[dundee] Broadband Providers

Sat Feb 28 15:39:26 UTC 2009

I don't really understand isp that have caps...

say I have 20gb cap?  sending my data to linx,, over a switch to another uk
isp/data center and then back again (hopefully) is that the same 'cost' as downloading 
20gb from japan or new zealand? of course not. So non sea cable/sat links  
(i.e expensive to maintain and install) are charged no differently to copper wires that
have been installed since the 1900's?

what if I was to down 20gb for A & A servers, do I get metered for that? 

whats wrong with the old frame relay way of doing things? i.e you given 128kb/s a second,
but you can burst when you need it? It just makes so much sense? you don't need 50mb/s
when sending a email, however you need it for large files. So ISP's should give you
a 1:1 contented 128kb/s link, but you can burst 32mb when ever you need it.
(and you pay for this). Imagine being able to burst to 1 gigabit but only for seconds.
Thats a couple of distro's you've just downloaded.

Using this simple way of doing things, you could probably support the entire internet
usage in the uk on a single fiber optic cable. (yep, that's right, 1 fecking cable).
The technology is there.......

so when you think of it's this way,  your being ripped of. well what about the service
you say.. try and find any isp that does 'service' you best hope is Zen/Newnet. 
But unfortuantly, due to the comms regulation on this island, you've got no chance of getting anything of high quality. 

data networking is not difficult, not smoke and mirrors..... it's very simple, do you think
BT invented the internet?

I find this very bizzare?

I much prefered the internet when people just hung cables out of windows, and connected
it together willy nilly.

You payfor everything, don't you think raw data (not information) should be
zero cost, It's not like it actually really exists does it. (it's a electrons , photons &radio waves)

Data communication is not telephone calls!!! stop treating it this way.

metering internet bandwidth is a very stupid idea for a very small island. 

but then again that's what you get in this country...

I'd certainly recommend that some of you lot get together and start you own isp
using h2o as you metro transit. forget dsl (dodgy subscriber line) it's just a joke in
my book. It's a cost saving. start laying some fiber.. it's the only way to go.

If ISP offer you no more than a data connection, i.e no support, no email,. no usenet,
then why do you actually need an ISP, if ther is not Service?

I wonder what the ISP industry would look like if we unbundled the power of BT twety
years ago? It's that age old question, how to you privatise a monoploy.....

answer is you don't....

Cheers,
Lee
--- On Fri, 13/2/09, Simon Wells <swells at computing.dundee.ac.uk> wrote:
From: Simon Wells <swells at computing.dundee.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [dundee] Broadband Providers
To: "Sean McRobbie" <lug at seany.us>, "Tayside Linux User Group" <dundee at lists.lug.org.uk>
Cc: "Simon Wells" <swells at computing.dundee.ac.uk>
Date: Friday, 13 February, 2009, 4:37 PM

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.
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