20Mbps Cable Vs 5Mbps ADSL

Hey everyone.Basically I'm a student, and will be moving into a house in Bath next month (lived in halls last year), and I've been put in charge of sorting the internet out.

I have been thinking Virgin media, however have been put off by many Internet articles and posts about how rubbish they are / slow speeds / traffic management / bad pings etc.

However, due to the distance from the exchange, its either that, or around 4/5Mbps by ADSL from anyone. And I feel in a house of 4 people (2 of us being Computer Scientists), 5 meg just won't be enough.

Are virgin really as bad as people make them out to be?

Cheers.

Works fine for me .

Virgin ADSL has the really bad reputation. Virgin Cable doesn't get criticized nearly as much. The service can vary according to location so I'd ask in the Virgin Cable forum http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/virgin_cable.html

If your exchange is Kingsmead you might well be better off with Be/O2 as they are more likely to supply an unthrottled, uncapped, and protocol unmanaged service.

In reply to a post by john2007:

If your exchange is Kingsmead you might well be better off with Be/O2 as they are more likely to supply an unthrottled, uncapped, and protocol unmanaged service.

Yep it is Kingsmead.

Is Virgins throttling as they say it is? Cos I'd rather take a "sometimes 20Mbps, but other times 5Mbps" service over a 5Mbps that is that all the time.

I don't know. You would be better off asking in the Virgin Media Cable forum.

My way of looking at the Virgin 'limits' is that the 20Meg is a 5meg with bursts to 20.

Latency all depends on what others are doing in your area, which is the same with any consumer connection.

If I could have Virgin cable I would, but would retain ADSL for the things like reverse DNS, static IP upstream speeds