My ADSL migration experiance

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I have finally freed myself of the evil ISP that is Bulldog, and recently discovered its a part of cable and wireless, might explain why it sucks

My migration order to Zen was filled on Saturday meaning no work would start until monday, sure enough on monday my order reached stage 2, passed to BT, now the Zen automated system stops there and awaits a date from BT before it proceeds, BT estimate 5 days
however monday night while i'm asleep, my ADSL goes down, its down all night, down all day tuesday, and when I contact Bulldog they are unsure why
I got through to Zen and apparantly, my line has fully migrated, in under 24 hours, good job BT, but try and let us know next time

I got an 8 IP address block for true NAT capabilities, but by the time i lose the network/broadcast/router I may well sign up for the 16 block or 32 if I can justify it to RIPE

The Zen guys seem very technical, I was cursing just last night that I would rather be on hold 10 minutes for a competant tech rather than get picked up immediatly and have to deal with someone who doesnt even know what LCP-Up and PPPoA mean

Sure enough after 6 minutes on hold I got through to a smart person
When I get home I will test it out and let you know if it actually works, but baiscally it seems my routers trying to connect to Zen with bulldog credentials, as they are getting an 'invalid password' flag show up

Heres to a new ISP, 1 month contracts, and multiple IPs!

 

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Oh well, not long before I'm upgraded to Blueyonder's 10mbit! It'll be interesting to see whether it will actuall be "10mbit"...mind you there 2mbit service has been excellent!

 

on a side note i qualify fo 24MB from Be (whoever the hell they are)
however my decision of ISP is not based on throughput, as its not the most important decision

Blueyonder are a very good ISP, and good to thier customers, unfortunatly I cant get cable where i live

Be are an unheard of company for me, who activly mention on thier website that there call center is in india to save money (granted they may well pass it onto the customer, but the few times a decade i actually have to call tech support I want someone who speaks english, and doesnt need me to repeat myself 5 times before they understand it), your also tied into a 1 year contract, Zens policy (as well as other ISPs) is we keep our customers by being good, not by hooking them in to a contract, something I agree with and respect

24mb for 20 quid? sounds great
the reality is likely a bit different

 

like drum_dude am also waiting on Telewest bringing out the 10Mb connection...ah it will be heaven, just think a 5MB file will be downloaded in less than 10 secs!!! lets see...a 5MB file on a 10Mb connection, so we're talking about 1MB/sec damn better make that about 5s!!! but well done on the migration Phoenix... shame u cant Blueyonder tho...but when 24Mb arrives u will be laughing...

 

24mb has arrived mate
and i could of chosen to use it
but i put more faith in having a good isp than having a super fast connection
Zen are however part of the DSLMax trial which is BT Wholesale to 8mb, so I may get lucky

 

Zen are very good Phoenix as you are now discovering. I have used them and reccomended them several times in the past. I recently was lured away by a promotional offer from Pipex, more speed, cheaper overall price, and I regret changing now. I'm gonna switch back to Zen asap.

 

yeah you get what you pay for
zens network is beefy, its support is second to none, it throttles nothing, blocks nothing, just the way a true power user ISP should be

 

Yeah, the only thing I am slightly worried about is that people are ditching Pipex in droves to switch to Zen as they are truly 'unlimited'. I just hope Zen don't go the way of Pipex who now 'shape' and 'manage' their trafic if you are a heavy downloader. So they don't limit the amount you download, but they make it pointless to have an account, because it drops to modem like speeds at peak times.

I'm not actually a regular heavy downloader, but occationally I need to download or upload allot, like I have in the last week or so, and I think my account is being 'managed' now.

Pipex are just charlatans basically. In my opinion anyway.

 

pipex are geared at consumers, the ones who thing pure mb is the be all and end all
zen will maintian its status or it will lose its customers, its selling point (and the reason it gets away with its prices) are because of its policies, if it changes them, why would i (or anyone) pay a premium anymore?

 

Ryan, can you explain this in Boyce terms if you don't mind

 

I dont have 32 toes boyce!


LOL j/k mate


Basically with an ISP you get a single IP assigned to your router/adsl modem whatever
its often dynamic too, ie it changes, but sometimes static (its yours till you change ISPs)

if you use a USB modem, then you pretty much give your PC a globally addressable IP, ie, i can ping your pc provided you dont have a firewall

if you use a router than you move into a mode called PAT or Port Address Translation, what this does is use one ip and the port (collectivly known as a socket) to know what goes where, say it initiates a connection and assigns a random port of 34535 to the socket, when it recieves a packet back on the same port, it checks its PAT table and goes 'oooo i know where that goes' voila, hence how you can have networks with many inside hosts, but only one globally addressable IP (this is sometimes refurred to as NAT (incorrectly))

NAT is Network Address translation, and there are many different variations which I wont go into, but its similar to PAT, but on a more advanced level

by recieving a /29 block of addresses (thats I can assign upto 5 global addresses to various machines on my network via static 1-1 nat translation global.ip.address -> server1.internal.address and still use a 'catch all' address for the rest of the networks internet requirements

the reason you only get 5 usable addresses is the following
1 is the network address,
1 is the broadcast address,
1 is assigned to the router (hence cant be assigned somewhere else)
leaving me 5 addresses to play with

I run a dual nat configuration whereby global addresses are NATed on the front firewall to DMZ addresses (10.x.x.x) which are NATed again on the ISA server to my internal range (172.x.x.x)

er, i wont go into more detail here, wrong section
check out wikipedia for PAT and NAT for more light shedding

the short version if you know what NAT is and wasnt asking about that part is...

I have 8 IPs that my router can assign at will
I may upgrade to 16 IPs or 32IPs (unlikely) but for those you need to file an IP justification form with RIPE, as is the case with any requests for the coveted IPv4 addresses

bear in mind im shite at explaining shite, and not always right anyway, otherwise id make a killing selling mcse courses for 4k :P
so bear with me, lol

 

Nice explanation Phoenix

 

Ryan,

Thanks for the explanation matey. Have a beer on me.