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Author Topic: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please  (Read 27487 times)

insidejob

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I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« on: March 23, 2017, 12:07:56 AM »

Hi, hopefully in right forum for this. I assume many member on here use a verity of broadband providers?  I need some recommendations of isp's that one, have a dynamic IP and two dont show your home location so close to your actual City/town?

I am after fibre broadband really. I Dont want to go back to slow ADSL type broadband if I can help it.
Not plusnet as that's who I am with.

It would be helpful of members of other isp's, including BT, to say if you home location is shown or the central Hub data centres?

Thanks.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 12:16:24 AM by insidejob »
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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #1 on: March 23, 2017, 12:32:22 AM »

The thing about 'showing your location' is pretty much random, so it seems, in the sense that when you look at different ISPs and the accuracy of the geolocation of customers. We were discussing this a while ago. Certainly, with my ISP geolocation doesn't work at all.

But I certainly wouldn't want dynamic IPv4 addresses, in fact, I have gone to the opposite extreme, where every single box has a globally routable static IPv4 address and no NAT. I want a static IPv4 address because of reliability. If I lose the connection to the ISP, I can automatically reconnect and TCP sessions can carry on regardless, rather than just dropping everything on the floor, as TCP would have to if one endpoint moves.

If you don't want anyone to know where you are geographically, you have more to worry about from services bundled in with your operating system or with web browsers that report location based on Wireless LAN MAC addresses. Your iPhone or google / Facebook apps are pretty keen on identifying your location by a whole range of methods and this has nothing to do with a choice of ISP.

You need to think about cookies tracking you, these will track you even if you keep changing your ISP. So I don't see how picking a particular ISP is going to work because it isn't enough.

I would suggest that you just use Tor and then pick any good ISP you like. You can also use VPN services that move your apparent location away from the location shown for the actual ISP providing the current physical connection.

Also, remember IPv6 is about to take over. When you use IPv6 then you can use privacy addresses which individually are much harder to track. With the advent of IPv6, hopefully, most likely, there will be static /64 prefixes assigned to every LAN and that will identify where you are. But iirc Sky accidentally has dynamic prefix assignement for some imho crazy reason (to do with the advantages of making administration more difficult, the service less capable and minimising reliability.)

Do please ask if you don't know what Tor is. I am afraid that it will really be necessary to learn about all of this stuff unless you just want a false sense of security. A Tor browser and Tor VPN will sort you out and you will be able to have the best ISP because it is the best, not because of accidental characteristics which are going to change anyway.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 06:38:58 PM by Weaver »
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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #3 on: March 23, 2017, 08:31:34 AM »

My ISP doesn't sell people's home locations to any utter gits for money as far as I am aware, and to do so it seems to me would be very much against their public stance relating to human rights. You can contact them and ask them about this.

All geolocation lookups for my IPv4 addresses are several hundred miles out.

What information can you find out about yourself by searching in various public databases?
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 05:49:40 PM by Weaver »
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insidejob

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #4 on: March 23, 2017, 11:26:22 AM »

Thanks Weaver for your reply. I appreciate you going in to detail but much of what you say isn't a problem like browser, OS, social media but at same time, I dont really want to use tor. It's Plusnet that are the problem.

I am already considering a VPN but Plusnet have only just started this location thing recently and are no longer the right ISP for me. I prefer dynamic IP and only if you are a business, gamer, or run a mail server, is a static IP any use. PN offer static IP at extra cost but I dont want it and will have the same issues, as it's the same isp.

My issues are related to this and as a consequence of it. http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=16711.0


So would like to keep it to isp recommendations and if members kindly on here, can say, if there real home location is showing under that ISP or not.  Thanks :)

« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 11:30:08 AM by insidejob »
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Oldjim

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #5 on: March 23, 2017, 01:20:00 PM »

one assumes that your town is one on this list http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/MSE_locations.htm and, if so, you need an ISP which doesn't use them
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Jim
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ejs

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #6 on: March 23, 2017, 02:26:17 PM »

The presence of an MSE at your exchange doesn't matter, I think I still connected via the MSE at my exchange while on WBMC Shared with Plusnet, with much more widely varying IP addresses. It's how IP addresses are allocated that's important.

I suppose a smaller ISP would be less likely to have things divided up on a regional basis.
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burakkucat

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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2017, 05:43:57 PM »

Apologies to the op for getting off topic, I didn't know what your _motivations_ / underlying concerns were.

Sincere apologies for repeating myself: A static IP is always a good thing for reliability's sake as I mentioned earlier. If you get line instability problems / disconnects and you are in the middle of doing something then it's obviously far better if you can just reconnect, carry on undisturbed and not lose all your transport connections unnecessarily. If your ISP charges you extra for one static IPv4 and they are not using CGNAT anyway then they are just a rubbish ISP. If you don't reconnect for ages then your IPv4 address is as good as static anyway, please don't think that it is going to change all the time. (But then I'm sure you already knew that.) And when you do reconnect, then there is absolutely no guarantee that the IPv4 address assignment(s) will change anyway, in fact if they are any good they will keep it the same for the sake of maximising reliability. It's an open question for users of ISP x, how often does your IPv4 adddress assignment (or range) actually change on a reconnect, just saying that it's dynamic doesn't do it. I hear you about the point about listing IPs’ geographical locations in databases - obviously it is more difficult to do this if they keep changing.

I can see that people who don't absolutely need it or don't know of the reliability advantage will think it's just a waste of a small amount of money. ISPs such as AA, and also Demon and Zen iirc don't charge extra for a static IP, at least for some of their deals, unless it's buried inside other costs. Only you know what matters to you though. When I was with Zen I had a free block of 8 static IPv4 addresses, zero IPv6. When I was with Demon I firstly had a single IPv4 address, foc, and then I had a reasonable-sized block of static IPv4 addresses, zero IPv6.

And again, I just don't want you to be misled: Don't think solely about IPv4, it's yesterday's technology, although traces of it will obviously be around for many years to come. If you pick an ISP that hands out dynamic IPv4 addresses then what is happening in respect of your IPv6 address assignment? It's essential that you don't end up with IPv4 assignments doing 'the right thing' for you, only to find that your static IPv6 /64 or whatever is being listed somewhere. So only looking at IPv4 assignment policies would be a bad mistake. Now I have been with Andrews and Arnold for a long time and have always had a big block of static global IPv4 addresses and a static IPv6 /48. A few years ago, AA started only giving out a single IPv4 address (static, globally routable) per site because of IPv4 address exhaustion. It's free. But you can have lots of IPv6 space. As well as your initial /48, which is far more than enough anyway, you can simply get more space in the form of additional /64s by just hitting a button.

Certainly Andrews and Arnold don't report me to geolocation databases. So you would be quite safe there. If you feel let down by PN then do move. I just didn't want you to be disappointed or misled in other respects. :-) If you have any questions about policies privacy ethics just ask them, they claim to have a "no bull___" policy. You can chat with them on IRC and there's a web chat thingy, plus twitter, email, SMS. The boss of AA, RevK, is very much fired up about privacy and human rights, and you can chat to him directly eg @TheRealRevK. This is a topic that he would be very keen to discuss. You can even go and see them and extract free beer from them at the AAISPissup in a week or so's time.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 05:46:25 PM by Weaver »
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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2017, 05:48:39 PM »

Agreed with Burakkucat - I just looked at the length of that thread and despaired.
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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #10 on: March 23, 2017, 06:07:51 PM »

I looked at the links to geolocation sites that were given in that community.plus.net thread.

* Tracemyip got the isp correct but the location of the ISP was wrong.

* The iplocation.net service is the first one I've ever seen that worked. I looked up the IPv4 address of my iPad and it reported it as Broadford. I’m not in Broadford but it's the correct telephone exchange and the correct post office.

* The whatismyipaddress service failed miserably on my IPv6 address, but it got the name of the ISP correct but the ISP's location was rubbish. When I selected an option "Update your IP location", it showed results from several different database providers, and one of them was spot on. Listed me as in Heasta and that was presumably from my IPv6 /64 too.

Absolutely no reason at all to believe that this is anything at all to do with ISPs. Looking up an ISP by IP address is easy to do using RIPE's database. But beyond that getting to an individual user's site is another thing entirely.

Google, et al are possibly far more important sources of data to the geolocation service providers for all I know. We discussed this in an earlier thread. Also many users are now mobile so it isn't necessarily a question of locating premises, it could be that someone wants to locate a particular box or human.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2017, 06:18:51 PM by Weaver »
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Weaver

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2017, 06:27:40 PM »

I tried looking up the (static) IPv4 address of one of my IPads' 4G NICs and it came back as  Rickmansworth, god know where that came from. There is no support for the idea that my ISP sold someone that data.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2017, 06:35:08 PM »

My understanding is...

if anybody who connects to your WiFi has an Android phone, the likes of google will generally be able to pinpoint your IP as, when the phone connects to your WiFi, it will update them with IP address as well as any WiFis in range.   They know where every WiFi is from crowd-sourcing (and Street View) so it's easy to join the dots.  It will be available to anybody who pays Google enough dosh.

A lot of the online IP locators will be miles, or hundreds of miles, out.   But that is simply because they are basically gimics, and are not paying Google for up to date data.

Same goes for Apple and iPhones of course, without the Street View, but I believe they employ similar crowd-sourcing data, and I assume they sell it on.


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burakkucat

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2017, 06:47:39 PM »

Whenever I look at the output produced by such "utilities" for my own circuit it will get the correct ISP "family" but all locations are absolutely wrong . . . At best they are just approximations of the ISP/CP's POP.
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sevenlayermuddle

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Re: I need a certain type of isp - Recommendations Please
« Reply #14 on: March 23, 2017, 06:49:37 PM »

Whenever I look at the output produced by such "utilities" for my own circuit it will get the correct ISP "family" but all locations are absolutely wrong . . . At best they are just approximations of the ISP/CP's POP.

Am I correct in thinking you have neither an Android or iPhone connected to your WiFi?
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