@displaced
To servers in London, BBC, multiplay.co.uk etc.
Preferably from north west
I'm in the South East, but here's my results (via an Ethernet connection):
mediabox@trillian:~ % ping multiplay.co.uk
PING multiplay.co.uk (85.236.96.26): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=8.216 ms
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=8.548 ms
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=8.489 ms
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=8.333 ms
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=4 ttl=56 time=8.325 ms
64 bytes from 85.236.96.26: icmp_seq=5 ttl=56 time=8.486 ms
^C
--- multiplay.co.uk ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 8.216/8.399/8.548/0.116 ms
mediabox@trillian:~ % ping bbc.co.uk
PING bbc.co.uk (151.101.192.81): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=8.146 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=8.176 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=8.046 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=8.026 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=8.083 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=5 ttl=58 time=8.212 ms
64 bytes from 151.101.192.81: icmp_seq=6 ttl=58 time=8.008 ms
^C
--- bbc.co.uk ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 8.008/8.099/8.212/0.073 ms
I can only speak from my experience, but I've been perfectly happy with Vodafone, at least after a wobbly start.
If you
do choose them, here's a tip:
Ditch the Vodafone-provided Huawei HHG2500. It's junk. I had 4 years of totally stable BT Infinity via an Openreach HG612 modem. After switching to Vodafone, their HHG2500 router lost sync several times an hour, causing my line to be banded. I got my PPPoE login details from Vodafone, reconfigured my existing HG612 with those details, and eventually got Openreach to reset the DLM on my line. Since then, it's been great.
In two or three years with them (can't quite remember!), I've had maybe two disconnects and one case where there was noticeable congestion. I think I recall that was due to a router failure on their side, rather than run-of-the-mill congestion -- and lasted only a few hours.
I can't speak for how good their DNS or Email services are, as I don't use them -- I've got email hosted elsewhere, and use a local caching nameserver that delegates lookups to Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1 service.
[edit to add: I'm on the 76Mbit service, but my line is ~620m to the cabinet, so I get about 60Mbit down/10Mbit up with G.INP/interleaving etc. So not a terrible line, but not a great one either. Of course, that'd be the same no matter what VDSL ISP I use!]