Anyone heard of Nildram?

[minimax]

Just signed up to Nildrams' dsl surf500 512 Broadband account for £22.99 p/m on a rolling contract - anyone else heard of them or had any experience with them? The whole procedure took 2 minutes, they undercut BT by £5 per month, and there's no nasty 12 month minimum contract (essential as I'm moving back south in 4 months).

I hope their customer service isn't crap to compensate!

[Plotloss]

Didnt PH used to be/still is hosted with them.

Everything I have heard has been good.

[slinksport]

Couple of chaps in the office use Nilly and have had no probs at all..

I've just ordered a 2mb pipe through Central Point... MMMMMMmmm Bandwidth!

[qualityscrew]

I use them at home and now in the office.

So far so good.

[dern]

I've used them for as long as I've had ADSL (couple of years I think) and they are absolutely superb.

Mark

[PetrolTed]

I've used them for several years now. The directors are petrolheads and drop in here from time to time.

PH was hosted by them for a couple of years and I use their ADSL service without any probs.

[Podie]

Very good reputation, and excellent service IMHO.

Always seem to do well in the "charts" for broadband too...

[Mark.S]

Agree with all of the above. They actually have customer service, something which Bulldog seem to be lacking. 12 days to reply to an email so far!

[rich-uk]

www.adslguide.org

They have a league table of sorts and Nildram are always at or near the top.


(Just ordered my 2Mb link from Central Point too)

[slinksport]

good man rich-uk.. you know it makes sense!

[ATG]

I use them too and have never had a problem. Thumbs up from me.

[polar_ben]

www.pistonheads.com/members/showProfile.asp?memberId=17715

[thepeoplespal]

minimax said:

Just signed up to Nildrams' dsl surf500 512 Broadband account for £22.99 p/m on a rolling contract - anyone else heard of them or had any experience with them? The whole procedure took 2 minutes, they undercut BT by £5 per month, and there's no nasty 12 month minimum contract (essential as I'm moving back south in 4 months). I hope their customer service isn't crap to compensate!

Had their ADSL service for quite a while and the only problem I ran into was sorted very quickly by an Actual person, although that was 18 months or so ago. They also have a few members of staff who post on the Nildram forum in the ADSLguide.co.uk website, and they appear to tell the truth rather than fob you off like some of the larger ISPs.

So overall I'm happy to recommend them.

[WildfireS3]

Do you have to have a BT line for it? Just I'm with telewest.

[slinksport]

You need a BT line for all "ADSL" connections as far as I'm aware..

Otherwise it's going to be a CABLE internet connection.

Still as fast, but a slightly different technology..

HTH,

W

[TheHobbit]

slinksport said:

You need a BT line for all "ADSL" connections as far as I'm aware.. Otherwise it's going to be a CABLE internet connection. Still as fast, but a slightly different technology.. HTH, W

...but IIRC cable is normally symetrical rather than asymetrical like ADSL. IE: if you get a 1meg cable connection, it will usually be 1meg each way, whereas a 1meg ADSL connection will be 1meg from the internet to you, but only 256k from you to the internet.

[davidd]

TheHobbit said:

...but IIRC cable is normally symetrical rather than asymetrical like ADSL. IE: if you get a 1meg cable connection, it will usually be 1meg each way, whereas a 1meg ADSL connection will be 1meg from the internet to you, but only 256k from you to the internet.

No, standard cable is usually 512 (or 600) down 128 up

D.

[TheHobbit]

davidd said:

TheHobbit said: ...but IIRC cable is normally symetrical rather than asymetrical like ADSL. IE: if you get a 1meg cable connection, it will usually be 1meg each way, whereas a 1meg ADSL connection will be 1meg from the internet to you, but only 256k from you to the internet. No, standard cable is usually 512 (or 600) down 128 up D.

Oh, fairy nuff. I stand corrected. Thought cable was symetrical!

[actech]

Most cable companies configure their accesses as asymmetical with the downstream being the bandwidth you pay for and the upstream usually around a 1/4 or 1/3 of that. Cable is a little more flexible because providing a symetrical service can be controlled at the headend and the Cable Modem adapts its rate accordingly. In the xDSL arena though the DSL TA needs to be able to support the different modultation schemes used by ADSL and SDSL and most on the market (esp for Home users) don't. So it requires a TA change.

The other thing to take into account with broadband is the contention ratio, home users tend to get around a 20-50:1 ratio and business users 1-20:1 ratio. This is a major factor when selecting a business circuit but not so much a domestic one and can have a major impact on the service you get especially during busy periods.

And another thing to take into account with broadband are the IP overheads incurred by using DOCSIS (Cable) or L2TP (xDSL). Most ISPs I know compensate for this but some don't, so if you're buying any broadband and are really going to hammer your connection check the actually up/down stream speeds.

It's interesting to see peoples perception of broadband and the views on the speed. In some respects it's a victim of it's own success in that it it provides people with a massive amount bandwidth at any time of the day. However, I've lost count the number of times on ADSLguide I've seen posts saying that their connection is slow and such an ISP must have a problem. This is mainly down to the contention ratios and the users lack of understanding about the technology. The knock on effect of this is calls to the ISP, taking up time of the call centre staff and distracting them from customers with real problems. Until users understand this or ISPs can provide a 1:1 contention ratio for everyone things will undoubtedly get worse.

As a point of reference your average broadband home user only uses 3% of their available bandwidth over 24 hours.

Anthony.

[rpguk]

Good point, actech, people forget that the speed of a connection is only as fast as the slowest link. Often down to the speed of the server pushing out the data as well.