ENTAnet and OpenVPN

EntaNet explicitly lowers the priority of UDP packets, treating all UDP
data as P2P. I have recently received confirmation from EntaNet that
it has no intention of removing this restriction for OpenVPN traffic
(UDP/1194) even though staff there acknowledge that it is a VPN service.

I've instead been advised that I should change my package from a Home
based one to a Business based one. There are a number of reasons why I
don't want to do this, but I would say that the biggest one is the drop
from 30GB/month to 15GB/month "peak" usage for a (small) increase in cost.

Rather than this simply being a general whinge, I'm going to ask whether
anyone "out there" can confirm how their ISP treats UDP/1194 OpenVPN
data, please? (I see four options: dropped on the floor, lumped in with
all P2P traffic, prioritised as VPN traffic, or simply left alone.)

Other things that would influence my decision to change ISPs (i.e. stuff
I use right now) are,

* Decent technical support on the rare occasions when I need it
* Cost (up to £20/month, inc VAT)
* SIP traffic from/to Sipgate and Betamax clones
* Static IP
* Custom rDNS entry
* Ability to deliver SMTP directly
* Ability to run my own SMTP service
* Ability to run my own other services, e.g. web, ssh, ntp


Thanks
Chris

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Chris Davies <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>EntaNet explicitly lowers the priority of UDP packets, treating all UDP
>data as P2P. I have recently received confirmation from EntaNet that
>it has no intention of removing this restriction for OpenVPN traffic
>(UDP/1194) even though staff there acknowledge that it is a VPN service.
>
>I've instead been advised that I should change my package from a Home
>based one to a Business based one. There are a number of reasons why I
>don't want to do this, but I would say that the biggest one is the drop
>from 30GB/month to 15GB/month "peak" usage for a (small) increase in cost.

Did they say it applies to just the home products, or both home and
business, and did they say all UDP or just port 1194?

I'm VERY interested in this, because if it's true for the business
products then it's time for me to move myself and all my customers
(I'm a reseller) off them...

Gordon

On 17/08/10 11:48, Chris Davies wrote:
> EntaNet explicitly lowers the priority of UDP packets, treating all UDP
> data as P2P. I have recently received confirmation from EntaNet that
> it has no intention of removing this restriction for OpenVPN traffic
> (UDP/1194) even though staff there acknowledge that it is a VPN service.

OpenVPN can be configured to use TCP rather than UDP. Is this an
option for you ?

Gordon Henderson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Did they say it applies to just the home products, or both home and
> business, and did they say all UDP or just port 1194?

I didn't enquire whether it really applied only to home products, but
there's an implication that it does not apply to business products given
that's what they want me to migrate to.

I was told initally that VPN traffic was prioritised. But later in another
email, "The port that you are using [1194] is one of the unrecognised
ports and may be subject to the shaping policy".

In practical terms, I get no slowdown with tcp/1194 even at the same
moments that udp/1194 is reaching 98%+ packet loss.


> I'm VERY interested in this, because if it's true for the business
> products then it's time for me to move myself and all my customers
> (I'm a reseller) off them...

If you contact me by email (reply-to is valid) then I can let you have
copies of my parts of the conversation along with suitably edited replies
from Enta. I suspect it's not of relevance to most other people here.

Chris

Andrew Benham <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> OpenVPN can be configured to use TCP rather than UDP. Is this an
> option for you ?

It's certainly an option. But I don't really enjoy running TCP over TCP
(it's fine until you hit congestion on the link, and then the multiple
back-offs start to interfere with each other. Ugh).

Thanks,
Chris

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:48:00 +0100, Chris Davies wrote:
> EntaNet explicitly lowers the priority of UDP packets, treating all UDP
> data as P2P. I have recently received confirmation from EntaNet that
> it has no intention of removing this restriction for OpenVPN traffic
> (UDP/1194) even though staff there acknowledge that it is a VPN service.

You always have the option of using a different port for your OpenVPN
traffic - maybe something that looks similar to SIP/RTP, pptp or IPSec
nat-traversal might work better.

Of course, switching ISP might be the better long term option...


Christof

--
http://cmeerw.org sip:cmeerw at cmeerw.org
mailto:cmeerw at cmeerw.org xmpp:cmeerw at cmeerw.org

Meanwhile, at the uk.telecom.broadband Job Justification Hearings, Chris
Davies chose the tried and tested strategy of:

> Rather than this simply being a general whinge, I'm going to ask whether
> anyone "out there" can confirm how their ISP treats UDP/1194 OpenVPN
> data, please? (I see four options: dropped on the floor, lumped in with
> all P2P traffic, prioritised as VPN traffic, or simply left alone.)

Using OpenVPN from one Be connection to another, I would say it's the latter
as I've never noticed an issue, but I've put it on Smokeping and will let
you know.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
21:52:55 up 4 days, 40 min, 6 users, load average: 0.04, 0.02, 0.01
Qua illic est accuso, illic est a vindicatum

alexd <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Using OpenVPN from one Be connection to another, I would say it's the
> latter as I've never noticed an issue, but I've put it on Smokeping
> and will let you know.

I appreciate the involvement. Thank you.
Chris

On Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:48:00 +0100, Chris Davies
<chris-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>EntaNet explicitly lowers the priority of UDP packets, treating all UDP
>data as P2P. I have recently received confirmation from EntaNet that
>it has no intention of removing this restriction for OpenVPN traffic
>(UDP/1194) even though staff there acknowledge that it is a VPN service.
>
>I've instead been advised that I should change my package from a Home
>based one to a Business based one. There are a number of reasons why I
>don't want to do this, but I would say that the biggest one is the drop
>from 30GB/month to 15GB/month "peak" usage for a (small) increase in cost.
>
>Rather than this simply being a general whinge, I'm going to ask whether
>anyone "out there" can confirm how their ISP treats UDP/1194 OpenVPN
>data, please? (I see four options: dropped on the floor, lumped in with
>all P2P traffic, prioritised as VPN traffic, or simply left alone.)
>
i use Cisco + Nortel VPNs from home.

virgin media dont seem to care what ports are used - all traffic
treated the same.

there is a "fair use" traffic control scheme - use above a threshhold
and your bandwidth for both upload and download is reduced.

having said that on a 10 Mbps link you need to download more than
1Gbyte over a few hours to trigger it.

1 thing to watch is the upload speed is not very high compared to ADSL
2+ services - and that gets reduced under traffic control as well.
http://help.virginmedia.com/system/s...RTICLE_ID=2781

>Other things that would influence my decision to change ISPs (i.e. stuff
>I use right now) are,
>
> * Decent technical support on the rare occasions when I need it
> * Cost (up to £20/month, inc VAT)
> * SIP traffic from/to Sipgate and Betamax clones
> * Static IP
> * Custom rDNS entry
> * Ability to deliver SMTP directly
> * Ability to run my own SMTP service
> * Ability to run my own other services, e.g. web, ssh, ntp
>
>
>Thanks
>Chris
--
Regards

(E-Mail Removed) - replace xyz with ntl

The only difference between the two routes is the OpenVPN one is 2ms slower,
which stands to reason. So from that I draw the conclusion that Be aren't
doing anything silly to it, but of course they may change their minds in the
future.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
12:31:16 up 13 days, 15:19, 6 users, load average: 0.08, 0.04, 0.01
Qua illic est accuso, illic est a vindicatum