IDNet vs ADSL24

I am considering an ISP swap - Demon are messing up their billing again.

My priorities are low hassle, high availability, decent support. Happy to
pay £25-30/month for quality service. I don't have a full picture of our
usage (no stats from Demon or our router), but have a reasonable idea; a
30Gb package should be enough.

On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet. Headline price
has ADSL24 for £20 vs. IDNet for £25. The penalty charges for over-running
30Gb appear higher on ADSL24, but they also offer "offpeak" which could be
used to for moving big files.



Questions about IDNet:
- does IDNet have some sort of usage control system offering similar
customer data to that from ADSL24 ?
- the IDNet pages imply content from the BBC (iPlayer, etc) is "free"; does
this count towards usage limits ? (ie. its not really "free" in the way I
would think of it).



- Nigel

--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

Nigel Cliffe wrote:
> I am considering an ISP swap - Demon are messing up their billing again.
>
> My priorities are low hassle, high availability, decent support. Happy to
> pay £25-30/month for quality service. I don't have a full picture of our
> usage (no stats from Demon or our router), but have a reasonable idea; a
> 30Gb package should be enough.
>
> On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet. Headline price
> has ADSL24 for £20 vs. IDNet for £25. The penalty charges for over-running
> 30Gb appear higher on ADSL24, but they also offer "offpeak" which could be
> used to for moving big files.
>
>
>
> Questions about IDNet:
> - does IDNet have some sort of usage control system offering similar
> customer data to that from ADSL24 ?
> - the IDNet pages imply content from the BBC (iPlayer, etc) is "free"; does
> this count towards usage limits ? (ie. its not really "free" in the way I
> would think of it).
>
>
>
> - Nigel
>
I would also look at Clara net.

For me they have been reliable , somewhat expensive, but with an
absolutely vanilla connectivity. No proxies, no shaping that I have
discovered, no requirement to use their DNS,..they will even accept
Email to their relay from just about any of the mail accounts, many not
registered with them, that I am part of. And a fixed IP address so I can
set up firewalls on remote sites I need to manage with a pretty high
degree of security.

The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> Nigel Cliffe wrote:
>> I am considering an ISP swap - Demon are messing up their billing
>> again. .......On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet.
>> Headline
>> price has ADSL24 for £20 vs. IDNet for £25. .........

> I would also look at Clara net.
>
> For me they have been reliable , somewhat expensive, but with an
> absolutely vanilla connectivity.


Thank you for the reply.

I will consider, but seems expensive (30Gb is £35 at Clara vs. £25 or £20).
Given that both ADSL24 and IDNet have positive support reports here, I
wonder if I actually gain any real quality of service for the extra paid ?


> No proxies, no shaping that I have
> discovered, no requirement to use their DNS,

All useful features, though think the other two are the same.

> they will even
> accept
> Email to their relay from just about any of the mail accounts, many
> not registered with them, that I am part of.

Could be useful, though I own three domains on different hosters with
(passworded) SMTP access, and have used them as relays when Demon had a
glitch last year.


> And a fixed IP address
> so I can set up firewalls on remote sites I need to manage with a
> pretty high degree of security.

Not required by me; single site installation.





- Nigel


--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

Nigel Cliffe wrote:

> I am considering an ISP swap - Demon are messing up their billing again.
>
> My priorities are low hassle, high availability, decent support. Happy to
> pay £25-30/month for quality service. I don't have a full picture of our
> usage (no stats from Demon or our router), but have a reasonable idea; a
> 30Gb package should be enough.
>
> On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet. Headline price
> has ADSL24 for £20 vs. IDNet for £25. The penalty charges for over-running
> 30Gb appear higher on ADSL24, but they also offer "offpeak" which could be
> used to for moving big files.
>
> Questions about IDNet:
> - does IDNet have some sort of usage control system offering similar
> customer data to that from ADSL24 ?

They provide daily download usage data. Is that what you meant ?


> - the IDNet pages imply content from the BBC (iPlayer, etc) is "free"; does
> this count towards usage limits ? (ie. its not really "free" in the way I
> would think of it).

Not familiar with that bit.

If you want to move to IDnet, email me on the address in my headers and we'll
both benefit to the tune of £10. They're an excellent ISP.

Graham

Eeyore wrote:
> Nigel Cliffe wrote:
>
>> I am considering an ISP swap ....
>> On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet.
>>
>> Questions about IDNet:
>> - does IDNet have some sort of usage control system offering similar
>> customer data to that from ADSL24 ?
>
> They provide daily download usage data. Is that what you meant ?

That's enough.


>> - the IDNet pages imply content from the BBC (iPlayer, etc) is
>> "free"; does this count towards usage limits ? (ie. its not really
>> "free" in the way I would think of it).
>
> Not familiar with that bit.

Answer from IDNet is that "they don't charge for accessing BBC on demand
content unlike some other ISP's, but it does count towards monthly download
limit".

But, I'm not aware of any normal ISP charging for accessing the BBC's on
demand stuff (at least not yet!), so it seems to be a meaningless claim.
They did answer their email very quickly.


> If you want to move to IDnet, email me on the address in my headers
> and we'll both benefit to the tune of £10. They're an excellent ISP.

Thanks, though £10 is useful, its not a deal clinching amount. ADSL24 has
slight lead at present, though I am not making final decision today.


- Nigel




--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

IDNet are excellent. We had an outage and they really worked hard to
get BT to shift their arses and get our broadband back. When you phone
support (0800, not 0870) you get straight through to a human being who
will actually help you. Support line closed at weekends though.

Bandwidth allowance is helped by the fact that only download is
counted, not upload. No traffic shaping or throttling that I know of,
if you're into torrents. No newsgroup server though. A very good
support forum for users called Idnetters - check it out before you
decide.

CG

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:07:59 -0000, "Nigel Cliffe" <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:
>
>On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet.

Overall I'm happy with adsl24 but there are issues with both the pop
and smtp email service.

New accounts go onto their new (since sept 2007) mailserver (saturn)
rather than the older one (pluto). It's been down rather a lot in
recent weeks but seems to be becoming more stable recently. Hopefully
the stability will continue.

Also, I get occasional false positive knock backs from the smtp server
refusing to send to/from? ip addresses supposedly blacklisted by
spamhaus.org

Not once has one of these knock backs turned out to be valid and it
can be quite annoying if the email is urgent and no backup smtp
facility is available. Fortunately, I have contingency plans for this
event.


Jim.

James Egan wrote:
> On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 09:07:59 -0000, "Nigel Cliffe" <(E-Mail Removed)>
> wrote:
>>
>> On past recommendations, I'm looking at ADSL24 and IDNet.
>
> Overall I'm happy with adsl24 but there are issues with both the pop
> and smtp email service.
>
> New accounts go onto their new (since sept 2007) mailserver (saturn)
> rather than the older one (pluto). It's been down rather a lot in
> recent weeks but seems to be becoming more stable recently. Hopefully
> the stability will continue.
>
> Also, I get occasional false positive knock backs from the smtp server
> refusing to send to/from? ip addresses supposedly blacklisted by
> spamhaus.org
>
> Not once has one of these knock backs turned out to be valid and it
> can be quite annoying if the email is urgent and no backup smtp
> facility is available. Fortunately, I have contingency plans for this
> event.

Thanks for the contribution Jim;

email is critical for our home business use, so that might now swing things
to IDNet rather than ADSL24. Whilst we have backup mail paths (and backup
backup mail paths), its not something I like having to rely upon.



- Nigel


--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

In article <fqhep4$h5i$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Nigel Cliffe <nxc653-(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>email is critical for our home business use, so that might now swing things
>to IDNet rather than ADSL24. Whilst we have backup mail paths (and backup
>backup mail paths), its not something I like having to rely upon.

Why not run your email completely separate from your connectivity
ISP? There are several ISPs who specialise just in email (and DNS
hosting). All you then need is an Internet connection to connect to
collect your email via POP or IMAP, or have it delivered by SMTP,
depending on the setup.

And one thing I bash on about to people (mainly small businesses!) is
that if your Internet connection is critical to your business, then get
a business quality connection and be prepared to pay for it! You can get
an excellent service through Entanet resellers for £25 a month
(+vat), you can even pay a little more for enhanced care to guarantee a
3-hour response from BT and a 20-hour fix time...

However, you might want to see is adsl24 has their own email, etc.
servers or resell Entas - if they have their own and host outside the
'Enta cloud' then that might be the same as separating the connectivity
(which is really enta) and the hosting (adsl24).

Gordon

On Mon, 3 Mar 2008 19:14:54 +0000 (UTC), Gordon Henderson
<gordon+(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Why not run your email completely separate from your connectivity
>ISP? There are several ISPs who specialise just in email (and DNS
>hosting). All you then need is an Internet connection to connect to
>collect your email via POP or IMAP, or have it delivered by SMTP,
>depending on the setup.

I was thinking about doing something similar myself.

My first ISP was U-Net and I was very happy with them until they got
taken over by ViaNet.

I noticed a while back that the old u-net team were back in the email
business.
http://www.simplymailsolutions.com/sms_nexgen.php


Jim.