Things to ask your ADSL ISP BEFORE you sign up!

Thought I might sumarise some of the questions to ask a potential ISP before you sign up. If I miss any, please add! In no particular order and with required answers in brackets:

• Do you support migrations, both to and from? (yes) (see ofcoms page here)
• What is the minimum contract length? (1-3 months max)
• Is there a cancelation fee? (no)
• Is there a limit on the amount of data I can download each month? (no)
• Is the service unmetered? (yes)
• Do you block any ports or restrict P2P apps? (no)
• Is your customer support a premium rate number? (no)
• Are you a reseller or do you manage your own connections? (manage their own)
• Do you provide one or more fixed IP addresses? (yes, more - better)
• Do you allow customers to run servers? (yes)
• Can you set up a reverse DNS entry? (yes)

Regards,
Dan.

[silver]

good one

also, although you expect not to have any outages or need to call custy services,.

call them at different times of day (to see how quickly they respond and if they can answer questions or are just phone jockeys)

Sil

[silver]

another tip, start with a short list of providers by looking at a few different months of 'top 10 fastest'

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/newsarch...Top+10+Fastest

of course the things in the above posts are as / more important and speed is only one part of the equation but.. ISPs who put time into making their networks fast for users tend to be customer focused in general.

another thing, if you want to run servers then you may as well get fixed IP or a few fixed IPs, some providers charge the earth for this others do them free of charge another thing to ask when you sign up if you are every likely to want to run servers (e.g. your own webserver / email server etc)

Sil

Dorset Wedding Photographer

Added Fixed ip addresses to the list

[Worldlife]

Will you waive charges or offer compensation in the event of me not being able to connect becauseof an ADSL fault due to you or to British Telecom?

Will you agree to my terminating the contract without penalty should, through no fault of mine, I am not provided with a satisfactory ADSL connection ?

I was considering swapping to Pipex for a cheaper option when customer support said that their basic home package did not allow connection to a VPN. So maybe thats a question, if you need to work from home.

[silver]

Originally posted by Jeraff
I was considering swapping to Pipex for a cheaper option when customer support said that their basic home package did not allow connection to a VPN. So maybe thats a question, if you need to work from home.

I'd be very suprised if they actually stopped you using a VPN,. sounds like a case of custy support confusion perhaps?

I could be wrong but I think most any ISP should work ok with VPNs,. even AOL should work (so long as they aren't blocking ports)

Sil

I was surprised (and disappointed) too. He definately said that their Solo 500 package did not allow connection to a VPN.

[silver]

I think he's probably mistaken though,. am prepared to be wrong but I haven't heard of any such restriction on other ISPs.

Sil

PS, perhaps email them or try talking to someone different ?

Another thing to consider is, if one of your lines is connected to one of these silly DACS line sharing devices Bt use, does the Broadband provider allow you to terminate your contract if BT say they have no 'unDAC'd lines available!

The reason I say this is because BT will NOT do a servey now before signing up. They tell you to sign up to broadband (usually try and force you to take theirs) and the DACS, if possible, will be removed when you have signed...

I spoke at length to a BT customer services guy the other day who told me he had NO way of ordering a DACS removal job on his PC, and no way was he allowed to speak to an engineer direct...the only thing he could order was a new line, reconnection or general callout. Then he informed me that if he ordered a general callout, when the engineer turned up he would say "I don't do DACS' and charge ya £130 callout fee! :-o

So beware...there are loads of people in this position especially with the recently extended Broadband reach...

I'm still plodding away at 28800...and BT love me cause I have 2 lines...

I had this problem at my old house with a DACS line, was a bit of a cheek as I ordered a new line so I could have my own line in my room and they gave me DACS and i didnt work it out for a long time. Bt made me pay for this??
Anyway after struggling day after day to get my Unlimited BT dialup to connect and couldnt get them to help I connected through another pay as u go service and quickly ran up a bill of several hundred pound...
Anyway when the bill came my mum said that that person didnt live there and so it got cut off...
So 2 weeks later I phone up and ask to get the line connected but I said I dont want it if they are gonna use a DACS line they said "no problem the engineer will take that out" and they came round in a few days.
So maybe you could get cut off then get connected again but give them your own terms as it worked for me.

Surely there must be some legal issue involving DACS lines... as it is just to save them money but they dont give you a full line :-/

[silver]

DACS - how to remove - take a look at <thread>:Fibre Broadband Issue as BT really should (and generally will) remove them if you complain in the right way

Sil

PS, welcome to TS! OFI

further to the dacs issue, mine has now been removed...

see this thread which contained info of how i did it. with the help of DaveL, who has also repasted the link to the ofcom site for others to look at

http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/s...1&goto=newpost

> Can you set up a reverse DNS entry?

Could someone explain what a reverse DNS entry is ?

A reverse DNS is something you need if you are setting up an email server on your connection. Some incoming mail servers, AOL for instance, will not accept mail from addresses where the RDNS is not set up.

Hope that helps,

Dan.

rDNS is the reverse DNS entry for an IP address. To make life easier and instead of having to remember lots of numbers (IP addresses), DNS (domain name service) was invented. This basically ties in a name to an IP. So instead of having to type in say 212.159.8.137, we can type in www.plus.net. A heck of a lot easier.

rDNS is the reverse, but very similar. A customer connects to us and gets assigned an IP address. They may also want to have a mail server (as above), web server a couple of public PC's etc... Instead of having to remember say x.x.x.1; x.x.x.2; x.x.x.3 etc... you can set up rDNS so that each IP has a name. So router.domain.name; mail.domain.name; web.domain.name and pc1.domain.name are typical examples.

http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDef...917504,00.html

kind regards

Luke

[silver]

kinda, but easier way is ..

DNS == domain name service

like said - when u type the-scream.co.uk into your browser you need to resolve it to an IP addy

in dos..

\Administrator>ping the-scream.co.uk

Pinging the-scream.co.uk [66.199.244.162] with 32 bytes of data:
..

and the reverse DNS is a what maps the ip address back to a name (they don't need to be the same) so

\Administrator>tracert 66.199.244.162

Tracing route to server.the-scream.net [66.199.244.162]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

...
9 78 ms 94 ms 94 ms 65.125.239.146
10 78 ms 93 ms 94 ms server.the-scream.net [66.199.244.162]

Trace complete.

a reverse is basically a DNS lookup on the IP address to give you a name.

Some ISPs let you choose what is setup as the reverse - others let you delegate to your own DNS servers, some won't let you set it and worst of all some don't set it up at all

Sil

After moving from freeserve to onetel i have had nothing but connection problems.
I have been with onetel now about 5 wks and my connection may last an hour or 5 mins.
This is an everday occurance,i have lost count and hope of all the calls i have made to onetel.
I am now saying to onetel that i will cancel and they say you have to pay the full 12 month contract.
I keep saying but you are not providing a service i can use and their answer is we are providing an adsl connection and thats the end of the matter.
I say you may be providing an adsl but my connection keeps dropping all the time.
Does anyone know where i stand legally,i have tried everything with these people,i am really at the end of my rope with these ignorant people.

How do i know if i have DACS or not.

[silver]

if you have ADSL installed then you do not have a DACS fitted

regarding the previous question - it's hard to know what could cause connection drops it can be many things,, the legal position is not always clear, phone the CAB and see what they suggest,. also try Ofcom website + ISPA sites

Sil

PS, welcome to TS!

Okay thanks siver will have a look.

All this is really helpul stuff guys. Thanks.

[silver]

ah no,. if your IP is dynamic then dynamic it is... I suspect what you're referring to is one of the dynamic IP to static DNS domain name, there's some free ones about and you run a client that points a name (e.g. myhost.ddnsservice.net) at your IP even though your IP can change

is a list of some @ http://kvtek.com/ddnsServices.asp?SortBy=0

personally if you are hosting servers (mail / web etc) then static is always better (if you get more than one IP then you can even run your own dns servers)

Sil

Also ask if will be able to run Remote Desktop over a VPN -- so that you can work from home (Virgin doesn't apparently).

Thought I might sumarise some of the questions to ask a potential ISP before you sign up. If I miss any, please add! In no particular order and with required answers in brackets:

• Do you support migrations, both to and from? (yes) (see ofcoms page here)
• What is the minimum contract length? (1-3 months max)
• Is there a cancelation fee? (no)
• Is there a limit on the amount of data I can download each month? (no)
• Is the service unmetered? (yes)
• Do you block any ports or restrict P2P apps? (no)
• Is your customer support a premium rate number? (no)
• Are you a reseller or do you manage your own connections? (manage their own)
• Do you provide one or more fixed IP addresses? (yes, more - better)
• Do you allow customers to run servers? (yes)
• Can you set up a reverse DNS entry? (yes)

Regards,
Dan.

Originally Posted by Danmancs

THANKS for this. Can you recommend any that match these answers?

[silver]

make a shortlist of potential providers - good searchable list on the left at http://www.adslguide.org.uk and call a few, if you've got one in mind then post and ask for comments

Sil

If a supplier offers/supports a multi-port modem/router, does this mean that they support VPN?
I am considering using Eclipse, and they have an offer of £5 off the first 3 months if signed up by 31st August (tomorrow!), and they werent too quick in answering much simpler questions, so any ideas here will be very welcome!
Cheers.

Unless specifically stated you can take it that there will be no official support offered for services other than "simple services" such as email etc.

Thanks for the reply.
I suspect I opened my mouth and put my foot (feet?) in it anyway, probably confusing a VPN (a network with pc's in different locations, connected thro the 'net?) with a network run off one router, a home network such as mine. Oops!

Possible additional questions (for your consideration):

How many email accounts do you provide? (some users may prefer to have several)

How much (if any) free web hosting space do you provide? (a few users may desire this)

HTH, John