UK dialup ISPs

[Owen]

Hi all,

This seems like the best place to ask.

I'm hoping to finally get up and running with MP sometime soon. Could be in the next week, more likely in a month or so.

I don't intend to get cable/ASDL, since I expect to have to move house soon. I'm currently using virgin.net, and have just transferred from their premium service (local call connection) to their "24Seven" service (£13-50 flat rate per month). This new service often seems to disconnect me while I'm reading the boards, mostly after failing to download data.

It is possible that this problem is due to being left idle for a couple of minutes. If not the service would obviously be unusable for MP games.

So, has anyone previously used virgin.net flatrate dialup for MP games, and does anyone have any recommendations for a good UK flatrate dialup service if I can't get it to work?

Thanks.

 

[Johan]

Originally posted by Owen
It is possible that this problem is due to being left idle for a couple of minutes. If not the service would obviously be unusable for MP games.

If its that, then its relatively safe in eu2... as the clients ping a few times every minute to the server.

 

[Mowers]

BT or Freeserve
Freeserve is fairly good.

PJL might know he has an excellent dial up.

You could get a free trial for a month with AOL and then cancel.

 

[Owen]

Ben, Johan, Thanks.

Virgin pay as you go gave me pretty good service, but would get expensive for MP games. It just seems their flat rate service isn't as good. I've only been on it for a week though, so I'll see if it settles down.

Any comments PJL?.

Oh and AOL? No, I don't want to go there.

 

[Mowers]

If you want to run a test I could do it tomorrow and we could just leave the machines running and linked and see if you fall over at all?

 

[Owen]

Good idea Ben... except it'll have to wait till I install the latest version of 1.06b, and at that stage I'll be almost ready to try MP. I figure a week of getting used to 1.06b will be necessary first.

I'll PM or ICQ you when I get that far.

 

[PJL]

You're not going to like me Owen, because AOL is the ISP I use all the time. The browser might be a bit dodgy when surfing the net, but as long as you use IE6.0 (or some other browser), it is great and very stable as a dial-up host.

It's kinda like the tortoise of the internet connection world, it may be slow sometimes, but it always plods on and gets there in the end, whereas some of the hares seem to take far too many breaks. Indeed, more often than not, I crash because of memory leakage, or the game itself, or not defragging the HD, rather than the connection.

 

[Owen]

OK, thanks PJL. I'll see how it goes with virgin.net when I have time to download 1.06 and then play around with BT/AOL/Freeserve or someone if necessary.

I reckon I can like you even if I don't like your ISP.