what should i look for when shopping for internet

[jondunford]

hi

i am looking at subscribing to a good internet connection however i don't know what the "specs" mean and which ones i should be interested in. ping, packet loss, etc

i don't care too much about download speed, as i don't large files or movies...i prefer reliability and for there not to be the .5 sec delay (ping i think, but i know this is different to download speed)

also how much better is a wired connection than connecting over wifi

everything i do on the computer is internet based but i live in the uk so i am worried that i will not be able to find an internet service to do a mac pro justice. at the moment i could get the best mac but my internet would make the performance of the actual computer meaningless

also, i don't really mind how much it costs because i could probably put the $10,000 from the mac pro into improving my internet connection and have a better experience with this + a mac mini, than my current internet + a ultimate mac pro

thanks

 

[Gav Mack]

Lol think you are in the wrong or maybe right place to ask this.

If you are in a Virgin Media cable area like me then you wont regret having 120Mb like I have it's pretty lush even for my 6 year old Mac Pro, though I did have a new Mac Pro connected here for a while and it did it justice. If not and you have a BT fibre cabinet close to your home then you can sign up with pretty much the rest of the competition with their fibre services.

Take a look here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

pmsl @ your signature

 

[jondunford]

Lol think you are in the wrong or maybe right place to ask this.

If you are in a Virgin Media cable area like me then you wont regret having 120Mb like I have it's pretty lush even for my 6 year old Mac Pro, though I did have a new Mac Pro connected here for a while and it did it justice. If not and you have a BT fibre cabinet close to your home then you can sign up with pretty much the rest of the competition with their fibre services.

Take a look here http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

pmsl @ your signature

i posted here as i could not find a broadband forum and i thought the mac pro users would have the best knowledge

thank you very much for the advice, i am with EE at the moment which i think is the same as BT and it's acceptable but I have a 0.5sec "ping" when i do anything (especially noticeable in video games)

i used to be with virgin but it used to disconnect every 30 mins and after sending an engineer out about 10 times and getting so many customer service compensations that they were actually paying me to use their service, we just gave up lol

i will take a look at the 120mb virgin as i think I'm in an area for it, i'm in a reasonable size town, not a large city...in this country it seems to be a choice of which problem you would prefer to live with, rather than best value, speed etc

thanks again for the advice and for appreciating my exclusive devices

 

[Gav Mack]

i posted here as i could not find a broadband forum and i thought the mac pro users would have the best knowledge

thank you very much for the advice, i am with EE at the moment which i think is the same as BT and it's acceptable but I have a 0.5sec "ping" when i do anything (especially noticeable in video games)

i used to be with virgin but it used to disconnect every 30 mins and after sending an engineer out about 10 times and getting so many customer service compensations that they were actually paying me to use their service, we just gave up lol

i will take a look at the 120mb virgin as i think I'm in an area for it, i'm in a reasonable size town, not a large city...in this country it seems to be a choice of which problem you would prefer to live with, rather than best value, speed etc

thanks again for the advice and for appreciating my exclusive devices

Lol. All the rest bar Virgin are all the same, they either lease their ADSL or VDSL (fibre) lines from BT Wholesale.

Me personally I would never switch from Virgin as it's by far the best unless you spend a bomb on a Fibre to the premises connection. Though I use Apple Airport Extreme as the router and the Virgin Superhub is in cable modem mode only. Got two other Apple routers as I have a big house wired with CAT6 cable too.

good luck anyway..