Strange Newnet T&C

I was on the point of signing for Newnet ADSL (having heard good reports
of them) but had decided that their supplied router, which turned out to
be wireless (which I most certainly did not want) and expensive (£80)
would be better avoided. I had settled on the Netgear DG834 as best suited
to my purpose.

So I was half way through the sign-up script, and all was going well, when
I spotted that if I wanted to use services such as FTP, SSH, SMTP, HTTP,
HTTPS, then I would have to sign up for their "Managed Firewall" option
(which might cost some unspecified extra). I can well understand why they
might baulk at FTP and HTTP, but why SSH (can't I connect in to my own
computer when I am away from home) and SMTP (can't I have my mail
delivered the civilised way)?

Anyway, I ticked the box, but then it said "if you want 'Managed
Firewall', then you MUST use our router".

What the heck? Is that a usual requirement amongst ISPs? And whatever for?
Does it mean that they want to be able to log in to my router so as to
configure its firewall to their needs (rather than catch the offending
packets at their end). If that is so, then it is a gross intrusion of my
privacy, but I can't think of any other explanation.

So I am now looking at other providers, and Eclipse is looking good so
far. Anybody any views on them?

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: (E-Mail Removed) Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5

"Charles Lindsey" <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> I was on the point of signing for Newnet ADSL (having heard good reports
> of them) but had decided that their supplied router, which turned out to
> be wireless (which I most certainly did not want) and expensive (£80)
> would be better avoided. I had settled on the Netgear DG834 as best suited
> to my purpose.
>
> So I was half way through the sign-up script, and all was going well, when
> I spotted that if I wanted to use services such as FTP, SSH, SMTP, HTTP,
> HTTPS, then I would have to sign up for their "Managed Firewall" option
> (which might cost some unspecified extra).

Use such services or run them?

Is a bit stringent if you just want to use HTTP, e.g., download a web page.

R.

In message <(E-Mail Removed)>, Charles Lindsey
<(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>
>So I am now looking at other providers, and Eclipse is looking good so
>far. Anybody any views on them?
>
I migrated into them almost 4 weeks ago (which was also an changeover to
Max ADSL for me as well). Unlike some, I've no general complaints about
the speeds etc. which have be good to OK, but not impressed with Tech
support response.

I had problem last Thursday with extremely slow speeds - dialup
territory literally - speeds of < 5 kB/s. when it didn't sort itself I
raised ticket via the website, I didn't receive a reply until
yesterday, by which time the problem had resolved itself anyway. Btu the
response was just stock reply re slow speeds, lots of guff about
checking things, BT speedtests etc. which really wasn't going to be much
help in my situation, this was something other than just a bit of slow
connection.

I don't expect to stay with Eclipse for long time TBH
--
Chris French, Leeds

On 7 Jun 2006, "Charles Lindsey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I was on the point of signing for Newnet ADSL (having heard good reports
>of them) but had decided that their supplied router, which turned out to
>be wireless (which I most certainly did not want) and expensive (£80)
>would be better avoided. I had settled on the Netgear DG834 as best suited
>to my purpose.

Ah, so you did decide to go for ADSL, and not stick with ISDN (are they
totally withdrawing Highway, or were you just minded to save by not using
ISDN and getting a 'regular' line and have the bonus of ADSL ?)

>What the heck? Is that a usual requirement amongst ISPs? And whatever for?

Not seen it mentioned by anyone else, and seems unusual to me, but then no
users are likely to spend all their time checking the T+C for each and every
ISP... You've highlighted an oddity (I can understand some ISP offering user
a speed above 8000 kbps to bundle some specific router as standard to be sure
they can give reasonable support, but not for relatively common "wants" and
at lower speed, where plenty of kit exists and works well).

>So I am now looking at other providers, and Eclipse is looking good so
>far. Anybody any views on them?

They (like many ISPs) have had their ups and downs, with a couple of outages
I think, in the last 6 months (one was for a couple of days) and seems quite
a lot of users on their Evolution range of accounts complain about speeds (I
saw one comment from a user on Evo 4, the 29.99/month account, claiming that
it was "nearly unusable") but I've had no problems (I questioned the lack of
a usage monitor and had a response from tech support the next day - my query
was submitted much later than their opening hours, so didn't expect any fast
response and it was hardly an "urgent" query anyway). I'm on their cheapest
account, at 14.99, but still within my free month (I migrated to them partly
as it was an easy route to get an "up to 8000 kbps" connection... still have
not been getting full speed out of the link, but that's not uncommon at this
time - waiting to see some statement that BTW has cured their monitoring and
then I should see an improvement as my router sync speed is rarely < 8000

See www.dslzoneuk.net for some of the negative comments, and check what they
say on the discussion board at www.adslguide.org too... Peter M.

In <(E-Mail Removed)> "Charles Lindsey" <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:

>I was on the point of signing for Newnet ADSL (having heard good reports
>of them) but had decided that their supplied router, which turned out to
>be wireless (which I most certainly did not want) and expensive (£80)
>would be better avoided. I had settled on the Netgear DG834 as best suited
>to my purpose.

>So I was half way through the sign-up script, and all was going well, when
>I spotted that if I wanted to use services such as FTP, SSH, SMTP, HTTP,
>HTTPS, then I would have to sign up for their "Managed Firewall" option
>(which might cost some unspecified extra). I can well understand why they
>might baulk at FTP and HTTP, but why SSH (can't I connect in to my own
>computer when I am away from home) and SMTP (can't I have my mail
>delivered the civilised way)?

>Anyway, I ticked the box, but then it said "if you want 'Managed
>Firewall', then you MUST use our router".

It now seems that what they were saying was "our router comes
preconfigured with a firewall that rejects all connection attempts from
outside". If you want it configuring differently, then we will do it (for
a suitable fee). So, since I intend to configure it all myself, that is
all irrelevant, and it is not (AFAICS) related to any forbidding of
running such services to outsiders (their 2GB limit would take care of any
excessive usage of that). But that was all totally unclear from the window
that their sign-up script provided.

And I have noted, from several attempts, that their sales droid always
answers a different question than the one you actually asked. So I am
still minded to go to Eclipse

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: (E-Mail Removed) Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5