Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Weaver on April 24, 2012, 01:26:42 PM
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Andrews and Arnold are just a joy. I thought I'd write a bit about the state of things here at WeaverTech City nowadays and my experience of AA.
[I don't have any connection with them other than being an ordinary happy customer.]
I have now got twin-line bonded ADSL going, with packet-by-packet weighted load balancing outbound and inbound, using a Firebrick FB2500 at my end to do the outbound load balancing as well as its usual router and firewall duties. I have two BTw 20CN phone lines, there's no sign of any LLU anywhere round here yet.
To do the actual ADSL end of things, I have two trusty old Netgear DG834v3s, set to act as pure bridging PPPoEoA to PPPoe between phone lines and two of the Ethernet ports on the Firebrick. Each DG834v3 was set to be a straight ethernet modem, as opposed to a router by using the undocumented magic URL command, whose effects are persistent.
Speed. One line is on the 2MBps BRAS profile (I think), the other line on 1.75Mbps. Measured throughput is sometimes over 3.5 Mbps, sometimes a supposed 3.9 very occasionally 4.1-4.3 Mbps. This could b due to th tool (tenmeg test download site) applying some conversion factor that is a bit excessive. Sync rate on line #1 is incredibly high, something slightly over 2500 for 6dB SNRM on this 63DB attn line. This is not nearly enough to get me to the 2.5Mbps profile, so it's 2Mbps for line one all the time as far as I can see. Line #2 has not yet made it to 2000 profile as far as I am aware, maybe I need to work on that a bit, or need to swap out that modem for a better individual one from out of the heap I keep. For some reason AA report line #1 as 2.25 MBps profile and line #2 as 1.97. I didn't know there was a 2.25Mbps BRAS profile, maybe there is and maybe there isn't, but it's not on the excellent table on this site.
And I have native IPv6 which is very very nice! I have, for some reason, 2 /48s and a couple of /64s. It's turned out to be incredibly useful in ways that I never expected. If you are fiddling around with all things things IPv4 reconfiguring stuff or are required to temporarily set yourself to 192.168.x.x/16 for initial config access, you can still use ipv6 to the Internet and google stuff or get settings from AA's website, which is just so handy.
AA VoIP. I think I have now also got VoIP working reasonably well, but needs proper stress-testing. It's an AA SIP /RTP service with an AA phone number which costs about £1 per month. Calls are about 1.5p per minute in peak hours, see AA website for tariff chart. H/w is a Siemens Gigaset DECT base station plus two handsets. On reflection I wish I had found a unit that speaks 802.11 to the handsets, so as to avoid the possibility of trouble with DECT-generated interference with my two existing 2.4GHz WLANs plus an existing POTS DECT phone. Config of the basestation was a real pain as I had no clue what I was doing and needed a lot of handholding, that plus getting firewall design right on the Firebrick and the whole thing took a lot of time to get going.
Now I'm fiddling about with wireless access points, a pain. I'd love to find a rock solid _5GHz_ MIMO 80211n access point.
AA are just superb. I ran out of IP addresses, so I chatted to them on IRC and they just moved my LAN to a new double-size address block right there and then, boomph. Wow.
This is a shameless plug for A&A, but like I say, I have no connection at all with AA, and I'd just like to tell you all about a series of occasions when things have gone right, since we usually discuss things that have gone wrong.
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Very belated update.
I have totally failed to get VoIp working reliably. I should reconfigure the Firebrick to be a back-to-back gateway, so the VoIP device on the LAN (a Siemens N300 box) talks to the Firebrick, and the Firebrick talks to A&A servers. But I just haven't got round to it, which is my fault.
As things stand, the the firewall has a hole in it to allow the N300 to talk directly to A&A’s boxes, but if I were to do the right thing and let the Firebrick be a gateway then presumably no firewall config would be required.
I think I will need a bit of hand-holding with this. To their credit, A&A even try to make it easy for you by publishing a snippet of XML on their VoIP config web server which is the required piece of Firebrick config magic runes for you to just cut-and-paste correct for your network setup.
I’m not sure why things don’t just work as they are, but I should first mend my ways and start doing things A&A’s preferred way before moaning about things not being healthy.
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Such a shame they're so damn expensive.
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A&A have their new(-ish) pricing deals Home::1 and Office::1, so those might be worth a look.
The fact that they don't offer all-you-can-eat deals for no money is the reason they remain guaranteed fast. (“we aim not to be the bottleneck”)
It all depends on how much frustration and slowness matter to you. I just couldn't face the thought of having to deal with “peak times” or impotent clueless ISP support staff ever again, so A&A is, barring disaster, my last ISP.
It's also pretty awesome dealing with the very people who designed your router too. Firebrick 2500.
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Such a shame they're so damn expensive.
They aren't that expensive these days. In 2003 it was "scrotum-twisting, eye wateringly expensive" - no joke :D
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In another thread (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,15699.0.html), Alec responded to my comment with --
But where will all these people go?
Perhaps, in view of the recent changes to their pricing structure, A&A will acquire some new (knowledgeable) users? :-\
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I have three DSL lines, so three “scrota” each getting its own individual twist too, as I pay: line rental for a few quid per line (to A&A, not direct to BT) and I pay for BTW Max Premium option for £36 total. I have no real phone service at all.
The fact is that the service does everything I need, the alternative would be than buying something that I hate and being pleased that I have saved some money yet have bought a constant source of frustration.
I need better modems, or a trip in the Tardis to depart 2006 and land in 2017 to see if Hie.co.uk waffle about investing in catching up with the lost entire decade and getting us a modern internet. These aren't facilities that A&A can reasonably be expected to provide, although they've give some valuable help on the modem front.
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No phone service removes AAISP from our list immediately, not to mention the crazy pricing for 300GB+ of data...
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Clarification. It’s just that I chose no POTS on these lines. I have VoIP with A&A. They do a lot of business telephony stuff too. It's worth having a poke around in their website under telephony.
Their website is easy to fall into and drown. If so, you can always talk to a human, via phone, email, IRC, IRC-over-web, Twitter and god knows what else IRC is the way to go if you want to talk to someone out of hours.
I am a heavy user on occasion, downloading movies, occasionally streaming them. I take usage of their 02:00-06:00 charging band of 1 zillion GB per unit. Sometimes I stream movies at the weekend or in the evening when its 40x cheaper than the 08:00-18:00 Mon-Fri band.
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I need better modems, or a trip in the Tardis to depart 2006 and land in 2017 to see if Hie.co.uk waffle about investing in catching up with the lost entire decade and getting us a modern internet.
Looks like Lewis is finally getting VDSL2 (FTTC) - although given a lot (most?) of Stornoway is on EO lines that probably isn't an awful lot of use.
Somewhat amusingly (given my comments about g.inp in another thread) most of the villages would be ideal candidates for g.fast - then again where's the use in that when you're connected to the mainland by the telecomms equivalent of a wet piece of string?
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A chat with a local BT man, who gave the impression that he found proposed development possibilities pretty confusing, started me wondering if there was a chance that BT might be doing a deployment (rather than a mere trial) of FTTDP, something wondrous linked to a box on a pole.
I’m on an EO line, like everyone else afaik, and I’m about 4-5 miles from the exchange. I get 1.75 Mbps IP payload - 2144 sync rate, varies between 2016-2272 when things are good. My three lines bond together very effectively to give 5.25 Mbps combined IP downstream. This is done by a box in A&A-land which seems to do the right thing even if the the lines are running at unequal speeeds. Upstream bonding is done by my FB 2500 router, which joins rather unequal u/s pipes into a combined 0.7-0.9 Mbps, or even 1.0-1.2 depending on who’s asking, as different speed testers give consistent wildly differing results with huge initial peaks which I don’t pretend to understand.
I assume, correct me if I’m wrong, that VDSL2 is no use to the people outside the villages and small towns that already offer a half-decent 6 Mbps. BT and the politicians seem very interested in fixing the problems that have already been fixed.
Those fortunate users who already have a decent service are clearly those most in need of the fruits of further investment [¿], this is obvious to those in power. Maximising the have-nots gap.
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There is some hope for EO lines. BT as part of the BDUK project are now starting to tackle the EO issue.
Quite a lot of cabs outside of exchanges are being installed to rectify the short EO lines, and BT are also starting to rollout more of the All in one units (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/fttc-cabinets.htm#combined_cabinets) for those longer EO lines. It will depend on how many EO lines there are and if BDUK is taking an interest.... but I would imagine the AIO solution would be the cheapest and easiest solution for BT to implement.
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Then we have some new stuff which I hope we can start next month - no promises, but it may finally mean some new broadband packages which I am quiet sure some people will like. Just watch this space.
http://www.revk.uk/2015/06/busy-week.html
I'm hopeful with the above, I had an AAISP line when FTTC first became available, then a few house moves later found myself renovating a house and just going with BT to get 2 x lines installed for free with FTTC. With recent unsolved/unexplained problems with my current ISP on 1 line (migrated 2-3 weeks ago), I will quite happily pay A&A and potentially migrate both FTTC lines to them. Although I am going to hang fire in the hope that these new packages will materialise...
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I apologise in advance to all kitizens for constant droning on and on like a bloody cracked record about my love affair with A&A. I give all permission to wag finger/administer slap with wet fish etc. as required. People who want to know why A&A users are happy bunnies can read ispreview.
I just want all the commission I'm now due as an unpaid salesman. ;D
It's a lot about personality. I'm one of those demanding customers from hell, and I have a low tolerance for frustration, for slowness, and for idiot tech support staff or those who are impotent or robots. Internet is ultra-important to me for personal reasons to do with my poor health, so that's what I spend my money on. (And I can't drive and can't go down the pub any more.)
I promise to relate the bad along with the good.
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They do sound great. I just wish they had an unlimited option. I'd burn through my allotment in a day.
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@mrprops - your allotment is up to you, you can buy as many units as you need. Home::1 and Office::1 (and whatever is forthcoming) aren't the only possibilities. I just use the traditional units-based tariff, rightly or wrongly, where I buy 10 units a month, but that's too much as I never seem to end up using it all even though I do a bit of live streaming, Netflix iPlayer and so in, and download a huge amount of movies and tv from Amazon and Apple over night.
Also remember there's the overnight 1000GB per unit deal on at the moment, Which I am making very full use of.
Wish there were more good download manager apps around that could do timed and gated downloads fir this reason.
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The cheapest option for me would still work out at £60/month(I currently pay £19.99 unlimited 80/20 FTTC) and I'd have to reduce my usage to achieve that. Didn't Adrian say new packages were arriving soon? Not that I expect AA to do anything spectacular.
EDIT:
Then we have some new stuff which I hope we can start next month - no promises, but it may finally mean some new broadband packages which I am quiet sure some people will like. Just watch this space.
http://www.revk.uk/2015/06/busy-week.html
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Such a shame they're so damn expensive.
Yes .
They are as expensive as Eclipse for FTTC. :(
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The three time-of day charging rate bands mean A&A gets either a lot more expensive, or vastly cheaper depending on whether or not you have to use the service during office hours or can use the overnight bands.
How many people could save vast amounts by keeping their heavy usage to the cheaper times? Or would this not fit in with your habits?
I'm using the service in the daytime every day, but I make the maximum possible usage of the overnight band with flat-out downloads and then the whole weekend has scattered downloads when it's not going to inconvenience my wife by slowing her down.
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I used to be on a 60GB package on PN many years ago, and it was such a pain trying to organise things to take advantage of the free overnight data period, moving to unlimited was the best thing I ever did internet wise. No need to worry what we download or upload or when we do it.
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quite understand Ronski’s point.
But so-called unlimited deals from ISPs put me off. The reason is that theres no solid funding underlying the model, excessive usage doesn't attract extra funding to keep the network always truly fast and wilt-free. A&A can fund heavier and heavier usage properly because it is being paid for, so they can always burst their network, unless they're simply caught out. It's actually attractive to me to see that things aren't based on a free-lunch, something for nothing financial model.
Users like having freebies and good deals, and most are presumably happy with the slowness and wilt that follows inevitably from this. Some will moan about the slowness but apathy keeps them staying with that service. History proves it's possible to survive financially using this under-investment model because users aren't sufficiently bothered. Not for me though. My service is unbelievably slow because of the length of my line, and I certainly am not willing to pay for wilt as well as having to live with the limited top speed.
That's just an insight into what I value and how I think. Full speed all the time, no excuses ever.
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Been with AA for nearly a year now,being a non techie good technical support was paramount to my requirements.The few times I have to call them they have been superb,you get updates by text message,email and also social media if you use it,plus they have their own online chat system.
It is a bit pricey compared to some isps especially with all the offers and discounts to entice new users,but imo there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Until I hopefully get an opportunity to get FTTC back then I can't see me leaving,even then if finances permit I shall stay.
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A&A gave me the reason why, when I moved here, my Plusnet 20CN Max Premium line dropped when I had an incoming call. Only when I passed that information to Plusnet did it get fixed - Plusnet didn't know about the issue with Max Premium and Marconi exchange equipment. In fact it got worse than that, Plusnet thought there was only Marconi equipment whereas A&A knew there was another make also present which worked.
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@jelv what’s the background to this jelv. You were/are a Plusnet user?
How did you come to be talking to A&A?
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I re-read my first posting in this thread, and I realised that things have changed a bit since then, back in 2012. I now have a third line IP-bonded into the group. The Firebrick router ties the three incoming pipes together, handles IPv6 and IPv4 routing and firewalling, and deals with upstream load-sharing across the three lines. I have an adequate sized block of IPv4 addresses (no NAT) and a /48 for IPv6.
As for modems, I now have three DLink DSL-320B devices which are currently ds-syncing ~2100 ds, anyway in the BTW IP profile 1750 band, occasionally touching 2272 but this is only sustained for a week or so, sometimes more, sometimes less. Combined ds ip throughput comes out at something around 5.2 Mbps according to the speed tester http://speedof.me, other speed testers are lower. US throughput varies between lines, and combined US IP throughput varies wildly according to which speed tester is chosen, but is in excess of 700 kbps.
I’m still stuck with BTW 20CN ADSL1, no choices, no LLU on offer at this exchange. I take the BTW IPStream Max Premium option on all three lines, which gives me traffic priority on the A&A network as well as BTW’s. I also have BT Enhanced Care on one line as a just-in-case.
I also now have an A&A 3G SIM (on the Three network) which routes a single static IPv4 from an iPad straight through to the A&A network, again no NAT or mobile network private addressing in the way. This just works very cleanly and reliably, no fuss and has the same continuous quality monitoring as A&A’s DSL lines.
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@jelv what’s the background to this jelv. You were/are a Plusnet user?
How did you come to be talking to A&A?
I've been a Plusnet user since 2002. When I moved to my current house it was on to Max Premium as I need the better upload speed than the standard on 20CN exchanges. Immediately I started experiencing disconnections and it didn't take long to identify that they were when the phone rang for an incoming call. I had several engineer visits which confirmed the issue (they saw loads of errors on their test equipment when the phone rang), including one engineer who tested my line inside the exchange and saw the same issue. I contacted AAISP regarding the possibility of moving to them under their http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-trial.html scheme. They immediately identified the issue as being Max Premium connected to Marconi exchange equipment - a well known issue (to them anyway).
Plusnet's next step was to downgrade me to standard Max as when they were under the impression that there was only Marconi equipment in the exchange. This stopped the disconnections and confirmed the issue was Max Premium. AAISP had told me their was definitely alternative equipment in the exchange and eventually I persuaded Plusnet to get me moved across and put back on the Max Premium.
If it hadn't been for the information I got from AAISP and just left to Plusnet I would have been left with the option of Premium with disconnections or lose the faster upload.
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@jelv that's a brilliant story. Above and beyond the call.