Please recommend best FTTC ISP

I am just about to move away from Virgin Media XXL cable as their service has been extremely variable over the year I have been with them.

I would like a recommendation of what would be a good choice of FTTC ISP.

My main uses for the connection are YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

I have been considering AAISP and Eclipse (who I used to be with before moving to Virgin). Are there others which might be a better choice?

Can anyone post their Ping Test charts to give me an idea of what they are getting? I know it isn't the whole story, but my Virgin chart shows a lot of lost packets during the evening.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/share/af801c4c8d9...

Best as in technical or Best as in value for money? i.e. what price are you willing to pay.

AAISP could get expensive if you used a lot of streaming video during the day.

Compared to your BQM then even BT Infinity is likely to be a significant improvement.

Thanks for your reply, Andrew. I am looking for the best technical performance. My use would be almost 100% evenings and weekends.

Funny recommendation and I will most likely to be shouted at! but BT infinity with Vision will give you IPlayer on your television for free (£40 set up), and it is not counted in your downloads.

Pings posted on here by others seem very low, sub 20ms.

Vision give you the ability to have some Sky channels by subscription if you want them, and some films on a pay per view basis.


It is supposed to be unthrottled at the application layer, (contention across the web can still occur just like everyone else). Need to pick your package to match your downloads, x2 from current as you will download more. The unlinited package is meant to be unlimited, but not everybody believes that! cheapest has 40Gb limit.

Some filesharing sites are blocked by court order.

Does need 18mth lock in.

If you don't like BT, Others tend to be more expensive but basic quality is similar. A lot depends on what else you want to do, as each has different methods of limiting during peak demand, from letting contention take it's course, to specific throttleing of some protocols.

Do you use P2P? How much bandwidth do you need?

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

Do you use P2P? How much bandwidth do you need?

I don't generally use P2P. I would mostly like reliable streaming from YouTube and iPlayer.

I am looking for the best technical performance.

You might need to qualify that a bit. Do you mean you need particular technical features or that that, technically speaking, it just works?

In terms of knowing what they are doing, good support (being on BT's case for you when there is a problem for instance) and technical features AAISP is the proverbial quadruped's gamete factories.

For technical features you have

• pure unfiltered (they are one of the few ISPs that don't even subscribe to the IWF filter lists) unshaped (aside from the basics required to keep TCP running smoothly) bandwidth
• an excellent control panel (probably a bit confusing if you are a beginner, but a beginner won't be looking at it anyway) that allows you to tweak various parameters should you desire and lists detailed accounts of any problem reports (including communication between them and BT so you know what is going on) and a detailed view of your recent bandwidth use (broken down by the hour).
• native IPv6 - be ahead of the curve! (though I've still not got around to setting my home network up for that yet...)
• free IPv4 addresses (assuming you can justify them, though that isn't hard if you do actually plan to use them: I have a few couple of web and mail services that need their own fixed addresses for SSL purposes which was sufficient to qualify for a /29)
• fully delegated rDNS
• a billing system for bandwidth use is rather flexible, though some find it confusing

It is easy to run up a high bandwidth bill if you do anything big during the usual working day (their peak time for billing), but conversely if you schedule downloads for the cheap period (0200 to 0600) you can potentially drag down enough to blow some ISP's monthly caps in one night (my line can pull over 12G down in a single hour if I let it), and upstream bandwidth is unmetered at all times.

For the avoidance of doubt: I have no connection to AAISP other than currently being a satisfied customer.

Of course if you just need the basics you might find BT's offering (even the lowest one) works perfectly well for you, and it may be significantly cheaper. Aside from occasional exchange congestion (which will affect all ISPs just the same) at times in some places and apparent P2P throttling at busy times, I'm told the services is speedy and reliable (caveat: I've never used it FTTC via BT myself, I've been an AAISP subscriber since moving from ADSL).

Edited by deleted (Fri 27-Jan-12 17:38:33)

AAISP are a very good ISP, and particularly suitable for tech-y types, I should imagine. Their Pay As You Go system (kind of) is very flexible. Watch out for their weekday 09:00 - 18:00 pricing though...

I've been with IDNet for a while now and very pleased. I'm only a light user so by paying a year in advance, (pay for 11 months get one free), the cost is comparable with the cheapest apart from BT.

Higher packages are pricier as with most ISPs.

Many thanks for your detailed response, dspillett.

As I said, I am looking mainly for reliable playback of YouTube videos and iPlayer. If I can get better performance for film downloads than I am used to, so much the better.

You have given me the confidence to proceed with them which I shall do as soon as I get my BT line back.

I hope my FTTC doesn't run out of connections before I get chance to apply!