acrufox
join:2004-07-14
Canada
1 edit | reply to jericho
Re: 15 is fine if you're tech savvy :P
Although Eastlink puts those silly caps and throttling rules in place, it's still very beneficial to those with more than one user in the family who may be online at the same time.
Yes people spend their hard earned money for an expected service and usually do not get it, but that's the rule of thumb for quite some time now. I remember when I was on "the wave" which worked well but was very overpriced, then it was offloaded to Shaw and things went south quickly. Even though you paid for service; they did not want to fix their own equipment(bad nodes). I then ended up on Mpowered which was great until they took my 4 Megabit profile, dropped it near 1, charged the same price, then offered the same speed back to me for more. Eastlink at that time simply throttled you back to dial up speeds when you downloaded too much.
Most users I've met/helped usually don't even know the terminology of 5 or 15 megabits. Those that do and want 15, usually find ways to make use of it even if they can only accomplish it combined.
The only ISP of late I've seen to give you the advertised speed you paid for is Verizon FiOS and even they have their own flaws (jumping through hoops to get it, or playing billing games when your yearly contract runs out, and is not available in Canada)
I've done speed tests outside of Eastlink's network to places on the Eastern seaboard of the US and actually benchmark at times higher than Eastlink own tests. Recently I downloaded some game demos in excess of 1-2GB and it took mere minutes to complete the transfer. Or downloading service packs...or in my case test beta ISO's almost 4.7GB in size and see no throttling in place (only network congestion) Being on 15 I have yet to see an overall cap on speeds to keep me at 5.
No strings attached ISP's are rare on this side of the pond, especially in Canada.
Compared to what's currently available, Eastlink 5 or 15 is better than most of the rest of Canada, and unless you're willing to bind two DSL connections on an ISP like Techsavvy in places like Ontario. Working with/around the traffic shaping seems to be a lot easier to deal with.
It's the protocols that have bandwidth shaping applied to not the entire service at the same time, and is a small price to pay to have 15. |
