Low latency ISP - UK

[traen]

Dunno how you figure "ADSL = guaranteed bad quality, low speed and high latency" Its not low speed in most areas and I have a latency of 26-30 ms which is good. Compared to fibre its slower but no game in existance actually uses all of a 20 Mb connection like ADSL so fibre is even more reduntant. And ADSL can stream films and audio with no issues.

Fibre is really just an e-peen thing for 99% of users

Depends on your area and who your with for your latency with ADSL which can be annoying. Fibre isn't available in all area's yet either

Fibre is not "e-peen". It's a standard connection not based on 100-years-old technologies.
ADSL has low speed for a reason. It uses the standard telephone line with 2(4) wires designed for analogue signal transmission. The line is not protected against interference induction. It's not even protected even against self inductions - it's not twisted, like twisted ethernet pair.
Low speed has to be used because of the retransmissions and to keep you from losing even more data.
Additional incapsulation - ATM - lowers your speed because of the overhead and makes your line even less reliable

But what is probably even more annoying is adsl equipment. Nothing is more unreliable and buggy as adsl equipment - on both client and server side. It just can't work right even for a short period of time. Providers reboot adsl equipment at least several times a week - and every time you lose your connection for few minutes and it assigns you a new ip address.

Most people don't even care. If you use your internet to read twitter you can do it from your mobile phone.
But if you are a serious gamer, or, for example, play diablo on hardcore, adsl quality is not acceptable.

[Deleted]

ADSL doesn't have to be unreliable. I've been using it for years with a good smaller UK ISP and I get very reliable synchronisation.

Just had a look back through the router syslog for the most recent resync events.

Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Connection terminated.
Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Connect time 125373.3 minutes.
Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Sent 16622784836 bytes, received 188389209896 bytes.
Nov 30 04:04:17 pppd[23162]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 1 min 30 sec

Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Connection terminated.
Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Connect time 36644.5 minutes.
Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Sent 3691773143 bytes, received 49690380071 bytes.
Dec 25 14:48:52 pppd[27999]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 22 seconds.

Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Connection terminated.
Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Connect time 93440.0 minutes.
Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Sent 15853202959 bytes, received 146940224638 bytes.
Apr 15 03:49:11 pppd[549]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 2 seconds

There was a resync mid Feb too I missed, ADSL seems very reliable to me though

[Deleted]

This is from Virgin, we never have downtime and they have great customer support and deals.

wrong they have shit customer support like most big companys your always put through to some person who deosnt know any english and knows less than you do.

[Shammysheep]

wrong they have shit customer support like most big companys your always put through to some person who deosnt know any english and knows less than you do.

TBH, from working for Virgin Mobile, it was always dependant at which time you called customer service, as India or South Africa were the default out of hours, for Virgin Mobile, this was after 11pm. Policies may of changed now, but when I worked there, about 3 years ago, it was like that, and we were voted the best customer service in the country. Again Virgin Media, and Virgin Mobile maybe ran differently, and I know when I've rang Virgin Media, its always an Indian called Albert or something stupid, that is extremely hard to understand, but that is at 2am or some time in the morning when the internet goes down.

The troubles for my internet were most recently caused by the widening of a bridge, and they cut the cable while doing it, but was refunded for the 3 days it was proposed to be down, and it was up the next day. Other than that, my internet has been stable, been upgraded for free to 2.5x the speed it was, now 125-150mb! I wouldn't ever change from Virgin.

[traen]

ADSL doesn't have to be unreliable. I've been using it for years with a good smaller UK ISP and I get very reliable synchronisation.

Just had a look back through the router syslog for the most recent resync events.

Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Connection terminated.
Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Connect time 125373.3 minutes.
Nov 30 04:02:53 pppd[11556]: Sent 16622784836 bytes, received 188389209896 bytes.
Nov 30 04:04:17 pppd[23162]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 1 min 30 sec

Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Connection terminated.
Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Connect time 36644.5 minutes.
Dec 25 14:48:31 pppd[23162]: Sent 3691773143 bytes, received 49690380071 bytes.
Dec 25 14:48:52 pppd[27999]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 22 seconds.

Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Connection terminated.
Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Connect time 93440.0 minutes.
Apr 15 03:49:09 pppd[549]: Sent 15853202959 bytes, received 146940224638 bytes.
Apr 15 03:49:11 pppd[549]: Received valid IP address from server. Connection UP.
--> Downtime of about 2 seconds

There was a resync mid Feb too I missed, ADSL seems very reliable to me though

That is the point. The connection is unreliable. It can be good, it can be bad, it can be awful. Depending on how far you are located from telephone exchange how many cables run alongside with your one and how many users are using adsl in the same time with you.
Fiber optics is reliable. The throughput is guaranteed. There can't be any collisions. You don't lose packets. Equipment is absolutely reliable and can have years uptime unless it is shut down for an upgrade.
And even when they do shut it down it is possible to still provide you with internet access using alternative routes.
When you upgrade phone equipment ALL users lose access and you can't do anything about it.

adsl is asynchronous. It uses the same 2 wires for download and upload. Upload signal is transmitted by your weak chip chinese modem and in the end it comes to the telephone exchange where it crosstalks to hundreds of other cables coming from your neighbourghs. That's why your upload speed is so low(usually 1-2mb/s, sometimes less) - your modem signal is so week and noisy that reciever and transmitter just can't communicate on this speed.

It means that your outgoing traffic is especially unreliable. And it means that there is high chance that your game server won't recieve a reply from your in time.

It get's even worth when you are downloading something. Even more collisions, even more noice. Ping jumps from 20ms to 150ms. Host keeps losing and retransmitting packets, wasting even more time.

Honestly I don't understand people who are trying to protect this ancient technology. They either sit in few hundred meters from dslam or just don't use internet for anything but browsing.

They don't seem to understand that if they would've stopped using it fiber optics would've become cheap and available pretty much everywhere.
Look at Japan. They barely use adsl at all.

Even the idea is totally crazy. Why would you use telephone line to transmit data? Why not to use fiber optics to transmit everything, including phone calls if you like?
But even in new houses BT keeps installing old phone lines instead of fiber optic concentrators.

[Deleted]

TBH, from working for Virgin Mobile, it was always dependant at which time you called customer service, as India or South Africa were the default out of hours, for Virgin Mobile, this was after 11pm. Policies may of changed now, but when I worked there, about 3 years ago, it was like that, and we were voted the best customer service in the country. Again Virgin Media, and Virgin Mobile maybe ran differently, and I know when I've rang Virgin Media, its always an Indian called Albert or something stupid, that is extremely hard to understand, but that is at 2am or some time in the morning when the internet goes down.

The troubles for my internet were most recently caused by the widening of a bridge, and they cut the cable while doing it, but was refunded for the 3 days it was proposed to be down, and it was up the next day. Other than that, my internet has been stable, been upgraded for free to 2.5x the speed it was, now 125-150mb! I wouldn't ever change from Virgin.

internet speed means nothing thats just your download speed it doesnt affect anything else online pretty much , all u will notice is webpages laod faster and downlaods will be faster there wont be any noticeable difference in games