> Not a very credible selection of nominations this year, I am afraid.

The "nominations" being the short list are selected from Epitiro testing (which everyone has to go for with the ISPA awards) so they are objective tests.. The judges then decide the winners taking into consideration other information. Just because an ISP is the favourite of forum users en masse doesn't mean they necessarily have the best service overall.

Also, some providers just won't go for the awards.. you need to submit paperwork and they don't. Bringing in objective testing for part of the awards is definitely a good thing.

There are some criticisms that can be made of ISPAs.. certainly in previous years (and I *think* this year but I need to check) the VoIP/Internet telephony type award was not frames well in my view.


seb

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I think they're holding out for us winning a hattrick of awards at the ISPAs

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Looking at the nominations there's no competition. Plusnet will triumph again. Congratulations

Post deleted by greyposter

One should always do homework before signing up to any provider.

However, I would suggest Epitiro technical benchmarking is far more scientific than, say, referral operator DSLZone's 'Ratings' which many suggest as a benchmark. I've noticed that some providers 'rated' above Plusnet there have only one rating in the last 6 months or are currently involved in insolvency proceedings.

As Epitiro's research ( Not a survey! ) is blind and is also used as the benchmark for the ISPAs, they are not a bad source of research.

I doubt Enta would want to be included in the benchmarking as their throttling is across the board evenings and weekends which would severely hit their scores. Whereas Plusnet's throttling does not.

Enta throttling in effect takes from the internet browser and gives to the P2P user. Plusnet throttling slows the P2P user and gives to the internet browser.

The Epitiro benchmarking shows Plus have benefitted from investment and are giving a better service to their punters in hard, cold data. Rather than just believing Plusnet comms woolly spin data

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Enta throttling in effect takes from the internet browser and gives to the P2P user. Plusnet throttling slows the P2P user and gives to the internet browser.

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(sorry for the OT post for the forum, but it IS on topic for the way the thread appears to have developed)

I'm not sure that the above is really a fair characterisation of the way ENTA's system works (not commenting on the characterisation of PN's system as my experience is pre-BTW) - ENTA's system seems to me to be more a managed sharing of the available bandwidth (subject to the limitations imposed by BTO's lack of session steering) at times of high demand while protecting responsiveness as far as possible.

From the reports I have seen that is a case of protecting low pings at the expense of applying a responsive, shared ceiling to downloading.

So the people adversely affected, by this (at high demand times: typically 10pm-midnight weekdays and PM at weekends when the ceiling for sustained download bandwidth tends to vary between 2Mbps and 8Mbps) are those wanting to download lots of data rapidly (typically P2P, binary NNTP, rapidshare and similar... - it just takes longer) and those protected are those gaming, browsing, streaming, email, VPN and remote access - which would be compromised by contention if it were left as a free-for-all and if unmanaged demand caused packet-loss.

Obviously, no ISP's system can protect everyone when demand finally exceeds available throughput - but that is an argument about central/segment provision per customer (and involves financial constraints).

I have no idea why ENTA are not involved with Epitiro - there could be many reasons. It may well be that the method of testing would not reflect well on ENTA - their management does not distinguish between types of traffic, so a system that does might give an unrealistically positive view. However, I personally am happy that ENTA's focus on provision to businesses means that outside business hours I get access to more bandwidth for the price than if ENTA's business model focussed on consumer provision. But each to their own. Oh, and I am someone who downloads quite a lot - I'm just not anal about waiting a little longer - I sync under 5Mbps, so seldom get affected adversely by ENTA's management and just benefit from the protected responsiveness.

Sorry for the waffle, but I felt the 'soundbite' above wasn't quite a fair characterisation and for once (in the immortal words of Vic Reeves) I couldn't let it lie .

Stuart

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As a matter of interest can you confirm if payment is required to be included and or third party equipment is used to monitor ISP's systems?.

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It used to be the case that you had to be an Epitiro customer to be able to participate in the testing.

TT

I see PN are sponsoring one of the ISPA award categories this year

edited for clarity.

Edited by wingco1 (Sun 17-Feb-08 22:26:56)

Throttling may affect some parts of the benchmarking, but there are many parameters, e.g. packet loss and ping response may be better with throttling than none