From Entanet to Murphx - good move?

My ISP, ADSL24, has written to saying that they are leaving Entanet and
moving to "Murphx".

I am told that "Murphx recently won ISP of the Year 2009 at the Comms
Business Awards and are currently ranked the 5th fastest growing
internet service provider by Plimsoll independent research."

But there doesn't seem to have been a mention of them on uk.telecom
since 2007 (and only three threads ever). Does that mean that they are
an exemplary provider who never gives cause for comment, or that they
are too small to have much visibility? (You could be "fastest-growing"
by going from miniscule to tiny: 1 user to 10 would be 900% growth).

Any experiences of Murphx?

John Geddes

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

> I am told that "Murphx recently won ISP of the Year 2009 at the Comms
> Business Awards

I wouldn't take any notice of anything in Comms Business. Most of the
articles in the magazine are about or by the advertisers in, and the
subscribers to, the magazine, and as such its editorial independence is
doubtful in my mind.

> But there doesn't seem to have been a mention of them on uk.telecom
> since 2007 (and only three threads ever).

They're a white-label reseller of BT, C&W and ex-Tiscali LLU, so not many
posters here are likely to have dealt with them directly [or would mention
it if they had].

> Any experiences of Murphx?

I've worked for a couple of their resellers and customers have generally
been happy with their service. Massive network-wide outages are few and far
between compared to, say, Griffin [another white labeller].

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
21:07:01 up 13 days, 8 min, 5 users, load average: 0.01, 0.01, 0.00
DIMENSION-CONTROLLING FORT DOH HAS NOW BEEN DEMOLISHED,
AND TIME STARTED FLOWING REVERSELY

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:022f08be-7e47-4ee9-a979-(E-Mail Removed)...
> The reason that not many people have heard of us is that we are a
> wholesale connectivity provider, providing resilient, scalable and
> robust solutions.
>

What does this mean?

Does it mean they are separate from the BT and Entanet systems, and like Be
with their own equipment and network?
Regards
David

In article <022f08be-7e47-4ee9-a979-(E-Mail Removed)>,
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>The reliable and resilient infrastructure is the underlying strength
>of the murphx business. The ability to manage and control the entire
>network point to point ensures guaranteed service levels and
>dependability for customers, this, coupled with leading edge
>technology gives us an edge over our competitors.

I'm curious about your ability to "control the entire network point to
point" when you have no choice but to go over the BT Wholesale network
from exchanges that have no LLU equipment - such as mine.

Can you provide more details?

Thanks,

Gordon
(Presently an Entanet reseller FWIW)

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> The reliable and resilient infrastructure is the underlying strength
> of the murphx business. The ability to manage and control the entire
> network point to point ensures guaranteed service levels and
> dependability for customers, this, coupled with leading edge
> technology gives us an edge over our competitors.
>
Straight off the meaningless gobbledygook glossy that tells me precisely
nothing about anything.

How about real life statistics, like percentage of customers suffering
more than 30 secs of reduced traffic, or mean outage time across all
customers as a percentage of total customer minutes. Or longest time
customer has had to wait, unable to use the service, or get through to a
support person who is capable of supporting more than Chelsea.

David wrote:
>
>
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> news:022f08be-7e47-4ee9-a979-(E-Mail Removed)...
>> The reason that not many people have heard of us is that we are a
>> wholesale connectivity provider, providing resilient, scalable and
>> robust solutions.
>>
>
> What does this mean?
>

nothing.

> Does it mean they are separate from the BT and Entanet systems, and like
> Be with their own equipment and network?
> Regards
> David

In article <935a17cd-2369-4376-b762-(E-Mail Removed)>,
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Hi Gordon,
>
>I'm curious about your ability to "control the entire network point
>to
>point" when you have no choice but to go over the BT Wholesale
>network
>from exchanges that have no LLU equipment - such as mine.
>
>We have connections with BT for 20C, 21C Cable and Wireless and
>Tiscali, all are interconnected via L2TP through various points of
>presence on our network, we own our own core network, with three
>independant locations within London docklands, murphx operate 3
>redundant, independent locations in London Docklands each with their
>own carrier connectivity and central pipe capacity. As well as this
>murphx have a number of points of presence around the UK to terminate
>client services.

Well, I'll have to go and do some more reading then (of BT wholesale
interconnect mechanisms) - I still don't understand how you can have
absolute control over the data, contention, etc. from my exchange in
rural Devon right into your network - My exchange dos not have LLU (never
will), so the data must go via the BT wholesale network to get to you,
and if it's going over the BT wholesale network, then it's going to be
subject to contention, or whatever other metric is applied these days.

And if it is the case that you do have that high level of control,
then why is anyone ever bothering with LLU? Why bother paying for C&W
and Tiscali's LLU platforms when you can go direct from the end-user
into your network via the BTW network, having the ability to control it
"point to point"?

>Our platforms and associated services are owned, operated and fully
>managed by murphx. The network, hardware and software systems have
>been designed from the ground up to be fully resilient, scalable and
>to provide ease of management and maintenance.

But so are everyone elses - after they leave the BT wholesale network.
*My* network (of servers) is owned, operated and fully managed by me,
I have designed the software, hardware from the ground up too - that's
a relatively easy statement to make. (Even if it's not true - you use
Linux and Cisco routers - you didn't design that from the ground up,
and you didn't design the PCs that Linux is running on either, but we
can argue about semantics like this all day...

>Happy for you to E Mail me or contact me on 0870 034 9100 option one
>and ask for me

Thanks, but I've no need although I am genuinly curious though, but
really, I ought to be talking to a techie and not a salesman. (and even
though 0870 is no-longer revenue generating, I'm still not calling it
out of principle)

Part of my business *could* benefit from another wholesale ADSL provider,
but I have to say, I really haven't had an issue with Entanet at all
over the past 3 years, other than those caused by BT - which any ISP is
going to have to put up with. Maybe it's because all my customers are
businesses on business tarrifs and not the great plethora of p2p users
and gamers, thrashing their networks for every byte they can get... I'm
actually glad 1000s are being taken away - all the more for the rest
of us!

Gordon

In article <3e40c071-ae4e-4699-97c1-(E-Mail Removed)>,
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Part of my business *could* benefit from another wholesale ADSL
>provider,
>but I have to say, I really haven't had an issue with Entanet at all
>over the past 3 years, other than those caused by BT - which any ISP
>is
>going to have to put up with. Maybe it's because all my customers
>are
>businesses on business tarrifs and not the great plethora of p2p
>users
>and gamers, thrashing their networks for every byte they can get...
>I'm
>actually glad 1000s are being taken away - all the more for the rest
>of us!
>
>Hi Gordon,
>
>We do use BT Wholesale for IP Stream services, like the majority of
>service providers, but its fair to say that contention is more related
>to the ISP's network rather than BTW, the virtual pipes that BTW use
>on their ATM network are set with 20 or 50 Virtual channels, but the
>way BTW manage their network by having sufficient bandwidth from the
>DSLAM to the aggregation point means that "contention" does not really
>apply, and the key point for contended services is when it crosses the
>ATM network and back to the ISP interconnects, this is where customers
>can see issues, our network is designed such that we have multiple
>points of presence and therefore traffic is not always routed the same
>way each time, we will be moving our traditional IPstream over to IP
>Stream connect in the coming months, and therefore we will be using an
>MPLS backbone, and by the very nature, contention should not prove to
>be an issue.

Thanks for the reply.

Gordon