Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Jon21 on September 20, 2018, 11:44:30 AM
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I’m just wondering what alternatives there are to AAISP? I’ve had no issues with A&A since joining them nearly 6 months ago but unfortunately, one of my part time jobs isn’t looking secure at the moment. This may lead to a reduction in income. I probably won’t know for definite for a couple of weeks. The minimum term with A&A finishes next month. I could drop down a tier on the quota system but that’s only going to save me £5 and it wouldn’t be enough of an allowance.
Things I’d like from a potential new ISP:
IPv6. Would seem a backwards step to go with anyone who isn’t providing that now.
Unlimited or a high data allowance
A uncongested network
Up to £45 a month
Uno, Zen, even Sky could be possibilities.
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You could probably negotiate a deal with Sky on their FTTC.
They indeed provide IPv6
Unlimited
Uncongested network - well for me, I can start downloading at any time of day, and in the 6 years I've had FTTC with them, and 10 years I've had some form of connection with Sky, it's always worked at 100% of the line rate speed.
My Sky Fibre Pro has been discounted to £21 a month (£18.99 line rental) £40 a month all in.
However, customer service................. It'll be a vastly different world to AAISP as you are no doubt aware. However, they do fit the criteria.
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What about idnet? A clueful outfit.
I would also ask AA for suggestions. It can’t hurt. If you are happy with them you will save some money and be unhappy with someone else, you chose them for a reason. I know what it is like to need to economise, I haven’t worked in many years.
Useless point: One option that might very well make no sense at all is to use their L2TP service. That is something that I have occasionally thought about, but as I said propbably will make no sense for you.
Other things to cut out instead: [Sincere apologies since you have probably looked at all of these already] I cut out Sky satellite TV. That saved us a fortune. I could get rid of the TV license but my wife still watches normal TV over Freesat. What is the deal about line rental currently. Can you get rid of PSTN phone service if you have any and go VoIP with AA or go mobile only? I half-use AA VoIP, in the sense that I do not use it over DSL, AA redirects it to my wife’s mobile phone.
I currently use the traditional ‘units’ tariff, which has no limit. You just get charged for what you download by the byte and you prepurchase a certain amount of download ‘units’ of your choice at a cheaper rate, which is a slight money saver if you are sure you will download more than a certain amount. I always get it wrong and prepurchase too much thus wasting a small amount of money. All uploads are free. I can’t work out how it compares for cost with the new ::1 deals where you do have a download limit.
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Another thought: Burakkucat uses TalkTalk and is happy with them, and I think some of our users use TalkTalk Business. They are after all the wholesale carrier that AA uses for a large proportion of their own customers.
Techno people such as me love IPv6. It is after all slower than IPv4, yay. IPv6 could be added separately onto an IPv4-only ISP by the use of a tunnel: eg using AA’s L2TP service over eg TalkTalk or by getting a tunnel from Hurricane Electric. These tunnels free you from censorship, and an L2TP tunnel can even give you back real IPv4 address blocks freedom from NAT and so on. But it is all more hassle and the L2TP service costs money, thus defeating the point.
Really, really whacky idea: [I know it’s a stupid idea] share internet access with an incredibly friendly and trustworthy neighbour if such exists. Share costs. Could use a line of sight rf link, such as the 60GHz Mikrotik device in my recent post. Ubiquity do iirc do outside long range high quality rf kit. That way two or more neighbours could share costs, if the relationship makes it feasible. Can use firewalling and other technologies to keep users apart. (I already do such isolation: friends coming to stay can use the internet in my house but cannot talk to any of my own machines on the wired or wireless LAN. So there are various ways of keeping people separated, using very different methods.)
Final thought: Talk to other AA users on IRC. Use collective brainpower to attack the problem.
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If you are on Home::1 and paying for more than the 200GB allowance have you looked at gaming the system to save money? If your monthly usage is less than 800GB it can be done.
You are free to swap between the 200GB, 300GB and 2TB every month if you want and you keep your quota bonus. The 300GB option is totally redundant as you can effectively have a 800GB allowance for an average of £7.50 over the cost of the basic 200GB Home::1.
This is how you do it:
- Month 1 2TB package: Use 800GB which means you carry over 600GB (half the unused 1.2TB)
- Month 2 200GB package: Starting allowance is 800GB and all is used
- Month 3 back to 2TB and keep repeating.
AAISP have confirmed in a post on the TBB forums that this is acceptable.
You may find you can save even more if you need to only be on the 2TB package one month out of three if you have sufficient quota bonus carried over.
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If you are on Home::1 and paying for more than the 200GB allowance have you looked at gaming the system to save money? If your monthly usage is less than 800GB it can be done.
You are free to swap between the 200GB, 300GB and 2TB every month if you want and you keep your quota bonus. The 300GB option is totally redundant as you can effectively have a 800GB allowance for an average of £7.50 over the cost of the basic 200GB Home::1.
This is how you do it:
- Month 1 2TB package: Use 800GB which means you carry over 600GB (half the unused 1.2TB)
- Month 2 200GB package: Starting allowance is 800GB and all is used
- Month 3 back to 2TB and keep repeating.
AAISP have confirmed in a post on the TBB forums that this is acceptable.
You may find you can save even more if you need to only be on the 2TB package one month out of three if you have sufficient quota bonus carried over.
I didn't realise that could be done. Most that has been used in a month is 304GB, which was August. For some reason, I thought more was being used. Currently have an allowance of just over 3TB, which would never be used in a month. Not quite sure why AAISP don't have say a 500/600GB tariff. As you say, the 300GB tariff seems pretty pointless.
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I asked on IRC and the consensus was ‘talk to AA’ and Sky and TalkTalk work.
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I think if they changed the 300GB to 750GB that would be a good middle ground, seeing as they have scaled up the 1TB to 2TB, but, I don't have access to all their figures and data consumption across all subscribers. :)
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@Jon21
Looks like you only need to be on 2TB one month in three.
https://aa.net.uk/broadband-regrade.html has instructions on how to change your tariff which (will come in to effect 1st October). I suggest you should change to 200GB now while you ponder your options as if you are going to migrate it won't go through before next month. You'll start next month with well over 1TB allowance!
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I'm with Zen and only have good things to say about them. Support is top-notch and their network is solid; I've not experienced any congestion in the ~9 months that I've been with them.
You get one static IPv4 and a /48 IPv6 prefix. I pay around £36 a month (via a deal advertised on The Big Deal) for unlimited 80/20 FTTC. No idea how much data we use but it's likely to be quite a lot (most Sky catch-up and Netflix, both in 4K where available). But hey, unlimited :thumbs:
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I myself used Zen (adsl) as well as AA for a while, at a different site, but Zen did not have IPv6 back then and I was fed up with waiting for it, plus I only got a /29 IPv4 back then from Zen. AA basically won out because of being far more fully featured and the channel bonding was the thing that swung it. Zen was great though.
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Thanks for all the replies so far. At the very latest, I should know either way with regards to this particular job, by early November. This is when the new owners come in.
Out of interest, is there an up to date list of PoP’s for Zen? Samknows suggests that Zen don’t have their network equipment at the local exchange but I believe it’s potentially out of date. I think they use TTB or BTW otherwise?
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Almost everything on SamKnows is out of date.
I don't think they even update their broadband coverage stuff now.
They concentrate on their white boxes now.
The zen broadband checker should tell you if you are "on net".
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I stopped looking at SamDoesntKnow ages ago!
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Have Sky stopped forcing people to use the Sky hub out of interest? That has always been one of the things which has put me off them, and any other ISP's which force their kit on you. I've got my own Zyexl device so all I will never need are the PPPoE info from ISP's, but it seems some are quite reluctant to give it out or are very confused at the request (I had a similar experience with Vodafone not so long ago) - I just remember Sky were always a little bit funny about using non-standard kit.
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Yes, it used to be the case that Sky had, in their terms and conditions, a point that said that 3rd party equipment was forbidden.
However, they didn't stop anyone who actually did. I very quickly dumped the Sagem router when they first gave me FTTC in 2012 and nobody has ever said anything about the non-Sky equipment.
Obviously it became interesting if I ever needed to call them, but luckily that has only had to happen on very few occasions. I had Sky Q in early 2016, and as an early adopter, I think the engineers were expecting to see the Sky Q router in place before they installed the TV due to the Wi-Fi mesh. As soon as the engineer left my house, their router was promptly removed and I put my own equipment back on.
I think in the last few months they have indeed relaxed that requirement, I believe there was some Ofcom ruling that has forced this, but don't quote me on that as I am not sure if I actually read that or if I'm making that up.
Having said that, I don't know if they publish anything to help you achieve that, my guess is not - if you wish to use your own equipment then go ahead, but I don't think Sky would be expected to support whatever esoteric routing device you have on your network.
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Almost everything on SamKnows is out of date.
I don't think they even update their broadband coverage stuff now.
Yeah, it hasn't been updated in years. In my case, kitz kindly checked for me and confirmed that my exchange had Zen LLU presence.
The zen broadband checker should tell you if you are "on net".
Ooh, didn't know that.
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Have Sky stopped forcing people to use the Sky hub out of interest? That has always been one of the things which has put me off them, and any other ISP's which force their kit on you. I've got my own Zyexl device so all I will never need are the PPPoE info from ISP's, but it seems some are quite reluctant to give it out or are very confused at the request (I had a similar experience with Vodafone not so long ago) - I just remember Sky were always a little bit funny about using non-standard kit.
AFAIK, Sky doesn't use PPPoE.
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Yeah, you have to use what Sky call "MER" but it's essentially just DHCP Option 61.
You don't even need a username/password, as long as the field has something in it, it'll authenticate.
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Sky are generally uncongested to the point you wont notice it but in some of my recent months I have had on occasion some increased peak latency at peak hours but in terms of real world usage no impact, streaming, downloads etc. full performance.
Sky officially support ipv6 in dual stack configuration.
But the gotchas are as follows.
They used to not support (but not forbid either) 3rd party routers, now its in the t&c's as a breach. I dont know of anyone who has been kicked off for it but it is something to be aware off.
The ipv6 prefix is not static, it is dynamic with a week long DHCP expiry, since I started using ipv6 on sky my prefix has changed at least 3 times from network resegmentations. If they resegment the part of the network you on, your prefix may well get forcefully changed which may or may not bother you.
They do support a single static ipv4 on the pro package which 'will' survive resegmentations. But apparently a few of their dslams do not support it for some reason.
I can confirm you dont need your actual user/password any more to use 3rd party routers so its easier than it used to be, in addition when I had my last line fault, they gave me no hassle whatsoever in regards to my router, they did the line test (which failed) without even asking me if I am using the sky hub which was interesting.
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They have removed that clause from their T&C's.
They also won't sell you the Pro package anymore, either.
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I see Sky have dropped the price of Fibre Max to £27/month. That coupled with the pre-paid card and potential cashback through Quidco is making it tempting. I was thinking of waiting till around Black Friday to see what Zen may do but fairly sure they wouldn’t be able to get near that.
No static IP though but to be honest, I don’t really need one. It’s kind of useful for the TBB monitor but I think using a Dynamic DNS like No-IP would get around that?
Edit: Signed up with Sky. Hopefully made the right choice. Still not certain with regards to job security, so cutting £33/month off the broadband bill kind of needed to be done.
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On a more serious note, I hope the job security situation gets cleared soon for you.
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Seconded, I know what it’s like to be uncertain about your job, so my very best wishes.
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On a more serious note, I hope the job security situation gets cleared soon for you.
Seconded, I know what it’s like to be uncertain about your job, so my very best wishes.
Thank you both :) I'm quietly confident that it'll be ok, it's just the not knowing that's a pain.
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Now activated with Sky. Interleaving has been applied but I guess it should come off in a few days?
adsl info --stats
adsl: ADSL driver and PHY status
Status: Showtime
Last Retrain Reason: 0
Last initialization procedure status: 0
Max: Upstream rate = 16629 Kbps, Downstream rate = 82675 Kbps
Bearer: 0, Upstream rate = 16606 Kbps, Downstream rate = 69335 Kbps
Link Power State: L0
Mode: VDSL2 Annex B
VDSL2 Profile: Profile 17a
TPS-TC: PTM Mode(0x0)
Trellis: U:ON /D:ON
Line Status: No Defect
Training Status: Showtime
Down Up
SNR (dB): 6.2 6.1
Attn(dB): 19.5 0.0
Pwr(dBm): 13.3 6.9
VDSL2 framing
Bearer 0
MSGc: 18 16
B: 51 238
M: 1 1
T: 64 3
R: 12 16
S: 0.0239 0.4581
L: 21456 4453
D: 1357 1
I: 64 255
N: 64 255
Counters
Bearer 0
OHF: 5305945 1076555
OHFErr: 12 3
RS: 1358156460 2326835
RSCorr: 37694 1924
RSUnCorr: 264 0
Bearer 0
HEC: 45 0
OCD: 0 0
LCD: 0 0
Total Cells: 1084698329 0
Data Cells: 5017761 0
Drop Cells: 0
Bit Errors: 0 0
ES: 2 645
SES: 0 0
UAS: 28 442
AS: 8138
Bearer 0
INP: 3.00 0.00
INPRein: 0.00 0.00
delay: 8 0
PER: 1.53 7.58
OR: 125.22 23.19
AgR: 69460.66 16629.42
Bitswap: 390/390 2/2
Total time = 2 hours 16 min 6 sec
FEC: 37694 1924
CRC: 12 3
ES: 2 645
SES: 0 0
UAS: 28 442
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Latest 15 minutes time = 1 min 6 sec
FEC: 1570 0
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Previous 15 minutes time = 15 min 0 sec
FEC: 7452 2
CRC: 0 2
ES: 0 2
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Latest 1 day time = 2 hours 16 min 6 sec
FEC: 37694 1924
CRC: 12 3
ES: 2 645
SES: 0 0
UAS: 28 442
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Previous 1 day time = 0 sec
FEC: 0 0
CRC: 0 0
ES: 0 0
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 0
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
Since Link time = 2 hours 15 min 37 sec
FEC: 37694 1924
CRC: 12 3
ES: 2 645
SES: 0 0
UAS: 0 414
LOS: 0 0
LOF: 0 0
LOM: 0 0
NTR: mipsCntAtNtr=0 ncoCntAtNtr=0
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I've been using noip for 2 years now with no issues at all.
Stuart
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Ermm, not sure why the base latency has increased from 7pm ish.
(https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/thumb/96caceec2d3835fba971ed03f95c5829ced86502-24-10-2018.png) (https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/96caceec2d3835fba971ed03f95c5829ced86502-24-10-2018)
Edit: Oops, ignore the packet loss. Just rebooted the router and forgot that the IPv6 address isn't static.
Edit 2: I did setup No-IP around the time of the latency increase, saw the graph and then removed it, wondering if it somehow caused the increase (wouldn't think it would?). Looking at the stats, it's still INP 3 delay 8, so not down to extra delay. Perhaps it's just coincidence that the latency between Sky's network and TBB has increased?