[Wiltshire] Any ISP recommendations please?

[Greg Browne]

I read of and know several people who have had trouble with Virgin and
Vodaphone modems in my area (Swindon). For the last 12 months, I've used
Three with a 4G modem but have a mast nearby which provides up to
50gb/s but down to 12gb/s at times, in the day. For many people this is
not an option as the data throughput on their masts is quite low during
the day. (Three plus modem and unlimited internet £17 a month for 24
months)
Greg 

On Mon, 25 Oct 2021 22:28:11 +0100
David Fletcher via Wiltshire <wiltshire at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sun, 2021-10-24 at 20:32 +0100, Simon Iremonger via Wiltshire
> wrote:
> > 
> > I can +1 both AAISP and Zen as helpful Dual-Stack IPv4+IPv6 ISPs.
> > AAISP will arrange a 'copper pair' (dummy phone line) for A/V DSL,
> > Zen can arrange actual phone-service too if desired.  
> 
> I had a good chat with technical at Zen late this afternoon. Very
> interesting. I expect I'll speak to sales in the morning.
> 
> Also had a chat with Virgin Media to tell them that I had returned the
> rubbish new equipment. He was very talkative and, I think, learned a
> few things from me. For example he thought Linux was dying out so I
> pointed him at netcraft.com and suggested he investigate the google
> and amazon sites for starters.
> 
> The techie who took the equipment away seemed to be no more impressed
> with his employer and its services than we are!
> 
> The strange thing is, after telling them today that I'm leaving, the
> WiFi which has recently been dawn and up multiple times per hour every
> evening hasn't been down at all! Coincidence I wonder? I did issue a
> warning to the guy at Virgin that with the now wide availability of
> fibre to the home at decent prices they'd better watch out.
> 
> 
> > I can also recommend (or help with) how to put OpenWRT on a
> > BT HomeHub v5 Type A  which then gives you a reasonable mostly-
> > FOSS solution on WAN-router yet cheaply, noting that there are
> > few options for DSL-supporting OpenWRT devices.  These are limited
> > to about 160mbps CPU throughput, but then that is basically fine
> > for VDSL wan-lan traffic and wifi-lan traffic from the inbuilt
> > AP, and for about 20 pounds these things are amazing value for
> > money!.  
> 
> Are these sold on by BT after being returned by BT customers? My lady
> friend had a new BT hub sent to her a few months ago which I
> configured for her to match the previous one, which they wanted
> returned in a prepaid package.
> 
> 
> > A good plan is to have something like this with a Zen/AAISP
> > supplied zyxel/technicolor router as "tested working backup"
> > alongside.  
> 
> Good idea. I like my backups including hardware if possible. I have a
> spare identical server board. A functionally equivalent router too
> would be reassuring.
> 
> 
> > --Simon  
> 
> Dave
> 
>