[dundee] Broadband Providers

[Andrew Clayton]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 12:16:35 +0000, Simon Wells wrote:

> Hi everybody,
> 
> I am considering changing my broadband provider from demon.net to
> something else. Does anybody have any suggestions for good providers?
> (I cannot get cable so will stick with ADSL for the time being).
> 
> I am leaning towards ukfsn.org at the moment, they have scaleable
> bandwidth allowances so I don't get too penalised for heavy usage,
> just shifted up into the next band, and they actually have a way to
> track how much you have transferred, rather than surprising you with
> a restriction. Also their donation of profits to free software
> projects is having a large effect on my decision at the moment.
> Nevertheless, I thought that I would try here for more suggestions
> before making a final decision.

They are probably OK. At least the money goes to a good cause.

I use Andrews & Arnold http://aaisp.net.uk/, also one of the smaller
technical ISPs, plenty of ex demonites (myself included) are with them.
As well as Linux folks, like Alan Cox, David Woodhouse (and Dave Jones until 
he moved to the US). They'll give you blocks of static IPs, support IPv6 and 
don't block or filter traffic/ports and don't force you through any proxies. 
Just a nice a raw internet connection. Yes, they are not the cheapest, this 
is to discourage people who would use things like p2p all day long, they do
closely meter traffic usage , but provide you with detailed graphs to
show useage/latencies etc. http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-broadband-cqm.html

They are also pretty good at discovering problems within BT and
getting onto them to fix stuff. Oh and they actively support Linux and
use it extensively in their own network, including core routers.

They do business in very open maner. They have a USENET news group,
uk.net.providers.aaisp  A blog at http://aaisp.blogspot.com/ and an
IRC channel at irc://irc.nixhelp.org/A&A where employees of the
company (including the Director) hang out. 

They do go for the more technical user (of which you'd certainly
apply) but if your usage is likely to be including a lot of
bittorreting and p2p stuff etc, then they maybe aren't for you.
 

Andrew