General advice on broadband / WLAN wanted
Dear ALUG folks, I have moved from Germany to Norwich a couple of months ago and now I consider getting a broadband Internet connection for use with Linux (evidently on this list, I guess...). Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility. Certainly, some of you on this list have a broadband connection? I'd be interested if you could share your experience and tell me how you managed (or failed) to use a broadband package. I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features. The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too. Thanks in advance and best regards, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | *NEW* email: jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk | | *NEW* WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*
On 9/12/05, Jan T. Kim <jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk> wrote:
I have moved from Germany to Norwich a couple of months ago and now I consider getting a broadband Internet connection for use with Linux (evidently on this list, I guess...).
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Definitely do NOT buy your broadband connection from BT. Getting a phone line from them is acceptable, but you don't pay extra to get it ADSL 'enabled'. Insist on an Ethernet ADSL router - there should be zero compatibility issues with any OS that understand TCP/IP, and you can change or add things to the connection much more easily. I use PlusNet as my ISP. They're OK. Hope this helps! Tim.
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:24:47AM +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Basically, you don't want to buy broadband from BT, as they will not offer you technical support if you are using Linux (amongst other reasons). There are plenty of other ADSL suppliers who provide broadband over a BT phone line. If you already have NTL cable tv or phone then getting broadband with them could be sensible. Basically they provide you with an ethernet socket on the back of the cable box. You can then connect a router to this to connect all the other machines to.
The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too.
If you want wireless my suggestion would be to get ADSL (if you have a BT phone line) from someone like Black Cat Networks [1] (who host this mailing list and provide DNS for Alug etc.) and buy some kind of adsl router with a wireless access point built in. (Netgear, Belkin & Linksys will sell suitable routers and there are other manufacturers). The main reason I suggest Black Cat Networks is that I am very happy with their service (more so than any other ISP I have used) and so are other Aluggers who use them and Jonathan (who owns/works for/runs Black Cat) is in the pub every month for the 2nd Thursday Norwich Alug pub meet. [1] http://www.blackcatnetworks.co.uk/ Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex@jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem
Dear Adam and all others, thanks for all your replies. On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:52:37AM +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:24:47AM +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Basically, you don't want to buy broadband from BT, as they will not offer you technical support if you are using Linux (amongst other reasons).
That's a valuable bit of information, as I would have been inclined to just go ahead with BT, as I have my phone line with them and I thought that, being a big company, they should more or less have seen it all... I had some doubts, though, that perhaps as a big player, they may, on the other hand, just ignore the "non-mainstream" market. The replies you sent all seem to indicate that this is indeed the case.
There are plenty of other ADSL suppliers who provide broadband over a BT phone line. If you already have NTL cable tv or phone then getting broadband with them could be sensible. Basically they provide you with an ethernet socket on the back of the cable box. You can then connect a router to this to connect all the other machines to.
An ethernet socket sounds like a reasonable start, and if they also provide dynamic IP numbers and name servers via DHCP, that is the kind thing I'm looking for.
The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too.
If you want wireless my suggestion would be to get ADSL (if you have a BT phone line) from someone like Black Cat Networks [1] (who host this mailing list and provide DNS for Alug etc.) and buy some kind of adsl router with a wireless access point built in. (Netgear, Belkin & Linksys will sell suitable routers and there are other manufacturers).
The main reason I suggest Black Cat Networks is that I am very happy with their service (more so than any other ISP I have used) and so are other Aluggers who use them and Jonathan (who owns/works for/runs Black Cat) is in the pub every month for the 2nd Thursday Norwich Alug pub meet.
This sounds attractive to me, I would be quite inclined to go locally with a company that is known to be "Linux aware". It seems to me that the ADSL service they offer might be a bit more than what I was looking for -- e.g. I don't think I need a static IP; my main use of the connection would be shuttling files back and forth between home and work (via scp / rsync etc.), installing Debian packages, and occasional general surfing / email checking etc. But then again, a nicely working connection to the rest of the Internet may well be worth the additional costs (mainly the setup fee)... Perhaps, I should come to the pub meeting next month... that should be 13 Oct, right? Best regards & thanks again, Jan -- +- Jan T. Kim -------------------------------------------------------+ | *NEW* email: jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk | | *NEW* WWW: http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/people/jtk | *-----=< hierarchical systems are for files, not for humans >=-----*
The message <20050913203606.GF32541@jtkpc.cmp.uea.ac.uk> from "Jan T. Kim" <jtk@cmp.uea.ac.uk> contains these words: /big snip/ I'm not criticising the snipped portion...
But then again, a nicely working connection to the rest of the Internet may well be worth the additional costs (mainly the setup fee)...
Perhaps, I should come to the pub meeting next month... that should be 13 Oct, right?
You might just have a look at www.zetnet.com - where you will get Linux support. Zetnet runs Linux servers (mostly) and the Zetgod in charge is a Debian Developer. They supply broadband, and a ready-configured router/modem thingy with a built-in firewall. Most people who have used it report it's plug-and-play. There's an in-house Linux support newsgroup, and general help/support groups for more general or differently specific wossnames. I believe you get a static IP address too. For anyone with kids, there is an 'under 18' account which filters out the worst newsgroups and connects to the Littlehat Server, which is ever-so-puritanical. People are friendly, the newsgroups are generally free from bad language and flaming, and directors and staff come and chat in them. Even the owner appears from time to time. I've been with them for nearly ten years now. -- Tony http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/hi-fi/ The only way to tell when a Finn is in love with you is that they look at your feet instead of their own.
Hi Jan On Monday 12 September 2005 10:24, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
I'm on NTL - What can I say about the company... Probably best not to say anything in public. The hell desk is often difficult to get through to, they are (generally) totally ignorant of anything not connected with Bill Gates. If you do hit lucky, there are one or two guys that know of Linux, but support is unofficial & off the record.. Service wise, very little down time, probably less than 48 hours in the last two or three years I've been with them. Upload speed is pretty dire, but offset that against a 2Mbit download, I'm reasonably happy. The transparent poxy cache NTL run can produce interesting results at times.. For example, a broadband speed test returned something like 50GB/Sec recently..
I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features.
Would a basic pay as you go or a fixed low cost dialup be more cost effective ? Regards, Paul. -- From the Klingon book of C: Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
BT are not bad, it's just you get the whole shrink wrapped thing and end up paying more than with any other ISP, so avoid them as mentioned by others. BT line yes, BT service no. BT = fairly crap This may sound obvious but do not under any circumstances get AOL, my new housemate got them last year and I am just waiting for the contract to expire so I can go with plusnet instead. AOL have dirty transparent SMTP proxies which drop mail, USA registered IP addresses (which flag up security warnings when buying goods online) and a website that does not mention the DNS server IP addresses at all. AOL = crap. Also, do not under any circumstances use prodigynet http://www.prodigynet.co.uk/. They offer the cheapest static IP based 20:1 contention service around but the guy that runs it, Nick is a psycho and will not cancel your account ever! beware. Prodigynet = crapper If you fancy yourself at Linux, like a challenge and have a spare PC then you could make your own router/firewall/gateway. My home network which I share with three other students consists of an old Compaq deskpro SFF connected to a USB Thomson Speedtouch ADSL modem, broadband, a 16 port switch and a belkin wireless card. I have a full fledged IP tables based firewall/router (wired and wireless) for £100 when purchased off ebay, I can serve web pages, ftp, SSH if I want to, the possibilities are endless. The 2.6 kernel support for the Speedtouch USB modem is briliant and works like magic http://www.linux-usb.org/SpeedTouch/. Just an idea. As I said I earlier, I intend to move to plusnet as they are a fairly good ISP, I will look at blackcat first though. Jan T. Kim wrote:
Dear ALUG folks,
I have moved from Germany to Norwich a couple of months ago and now I consider getting a broadband Internet connection for use with Linux (evidently on this list, I guess...).
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Certainly, some of you on this list have a broadband connection? I'd be interested if you could share your experience and tell me how you managed (or failed) to use a broadband package. I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features.
The computer(s) to be connected are laptops (running Debian), if that makes any difference. As a next step, I'd also look into getting wireless, so I'd be interested in comments on that too.
Thanks in advance and best regards, Jan
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 12:36 +0100, David Simon Cooper wrote:
As I said I earlier, I intend to move to plusnet as they are a fairly good ISP, I will look at blackcat first though.
Sadly I have to withdraw my former recommendations of PlusNet for the following reasons. 1. In a recent change to their T's and C's Customers on the low end products may get booted after 30 minutes of line inactivity (although see reason 2) Some ADSL routers can be a little inconsistent as to automatically reconnecting so this could be a major pain to those on these products (I am on an unaffected product but this still sounds annoying) I guess a mail client that checks for new messages every 15 minutes will get around this...making the whole idea even more redundant. 2. Almost every press release or mass communication with PlusNet customers is either withdrawn, amended or contradicted in a later release....this has become something of a running joke in the user forums. 3. Speaking of the user forums, there are strong rumours that Users have had service withdrawn (not just access to the forums) for posting repeated negative (non abusive) comments about PlusNet's service. 4. They have amended the T's and C's to include traffic shaping, but they refuse to release details of the shaping rules or any further details about this, which accounts are shaped or if the shaping is only present at peak times. 5. They have a really vague policy on the download caps on their network for the premier accounts. Leaving some customers like myself not sure whether they are capped or not. It seems that the Premier service is capped at 100GB a month (which is pretty generous as I use about 5-6 on average) but it's a vague soft cap that has never been announced to anyone other than those that have exceeded it....the cap is way above my usage but some clear notification as to it's presence would be helpful. 6. The extra value services (like site hosting, Usenet servers, Forums, Site builder etc) are all oversubscribed/under-provisioned, meaning that the only reason to go for the premier service is that you may or may not have a cap and you get around the brain dead idle disconnect business. It's a shame because technically their service is pretty good, I have had no connection outages or problems to speak of, and the few questions I have had to put to their support have been answered swiftly. But they just keep changing their minds about the service you get - Capped, not capped, interesting fair usage policy (now withdrawn) Free 8MB MaxDSL upgrades (now withdrawn). At one point last month I vowed into migrating, but then as if by chance the free 2MB upgrade I was promised in April appeared and I decided that the pain I would suffer in changing email addresses moving a few sites hosted on their service etc was not worth the bother until I move house or something. Personally I would look around on ADSLGuide before using Plusnet
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:24:15PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
As I said I earlier, I intend to move to plusnet as they are a fairly good ISP, I will look at blackcat first though.
Sadly I have to withdraw my former recommendations of PlusNet for the following reasons.
To me it sounds like they are being crap still... I once had a plusnet (well, force9) account, it was closed back in late 2000. They hosted my domain and would usually manage to screw up the MX records once a month resulting in me losing mail. At another point they managed to screw up my authentication details for the friaco dialup, despite phoning them daily for 2 weeks it never got sorted until one night when I was *very* drunk I called them up and just so happened to get hold of a sysadmin who was working late, after 3 minutes of talking to him the problem was solved. Basically the helldesk were not escalating calls, at one point telling me that Plusnet "don't use TCP/IP, it is non-standard" when asked what they did use they told me it was "in house customised software". Anyhow after a few months of this (and exploding news servers, and failing Sun machines that resulted in more lost mail that they couldn't get fixed for a few *days* I got rather annoyed and left them, but recently they started sending me mail about "my account" after emailing them about 12 times telling them to stop spamming me I got hold of a person who said "if you want to close your account you must phone customer services" or similar. After a 30 minute wait on the phone I spoke to someone who told me that they had screwed up closing my account *5* years ago and that is why they were spamming me, even then the tech support guy was really rude and condescending on the phone and apparently it "wasn't our fault" but "that happens sometimes because of our systems". Truely, they are the *worst* isp I have ever had the misfortune to suffer (with the possible exception of an ISP I once worked for). Thanks Adam -- jabberid = quinophex@jabber.earth.li AFFS || http://www.affs.org.uk/ || Not a filesystem
Plusnet "don't use TCP/IP, it is non-standard"
Blimey, plusnet developed their own ethernet stack!...lol
Truely, they are the *worst* isp I have ever had the misfortune to suffer (with the possible exception of an ISP I once worked for).
It looks like my search for a new ISP will go on then! Cheers Adam Bower wrote:
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 10:24:15PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
As I said I earlier, I intend to move to plusnet as they are a fairly good ISP, I will look at blackcat first though.
Sadly I have to withdraw my former recommendations of PlusNet for the following reasons.
To me it sounds like they are being crap still... I once had a plusnet (well, force9) account, it was closed back in late 2000. They hosted my domain and would usually manage to screw up the MX records once a month resulting in me losing mail. At another point they managed to screw up my authentication details for the friaco dialup, despite phoning them daily for 2 weeks it never got sorted until one night when I was *very* drunk I called them up and just so happened to get hold of a sysadmin who was working late, after 3 minutes of talking to him the problem was solved. Basically the helldesk were not escalating calls, at one point telling me that Plusnet "don't use TCP/IP, it is non-standard" when asked what they did use they told me it was "in house customised software".
Anyhow after a few months of this (and exploding news servers, and failing Sun machines that resulted in more lost mail that they couldn't get fixed for a few *days* I got rather annoyed and left them, but recently they started sending me mail about "my account" after emailing them about 12 times telling them to stop spamming me I got hold of a person who said "if you want to close your account you must phone customer services" or similar. After a 30 minute wait on the phone I spoke to someone who told me that they had screwed up closing my account *5* years ago and that is why they were spamming me, even then the tech support guy was really rude and condescending on the phone and apparently it "wasn't our fault" but "that happens sometimes because of our systems".
Truely, they are the *worst* isp I have ever had the misfortune to suffer (with the possible exception of an ISP I once worked for).
Thanks Adam
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 23:40 +0100, David Simon Cooper wrote:
Plusnet "don't use TCP/IP, it is non-standard"
Blimey, plusnet developed their own ethernet stack!...lol
Gotta love first line support, reminds me of my dealings with BT (we don't support anything without a MS license sticker) Me (pretending to be running Windows XP Pro) BT Customer support "ok sir if you can open the control panel" Me (cd /etc) "Ok done that" It did go horribly wrong a few times when I (from memory) gave them the wrong error box, or described the wrong GUI feedback as I converted it in realtime from the Linux error logs I was seeing. Usually I played the "sorry the line is breaking up, can you repeat that" game as I frantically tried to get my (unconnected) windows laptop to a similar point in the configuration...fun times
Classic, I remember the time when this Compaq dealer phoned trying to sell us some windows NT servers with Exchange, he wanted to speak to my boss (as he had spoke before) but I was determined to not pass him on, I tried to get rid of him and he was like this is my name, office and mobile number. I pretended to write it all down to get the call over with and just as I was about to say goodbye........he asked me to read back the details he just gave me! ....Busted! I think I just hung up with embarassment. At PC world, a guy was in front of me in the returns queue and I heard some script kiddie worker telling him that the hard drive could be fixed but it would need to be sent to........a lab containing a room with no air in it! I did not know that PC world staff had access to an Interstellar Medium! very clever. I think NASA would be interested with PC world offering this service on earth. Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 23:40 +0100, David Simon Cooper wrote:
Plusnet "don't use TCP/IP, it is non-standard"
Blimey, plusnet developed their own ethernet stack!...lol
Gotta love first line support, reminds me of my dealings with BT (we don't support anything without a MS license sticker)
Me (pretending to be running Windows XP Pro) BT Customer support "ok sir if you can open the control panel" Me (cd /etc) "Ok done that"
It did go horribly wrong a few times when I (from memory) gave them the wrong error box, or described the wrong GUI feedback as I converted it in realtime from the Linux error logs I was seeing. Usually I played the "sorry the line is breaking up, can you repeat that" game as I frantically tried to get my (unconnected) windows laptop to a similar point in the configuration...fun times
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On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 22:53 +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
Truely, they are the *worst* isp I have ever had the misfortune to suffer (with the possible exception of an ISP I once worked for).
The worst ISP for me was BTBroadband. Days of outages, A service status hotline that told lies, Two months from installation (this was in the early days of ADSL when an engineer had to actually come and visit) before I could get authentication. Laughable News Servers and best of all a spam filter that used to mark BT's own service notifications, billing reminders and postmaster administration mail as Spam....priceless. The best ISP I had was also my first one, Abel Internet. I used them back in the days before freeswerve when you had to pay a quarterly access fee AND local dial up rates. But Abel forgot to charge me after the first bill. Being an honest sort of chap after the 2nd missed bill I called them, they guy on the other end just laughed and said "don't worry mate" I had that connection free for about 4-5 years and every so often I used to call and check I wasn't going to get landed with a huge bill at the end. I've lost the access details now, but I sometimes wonder if that account is still active. Strangely they still charge for 0845 access and are a little expensive on Broadband, otherwise I would still be using them.
I concur with the remarks made about Plusnet. I've been with Plusnet for two years without problems but, as has been said, I'm getting really peeved at the way they keep changing their terms and conditions and so have decided to migrate to Freedom2Surf. This will take place on the 27th of this month so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. My ADSL speed was increased very recently by Plusnet, without charge, and I will keep that as Freedom2Surf give 512k to 2MB at the same cost. On 2005.09.12 22:24, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 12:36 +0100, David Simon Cooper wrote:
As I said I earlier, I intend to move to plusnet as they are a
fairly good ISP, I will look at blackcat first though.
Sadly I have to withdraw my former recommendations of PlusNet for the following reasons.
1. In a recent change to their T's and C's Customers on the low end products may get booted after 30 minutes of line inactivity (although see reason 2) Some ADSL routers can be a little inconsistent as to automatically reconnecting so this could be a major pain to those on these products (I am on an unaffected product but this still sounds annoying) I guess a mail client that checks for new messages every 15 minutes will get around this...making the whole idea even more redundant.
<snip> -- Barry Samuels http://www.beenthere-donethat.org.uk The Unofficial Guide to Great Britain
Jan T. Kim wrote:
Dear ALUG folks,
I have moved from Germany to Norwich a couple of months ago and now I consider getting a broadband Internet connection for use with Linux (evidently on this list, I guess...).
Hi Jan, welcome to sunny Norfolk.
Certainly, some of you on this list have a broadband connection? I'd be interested if you could share your experience and tell me how you managed (or failed) to use a broadband package. I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features.
I have in my time used three ADSL providers - Pipex, Pronet and E7Even. I can't speak for Pipex (http://www.pipex.net) any more as I had their service when ADSL was first enabled in the Norwich exchanges way back when. At that time there were regular, extended outages and regular routing and DNS problems so I dropped them when I moved out to the sticks. I now use Pronet (http://www.pro-net.co.uk) at work (don't have much say on that - they provide a managed service for our company) and although they are pretty reliable its prohibitively expensive for a home user. I use E7Even (http://www.e7even.com) at home and I am very happy with their service, although they are not geared up for a huge amount of Linux support they do use Linux and BSD boxes for their servers and also provide email support if you are capable of describing your problem in as much of a OS independent way. The biggest advantages for me were the static IP address provided and the setup for payment - you pay annually (you can pay every 6 months or 3 months IIRC, but pay a premium for doing so) and regularly receive offers to extend your subscription for a reduced fee - I just added 10 months for £50 on a 512k line. They also provide a dial-up backup service, and provide support for KPPP on their web site to help you get connected. The status page on the web site is one of the more useful I have found - it tends to be updated quickly when there is a fault, but they can take a while to take the faults off when they are resolved. Another plus point - you get extra subscription time if you recommend-a-friend who signs up (my referral code is 701738). They will provide a router with your sign-up, but I would suggest you look for something elsewhere as their prices for hardware are not so great - somewhere like http://www.ebuyer.com would almost certainly get you a better price and better product at the end of the day. If you are happy to pay up front rather than monthly, I would certainly recommend E7Even. Hope this helps, Jim Rippon (no affiliation to any company mentioned)
On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 10:24 +0100, Jan T. Kim wrote:
Dear ALUG folks,
Looking at the offers by BT and NTL, I have not been quite able to determine what hardware is provided with the packages offered. For example, the most basic package from BT is advertised as "Not Mac compatible", but I've not been able to figure out what causes this incompatibility.
Certainly, some of you on this list have a broadband connection? I'd be interested if you could share your experience and tell me how you managed (or failed) to use a broadband package. I'm most interested in the basic ones -- having Internet access at work (UEA), I don't need huge download capacity, web space or other add-on features.
Thanks in advance and best regards, Jan Hi Jan,
I run NTL via a stand alone cable modem, free from NTL. I have a BT phone and freeview TV, so nothing else from NTL. At the moment they are offering 1 meg for just £9.99 per month. I run mine through a Belkon 4 way Ethernet router. I have had this setup for several years now and have never had any complaints with it, or reason to use the helpline. I am running Ubuntu 5.10 (preview edition) and, as with all versions of Linux, the cable connection is recognised and configured automatically during install. Hope this helps. Regards, Peter.
participants (11)
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Adam Bower -
Anthony Anson -
Barry Samuels -
David Simon Cooper -
Jan T. Kim -
Jim Rippon -
Paul -
Peter Hunter -
Steve Engledow -
Tim Green -
Wayne Stallwood