Zen, AAISP, Idnet or other?

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:24:47 +0000, Tony Mountifield wrote:

> What I am after is what you don't find
> on the websites, which is user experience - speed, contention,
> reliability and customer service.

OK, just thought you wanted the factual stuff.

AAISP's speed has never been a problem for me. They are very pro-active
in keeping their links up to speed. The only speed problems (not
experienced by me personally) have been contention *in BT*, which has
affected customers of other ISPs at the same time. AAISP are very good at
chasing BT, as they have considerable monitoring looking at latency on
all customer lines, 24/7.

Contention comes down to the same thing. The days of the 50:1 stuff at
the exchange are long gone.

Reliability - pretty good. We had one long outage last year due to a
cascade of events, but they were upfront about what happened and gave
everyone some extra usage credit as compensation. You can carry unused
usage credit forward to the next month (limited to a whole extra month's
credit) so this didn't have to be used at once. You can also change
tariff on a monthly basis without penalty if you need to.

(a minor note is that they don't charge usage at all between Christmas
and New Year, so you can build up a bit of credit there).

Customer serviceis excellent. Examples:

I wanted an extra domain name. I emailed them at 1720 on a Friday asking
for it, and I had it within 10 minutes.

I wanted 16 extra static IP addresses (I had 16 already). They emaile dme
back within half an hour to say that they were now routing a new 32
address block to me, and to let them know (no rush) when I'd changed over
and stopped using the old one. AS an aside, you can have a block of IPv6
addresses routed to you too at no extra charge.

I had a fault one morning where the ADSL had failed completely. I
reported this at 0905 when I got to work. I came back at 1530 to find it
all fixed. It transpired that BT had screwed up on some overnight
exchange work. They'd reported it to BT, and at midday BT had closed the
fault saying it must be a misconfigured router. They promptly re-opened
it (not worrying about contacting me, because they could see it wasn't),
and BT then grudgingly took another look. I knew nothing of this - all I
observed was that it was working when I got home. In generalthey are
*very* good at chasing BT.

If you ring for tech support, you get a real tech person, not a teletubby
with a script.

Hope this helps.
--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

Phil W Lee wrote:

> I use a Zen block of 8, and can confirm configurable reverse DNS for
> the IPs.

Do Zen still insist on registering blocks in your name?

If they do, it may be a consideration. I always thought it was a bit
silly eg. telling your kids not to give away their names to strangers
and finding your ISP has done it for you.

I've got a /29 from ukfsn/enta and they don't do that.

Tony Mountifield wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> <peter (E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> On 7 Mar 2010 13:16:06 GMT, Bob Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>> So far you have contributed no useful or concrete information at all.
>> I never had any intention of contributing any information I was making
>> sure that the OP was aware that AAISP had a very bad fault apart from
>> the good ones which you where very keen to point out which is that
>> they are very expensive in comparison to other isp's that offer the
>> same .
>>> wonder which ISP you work for?
>> I don't work for any ISP not that it is any business of yours .
>
> Come on guys, I wasn't here to start a fight.
>
> I can easily compare and assess prices myself, as they are easily available
> on the ISPs' websites. What I am after is what you don't find on the
> websites, which is user experience - speed, contention, reliability and
> customer service.
>
> Thanks to all who have contirbuted so far...
>
> Cheers
> Tony

I checked up on my IDNET account: its has a reverse DNS entry, but its a
bit dull. I.e custome3-my-ip-address.idnet.net..

Whether they would fix it to something else is a moot point.

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:43:43 +0000, peter pan wrote:

> On 7 Mar 2010 01:35:54 GMT, Bob Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>>I use AAISP, and have done for quite a few years.

> Why don't you also explain that AAISP is also a very costly ISP . .

You're so thoughtless Bob. Just imagine how mad the OP would have been if
he'd inexplicably managed to sign up to service from AAISP without seeing
the prices, and then discovered how expensive it was.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) ((E-Mail Removed))
20:21:57 up 20 days, 1:13, 4 users, load average: 0.09, 0.03, 0.00
It is better to have been wasted and then sober
than to never have been wasted at all

On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 20:25:39 +0000, alexd wrote:

> On Sun, 07 Mar 2010 11:43:43 +0000, peter pan wrote:
>
>> On 7 Mar 2010 01:35:54 GMT, Bob Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>>I use AAISP, and have done for quite a few years.
>
>> Why don't you also explain that AAISP is also a very costly ISP . .
>
> You're so thoughtless Bob. Just imagine how mad the OP would have been
> if he'd inexplicably managed to sign up to service from AAISP without
> seeing the prices, and then discovered how expensive it was.

I know. I do apologise.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

In article <(E-Mail Removed) >, Andy
Burns <(E-Mail Removed)> writes

>My exchange is (or maybe was, as no RFS date shown now) supposed to be
>getting 21CN WBC next month, I might be tempted to change,

How does 21CH affect the end user? I thought it was an upgrade to the
backbone.

--
Mike Tomlinson

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:41:55 +0000, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

> In article <(E-Mail Removed) >, Andy
> Burns <(E-Mail Removed)> writes
>
>>My exchange is (or maybe was, as no RFS date shown now) supposed to be
>>getting 21CN WBC next month, I might be tempted to change,
>
> How does 21CH affect the end user? I thought it was an upgrade to the
> backbone.

For a start, it affects the cost. AAISP at least have lower prices if you
are on 21CN.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:55:58 +0000, Max wrote:

> On 7 Mar 2010 18:07:18 GMT, Bob Eager <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>I wanted 16 extra static IP addresses (I had 16 already). They emaile
>>dme back within half an hour to say that they were now routing a new 32
>>address block to me, and to let them know (no rush) when I'd changed
>>over and stopped using the old one. AS an aside, you can have a block of
>>IPv6 addresses routed to you too at no extra charge.
>
> IDNET quoted me 10 quid per month extra for a block of 8 IP's
>
> So that't what's currently stopping me from going with them.

I didn't actually make it clear, but AAISP don't charge for IPv4 blocks
either.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Adrian Mupp <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> Not quite sure what you mean with regards to Claranet, I have a block of
> 8 addresses from them and have had for some time, I just called them up
> and asked them for it.

Oh, ok. I asked some time ago and the support person who replied said
they couldn't. Either they have changed, or he didn't know what he was
talking about!

I'll ask them again, just to be sure.

What account type do you have? Perhaps it depends on that.

Thanks
Tony
--
Tony Mountifield
Work: (E-Mail Removed) - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: (E-Mail Removed) - http://tony.mountifield.org

Following up myself...

In article <hn32bq$7tq$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Tony Mountifield <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
> Adrian Mupp <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> >
> > Not quite sure what you mean with regards to Claranet, I have a block of
> > 8 addresses from them and have had for some time, I just called them up
> > and asked them for it.
>
> Oh, ok. I asked some time ago and the support person who replied said
> they couldn't. Either they have changed, or he didn't know what he was
> talking about!
>
> I'll ask them again, just to be sure.

I've just checked through my emails from when I asked last August, and
it wasn't that they couldn't do it, but rather that they would only do
it on their Business and Business Premium accounts at £60 and £70 per
month respectively.

Cheers
Tony
--
Tony Mountifield
Work: (E-Mail Removed) - http://www.softins.co.uk
Play: (E-Mail Removed) - http://tony.mountifield.org