Dial up or Broadband?

[Lindsay]

Demon broadband is PANTS
There's no support whatsoever, and their helpline is staffed by school kids.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Lindsay

Demon broadband is PANTS
There's no support whatsoever, and their helpline is staffed by school kids.

Well it's very easy to switch ISP these days. Many of them will take an online "migration" type order, where they handle the switch in its entirety for you. You have to get a code from your current ISP (a MAC - Migration Authorisation Code I think it is) which you give to the new one, and they switch the service over.

I only lost about half a day of connectivity when I switched from Flyer Internet (good support but terribly slow line) to Zen (good support so far and pretty quick).

And they were pretty apologetic, so I think it's supposed to be even more seamless than that.

Chris

[philsmove]

Well it's very easy to switch ISP these days.

Not, if you are unfortunate enough to be with BT open world, is isn’t

I am in the process of switching

BT take 2 weeks to “disconnect you “ (even if you are already disconnected because you have moved and kept the same phone number)

After you have been “disconnected” you have to wait 3 days for the disconnection to become effective

Then you have to settle any outstanding fees on your contract before they will release the line to another ISP and don’t believe the installation date form the new ISP


And don’t bother taking to Oftel they don’t cover broadband

I f you rely on broadband for work and are going to change, do it one a new line and get it working before you disconnect the old one

[Gus]

Originally Posted by Will

I've got a 2 Meg pipe from Bulldog. Fortunately my job pays for that so I can "Work from Home".

Will, is this yet another cunning ploy by your co-workers to keep you away from the office as much as possible?

[Zebra Woman]

I was on NTL's free wirelss broadband trial, which was fabulous. You get a box to go on your roof and there is a mast about five miles away which you need to have line of sight to. Sadly ,the service was deemed commercially unviable and so the trial was stopped mid Sept. Since then I've been on dial up.

I ordered NTL freeserve over a month ago .....NTL says they're waiting for BT to do something to the phone line

Do you know my broadband was cut off when I changed my sig......spooky
I am certainly experiencing the dark right now

Originally Posted by ChrisA

I had a thing through the door today from Bulldog... I noticed they are now offering static IP addresses (for an extra fiver a month ), which, when they didn't, ruled them out of my ISP short list before.

I've also looked through their T&C and AUP, and I can't find any reference to banning locally hosted servers any more either, which ISTR they did before.

???
You have completely parted my hair there Chris ....

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by philsmove

Not, if you are unfortunate enough to be with BT open world, is isn’t

I am in the process of switching
<snip>

don’t believe the installation date form the new ISP

Sounds awful. I was quite fortunate in the early days - I didn't go with BT cos they didn't do static IPs.

Who are you moving to?

[Dreadful Scathe]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Sounds awful. I was quite fortunate in the early days - I didn't go with BT cos they didn't do static IPs.

Who are you moving to?

well thats one thing is demons favour, they've always given static ip addresses. I still remember mine from my dial up days Im not worried about a static ip anymore as if I am running a server I can find out what the new ip address is because I am always connected via a VPN connection to work which is a static ip, so I can find it out manually. An alternative is to use something like zoneedit here which will allow you to have a permanent address. i.e. myaddress.com is always mapped to your REAL ip address and as that changes you can reflect that change and keep myaddress.com current. Read through that zoneedit link for more on this .
Im pretty sure most ISPs have 'no local servers' in their T's and C's (although they would only police that for busy FTP servers and the like Im sure, they certainly dont care about KaZaa et al) exceptions are Demon (afaik) and Andrews and Arnold who specifically say they dont care (up to a point of course they may eventually have words if you are hogging bandwidth). You CAN get a static ip from BT though - see here, but it is for business broadband of course .

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Zebra Woman

You have completely parted my hair there Chris ....

Sorry.

ISP = Internet Service Provider
ISTR = I seem to recall

T&C = Terms and Conditions
AUP = Acceptable Use Policy


These latter two are the fine print that no one ever reads when signing up to an ISP.

Most of T&C docs say basically that you have to pay, and they don't guarantee any level of service, and if it's crap then it's the line provider's fault not the ISP's.

The AUPs mostly say that you mustn't do anything bad using their service. So nothing illegal, no spamming people, and no attempts to hack into other people's networks. Sometimes they say that they'll smack you about a bit if they think you're downloading too much stuff, but they cunningly leave it open to interpretation as to how much is too much.

All fine, unless you're into w4r3z or c411d pr0n, but quite a few ISPs also state that you can't run any servers (eg web servers) that are exposed to the public internet. And given that I host a couple of web sites locally on my PC, any ISPs enforcing such a ban are no good to me so I have to actually read the fine print before signing up with any of 'em.

A bit retentive, but there you go

Chris

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe

Im pretty sure most ISPs have 'no local servers' in their T's and C's

Yeah, lots do, but some don't. Zen don't. That's why I'm with them now.

They do block ports 137-139, though, which I didn't discover till after I'd signed up with them, and is mildly inconvenient.

Chris

[Zebra Woman]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

ISP = Internet Service Provider
ISTR = I seem to recall

T&C = Terms and Conditions
AUP = Acceptable Use Policy

I was OK with 'ISP' but wrongly assumed the rest were computer related, and none of them were ...oops

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe

You CAN get a static ip from BT though - see here, but it is for business broadband of course .

Gawd. I looked up the price... 47 quid a month inc VAT for a basic 512k service.

I'm paying Zen 25 quid a month inc. VAT for 512k, which includes 8 static IPs, and all the web-based mail access that the more enlightened ISPs are offering now.

Chris

[Dreadful Scathe]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

Gawd. I looked up the price... 47 quid a month inc VAT for a basic 512k service.

I'm paying Zen 25 quid a month inc. VAT for 512k, which includes 8 static IPs, and all the web-based mail access that the more enlightened ISPs are offering now.

Chris

Yeah you can get anything you want if you want to pay for it I didnt know about Zen sounds very good to me!

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe

I didnt know about Zen sounds very good to me!

I trawled around http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ for ages checking out the various providers.

It's the best place to go that I've found if you want to compare them - and there's quite a good beginners guide to it all as well there.

Chris

[Will]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

I had a thing through the door today from Bulldog... I noticed they are now offering static IP addresses (for an extra fiver a month ), which, when they didn't, ruled them out of my ISP short list before.

I forgot to mention that my £40 includes a static ip address. Why do you want a static ip address anyway? Am I to take it from your questions that you are planing to host your own website?

As far as I know Bulldog aren't blocking any ports.

Will

[djtrev]

I have just read thro this whole thread and suddenly realised that I hardly understood a word of it.It just shows how addicted one gets to sites like this;you have to read everything because you are frightened of missing something.
I think I had better stick to dj/dance related threads in future.

[Stubob]

I have just switched today from dial-up to broadband I was on the Virgin £12.49 unlimited dial-up service but have switched to their 512kbit/s £17.99 limited broadband service. I figure that an extra £5.00/month is not much more to pay for a faster always-on.

I am using a Netgear Router so that I can have both my PC and Mac connected at the same time. The Router was only £35.00 off EBuyer and also acts as a Modem, Switch and Firewall.

Because most ISPs are now offering broadband at under £20.00, I believe a lot more people will be tempted to switch from dial-up to broadband.

Stuart

[djtrev]

Sorry this is not on topic but it might get me out of a bit of a jam.

Dreadful scathe,what is the typeface that you are using at the bottom of your posts-the piece about question marks?
The reason I ask is that I can hardly read it which suggests I have a dodgy font

[Dreadful Scathe]

Originally Posted by djtrev

Sorry this is not on topic but it might get me out of a bit of a jam.

Dreadful scathe,what is the typeface that you are using at the bottom of your posts-the piece about question marks?
The reason I ask is that I can hardly read it which suggests I have a dodgy font

the only stipulation as far as the forum goes is that it is set to size=1 the actual font will depend upon the style you are using to view the forum in - i dont know if the smallest size looks ok in other styles as Ive not looked.

[djtrev]

I'm still having trouble with that bottom line.All other typeface seems to be ok.
Anyone else got any suggestions,please

[Gadget]

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