Kitz Forum
Broadband Related => ISPs => Topic started by: Weaver on June 30, 2010, 12:31:19 PM
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I'm going to evaluate Andrews and Arnold ('AAISP') for a decent period on one of my lines. ( http://aaisp.net.uk/ )
I'm moving one line from Demon 's Business 2000 (=BT Wholesale IPStream Max Premium) to AAISP today hopefully. That line is horrendously long and although very very clean and stable generally a 62dB attenuation means that there's only so much it will do. I've ordered AAISP's service with the option of BT Wholesale IPStream Max _Premium_ (again, as before with Demon) meaning (i) the potential for faster outbound ('upstream') service (which won't be achieveable/sustainable in practice given the length of the line) and (ii) BTW traffic priority at peak times, supposedly.
Last year I also trialled Zen for about 9 months at a different site, unfortunately on a really good (=short) line, so not much of a challenge.
I'll compare AAISP's service with Demon Business 8000 (which is still up on a different line and will remain so) and Zen and - so a three-way contest - and will report back if anyone's interested.
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Switched over to AAISP this afternoon.
Luurrverly.
Inbound real TCP payload throughput is much healthier this afternoon at well over 1.9kb/s (typically 1.96Mb/s say) and this is during peak hours, and that's near enough up to the limit imposed by the current BTW IP Profile 'rung' of 2000 currently in effect, especially remembering that I presumably need to also allow for TCP's overheads to be deducted from that figure of 2000. Latency / ping times to the nearest hop are down to 45ms (-ish) which I would think is about where they should be for a line with interleave.
Comparing these numbers with Demon, from spot measurements at various times during the last two week, real-world TCP inbound throughput ranged from 1.53Mb/s at midday on one day, to 1.71Mb/s on another day, again at midday and only up to 1.87Mb/s very late at night. The ping-to-nearest-hop times were consistently worse with Demon, more often than not from 65ms or above rather than in the 40s, and at times they had been as high as 100ms and last Autumn even more like 150ms at one point.
Not that its anything to do with AAISP or Demon, but the faithful Netgear DG834v3 (with various h/w pamperings) was purring away at a sync rate of 2464 with 5.5-6dB SNR margin and the usual 62dB attn. So well above the sync rate for IP profile 2000 but not close to that for 2500 unfortunately.
Concerning the accuracy of these TCP test figures, I also think there is a likelihood that there is a danger that these figures are on the low side as I used PlusNet's Flash-based speed tester (among others) all of which are outside the AAISP's network so congestion could play a factor. I should have used the BT Wholesale speed test for a more accurate result, but the BTW tool now wants strange magic runes of power to be entered into it before you can use it, and these I don't have at hand. I have compared several of the popular UK-based test servers against one another from time to time and find them broadly in agreement, so it doesn't seem that the PlusNet one is especially stressed or congested though.
AAISP - a really, really good start - good first impression anyway.
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A couple of weeks in, and AAISP is still going strong. Just blindingly fast.
Until I had a bit of bad luck again last night. Trying to fiddle with a new Juniper Netscreen SSG-20, I managed to upset BT Wholesale, whose 20CN BRAS knocked my IP Profile down from 2000 to 1750 despite sync being restored later to be way at 2496 well above the threshold for IP profile 2000 according to Kitz' excellent table at http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/IPprofile.htm .
I asked AAISP staff (via their web chat IRC service) if they would kick BTW for me and shove the BRAS IP profile back to where it should be. AAISP staff warned me that they believe it takes 60+ hours to float back up again, which fits in with my recent experience, and gave me the impression that they would sort it.
I got the feeling that this meant talking to a human at BTW. Is this kind of thing capable of being automated, anyone know?
Unfortunately they haven't yet fixed it as far as I can see, which is disappointing.
AAISP's website shows a kind of marked 'blob' thing in a graphical history of the state of the DSL line, and says explicitly mm:hh BRAS changed to xxxx which is nice, very full info. It's a really nice feature that you can set things up so that they SMS you if your DSL line dies or loses sync, router disappears or other bad thing happens.
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@ Weaver,
I believe one mechanism for so doing is to ask BT W to order a retrain taking 10 days and which also recalculates your MSR and FTR.
There is some more explanation here:-
http://www.zensupport.co.uk/knowledgebase/article.aspx?id=10593
Kind regards,
Walter
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Thanks Walter. That's an excellent tip. I have also been a Zen customer at a different site and I noticed this reporting goodness in the Zen www UI. I hadn't thought of it that way round.
And presumably ending up having a better FTR afterwards is no bad thing long term, a benefit in itself.
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The DS sync rate went back up into the ~2400-2500 range this last weekend, at midnight exactly. Weird.
It may have been something the AAISP guys did via BTW, can't say. It's a nice feature that their website tells you when there has been a change in the BRAS rate. Another nice feature is how you can set it up so they automatically SMS you if your line dies, router is powered off or disconnected.
AAISP still blazingly fast, with the reported download "speeds" given by <insert favourite web-based speed tester of your choice> all around 1950kb/s which is really close to IP profile 2000 even at peak times in the middle of the day. Bizarrely, http://www.broadband-expert.co.uk/broadband/speedtest/ reports 2.2Mb/s so they're using a multiplication factor to convert TCP payload into sync rate or something.
At this rate, AAISP will probably happen to work out a bit cheaper than the Demon Business 2000 that I was using on the particular line in question, which is pretty amazing.
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I have been following this thread with interest, and have been trying to access the AAISP site to glean more info.
That site appears to have been down for the past three days.
Not a very good advert for AAISP services.
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AAISP ..............
That site appears to have been down for the past three days.
I looked at it yesterday and just checked again now - no problems!
Not a very good advert for your own ISP? Or your own systems setup? :lol:
DNS problem maybe........
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@tuftedduck
Weird. I can confirm that the site has been up all weekend as I've visited it several times to check on my usage using their very detailed usage metering graphical reporting tools.
(I vastly overestimated my likely daytime peak monthly usage figure and have now dropped my tariff right down to only be a mere 400% of the estimate for the month not 1100%.)
Server aaisp.net is up now as of Tue 13:00 UTC.
@tuftedduck - I have seen an attack on a customer site where the ISP (Demon's) DNS servers were the target of a reflection DOS attack. I told myself that this was upsetting the firewall at the customer site, so that the firewall was cutting off service to the ISP's DNS servers as a result of it's anti-attack algorithms. This would have the effect of making users think the DNS had failed.
You could do an nslookup and use the "server" command to select a different server and try to look up aaisp.net.
NSLOOKUP
> set verbose
> aaisp.net
then
> server 8.8.8.8
> aaisp.net
again
and again with say "server 4.2.2.3"
and compare them.
The doman name "aaisp.net" A-record should resolve as 81.187.81.81 or similar.
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There have been a lot of DNS problems around in recent months, and no-one ever seems to have mentioned the fact that DNS itself may not be the answer.
Shout if you'd like any help, as I will be pottering around today. Not that I can claim to be the fount of all wisdom in this area, far from it, as DNS is one of my many weak brain areas, but "two heads are better then one, even if they're only sheeps'" as my dear mother used to love to say.
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This week I'm going to struggle and flounder with my new Juniper Netscreen SSG20 which has two ADSL modem modules fitted in it.
First have to get it to even work at all in the slightest. Then get it to speak ipv6 nicely. Then order a second line from AAISP and get both of its two ADSL modules up and running in lovely twin load-sharing mode. (IP based, not PPP multilink at AAISP.)
The manual for the brute is longer than "Lord of the Rings" at 1200+ pages. Ugly.
I need a weird RS232 cable to talk to it - RJ45 to standard IBM PC-AT 9-pin D-type com port. And I have to find an old PC with an RS232 port on it, or else something use a USB-to-RS232 converter. Amazing how quickly I'm starting to forget that such a thing as RS232 once existed!
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I stand corrected, weaver, and thank you for your advice and comments.
I stand corrected as the site does open without difficuly in IE............but does not in my default Opera browser.
Off to try some tweaks.
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I stand corrected, weaver, and thank you for your advice and comments.
I stand corrected as the site does open without difficuly in IE............but does not in my default Opera browser.
Off to try some tweaks.
Hi TD. :)
It opens ok for me in FF 3.6.6 and have just opened it ok in Opera 10.60
Not a very good advert for your own ISP? Or your own systems setup? :lol:
If a member is having internet problems,its hardly constructive when you choose to laugh about HP Sauce.
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> but does not in my default Opera browser.
Weird. I'm quite an Opera fan myself. Wonder why that might be...
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If a member is having internet problems,its hardly constructive when you choose to laugh
Oh come on, I was only echoing what he said (incorrectly) about AAISP in a lighthearted way (well worth a chuckle I reckon), and THEN I offered a constructive suggestion to look at DNS.
Time to lighten up UUB? ;)
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If a member is having internet problems,its hardly constructive when you choose to laugh
Oh come on, I was only echoing what he said (incorrectly) about AAISP in a lighthearted way (well worth a chuckle I reckon), and THEN I offered a constructive suggestion to look at DNS.
Time to lighten up UUB? ;)
Is it?
I personally don't seem to be laughing.I make loads of mistakes regarding computers and will be the first to admit I'm not very very knowledgeable on the subject.
If what(TD) has said was incorrect,then by all means point it out and if possible offer a solution,but why you find it amusing is beyond me.
I have been in the construction industry all my life and have seen quite a few 'cock-ups' and believe me if I had laughed at some of the people who had made them I don't think I would be here today typing this. ;D
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I have been in the construction industry all my life
So has my daughter (a Chartered Civil Engineer) and it's a notably agressive/dispute-ridden business.
Here we can be nicer, and being (mostly) British hopefully can laugh at our own mistakes without getting upset. ;D
And TD, who I was replying to, didn't seem to mind. :no:
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I have been in the construction industry all my life
So has my daughter (a Chartered Civil Engineer) and it's a notably agressive/dispute-ridden business.
Here we can be nicer, and being (mostly) British hopefully can laugh at our own mistakes without getting upset. ;D
:drink:
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I wondered if it might be instructive for poor souls who might want to see my trials and struggles re IPv6 and dual-line goodness if I put up some links to screenshots ?
I could put some screenshots on flickr maybe rather than burdening kitz-land with "attachments" to posts :-\ ?
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Attachments are OK for a few fairly small images, but if it's more than that then we appreciate it if they're hosted externally.
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Well, I've been fiddling around and cannot get the site to open in Opera, despite much tweaking of setting in there, in firewall, in av prog.
Not to worry though, I can access via IE and have had a good read through. I don't think I need trouble the site again as aaisp appear not for me.
Thank you for your comments and advices.
I hope you have all shaken hands and are friends again. :)
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[I'm myself polluting this thread.]
@tuftedduck
I've just done some quick checks. Opera 10.6 newly installed on a fresh, new, minimal and clean WinXp SP3 test system. http://aaisp.net start page and a few other pages seem to render fine to me in Opera 10.6.
So some funny weirdness (that's helpful [!]) going on. I can say the blindingly obvious like "reinstall Opera, latest ver" and "disable antivirus s/w" and "empty Opera's cache".
AAISP's start page isn't valid XHTML 1.0 Strict but the couple of mistakes are very minor and can not be responsible here. The CSS fed to IE8 isn't valid either and the errors are more significant, but the fact is that Opera manages to render the content without immediately obvious wrongness, and the nature of CSS requirements for parsing for error recovery means that the effects of the CSS errors seen are likely to be limited in scope. I checked the HTTP headers and there's nothing out of the ordinary going on there either that I might conceiveably point the finger at.
Are you (possibly) using an HTTP proxy cache?
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> This week I'm going to struggle and flounder with my new Juniper Netscreen SSG20 which has two ADSL modem modules fitted in it.
> The manual for the brute is longer than "Lord of the Rings" at 1200+ pages. Ugly.
I was wrong. The PDF manual for the beast is actually >2300 pages long. Which is possibly not a good thing.
Got the device up and running in the sense that it appears to PPP-connect to AAISP, one line only thus far. It just doesn't seem to want to route packets. Tried asking the device itself to ping say 8.8.8.8 but no joy. The problem is the defective component that is the wally user, yours truly, of course, who is new to Juniper ScreenOS.
Squinted at routing table for IPv4, looks vaguely plausible, although I need to watch out, as in my experience different mfrs have different presentation conventions for this and things don't necessarily mean what I think they mean, for all I know.
As for ipv6, well that's a complete mystery at the moment :no: as haven't even managed to get as far as discovering the magic words of power that will cause a decent-looking ipv6 routing rtable appear yet.
H hum.