[dundee] Broadband Providers

Sat Feb 28 17:55:25 UTC 2009

Excluding the massive rant, i think you're onto something with this idea of
only giving large bandwith when needed.    Because, in my own experience.
Most home users, and I will include myself in this one, dont use - say 20mb
- ALL the time.   I find most of my web traffic is checking emails, IM-ing
and reading up on stuff.   Maybe once every few days I will watch something
on the iPlayer or decided to try out a new linux distro and thats when I
would like the full rate.    The rest of time it would be wasted as it
were.


Huntly Cameron
e: huntly.cameron at gmail.com


2009/2/28 Lee Hughes <toxicnaan at yahoo.co.uk>

> 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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> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
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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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