On 16/07/2023 10:27, SH wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 10:22, David Wade wrote:
>> Folks,
>>
>> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
>> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
>> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service designed
>> to get round this issue.
>>
>> So, is this an issue in practice?
>>
>> Don't mobile networks also use CGNAT ? is this also an issue for
>> mobile apps?
>>
>> Dave
>
> I dont think fibre networks actally use CG NAT, its just dynamically
> allocated IPs.
>

by default City Fibre uses CGNAT

> Its the mobile phone networks that use CG NAT.
>
> Some fibre providers do provide an option to have a Static IP, I have a
> FREE static IP address provided upon request, this is with Vodafone
> Gigafast that is on the City Fibre ALt-Net.

Yes but some make a monthly charge for this....

Dave

On 16/07/2023 10:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 10:22, David Wade wrote:
>> Folks,
>>
>> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
>> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
>> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service designed
>> to get round this issue.
>>
>> So, is this an issue in practice?
>>
>> Don't mobile networks also use CGNAT ? is this also an issue for
>> mobile apps?
>>
>> Dave
>
> The issue with NAT is that it makes *incoming* opening of TCP/UDP
> connections harder.
>
> Normally an outgoing app will have no issues.
>
> Incoming listeners have to register, and maybe keep registering, their
> (translated) port/IP addresses with some centralised server.
>
> That's no different, however, between local NAT and CGNAT...
>
>
SIP needs inbound connections.
My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT

On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
> SIP needs inbound connections.
> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT

You probably could. SIP works *behind* router NAT.
--
Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have
guns, why should we let them have ideas?

Josef Stalin

On 16/07/2023 10:59, Joe wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:30:26 +0100
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>> There is simply no reason to dynamically allocate IP addresses to
>> 'always on' services.
>>
>
> Indeed not, but it's not easy to get a fixed IP. Salespeople for many
> ISPs don't even know what that means, and BT a few years ago were
> charging £10 a month for a fixed address on a *business* account.
> And a 'fixed' IP address is simply a dynamic one with a reservation,
> which takes about two minutes to set up, as a one-off thing.

I'm with Virgin. They don't offer static IP on domestic contracts, but I
had read in advance that the dynamic IPs very rarely change - even after
router reboots, power outages, etc. So far I've had the same IP address
for the 3 years that I've been with them.

> I'm with Virgin.
> So far I've had the same IP address for the 3 years that I've been
> with them.

Virgin Media has been selling broadband for 20 years and acquired large blocks
of IPv4 addresses at that time, so has no need to use CNAT.

Newer full fibre suppliers are less lucky, they need to buy IPv4 blocks from
other users, so often used CNAT to save money.

I'm told Community Fibre uses CNAT for the cheaper packages, but DHCP for the
more expensive ones, would be nice to have that confirmed by any actual
Community Fibre users with real service.

The Community Fibre GPON splitter box has been at the bottom of the telegraph
pole outside my house for six months, but they still say there is service in my
area due to their inability to use a hoist to move the box to the top of the
pole, which is condemned (BT does so without a problem).

Angus

David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid> wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 10:26, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 10:22, David Wade wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
>>> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
>>> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service designed
>>> to get round this issue.
>>>
>>> So, is this an issue in practice?
>>>
>>> Don't mobile networks also use CGNAT ? is this also an issue for
>>> mobile apps?
>>>
>>> Dave
>>
>> I don't see why fibre would imply a move to CGNAT.
>>
>>
>
> Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
> terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
> every user.
>
> It would be expensive and challenging to obtain more.
>
> So for example by default both City Fibre and Giganet use CGNAT
> addresses. They will sell you a fixed routable IP for a monthly fee.
>
> Dave
>

City Fibre is not an ISP. Whether or not you get a routeable IP address
depends on which ISP you select to run over CF. CF is unusual amongst the
altnets in this respect. Many of the others altnet fibre suppliers are also
the sole ISP. That’s where you can run into trouble with CGNAT.

On 16/07/2023 11:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
>> SIP needs inbound connections.
>> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
>> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT
>
> You probably could. SIP works *behind* router NAT.

If thats the case why do A&A offer a VPN service specially to allow VOIP
users to by-pass NAT?

Dave

On 16/07/2023 11:32, Angus Robertson - Magenta Systems Ltd wrote:
>> I'm with Virgin.
>> So far I've had the same IP address for the 3 years that I've been
>> with them.
>
> Virgin Media has been selling broadband for 20 years and acquired large blocks
> of IPv4 addresses at that time, so has no need to use CNAT.
>
> Newer full fibre suppliers are less lucky, they need to buy IPv4 blocks from
> other users, so often used CNAT to save money.
>
> I'm told Community Fibre uses CNAT for the cheaper packages, but DHCP for the
> more expensive ones, would be nice to have that confirmed by any actual
> Community Fibre users with real service.
>
> The Community Fibre GPON splitter box has been at the bottom of the telegraph
> pole outside my house for six months, but they still say there is service in my
> area due to their inability to use a hoist to move the box to the top of the
> pole, which is condemned (BT does so without a problem).

Not so sure about the "without problem". They spent nearly a day
replacing my pole. No warning given about loss of service but could of
course have been plusnet not telling me. Was not impressed..

>
> Angus
>
>

Dave

On 16/07/2023 in message
<20230716105957.72fccc1c@jrenewsid.jretrading.com> Joe wrote:

>What you can't generally find out in advance is which ISPs have an
>interest in staying off email blacklists, and I know for a fact that BT
>doesn't. I've advised three former business clients to move away from
>BT, and they all suffered for not doing so.

That's interesting. I have suffered that with Heart Internet who were
black-listed by Yahoo but you are the first person who has mentioned it in
a post I have seen.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
I've been through the desert on a horse with no name.
It was a right bugger to get him back when he ran off.

On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:

>Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
>terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
>every user.

What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to use it.

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
There are 3 types of people in this world. Those who can count, and those
who can't.

On 16/07/2023 12:07, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:
>
>> Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
>> terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
>> every user.
>
> What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to use it.
>
It's pretty horrible really.

--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone

On 16/07/2023 11:48, David Wade wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 11:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
>>> SIP needs inbound connections.
>>> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
>>> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT
>>
>> You probably could. SIP works *behind* router NAT.
>
> If thats the case why do A&A offer a VPN service specially to allow VOIP
> users to by-pass NAT?
>
Why don't you ask them?
Perhaps there are other protocols in use than SIP

> Dave
>

--
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a
kind word alone.

Al Capone

On 16 Jul 2023 11:06:10 GMT
"Jeff Gaines" <jgnewsid@outlook.com> wrote:

> On 16/07/2023 in message
> <20230716105957.72fccc1c@jrenewsid.jretrading.com> Joe wrote:
>
> >What you can't generally find out in advance is which ISPs have an
> >interest in staying off email blacklists, and I know for a fact that
> >BT doesn't. I've advised three former business clients to move away
> >from BT, and they all suffered for not doing so.
>
> That's interesting. I have suffered that with Heart Internet who were
> black-listed by Yahoo but you are the first person who has mentioned
> it in a post I have seen.
>

Generally the whole IP block gets on a blacklist, and unless the ISP is
willing to discipline the actual offender and pay to get taken off the
list, there's not a lot you can do. Another reason for using a
'professional' ISP rather than the cheaper mass-market ones is that
their other customers are less likely to be hacked and turned into
malware distributors.

But if you're on a blacklist, all you can do is use a smarthost, which
your ISP or domain host may provide. I could probably do that now I'm
retired, but previously I needed to see the actual transaction with the
destination SMTP server when a client had an email problem. I moved from
Demon, when Vodafone finally killed it, to Plusnet, and both seem to
have been clean.

--
Joe

On Sun 16/07/2023 11:20, SteveW wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 10:59, Joe wrote:
>> On Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:30:26 +0100
>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> There is simply no reason to dynamically allocate IP addresses to
>>> 'always on' services.
>>>
>>
>> Indeed not, but it's not easy to get a fixed IP. Salespeople for many
>> ISPs don't even know what that means, and BT a few years ago were
>> charging £10 a month for a fixed address on a *business* account.
>> And a 'fixed' IP address is simply a dynamic one with a reservation,
>> which takes about two minutes to set up, as a one-off thing.
>
> I'm with Virgin. They don't offer static IP on domestic contracts, but I
> had read in advance that the dynamic IPs very rarely change - even after
> router reboots, power outages, etc. So far I've had the same IP address
> for the 3 years that I've been with them.
>

I can beat that. Mine has been unchanged for must be getting on for 20
years!

Am 16.07.2023 um 10:22:08 Uhr schrieb David Wade:

> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service
> designed to get round this issue.

Use IPv6 for VoIP and you don't need to care.
CGNAT makes incoming calls with VoIP mostly impossible.

In uk.d-i-y David Wade <g4ugm@dave.invalid> wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 11:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> > On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
> >> SIP needs inbound connections.
> >> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
> >> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT
> >
> > You probably could. SIP works *behind* router NAT.
>
> If thats the case why do A&A offer a VPN service specially to allow VOIP
> users to by-pass NAT?

I've run A&A's SIP service over a number of ISP routers. I only remember
having to change router settings once - I think it might have been Plusnet
maybe a decade ago. STUN should handle the case where the local IP is not
the same as the public IP, which is the case for domestic NAT and for CGNAT.

In the case of A&A, having IPv6 should avoid NAT altogether, and that is
what A&A recommend: they effectively say they don't really support their SIP
service unless there's Proper Internet (which they provide to their
customers, of course).

The VPN service is for other things that using their VOIP service - for
example, inbound connections to machines on the network. For SIP you could
also use it for inbound SIP trunks to your PABX - ie rather than your client
talking to A&A's server, an A&A customer hosts a SIP PABX on their network
and allows clients to connect to it. For that you need incoming public IPs.

Theo

On 16/07/2023 10:59, Joe wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:30:26 +0100
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>
>> There is simply no reason to dynamically allocate IP addresses to
>> 'always on' services.
>>
>
> Indeed not, but it's not easy to get a fixed IP. Salespeople for many
> ISPs don't even know what that means, and BT a few years ago were
> charging £10 a month for a fixed address on a *business* account.
> And a 'fixed' IP address is simply a dynamic one with a reservation,
> which takes about two minutes to set up, as a one-off thing.
> I'm on Plusnet (oddly, part of BT) which was one of three ISPs I could
> find about five years ago offering fixed, and I couldn't afford A&A.
>
> What you can't generally find out in advance is which ISPs have an
> interest in staying off email blacklists, and I know for a fact that BT
> doesn't. I've advised three former business clients to move away from
> BT, and they all suffered for not doing so.
>

Plusnet made a one time charge of £5 for a fixed IP address. Dynamic DNS
services can be an alternative. Voip clients don't have to be behind a
fixed adddress as they register with a server using a DNS name.

--
Michael Chare

On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 10:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 10:22, David Wade wrote:
>>> Folks,
>>>
>>> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
>>> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
>>> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service
>>> designed to get round this issue.
>>>
>>> So, is this an issue in practice?
>>>
>>> Don't mobile networks also use CGNAT ? is this also an issue for
>>> mobile apps?
>>>
>>> Dave
>>
>> The issue with NAT is that it makes *incoming* opening of TCP/UDP
>> connections harder.
>>
>> Normally an outgoing app will have no issues.
>>
>> Incoming listeners have to register, and maybe keep registering, their
>> (translated) port/IP addresses with some centralised server.
>>
>> That's no different, however, between local NAT and CGNAT...
>>
>>
> SIP needs inbound connections.
> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT

Sip clients establish a connection to a Sip server by registering. The
clients can be behind Nat. They keep reregistering maybe every minute.

I use three different Sip providers. They are the same in that respect.
I use a Gigaset N300 Dect base station and Gigaset Dect phones. The
N300 can register with several different providers at the same time.

On 16/07/2023 in message <u90jop$ogqd$1@dont-email.me> The Natural
Philosopher wrote:

>On 16/07/2023 12:07, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:
>>
>>>Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
>>>terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
>>>every user.
>>
>>What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to use
>>it.
>>
>It's pretty horrible really.

Isn't it just bigger numbers so a lot more available?

--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who do binary and those
who don't.

On 16/07/2023 12:39, Woody wrote:
> On Sun 16/07/2023 11:20, SteveW wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 10:59, Joe wrote:
>>> On Sun, 16 Jul 2023 10:30:26 +0100
>>> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> There is simply no reason to dynamically allocate IP addresses to
>>>> 'always on' services.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Indeed not, but it's not easy to get a fixed IP. Salespeople for many
>>> ISPs don't even know what that means, and BT a few years ago were
>>> charging £10 a month for a fixed address on a *business* account.
>>> And a 'fixed' IP address is simply a dynamic one with a reservation,
>>> which takes about two minutes to set up, as a one-off thing.
>>
>> I'm with Virgin. They don't offer static IP on domestic contracts, but
>> I had read in advance that the dynamic IPs very rarely change - even
>> after router reboots, power outages, etc. So far I've had the same IP
>> address for the 3 years that I've been with them.
>>
>
> I can beat that. Mine has been unchanged for must be getting on for 20
> years!

Similar length of time with IDNET.
--
All political activity makes complete sense once the proposition that
all government is basically a self-legalising protection racket, is
fully understood.

On 16/07/2023 13:26, Jeff Gaines wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90jop$ogqd$1@dont-email.me> The Natural
> Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 16/07/2023 12:07, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:
>>>
>>>> Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in
>>>> IP terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give
>>>> one to every user.
>>>
>>> What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to
>>> use it.
>>>
>> It's pretty horrible really.
>
> Isn't it just bigger numbers so a lot more available?
>
Yes, but no one uses it because no one uses it :-)

--
All political activity makes complete sense once the proposition that
all government is basically a self-legalising protection racket, is
fully understood.

> Not so sure about the "without problem". They spent nearly a day
> replacing my pole.

The pole is only 30 years old, I watched it being replaced while waiting for a
new phone line to be installed. Maybe not properly protected by creosote but
something less efficient so rotting already.

BT had to replace a drop wire eaten by squirrels for a neighbour, simply
brought a hoist around, but that is beyond Community Fibre.

Community Fibre are allowing access to their network by other ISPs, two of my
existing ISPs are attempting to sign up, but it's early days for all parties.
I expect to keep my existing FTTC block of IPs.

Angus

On 2023-07-16, Jeff Gaines <jgnewsid@outlook.com> wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90jop$ogqd$1@dont-email.me> The Natural
> Philosopher wrote:
>
>>On 16/07/2023 12:07, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>>On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:
>>>
>>>>Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
>>>>terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
>>>>every user.
>>>
>>>What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to use
>>>it.
>>>
>>It's pretty horrible really.
>
> Isn't it just bigger numbers so a lot more available?
>

It certainly is.

Ramble/rant follows...

We've just had our fibre lit up, and went with Zen, as we already had ADSL from them
as a backup for <undesirable rodent> Media, who have been unable to deliver a reliable
cable service for the 12 months we've been here.

Can't fault Zen, upgraded the contract with no penalty, even kept the same static IP
on the fibre as we had on ADSL. Not quite so impressed with the physical install by
City Fibre. First crew gave up, supposedly because they needed a crane to get over
some trees. Second crew managed without one, but pointed out the first crew hadn't
put up a long enough drop from the pole to reach the wall box, which is probably
why they scarpered. Luckly they could move the wall box and got it working, though
I don't like how the flimsy fibre cable (~4mm jacketed) is nailed to the wall, and
a good breeze will probably bring down the drop cable, along with a few branches of
the tree it's wrapped around.

Download speed is top notch, rock solid 100MBps (that's Bytes...) downloading a 35GB
game on Steam. Ping isn't much better than cable / ADSL. Haven't been able to get
anywhere near Gbit upload speeds though. With a fast laptop straight in to the Zen
router (FritxBox) gets ~450Mbps. By the time it's been through our firewall, internal
router and a couple of switches the best we see on the PC is about 60Mbps up, so
not much better than cable was (download on the same PC gets the full Gbit speed).
Need to figure out where the bottleneck is, probably some MTU or window size issue
internally, as the physical is all Gbit. Another job to do, and I already spend
half my working time looking at TCP traces and comms dumps :(

Anyway, looking forward to a chat with VM when the contract comes up for renewal.
Hopefully we can keep a cable service as a backup, but dropping it down to the lowest
(cheapest) tier, just out of spite for them screwing loyal customers with an
annual inflation+4% cost increase. Intrestingly they recently increased our service
to 1Gbit "for free", probably knowing we'd be looking at fibre very soon. Wonder
if they were hoping to slam us into the higher price tier at renewal?

So now we have three bits of wet string that can supply broadband - copper pair,
co-ax cable and fibre. We want to keep two of those live, as internet is essential,
but are they likely to deprecicate the coax and copper lines, and insist all future
broadband is fibre only? Time will tell...

What about IPv6 then?. While futzing about on the new Zen router, I noticed it showed
some IPv6 addresses, a /64, presumably for the WAN link, and a /48. Nice, I thought,
as we've been using Hurricane Electric to give us an IPv6 /48. Quick call to
Zen confirmed thay yes, IPv6 was live on our service, so started to see if I could
get it working - much better to have a fast direct link than a tunneled one.
Then the nightmares returned from when I set ip all up in the first place. IPv6 is
an over-complicated, unreliable, incompatible abortion of a protocol. With IPv4
you configure your address, some static routes, and NAT if you want it, and off
you go. With IPv6 you have to hope some SLACC or DHCPv6 gets you an address, and
if you're lucky you catch a Router advertisment and get a default route. If you want
to have static routes to private networks you need to configure addresses carefully,
as the auto ones may change. Then you have to configure your /48 prefix on all internal
systems (and if you change ISP you need to change it, and all the corresponding
firewall rules). It's all do-able, but a right-royal pain in the arse. In the end
I decided IPv6 was more trouble than it's worth, and instead of switching to an
ISP-supplied IPv6 connection I ripped it all out, removed all the AAAA records from
the DNS and dropped the HE tunnel. Funny how everything still works just fine.

IPv6 must be one of the worst technical innovations of recent times (I don't count
twitter/facebook/etc. as either technical or innovations). Had they just added a
few bytes to the IPv4 address range, and kept everything else the same, by now the
new protocol would likely be in universal use, but instead they had to make it
complicated and incompatible, and as a result unreliable, insecure and (still)
poorly supported.

(Nurse, the meds, stat!)

--
Ian

"Tamahome!!!" - "Miaka!!!"

On Sun 16/07/2023 13:21, Michael Chare wrote:
> On 16/07/2023 11:14, David Wade wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 10:28, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>> On 16/07/2023 10:22, David Wade wrote:
>>>> Folks,
>>>>
>>>> Just a quick question. I know many of the new Fibre suppliers use
>>>> CGNAT on their services. I also know this can cause issues with VOIP
>>>> and SIP in particular, as, for example A&A have a VPN service
>>>> designed to get round this issue.
>>>>
>>>> So, is this an issue in practice?
>>>>
>>>> Don't mobile networks also use CGNAT ? is this also an issue for
>>>> mobile apps?
>>>>
>>>> Dave
>>>
>>> The issue with NAT is that it makes *incoming* opening of TCP/UDP
>>> connections harder.
>>>
>>> Normally an outgoing app will have no issues.
>>>
>>> Incoming listeners have to register, and maybe keep registering,
>>> their (translated) port/IP addresses with some centralised server.
>>>
>>> That's no different, however, between local NAT and CGNAT...
>>>
>>>
>> SIP needs inbound connections.
>> My router has SIP detection and opens and routes the ports as needed.
>> I can't do that on the ISPs CGNAT
>
> Sip clients establish a connection to a Sip server by registering.  The
> clients can be behind Nat.  They keep reregistering maybe every minute.
>
> I use three different Sip providers.  They are the same in that respect.
>  I use a Gigaset N300 Dect base station and Gigaset Dect phones. The
> N300 can register with several different providers at the same time.
>
>

My PAP2T reregisters every 3600 seconds or one hour by default.

On Sun 16/07/2023 14:57, Ian wrote:
> On 2023-07-16, Jeff Gaines <jgnewsid@outlook.com> wrote:
>> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90jop$ogqd$1@dont-email.me> The Natural
>> Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 16/07/2023 12:07, Jeff Gaines wrote:
>>>> On 16/07/2023 in message <u90flo$o11e$1@dont-email.me> David Wade wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Its not the Fibre but the suppliers. They were late on the scene in IP
>>>>> terms and so don't have enough routable IPV4 addresses to give one to
>>>>> every user.
>>>>
>>>> What happened to IPV6? It's been here for years but nobody seems to use
>>>> it.
>>>>
>>> It's pretty horrible really.
>>
>> Isn't it just bigger numbers so a lot more available?
>>
>
> It certainly is.
>
> Ramble/rant follows...
>
> We've just had our fibre lit up, and went with Zen, as we already had ADSL from them
> as a backup for <undesirable rodent> Media, who have been unable to deliver a reliable
> cable service for the 12 months we've been here.
>
> Can't fault Zen, upgraded the contract with no penalty, even kept the same static IP
> on the fibre as we had on ADSL. Not quite so impressed with the physical install by
> City Fibre. First crew gave up, supposedly because they needed a crane to get over
> some trees. Second crew managed without one, but pointed out the first crew hadn't
> put up a long enough drop from the pole to reach the wall box, which is probably
> why they scarpered. Luckly they could move the wall box and got it working, though
> I don't like how the flimsy fibre cable (~4mm jacketed) is nailed to the wall, and
> a good breeze will probably bring down the drop cable, along with a few branches of
> the tree it's wrapped around.
>
> Download speed is top notch, rock solid 100MBps (that's Bytes...) downloading a 35GB
> game on Steam. Ping isn't much better than cable / ADSL. Haven't been able to get
> anywhere near Gbit upload speeds though. With a fast laptop straight in to the Zen
> router (FritxBox) gets ~450Mbps. By the time it's been through our firewall, internal
> router and a couple of switches the best we see on the PC is about 60Mbps up, so
> not much better than cable was (download on the same PC gets the full Gbit speed).
> Need to figure out where the bottleneck is, probably some MTU or window size issue
> internally, as the physical is all Gbit. Another job to do, and I already spend
> half my working time looking at TCP traces and comms dumps :(
>
> Anyway, looking forward to a chat with VM when the contract comes up for renewal.
> Hopefully we can keep a cable service as a backup, but dropping it down to the lowest
> (cheapest) tier, just out of spite for them screwing loyal customers with an
> annual inflation+4% cost increase. Intrestingly they recently increased our service
> to 1Gbit "for free", probably knowing we'd be looking at fibre very soon. Wonder
> if they were hoping to slam us into the higher price tier at renewal?
>
[snip]
The slowest that VM do now is 50Mb at a cost of £42/m - which is still
steep compared with most ISP broadband over CityFibre!

For the record they increase annually by RPI+3.9% against CPI+3.9% for
most other ISPs. Mine went up from £36 to £42 in July as RPI is usually
around 2-2.2% higher than CPI!!