An interesting thing to note however is that ping latency usually, even when it appears that the connection is being restricted, often never reach higher than 80ms. Also while the download speed, which should be around 3Mbit (on an 8Mbit connection almost three miles from the exchange) drops to the 56k speeds its been doing recently, the upstream rate has stayed at a constant 550Kbit (See graph above). If there where a fault on the line or as several people have stated too much strain on the copper wire I would be seeing correlation between the upstream and the downstream, something that the above graph obviously shows as not happening. Please note that the spikes in speed are from tests ran during early morning 1am to 6am, speed tests where ran using the thinkbroadband.com speed test tool.

As I write this the connection speed appears to be ok and I’m getting a constant 3Mbit connection at the moment, if you google for any broadband package your bound to find some chaff in with the wheat and it could just be that eclipse had a bad few days. However I shall continue to monitor the connection and post a further update is one is needed.

Don’t go anywhere near Eclipse if you ever want to download. Doesn’t matter if you have the top end unlimited package. Eclipse throttle ALL downloads. – Vambo

At 3am I can get a good 375kbs but at any normal time of the day I’m lucky to get around 50kbs. avoid them like the plague. – Not a Happy Man

Internet access is a total lottery and download speeds are pathetic. – Gabby

They still can’t get their act together to send an accurate final bill. I do not recommend Eclipse Internet Broadband. Ever. - Afmspace

Phoned their IT department to try and sort out the problems and in my opinion they were useless. - mdyches

Even though an unlimited, 8MB connection is promised, I continuously find it hard to reach a speed of 512kb - chimp14uk

So it appears i’m not alone, a large collection of bad reviews all documenting similar problems of poor service and terrible support. Unfortunately the broadband is paid for by parents as i’m staying at theirs for the summer and there is nothing I can do other than weather it out as they appear to be quite happy with it even with mine and my sisters complaints. While at university I have used ask4 and virgin broadband, both delivered me full 20Mbit broadband with no problems, we had one disruption with the virgin broadband and within a couple of hours of our call it was fixed I hate to imagine how long its taken eclipse to fix outages proof of their slowness is just a google away. Anyway less of the ranting, i’m off to look for an effective broadband package for going back to uni and possibly my own mobile broadband package for when at home.