THR! said:
iiNet is similarly priced but you need to pay $34.95 for the line rental.|
um you don't have to sign to the pstn/phone advantage product. if you sign up for the voip product you get 24/1 port speed + double the download
So for example i pay tops 60 bucks, get 24/1mbps port and 7gb peak and 14 offpeak which goes from 2am to 12pm. more then sufficent for the latest simpsons and battlestar galactica.
not that i um ahem ever been gainfully ahem cough emplyed by iiNet but their support people at least like their jobs. well the ones not in sydney anyway
most isp are staffed by apethetic slackers who have usernames that start with the letter C.
honestly though, the ISP that sell a dirt cheap product tend to allow congestion to occur on the backhaul (the ATM/ethernet links)...straight from the horses mouth, if their cheap they tend to be cheap and nasty on the backend.
they usually try and get away with cheapo ATM connections relaying on the burst rate to handle peak spots but obviously after awhile peak traffic becomes baseline and since they're still cheap bastards they won't lay anymore on until it becomes the last option (aka the churn rate increases)
Optus are having heaps from probs with bandwidth lately. probably not a good bet to go with especially in light of launch their residential DSL2+ product which will just put heaps more preasure on their network
most of the cheapo ISP however artifically shape their customers (without telling them) and implement various traffic management mechanisms be it blocking p2p or throttling based on port or any other number of ways. I used to work with a programmer who implemented his own progressive shaping system which if your download exceeded X over X period of time it'd slow your connection down. The key thing was that if you laid off it, the thing would progressively unshape. Statistically it resulted in the ISP subconsciously changing their users downloading habits. a lesson in mind control eh