[dundee] Broadband Providers

Fri Feb 13 16:37:49 UTC 2009

Hi Sean, not a major problem as such, just minor niggles over the  
years. Whilst their customer facing staff are very polite, it is  
difficult to get actual technical know-how from them which usually  
involves being passed backwards and forwards and being placed on hold  
a lot. Recently a firmware upgrade to my router had caused an issue  
with my service. I could download my mail, use the web, and ssh but  
could not use an ssl site or send email. It wasn't immediately  
apparent where the problem lay but all of my questions to try and  
track down where the problem lay were responded to with "We do not  
block any services" which was repeated ad infinitum. That said their  
broadband service has been rock solid over the last few years  
(although I still won't use their mail servers).

The most recent problem happened because I work from home most of the  
time and often move large datasets between my work and home machines.  
This coincided with my moving some very large archives from work to  
home which sent me over the allowed transfer for the FUP for the first  
time. Yes I know I could use an external drive and carry the data home  
but I would rather just initiate a data transfer. Anyway at this point  
I found that there is no option to buy extra bandwidth, all you can do  
is wait until your average usage falls back into line with FUP. In the  
meantime your peak speed, between 6AM and Midnight is 128kBps. I  
cannot not work while I wait for restrictions to be lifted so I  
decided to look for an alternative, hence my question to the TLUG.

Ultimately, if anybody is interested I have stayed with Demon but  
moved up to a business account which doubles my upload speed and  
removes any bandwidth restrictions. Because there is also a special  
offer at the moment where you get the uncapped 8MB business service  
for the price of the uncapped 2MB service I decided to stick with them.

Andrews & Arnold look really good but I actually do most of my work  
during peak times so their usage caps are backwards for me. If it was  
purely for home usage then I would have gone with them but to work out  
a package which fit my work needs would have cost more than the  
equivalent Demon service, especially given the current offer.

Basically, I had outgrown my current package and was looking for an  
alternative. Sorry to alarm you Sean ;)

Simon

On 5 Feb 2009, at 20:25, Sean McRobbie wrote:

> Again though, I'd like to know what problems are causing people to  
> leave Demon.
>
> If something bad is going on with them (apart from being owned by  
> C&W) please let me know so I can leave them before I am stung.
>
> Regards,
> Sean McRobbie
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Andrew Clayton" <andrew at digital-domain.net>
> To: dundee at lists.lug.org.uk
> Sent: Thursday, 5 February, 2009 20:22:05 GMT +00:00 GMT Britain,  
> Ireland, Portugal
> Subject: Re: [dundee] Broadband Providers
>
> 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
>
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Dr. Simon Wells
=============

E-mail: 	swells at computing.dundee.ac.uk
IM: 		sw3lls at yahoo.co.uk
Mail: 	School of Computing,
		Queen Mother Building,
		University of Dundee,
		Dundee, DD1 4HN.
WWW: 	http://quiddity.computing.dundee.ac.uk/swells/blog/
Phone: 	+44 (0)1382 386 526
Fax:		+44 (0)1382 385 509 (FAO: Simon Wells)

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