.
to simply ask "which do you think is best" will always bring out the ones that simply say "i've never had a problem connecting. or they have never noticed downtimes etc etc".
there are so many variables involved a fair conclusion cannot be ascertained.
again, as in the 1st post, evaluating the way in which you use the net determines the outcome every time. also the extent to which you use it gives you a better average (as in time each day)
personally i don't believe you will get any better true evaluation of an isp unless you are an intense gamer. gamers 99% of the time run their games with net monitors on. this shows a constant evaluation of what is exactly happening at any given point of time. trust me here when i say, i gamer tries everything to get the best out of their system to beat the next person. just one "ping/latency" etc depending on what game you play, makes all the difference in their eyes. we monitor "lag" spikes, outage, packets, pings etc all the time.
to coincide with the above, i also do a LOT of FTP work so i get to monitor the upload as well as the download.
having been involved with running gaming leagues for over 6 years, i have not only monitored it on my own rig, i have watched it online with 1000's of different players and 6 years worth of it has produced all of the arguments one needs to see to make up their own minds.
again, as int he 1st post, before you decide which isp to go for you must decide what uses you want it for. then and only then can you decide weather it's worth paying more for one isp then another.
my own personal history with isp's
i have had broadband since it was 1st introduced as the "next step" a 512 connection.
1st isp was Freeserve (now wannadoo): - to start with they were great but as time went on and more people started to get BB they became totally unreliable. we spent more time down than online...binned them.
2nd isp was BT, took over a week of arguements with their so called engineers to get them to finally agree it hadn't been connected at their end. when it was connected, the lag was imense. files got screwed up on downloads because of the packet loss..told them to shove it where the sun doesn't shine (having spent nearly an hour waiting on Q for CS)
3rd isp was AOL..what a mistake. all i can say is, i then found out why people call them "A O HELL"
at this point the gaming world was advising the best route would be to get a cable connection which doesn't rely on an old BT line. unfortunately for me, cable wasn't in our area.
4th isp i went back to BT but this time it was called BT openworld. thought the price was fair for a 1M line so i tried it. again, for the 1st few months it was great but as more people got BB, they crammed too many into one box and i watched my gaming pings progressively go from 35 average to 60 average.
finally, NTL cable became available in my area. rang up, got conencted within a few days and wow! lowest ping i had seen so far. net monitors running, no lag, no packet loss, no spikes, no outage. seemed to good to be true. i was whooping other gamers with a response ping of 25 on a 1M con.
within 1 year of having NTL i had no cause to ring their CS so i had no idea how crap their CS actually was....until..1 day it went down, net off completely. i rang the CS number, got put in a 45 minute Q at my phone expense. then to be greated with an automated message saying "do you realise that most problems can be answered by visiting www.ntlworld.com's homepage" idiots, if i have no net how can i do that. eventually i got through to find their was a hardware failure. ok, fair enough, everybody will have some problem at one time or another so i waited the 4 hours for it to be fixed. missed all that nights gaming matches but such was life.
soon after we got upgraded to 2M with ntl for the same price. uploads were a fraction better but no worth having a drink over to celebrate.
just then, BULLDOG became available offering a staggering 8M connection BB. i had to try. not wanting to cut NTL off as it had been the best one for me so far, i paid out for two connections to try Bulldog.
they were a complete joke. i knew more about the interent than they did. i spent ages on the phone explaining how they should do this n that to get me connected. the longest Q i had was 1.5 hours waiting on the phone. i soon found out why they should have named themselves BULL SH&T not bulldog. after waiting 3 weeks for an email addy password i told them to shove it. they informed me i had breached the contract and had to pay for the year in full. i then replied that they had breached the contract by not providing what they promised and refused to pay it.
i was so glad i never cancelled NTL. as time went by, faster connections were provided by rival isps and NTL would always seem to wait until they lost customers before they offered an upgrade in speed. so begrudgingly i waited for NTL to catch up. eventually they came out with 10M and capped it to 75G/month. without giving out details, that crippled me as i hit 200G in the 1st month. (i am talking a few years ago as well). luckily for me, again people left NTL because of the capping and eventually they removed it making our connection unlimited....pure bliss :D
recently there has been a lot of talk about 16M/20M and in the near future, 50M connections. (thoughout isp's in general) with this in mind i sat here wondering how long it would be before NTL would upgrade again.
now my costs with NTL have always been the top ones they do. in 2002 i took on their BB and phone line. i was paying £250/quarter with BT for the phone and with NTL that dropped to £75/ quarter unlimited talk. BT soon changed their system when they lost a lot of customers and offered the same. happy with what i had i kept the same.
so i was paying £25/month for the phone and £35/month for the 10M BB.
equating to £60/month. i am unsure of how long that was but will guess at it being at least 2 years at that cost.
recently a lot of customers have left because of sky taking their channels away from NTL (now Virgin Media). my father rang up NTL with a freephone number he got off a website, to ask about leaving for sky as they were offering him an 8M con (which he can only get 4M out of it) and the telephone line for less than half of NTL's price he currently pays. they made him an offer but it wasn't good enough and he subsequently left NTL.
that got me thinking, so i used the same freephone number and rang them. i'm glad it was a freephone 0800 number because i spent 1 hour 20 mins waiting for the CS to answer.
used a fair bit of BS telling them i was considering leaving to go to sky (had no intension of it) and they made me an offer. i had to ask them to repeat 3 times as i couldn't believe it.
i was lucky enough to get a...
10M BB & talk unlimited 24 phone for £19.95/month. Indefinitely! (was costing me £60)
i have had that confirmed and for the last 2 months i have been paying that price. i have told many friends about it that i know are currently on NTL but they have not been successful in getting the same offer. i don't know why i got it but i am not questioning the reason.
all i do expect is that when they release 20M BB in May, i will have to do some arguing on the phone to get the price right.
so, finally, after all of the story above, i personally conclude that for me, NTL (Virgin Media) or at least, a cable connection is one of the best means of internet connection for somebody who does a lot of hard core gaming or a lot of FTP work by means of uploading & downloading. however, all this is subject to my circumstances alone. if you are far away from the exchange, it will not matter weather you use a BT line associated isp or cable, both will give you problems.
regarding CS, i would agree that NTL's is poor as in the waiting time but as for their connection, i am more than happy with it for all the uses stated above.
my rig is on 24/7 (over 6 weeks since i last tuned it off) so i get a failry good monitoring of my service.
to my knowledge, since 2002, i have lost connection to NTL 3 times.
if you do have problems with your existing ISP you will require some form of evidence to provide them with. generally they will just try to fob you off with excuses. if you do the following you will obtain the proof you need to show a bad connection: -
open DOS and type:
tracert ntlworld.com
(replace ntlworld.com with the place you want to test or your ISP)
this will show you the amount of hops your isp sends you through and how long each one takes to reach the destination. most should average the same m/s in time. if one does not, it usually indicates their is a problem at the routing point. this is what you tell your ISP.
if you wish to do a long survey to get a better idea of any packets dropped by your connection over a period of time then type:
ping
www.ntlworld.com -t > c:\ping1.txt
(replace ntlworld.com with the place you want to test or your ISP, or an IP address)
leave it going for at least 20 minutes (different times of the day will effect the outcome, ie. 5pm, a lot more users, should be your worst test)
to end the test press CTRL & C. this wil then send the results in a .txt file to your C: drive. open it with notepad, it is self explanatory from there.