Choosing an Internet Service Provider
| Background Choosing an ISP for online gaming is easier once you know what you require. For 'first person shooter' games that are in need of low latency such as Quake, Unreal etc. you need an ISP that has little or no packet loss, some form of network layer software compression such as STAC or Microsoft MPPC and good routing with as few hops as possible to games servers. What is not commonly known is that there are not many ISP's that own their own backbone, usually they buy bandwidth from 'suppliers' such as Planet, INS, UUNET, Carrier1, Unisource, BTNet etc. Once you understand these facts the choice of ISP to use in any given situation really becomes a choice of two or three. I have already mentioned the major bandwidth suppliers, now to decide on the ISP's to use. The UK has many free ISP's that are linked to a pay for ISP, good examples are Gateway/ManUTD and FreeUK which are run by Pipex/UUNET and ClaraNET respectively. The UUNET run ISP's are always worth signing up for as world-wide connectivity is excellent and packet loss is non existent, however the connectivity to small ISPs not connected to LINX is not so good which is why another ISP will also be useful. The recommended ISP's take these factors into account and are chosen as they provide the best gaming connectivity with compression support and between them provide good routing to all European, USA and UK servers. As with all Internet connections, no matter if it is ISDN or Modem, always try each of the available dialup numbers to see which suits your hardware/driver/firmware and phone company exchange. I have included details on signup and connection numbers for the recommended free and subscription based ISP's: Recommended UK Gaming ISP's - 15.12.2003 * Indicates problems or issues with Microsoft/MPPC or Stac compression negotiation
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