Hi MoneySupermarket,

I'm currently with PlusNet on their Broadband Your Way Option 3 which is £19.99 for 30GB usage a month. It's been a painless experience, but I find that the connection just isn't fast enough for my needs. I play games online using my PS3 and I'm fed up with it ruining my games when the connection decides to slow down.

Would you be able to recommend an alternative provider that could guarantee a faster connection for me? I'm happy to pay more money if I get a noticeably better connection. My postcode is E1 2ET.

Also, could you explain what an LLU provider is? And whether that is available to me?

Thank you so much for your help,

Jon Purkis

Speed possibly not the main problem but if you are looking to change then Be have just started a new service that allows the customer to optimise their own connection depending on what they want from it. There is a gaming mode which you can use which turns interleaving off thereby improving latency. LLU just means the provider has their own equipment in your exchange, it can be full LLU both voice and broadband, or shared which leaves the voice side on BT's network but moves the broadband side. Checking at samknows.com shows Be is available to you as well as many other LLU providers although I wouldn't touch any of them apart from Sky if you have Sky TV. If you sign up to Be via Quidco there's also £40 cashback. Other options are ISPs like Newnet who don't use traffic shaping etc. or Entanet resellers , all a bit pricey but you get what you pay for.

Check out your wiring too while you're at it just to be on the safe side.

Thanks for your advice. I tried the phone-box tutorial but even though I have a box identical to one in the picture, when I tried plugging my modem into the test socket my Internet stopped working. It doesn't explain what the situation is if that happens.

If I get Be can I be certain of a marked improvement? I did a broadband speed test and apparently I currently get 4200kb/s which is apparently very good, but I still experience gaming problems. I just don't want to go through the hassle of changing to Be, and paying the extra 3 quid a month to not experience any improvement.

Too complicated to go through all the ins and outs here but if you go to the forum on kitz.co.uk you should get plenty advice there about optimising your connection. You would need to get your line stats from your router first, then post your queries.

Be are good but they provided me a modem that was not very good as it does not open all ports for gaming

I had to buy myself a new modem, which was fine as I wanted a wireless modem

With the new modem in place, connection to gaming was fast with no drop outs

Hi There,

I use www.ukfsn.org an entanet reseller, fantastic service, never had any problems. You could also try www.adsl24.co.uk.

I play PC games online and have always gone for the service which gets reccomended by other gamers alike. I pay £19.99 a month and get 30gb usage, more than enough!!

You get a user control panel which allows you to turn interleaving off. I currently get pings of 20 - 30 on servers, where with other internet such as Nildram & Tiscalli (urgh!!) i would be lucky to get 30 min.

Deffo give these guys a try, but if you can get Be or o2 go for them, they are also highly regarded.

I'd say that network latency / ping time (the time it takes for data packets to get from your computer to their destinaion) and packet loss (the percentage of data packets lost on the network due to problems on your internet connection or in the core network of the ISP) are most likely to affect gaming speeds. It is unlikely that the actual speed of your internet connetion in Mb/s will have much impact as there is not very much data sent / received when gaming (as opposed to streaming video, or internet phone calls). Having said that, ISPs that provide very good Mb/s speeds compared to their peers probably also provide good latency and packetloss statistics.

I use a VM 2 MB/s connection and find it does exactly what it says on the tin. O2 and Be also have a very good reputation. There are other small ISPs that do provide very good services and packages too. Some ISPs tend to 'sweat their assets' more than others, this means that there is more traffic on their network at peak times than would be ideal. Interleaving is another interesting issue. Turning interleaving on for ADSL can increase the line stability and therefore ma give faster and / or more reliable connections, but it adds some delay to the data packets so is not good for gaming. You should be able to ask your ISP (customer support) to turn this off.

I know that is quite academic and doesn't recommend a particular ISP, but perhaps a deeper understanding will help you choose the right one.

Thank you everyone for giving me such a detailed answer to my question. I did a Broadband speed test and according to that my connection is "excellent" and I get download speeds of around 4mb/s. I was incredibly surprised by this because simple browsing does not seem as fast to me as it should (or as fast as I have experienced on other people's connections).

It makes sense what tg says about the download speed not being the complete story, and I am definitely keen to go for a more gaming orientated provider. Be seem to be a good option, and I think there is a consensus here that I will get a good service from them. They also offer unlimited bandwidth, which may come in handy as I have been hitting very close to my current limits.

Could I ask a related question. Are any of you gamers able to have another computer using the net without any noticeable effect to your online gaming? My girlfriend likes to browse the internet whilst I'm playing, but it almost always affects the performance, which is understandable but obviously very annoying. But I was wondering if it is possible to have a connection that could support both simultaneously?