Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Derpy on January 13, 2022, 04:07:08 PM
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Hi
:fingers: FTTP should be coming to my area in the next few weeks (thanks to R100) and I have been looking at options for a FTTP ISP and possibly VOIP as well.
I am currently FTTC with Sky and have been looking at BT, Zen and Sky as possible options.
Sky have been ruled out a bit because they dont do 900mb yet and who knows when they will even though I actually like the fact they dont use PPPoE which is a bit of an issue on the router I wanted to use (UDM Pro) although the UDM isnt set in stone.
Does anyone have any feedback on the 3 ISP options or any other I should consider?
I would prefer not to use an ISP router which is a problem for both Sky and BT as the only way the house phone would work would be to have it plugged in but I am not sure if you can use a SIP client with Zen FTTP or not although they are not the cheapest for landline so I would consider porting to a VOIP provider.
Any feedback or ideas would be greatly welcome.
Even when FTTP is on this street I fear it wont be a simple job as I suspect the properties dont have ducting and are DIG and bizarrely my master BT socket is on my first floor rather than the ground even though we are not pole here.
:fingers: FTTP comes soon
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My plan is to stay with Zen and move my landline number to AAISPs SIP service (https://www.aa.net.uk/voice-and-mobile/voip-information/).
If you're okay with PAYG top-up services, there are services like https://www.sipgatebasic.co.uk/.
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Or to SIPGATE a solution that worked for me and doesn’t have any fees !
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Or to SIPGATE a solution that worked for me and doesn’t have any fees !
You posted while I was updating mine, lol. I couldn't remember the name so was checking my account.
But yeah, I've had a couple of SIPGATE numbers for years now, never actually used them (apart from every once in a while calling them from my mobile to test they still work) though they are "live" on my N300 IP and I use them for my domain name records. Amazed they kept them live all this time when I've never once paid them a penny.
However as the biggest problem is my mum not remembering how much credit she has on her mobile, she relies on the landline not having a call limit thus AAISP makes more sense for me when I transition the landline over.
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Thanks both, I was considering AA and taking a look at Sipgate, I personally never really use the landline but the other halfs family like to call it even though they have free mobile calls from their own landline its just in the mindset calling a house is cheaper/better...
Alex how have you found Zen? I presume you are on FTTC right now with a view to going FTTP when it comes?
Do you know anything about Zen's digital voice?
I wish more ISP's didnt use PPPoE like sky but sky is the only one I am aware of using Openreach, I know other non openreach services dont, I used to have hyperoptic 1GB and it was amazing but since moving my FTTC speeds have been a shock to say the least at < 25Mb.
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You are correct, FTTC but FTTP is due any time.
I know nothing about Zens Digital Voice, but I wouldn't use it anyway as if the worst happens and Zen turn into a bad ISP, keeping the voice with someone else means I can switch whenever I want without any hassle.
AA also have quite a reputation especially when dealing with vulnerable customers as @Weaver can attest to. I like the idea that if something goes wrong and excessive call charges were accrued, they would be sensitive in dealing with it. My mum once ran a HUGE bill up on her mobile (when it was on contract) due a phone glitch that caused the call to go on hold instead of hanging up, for DAYS. That was a nightmare dealing with the mobile company (I can't remember which now). Its unlikely to happen with the Gigaset handsets I use, but its still in the back of my mind.
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As soon as I heard FTTP was coming to my area, I started looking at voice options.
I thought about VoIP landline options, I have Siemens DECT phones that could support VoIP, but decided to ditch landline.
Over past few months, I encouraged anyone that called land line to use mobile number or WhatsApp instead, and delete my landline from their address books, even elderly relatives, who are now using WhatsApp voice calls to friends and family abroad, for group calls etc.
Its a nice feeling not having DECT base station handsets cluttering the house.
I was concerned about PPPoE overhead, but my Zen FTTP is performing as per advertised speeds in its first week. :fingers: for the next 23 months and 3 weeks!
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I'd rather use WhatsApp, but relying on just a single service can be problematic.
I still know people who wont use a smartphone at all. Plus you can't call your GP, Pharmacy, Hospital, etc with WhatsApp.
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I was suggesting WhatsApp for calling overseas and group chats for friends and family, of course use mobile phone/VoIP/landline for calling doctors etc.
For those that are overwhelmed with a smart phone, there are alternatives such as Doro.
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What really annoys me is I looked into WhatsApp on Dumb phones and every one of them its messages only, no voice. Considering the guy I want it for can't even handle SMS, its useless.
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> Does anyone have any feedback on the 3 ISP options or any other I should consider?
I’ve been delighted with Andrews and Arnold (aa.net.uk) for over ten years now. See some of my earlier ‘cracked record’ posts on the subject ;) As well as being a superb ISP, they have a lot of special features that aren’t easy to find elsewhere.’
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Thanks again all, I am starting to get an idea what I will do with the landline and a plan to move to voip seems best so any further voip provider recommendations would be welcome.
I’ve been delighted with Andrews and Arnold (aa.net.uk) for over ten years now. See some of my earlier ‘cracked record’ posts on the subject ;) As well as being a superb ISP, they have a lot of special features that aren’t easy to find elsewhere.’
I have always wanted to go with AA but the transfer limits basically prevent it as even with FTTC now I would easily be far over their current limits.
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> Does anyone have any feedback on the 3 ISP options or any other I should consider?
I’ve been delighted with Andrews and Arnold (aa.net.uk) for over ten years now. See some of my earlier ‘cracked record’ posts on the subject ;) As well as being a superb ISP, they have a lot of special features that aren’t easy to find elsewhere.’
What will AAISP offer on FTTP that is useful, what advantages do they offer? I can't see why anyone would pay them so much money for a service which basically won't go wrong
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Better support, less risk of congestion, the ability to change backhaul, the ability to upgrade/downgrade package (every month if you wanted) without having to renew contract.
They are also 1 of the very few ISP's that provides a solution that allows you to migrate your PSTN number to VOIP without it ceasing the broadband connection.
They are 1 of very few providers that can give multiple IPV4 addresses if that's a requirement.
They are 1 of a few who offering line bonding.
It's above what I would pay for my broadband but they certainly have plenty to offer.
FTTP isn't magic. It does go wrong. I've had 2 outages on my PON in the last year which was more downtime than the last 3-4 years combined on FTTC.
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What are AAISP going to be able to fix on FTTP faster than BT or Sky?
I simply don't see the advantage they offer - and their prices are ludicrous.
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Better support, less risk of congestion, the ability to change backhaul, the ability to upgrade/downgrade package (every month if you wanted) without having to renew contract.
They are also 1 of the very few ISP's that provides a solution that allows you to migrate your PSTN number to VOIP without it ceasing the broadband connection.
They are 1 of very few providers that can give multiple IPV4 addresses if that's a requirement.
They are 1 of a few who offering line bonding.
It's above what I would pay for my broadband but they certainly have plenty to offer.
FTTP isn't magic. It does go wrong. I've had 2 outages on my PON in the last year which was more downtime than the last 3-4 years combined on FTTC.
What are the issue that bring a PON down ?
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What are the issue that bring a PON down ?
Firmware updates, general maintenance or someone sticking a backhoe through it.
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Firmware updates, general maintenance or someone sticking a backhoe through it.
How is AAISP going to help with that? They will be calling out the same Openreach engineer to fix it
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BT, you get a UK-based support team, no they're not fantastic but I no longer feel like I wouldn't be with BT on that basis
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For me the rule of thumb is an ISP with:
1) A static public IP
2) They meddle with my traffic as a little as possible.
Once Zen gets large enough to be subject to the court orders blocking sites, I will seriously reconsider my position. Its not even that I visit those sites (and if I did there are VPNs), its the principle of the thing and the potential for the blocks to be implemented badly as Plusnet have done in the past as I recall.
Plusnet were my first ISP and I only left when they started badly implementing traffic limiters that caused my Usenet usage at the time to be throttled 24/7, when it was only supposed to throttle after a certain amount of traffic per month.
Its kinda ironic however that moving back to them for my second line caused the drop wire damage to be discovered and ultimately fix my Zen line, which I wasn't aware was faulty.
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What are AAISP going to be able to fix on FTTP faster than BT or Sky?
I simply don't see the advantage they offer - and their prices are ludicrous.
I actually pay AAISP similar to what I was paying sky before I moved to them. Their prices have actually got closer over time, because almost every year the big boys are doing inflation busting rises whilst AAISP dont, they charge line rate much closer to cost and every customer on AAISP pays the same instead of me subsidising those on retention deals.
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I do absolutely love the idea of AA as they have a stellar reputation for knowing their stuff, I just dont know how I would cope with even the 8TB limit, in December on my < 25MB connection my pc alone transferred over 700gb (Glasswire ftw!) and that excludes all the other devices in the house so I fear we would easily hit the 8TB cap, its a pity as their monthly isnt to bad.
BT, you get a UK-based support team, no they're not fantastic but I no longer feel like I wouldn't be with BT on that basis
So you have had no major speed issues with BT on FTTP?
I am between Zen and BT mostly, Zen had an old age rep for good support and service but BT has the mass to have backhaul although I am in a remote area of Scotland so it may not matter.
Thanks again
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I'm a very very heavy downloader but I think even I would struggle to hit 8TB over VDSL. Now G.fast or FTTP is a different matter, though I'm more likely to increase my uploading which is not capped by AA AFAIK.
Still though, I wouldn't feel comfortable with my only ISP having a cap. Right now I do load balance with AAISP over L2TP, but bulk downloads go over Three 5G. I'm lucky to have that option though.
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Insane amounts of usage aside A&A are a niche ISP and that niche shrinks considerably with the advent of FTTP.
Quality monitoring is less relevant, the finer degree of support not an issue - you're either getting light at the correct level or not, you're either provisioned correctly or not.
If you want what they offer use them.
If you are someone wanting to download and upload as much of the content on the Internet as possible they likely don't want your custom. ;)
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If you are someone wanting to download and upload as much of the content on the Internet as possible they likely don't want your custom. ;)
Indeed. They offer so many additional features that I can’t list them all, but I’ll try. Have a poke around their website, https://aa.net.uk, or talk to them via phone/email/IRC.- Bonding of multiple lines for n x speed and high reliability. I have three lines bonded together in both directions.
- Free IPv4 blocks as big as you want.
- Failover to 4G.
- Constant quality monitoring.
- The ability to see and manage your traffic, latency, packet loss if any on their control.aa.net.uk server.
- Setup of your own domain names reregistered annually with no risk of failure due to credit card stupidity, which happened to me and a domain name of mine (“tlachd.com”) was grabbed by squatters/profiteers.
- I can show you my control server account with logs if that’s of interest.
- Notification by email and SMS (and supposedly by twitter- doesn’t work for me though) if your internet connection drops.
- VOIP with flexible redirects to other phone numbers.
- Serious email.
- No censorship of your web browsing - big important point.
- Their business internet access services have no usage limits.
- They understand gaming.
- Optional traffic priority within both BT’s network and AA’s network (£10+vat? per line per month) which I have been using.
- Very fast network.
- Serious tech support with expert staff who understand geeks such as us and normal people too.
- Choice of BT or TalkTalk or both carrier connections.
- Support forever for their Firebrick router free, a superb piece of kit
- Serious wifi optionally - which I am going to go for, as my WAPs are ancient
- Happy users - see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php
I use pretty much all the features they have.
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Indeed. They offer so many additional features that I can’t list them all, but I’ll try. Have a poke around their website, https://aa.net.uk, or talk to them via phone/email/IRC.- Bonding of multiple lines for n x speed and high reliability. I have three lines bonded together in both directions.
- Free IPv4 blocks as big as you want.
- Failover to 4G.
- Constant quality monitoring.
- The ability to see and manage your data own world on their control.aa.net.uk server.
- Setup of your own domain names reregistered annually with no risk of failure due to credit card stupidity, which happened to me and a domain name of mine (“tlachd.com”) was grabbed by squatters/profiteers.
- I can show you my control server account with logs if that’s of interest.
- Notification by email and SMS (and supposedly by twitter- doesn’t work for me though) if your internet connection drops.
- VOIP with flexible redirects to other phone numbers.
- Serious email.
- No censorship of your web browsing - big important point.
- Their business internet access services have no usage limits.
- They understand gaming.
- Optional traffic priority with BT’s network and AA’s network (£10+vat? per line per month) which I have been using.
- Very fast network.
- Serious tech support with expert staff who understand geeks such as us and normal people too. Choice of BT or TalkTalk or both carrier connections.
- Support forever for their Firebrick router free, a superb piece of kit
- Serious wifi optionally - which I am going to go for, as my WAPs are ancient
- Happy users - see https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/top10.php
I use pretty much all the features they have.
Can you possibly show some of the VOIP control panel stuff?
I am considering them strongly for the interim at least.
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I actually think the day will come when AAISP is notably cheaper than the big boys, it feels inevitable, annual 5%+ increases. The only recent packaging changes I have seen announced on AAISP is quota increases.
It will get to the point where you paying extra for peace of mind of unlimited and maybe also for the convenience of bundled in services.
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Can you possibly show some of the VOIP control panel stuff?
I am considering them strongly for the interim at least.
A&A VOIP support pages https://support.aa.net.uk/Category:VoIP
These were sufficient for this complete VOIP novice to get a N300IP base station going via a pfSense firewall, with NAT.
If you buy the base station from them they configure it for you.
They do hammer the point that VOIP might not work with NAT, but it worked for me.
My starting point was A&A FTTC with Pulse8 for the phone. The number porting was painless.
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I haven’t been able to get my N300 system working, need to get AA to help me debug the handsets some time. But in addition I’m not at all sure that VoIP will work with three or four bonded lines that have unequal speeds. But I’ve been too lazy to sort it out given that the VoIP system works superbly on redirect to my wife’s mobile phone.
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The handsets surely need little in the way of configuration?
The base station needs a bit, especially to revert the hand set displays to a plain clock.
I thought that your bonded system hid the underlying connections to present a seamless single connection.
On the other hand, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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But I’ve been too lazy to sort it out given that the VoIP system works superbly on redirect to my wife’s mobile phone.
Do you redirect using Also Ring or are you using a SIP client on the phone?
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@adrianw:
I’m using the also ring (immediately) feature in the AA servers. No SIP in the phone, it’s just a normal telephone call from AA over EE to my wife’s mobile.
Indeed the handsets don’t need any configuration, so I don’t know what’s going wrong - N300 and handsets just not seeing one another so my wife reported, but I would need to take a look myself.
My bonded system does indeed weld the three connections into one seamlessly; applications have no way of knowing that there are actually three pipes underlying the one apparent one. However given the fact that the upstream speeds of the lines are very mismatched - 0.65 Mbps upstream on line #1 and 0.4 Mbps upstream on line #4 - I wonder about possible packet reordering, and certainly substantial jitter, which I can measure. I should retest this some time and see what the truth is. I could look out for packet out-of-orderness though by grinding my way through a connection traffic capture - god I hate that though.
That’s the problem though, seeing as it works so well as is, I’m too lazy to spend ages with AA debugging things.
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@adrianw:
Indeed the handsets don’t need any configuration, so I don’t know what’s going wrong - N300 and handsets just not seeing one another so my wife reported, but I would need to take a look myself.
The handsets do need registering with the base.
I also recall making some tweaks using the Web Configurator, such as turning off the useless info services on the phone displays.
<packet loss, out of sequence packets and jitter affecting VOIP, packet capture inspection, leaving well alone>
Ah, I concede your point.
And wading through tcpdump or similar output is indeed a PITA.
Given that also ring is working so well for you, do you even need the base and handsets?
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> do you even need the base and handsets?
No, indeed; haven’t used that kit in a long time. For some reason, I forget, I got a new lot of hardware which didn’t work even though I thought that I set it up carefully. And then, for reasons discussed, I just never got round to whimpering to AA for some help, as everything just worked perfectly with Plan B anyway.