New Broadband Options - Advice Please

[rohan]

Thanks for those comments, guys.

[511Flyer]

I have a SKY Fibre package that includes TV, Broadband, and telephone line rental with free calls after 18.00 and at weekends. If there are any problems, and I had one recently, I call SKY, they contact Openreach, who send an engineer who deals with SKY specifically. My problem, which the eng had not encountered before, was a break in the fibre at Weybridge exchange. He spent 5 hours locating and rectifying the fault. No charge to me, but I always give people a drink.(Glass of water)

I've just run a speed test, and the result was, Ping=32ms. Download=25.18mbps. Upload=5.69. I'm happy with that.

Den.

[TSR2]

As im lumbered with 2.5mb, an option im considering when my BT contract runs out in Feb is a 4g service from Vodafone. The mast is 150yards along the road. They are rumoured to be offering a 30GB per month package for £40 in the new year which is £6 less than BT currently charge and my BT charges are going up in January for the land line which I don't use.I'd have to buy a 4g router at about £120, but it would be worth it to get decent download speeds.

[emfrat]

As im lumbered with 2.5mb, an option im considering when my BT contract runs out in Feb is a 4g service from Vodafone. The mast is 150yards along the road. They are rumoured to be offering a 30GB per month package for £40 in the new year which is £6 less than BT currently charge and my BT charges are going up in January for the land line which I don't use.I'd have to buy a 4g router at about £120, but it would be worth it to get decent download speeds.

Hello Ben -
I got rid of my landline a couple of years ago, for the same reasons. That saved AUD30 / month, which was about to become AUD35.
I bought a 4g Mobile Broadband 8GB/mth plan from Telstra (AUD59.95 / mth), including a "free" 4g modem.
I bought a Dovado 'Tiny' 4g router post-free from the UK for about AUD90, and picked up an 8-port D-Link switch for under AUD60, which is what I was expecting to spend on a 5-port one.
The Tiny will accept wireless input, but I prefer wired. My network talks to the D-Link switch, which talks to the Tiny, and the Tiny connects by USB to the Telstra (Sierra) 4g modem.
It all works very nicely. 120 quid for a router seems to be at least 100% too dear, to me.
Bear in mind that without a landline, emergency services will not be able to locate you precisely when you call them. That is the situation in Oz at least - might not apply in the UK.
http://www.dovado.com/en/
Hope this helps

MikeW

[TSR2]

Hi Mike,

4G is only starting to be rolled out here in the UK, but any gsm based device can be triangulated to give a good indication of location, and if your smartphone has location services, it will soon be compulsory across Europe that the location of the call is sent when an emergency number is called. I'm only looking at the paid for routers as they have other functionality I'd want such as dmz's vpn's etc, but there is a little wireless unit available foc if I wanted it.

[emfrat]

Cheers, Ben.
4g hasn't reached here yet (60 miles W of Brisbane) but it runs fine on 3g and will use 2g if that's all that's available.
I noticed on the Dovado page that the latest firmware upgrades for the Tiny include VPN and a net access scheduler.
They're up to 7.1.2 now - I'm still using the 5.something from when I bought it.

Release notes 7.0.0

New Features:

- Embedded VPN (PPTP) client with optional 128-bit encryption, located on the VPN->PPTP page.

- By default, entire internal network will be routed through VPN tunnel.

- Possible to limit use of PPTP tunnel to only a certain number of devices as opposed to all. The rest use the Direct Internet in parallel.

- A "block" option is available in order to restrict Internet access for the network clients in case the PPTP tunnel drops. This will prevent any sensitive traffic to spill out on the

Internet.

- Port Forwarding rules are available for both the Direct Internet as well as PPTP Client interfaces, offering great flexibility

- Dynamic DNS is also available for the PPTP Client interface.

- Possible to enable multiple simultaneous Dynamic DNS profiles, regardless the connection type (Direct/PPTP).

- VPN's IP and Status info/command available in the API as well as the web menu's Status Overview Bar.

- SMS commands/notifications now include VPN IP address.

- Status Overview Bar can be disabled in the SYSTEM->REMOTE MANAGEMENT page.



**Please Note: Connection Tracker is currently disabled when the VPN client has been enabled.**

MikeW

[rohan]

Ben,
a word to the wise about Vodafone's mobile broadband service. Four years ago, I was using mobile broadband instead of a landline service. Having set myself up with 3 on a PAYG basis, I used quite a few other suppliers' services on a trial basis - that is, terminated it within two weeks. In most cases, this ended up being totally free, though Orange actually charged me for the usage but not the modem. Essentially, I was looking to see if I could get any better transfer rates from other suppliers, though the results from 3 were largely trouble free. Of course, all this was 3G.

Anyway, when it came to Vodafone, I had problems downloading files from some websites including allnodes. Checking their support forum, I found a lot of other users with similar complaints. The essential problem was that there were incompatibilities between the HTTP protocol as written for the Vodafone network and that written for some other ISPs' networks. My statement is my interpretation of comments on their forum posted by their own engineers, while of course all the formal comments by the company claimed they were not aware of any problems but were looking into the situation.

Of course, that was four years ago, and 4G may well be using different code from that used by 3G, for Vodafone if not other suppliers. In any event, before investing a large sum in your chosen supplier, you might want to look at some sort of free trial ...

Hope that helps,
Ro