My reviews on Web Providers

Okay, I know. "Web Providers" is a bit ambiguous but this includes the web hosts, colocation providers, uplink providers etc that I have used before.

NetrinoUK Ltd
Customer 04/2004 - 11/2006
Rating: 3/10

See my problems with NetrinoUK Ltd.

Poundhost.com
Rating: (10/10)

Outstanding. Their support has always responded within minutes. I mean, 1 or 2 minutes. And it's an actual person. I know!

Server reboots, remote hands.. it's dealt with professionally and again, within minutes - 24 hours a day!
They've merged, been bought out and what-not but it's still the same. The network has been getting stronger and more resilient since I have been with them. The speeds are great, latency is great. Access to the datacentres is easy - you can't miss those big blue gates.

All in all, there's not much to write about because they're so good. If there was something bad, I could rant on for a while (See my NetrinoUK Ltd post). Thoroughly recommend.

Shared9.com
Rating: (TBC)

I've just started with them, this week in fact. My Shared9 starting experience goes into a bit more detail. I'll post when I have been with them a bit longer.

Virgin Media/Telewest/NTL:Telewest/Blueyonder
Rating: (9/10)

Just because they are my home internet provider doesn't mean they escape my wrath.

I have been with VM for donkeys. Way back when they only had dial up and 4letter-5number usernames. We were one of the first in the region to get the new coaxial-to-fibre service, which is now so mainstream noone cares to think about it.

Let me get down to the nitty-gritty. They are brilliant! They aren't without fault - but they are still excellent. At the moment I am having a lot of trouble with connection drop outs and packetloss, which I would have given a rating of 5/10 for, but no, I have a network tech's mobile number and I am texting him whenever it goes down. He's passing it straight to the outage and monitoring team and they send out techs to replace hardware in the green boxes.

The problem I have been having has actually been annoying for them, the amount of techs I have had out replacing everything is unbelievable. Usually you just get the home techs, but being in direct contact with a network tech who can monitor quadrants from his station a few miles away actually makes me feel good.

Why am I only going on about that? I don't know. I'll stop.

The rest of their network for me is excellent. I am on 50Mb service and I actually get 50Mb (when I don't get a period of packetloss -- sorry). I've never really seen a problem with getting that speed either. Downloading games on steam and letting my friends know when it's finished is very pleasing.

As for their traffic shaping, well I don't get that on the 50Mb service, I can download as much as I want. Others on the lower services aren't so fortunate, they get 'STM'd which gives them really sucky upload speeds, which in turn gets saturated and lowers the download speed. At least they can carry on downloading, unlike the caps that other companies have. I can't complain.

Nitrotech Solutions/Quzo Gaming
Rating: (9/10)

I'll give Kris and his team a good write up tomorrow some time, after I've been to BlueSquare to pick up our equipment.