I can't usually be bothered to read the junk mail that gets its way through - but this time I did. I'm in a 'Virgin' area - ie fibre cable network - and their offer for phone line and broadband looks pretty attractive price wise compared to my present BT and Pipex. But of course I'm wary about changing things that work ok - hence still using an RPC. ;-)
At the moment I have two RPCs and a PC on a LAN all happily talking to one another as well as the net via CAT5 cable. And a wireless link from the router that gets used for visitors, etc.
So if I decide to think seriously about the Virgin offer any RISC OS gotchas - or other things to worry about?
-- *Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm *
Dave Plowman d...@davenoise.co.uk London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound.
In message <4fda8c7327d...@davenoise.co.uk> "Dave Plowman (News)" <d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
> At the moment I have two RPCs and a PC on a LAN all happily talking to > one another as well as the net via CAT5 cable. And a wireless link from > the router that gets used for visitors, etc. > So if I decide to think seriously about the Virgin offer any RISC OS > gotchas - or other things to worry about?
You will need to connect to a supplied modem with a suitable router via Ethernet, your current adsl router/modem is unlikely to be suitable.
RISCOS can connect directly to the modem but needs DHCP so a RiscPC needs a Version of the OS which has this (select from 4.37 up I think)
John
-- John Sandford West Herts UK
Hemel Hempstead RISC OS User Group email info @ hhrug.org
> I can't usually be bothered to read the junk mail that gets its way > through - but this time I did. I'm in a 'Virgin' area - ie fibre cable > network - and their offer for phone line and broadband looks pretty > attractive price wise compared to my present BT and Pipex. But of > course I'm wary about changing things that work ok - hence still > using an RPC. ;-)
Don't believe their marketting about it being "the country's ownly fibre-optic broadband" - I have no idea how they get away with that. You'll get a piece of copper to your home.
(It's fibre-optic from some DPs - much like BT's network is.)
> At the moment I have two RPCs and a PC on a LAN all happily talking > to one another as well as the net via CAT5 cable. And a wireless link > from the router that gets used for visitors, etc.
> So if I decide to think seriously about the Virgin offer any RISC OS > gotchas - or other things to worry about?
Be wary of Virgin's technical support (or lack of), the premium-rate contact numbers, and the obnoxious throttling/capping.
I'm on NTL:Telewest Business, which is delivered identally to Virgin Media broadband, except it's twice the price, has no cap (infact, they specifically say it's un*metered*, so if they ever complain you're using too much, you say 'how do you know?') has a 24h 0800 technical support line manned be people who are understandable and understand, and has a much lower contention radio. I think it's worth the premium.
They provide a cable modem/bridge where cable goes in one side, and ethernet goes in the other. You then plug in a switch, and away you go. Just as long as the clients can DHCP, it just works. You might want to invest in a cheap two-port Ethernet NATing firewall router. I recommend this one;
That'll provide you a good firewall (the device NTL provide has none) as well as NAT to allow you to share your connection with more than one computer (although the business service comes with 6 IP addresses.)
In article <20080906170359.6f6d9...@trite.i.flarn.net.i.flarn.net>, Rob Kendrick <n...@rjek.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:49:00 +0100 > "Dave Plowman (News)" <d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote: > > I can't usually be bothered to read the junk mail that gets its way > > through - but this time I did. I'm in a 'Virgin' area - ie fibre cable > > network - and their offer for phone line and broadband looks pretty > > attractive price wise compared to my present BT and Pipex. But of > > course I'm wary about changing things that work ok - hence still > > using an RPC. ;-) > Don't believe their marketting about it being "the country's ownly > fibre-optic broadband" - I have no idea how they get away with that. > You'll get a piece of copper to your home.
Looks to be a co-ax so maybe ok for the local link - it's certainly fibre to the box at the end of the street.
> (It's fibre-optic from some DPs - much like BT's network is.) > > At the moment I have two RPCs and a PC on a LAN all happily talking > > to one another as well as the net via CAT5 cable. And a wireless link > > from the router that gets used for visitors, etc.
> > So if I decide to think seriously about the Virgin offer any RISC OS > > gotchas - or other things to worry about? > Be wary of Virgin's technical support (or lack of), the premium-rate > contact numbers, and the obnoxious throttling/capping.
Pipex at one point was worse than useless too. Although I've only needed support three times and twice they were ok. Even although the fault was always 'their' end.
> I'm on NTL:Telewest Business, which is delivered identally to Virgin > Media broadband, except it's twice the price, has no cap (infact, they > specifically say it's un*metered*, so if they ever complain you're > using too much, you say 'how do you know?') has a 24h 0800 > technical support line manned be people who are understandable and > understand, and has a much lower contention radio. I think it's worth > the premium.
I'm actually happy with what I've got but being a good Aberdonian would always like to save money.
--
Dave Plowman d...@davenoise.co.uk London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound.
> > At the moment I have two RPCs and a PC on a LAN all happily talking to > > one another as well as the net via CAT5 cable. And a wireless link from > > the router that gets used for visitors, etc. > > So if I decide to think seriously about the Virgin offer any RISC OS > > gotchas - or other things to worry about? > You will need to connect to a supplied modem with a suitable router > via Ethernet, your current adsl router/modem is unlikely to be > suitable. > RISCOS can connect directly to the modem but needs DHCP so a RiscPC > needs a Version of the OS which has this (select from 4.37 up I think)
Ah. So only one of my machines will work.
-- *Why are they called apartments, when they're all stuck together? *
Dave Plowman d...@davenoise.co.uk London SW To e-mail, change noise into sound.
In message <4fdaabbf48d...@davenoise.co.uk> "Dave Plowman (News)" <d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote:
[snip]
>> RISCOS can connect directly to the modem but needs DHCP so a RiscPC >> needs a Version of the OS which has this (select from 4.37 up I think) > Ah. So only one of my machines will work.
only if you dont use a dsl router,dhcp is not required via a router as this will make the connection via the cable modem.
John
-- John Sandford West Herts UK
Hemel Hempstead RISC OS User Group email info @ hhrug.org
> > I'm on NTL:Telewest Business, which is delivered identally to Virgin > > Media broadband, except it's twice the price, has no cap (infact, > > they specifically say it's un*metered*, so if they ever complain > > you're using too much, you say 'how do you know?') has a 24h 0800 > > technical support line manned be people who are understandable and > > understand, and has a much lower contention radio. I think it's > > worth the premium.
> I'm actually happy with what I've got but being a good Aberdonian > would always like to save money.
I work from home, like one of my collegues who is on Virgin rather than NTL:Telewest Business. I can't afford downtime. I get none, he gets plenty!
I suppose it depends what your priorities are. It's important to me that there's no downtime, and it's semi-important I actually get the speeds I'm sold all the time (I've never had my end of the link be the bottleneck - I can always fill it if the remote end can.)
However, for me, it's a god send to be able to ring them up at 3am and say "this router within your network is dropping packets when tracerouting to this host." and get the reply "OK, I've just rebooted it. Does that look any better?"
In article <4fda8c7327d...@davenoise.co.uk>, Dave Plowman (News)
<d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote: > I can't usually be bothered to read the junk mail that gets its > way through - but this time I did. I'm in a 'Virgin' area - ie > fibre cable network - and their offer for phone line and > broadband looks pretty attractive price wise compared to my > present BT and Pipex. But of course I'm wary about changing > things that work ok - hence still using an RPC. ;-)
Ask locally about the phone service. My daughter was very unhappy with Virgin and went back to BT (keeping Virgin broadband , I think).
Joyce.
-- Joyce Haslam pendle atte boulsworth dotcodotuk Powerbase Support http://www.boulsworth.co.uk/ running Select 4.37 with 64M RAM plus 2M VRAM on SA RPC
"Quilljar" <N...@home.today> wrote: > My friends on Virgin Broadband get very slow rates compared with BT
I'm a VM broadband user, in two locations. In both cases I get 2 Mbps service, which is certainly slower than - say - an "up to" 8Mbps ADSL service. But it is vastly faster than the 28k dial-up service I used before, cheaper, always on... and it only costs me around £8 per month (or about £20 pcm along with my phone service).
It doesn't require one to be close to an ADSL-equipped exchange, which might not be a problem these days, but was when I got it, when ADSL simply wasn't available around here (a non-central suburb of Edinburgh).
Stuart <Spam...@argonet.co.uk> wrote: > In article <4fda8c7327d...@davenoise.co.uk>, > Dave Plowman (News) <d...@davenoise.co.uk> wrote: > > I can't usually be bothered to read the junk mail that gets its way > > through - but this time I did. I'm in a 'Virgin' area - ie fibre cable > > network - and their offer for phone line and broadband looks pretty > > attractive price wise compared to my present BT and Pipex.
> TRouble is, once you're in, you might find you're locked in for ever
Virginmedia contracts are only for a year like anyone else.
I used to have ntl cable TV and telephone and had a lot of problems with it. I eventually went to freeview for my TV and stayed with BT, augmented by VoIP.
BT for broadband in my area is hopeless - I could get a 2Mb/s connection sometimes, but it was often a lot less. MAX made it worse.
So, a year ago I had VM cable broadband installed and opted for the 4Mb/s package. Some months ago it was upgraded to 10Mb/s for no extra cost. There is no contention to speak of and I get very nearly the full 10Mb specified. You have to use the supplied cable modem but you just plug it into a router and forget about it. The Risc PC connected to my router just as it had done with the BT line before.
In the last year I have only had one outage - and that was for a few hours one morning when the whole area lost broadband.
Which reminds me, my year is up next month and I need to renegotiate a new cheap rate :-)
BTW, another good reason for being with Virginmedia is that you can subscribe to their cheap mobile phone packages. I have 300 minutes plus 300 texts fot £10 a month - which I think is the best SIM only offer around.
