regrading adsl, and its mixed benefits

The fast broadband myth had to be tested.here at the monkey house.  A free regrade by our existing provider was offered -not fibre (my blog) although there where offers and so it would have cost.

However the information was a little scant and the ‘up to’ higher speeds featured prominently opposed to the real world.  Being assured that nothing would change config wise i decided to give it a go.

I did get to slash our costs by losing our unlimited download* for a monthly capacity on our rather slow connection.  The regrade happened within a day its results are not that impressive with the upload speed not really changing.

Download speed is double what it was but nowhere near the mythical up to speed and does not say much, and ping is down by a 33%.  So it has improved but the marketing of up to leaves a lot to be desired, and i can see why it is now ‘free’.  So i am glad i did not pimp this upgrade to the alpha ape and pay for such unimpressive results.

Fibre would have been nice, however it would require a new router, and probably not support ipv6** so again with the marketing speak of ‘maybe fast, or about the same’ we will hang on for that.

Overall the change was competently handled and i like our supplier who is not British Telecom.

Better marginally technical performance with less resending and queuing requests -  i suppose but nothing to brag about as i notice the usage of it made  has remained the same per month seemingly with less data..

* within reason ** we want both ipv4 and ipv6 – and that’s not yet available

Capchta and the old

I got a call that apparently the internet was broken with funny letters and numbers on screen from an old zoo employee.  Being that there old and the words ‘internet not working ‘i decided to pay them a person visit being i probably not get  a lot of sense out of them as you would with a young person (example ask what are your dns servers, or what ones do the router use. You get my point.

So bananas leaves the monkey house not really knowing what to expect.  I get there and find the internet is not broken.  Being a windoze household (opposed to my linux) i discover that the webmail thing is using capchta’s – some debate is had over whether the isp will change and dump the funny letters and numbers which are causing the internet to be broken.

I say forget it, while updating software, running spybot [some issues] and a free virus check which may or may not be truthful on the matter.

Deciding to use the microsoft assets already on disk i decide to install the email client as part of office which theere be be several version of.  I succeed but then i have no product key, i have found microsoft bloat.  Time for thunderbird.  I get passwords and connect to the webmail servers which solves the ‘broken’ internet issue.

Having fixed funny stuff not using microsoft crap made both of us happy.

Little fibs

Our isp connection is slow, good and capable of having things stuck on the end of it.  We do.  Recently i got an email offer to upgrading the connection.  The first fib was a extra charge that the email forgot to mention.

I had a frank phone conversation with them about this (my blog) and although not as fast as that would not have minded it.  Off to alpha ape in the monkey house he says up to you but im not bothered about it.

In the end we stick with what we have.

Superfast fibre broadband and the morons who sell it.

golly gosh dear thats nice

The zoo can get ‘superfast’ broadband.  However the monkey house is not bothering with it.  Why i hear you ask?

Well – i did enquire and got a very generic response from a sales person,  eg yes and its up to you.  Technical points like ip range location (no ipv6 either)  and what it uses where not addressed. just in case things we use cannot support it  I like challenges and so i researched it, i guessed that protocol 1* was the thing and left it that.

I was not waiting for the role out (early bird) and the isp where advertising it as being available and for sale just in case you think im being too critical of the sales staff.

The good news is that we support ’1′ on our routers. but im not recommending it to the alpha.

The other problem is nobody believes the large providers as to speeds of service and the capacity is a problem with overselling. So if you are with british telecom, or that billionaire who has never had sex you might well be lumped in twelve months of disappointment or pay that nice sex starved billionaire a fee to dump the contract.

If you think im going to use a Rupert Murdoch or news international company who will then spy and sell my data then you need your head examined.

Its not Luddite: I would not object to a fast connection but i am ok with what we have, viop calls would be nice but that’s hardly mainstream and 8mb dsl might (an upgrade for us) be ok with that.

Extra problems lay in censorship, and neutrality – suppose i use a dvd site to send disks out, does this service stop british telecom from making extra money [maybe], gets worse with streaming issue and if say both try the us cable industry approach am i not providing free bandwidth for cable tv as well as an extra fee.

The speed and usage caps are another issue – suppose i want to download a debian iso** so its not a a photograph it seems i am unable to plan to run the download as an overnight job.  Did you know that ofcom deem downloading open source .debs (package file) to be piracy ?

Despite our broadband being slow i don’t have problems with it, it is reliable and i do not need to regrade our internal network from 100mb to gigabyte (a fair job in itself) or upgrade laptops to n from g.

So i am wise to the issues.  Im not sure what our good*** isp can do for us, everything apparently but that also raises other issues.  The good news is that while the marketing staff have ruined this tech with ‘upto’ speeds that nobody gets and all that is that not many humans have opted for it either.

The telecom marketing chickens have come home to roost.

* i don’t wish to divulge this information as it might help some stupid salesman ** ask your techy friends  *** our isp staff have had sex and are not based in india

British Telecom spam

So where does BT.plc (or british india) the people with the phone network for gchq send its spam – that yes i  unsubscribed from a long time ago come from.

postmaster@ibc.com.au, postmaster@destra.com

Australia is the answer.  Clearly not England, those fuckers really should go an rename themselves not here Telelcom/Offshored telecom? The United Kingdon is no place for British Telecom.

Mull – clearly if bt don’t think much the internet in england then why should i buy its sub-par services that apparently the Australians do better (even with Stephen Conroy).   Follow BT i do, and not become a client of there’s i think.

what the fuck do you home users do on your routers and Vista ?

Like four firewalls on windows vista (no im not joking)

Computers lie and make mistakes, if your computer thinks, ignore it or install another 4 firewalls just to be on the ‘safe side’.

Another example of this was the couple who’s helper turned off the wifi encryption and then wondered why things where slow, until somebody turned it back on again.

Humans….

user admin, password password.

So our professor is having problems with aol, and to make aol ‘work’ in Windows Vista (the backgrounder) which meant having a router because the usb broadband modems don’t work** in windows vista for some odd reason.

I ‘fled’ the scene when Professor bought Windows Vista over XP on his pc, when you hear what Dell are like (see the link above) – its a lost cause and went back to the chicken sheds and since the experts at Dell ‘helped’ him to buy a new pc poorly with only 1gb ram on a Vista box and he now wonders why Visa is ‘s l o w ****’. There good those Dell experts arent they.

So eventually i get called out of the monkey house where professor admits that having to buy a router,new printer, extra usb hubs just do what he did in xp was bad tco*, and a couple of weeks of ‘professionals’ in it changing things over that Vista isnt the best bargain out there.

So things where apparently happily chugging away, and then aol (think talk talk and a Charles Dunestone) screw up the aol connection, this blows up the naturally working aol client software and gets professor mega pissed off.

Theres some retards on the aol help desk. and Vista support for aol is odd and its not there yet (so much for Microsofts beta of Vista). But when another friend if his insists on putting on extra 4 firewalls on the pc (don’t forget the firewall on the router) means Vista runs like treacle syrup on strike or a go slow.

So Bananas ‘goes in’ and deletes the four firewalls and performance slightly returns but the aol software client is fucked*** (thats because the lady that says ‘welcome to aol’ and goodbye) wont work.

Fortunately Professor has some brains and knows that things could be better and flees aol.co.uk, he has a usage of Outlook for the ipaq and after an additional cost of exporting aols pfc, and favorites for some software means Aol isnt an easy migration.

Webmail on aol is rubbish compared with gmail and not the rich experience you get from aol’s odd software when it did work. Ok so aol is bad, but i ask does Professor know his router password, no is the response.

Some idiot working in ‘it’ advised him that user admin and the password of password where secure.

No this isn’t made up, yes this really happened. Honesty he is ripe for his connection being taken over and the best thing is he got this solution from the help he got (not me).

* tco total cost of ownership. ** nor do some printers and lots of hardware things in Vista. *** probably the best thing about aol **** dell pc’s are so good, they make it quite hard to buy memory that does not come from dell (it can be done) but they keep it pretty obsure there memory spec.

Talk Talk do it again.

Alas no the monkey house is not fans, or even subscribers to con merchant Charles Dunestone (my blog) ‘enterprises’*.  But the tribe met up with another monkey house and discovered that they too cannot provide broadband (adsl), or even a working telephone line.

With Charles Dunestone at the helm, quiet who needs a telephone or internet connection anyhow, because he can’t be buggered to provide you with one.

We all applaud Mr Dunestones attempts, and look forward to the day we his management techniques are applied to the whole UK’s telecom industry.  After all we can all shout cant we.

* misselling mobile phone contracts is the latest charge againt this ‘super’ businessman.

A visit to the professors office

Bananas was invited to visit the professors office to fix his computer, he now has a talk talk (now aol) connection for some odd reason and the windows xp thing was screwed up in a number of ways by aol being that only they can screw things up.

Most which where easy to fix. But aol (under new management to a human called Charles Dunston*) but the connection was dead, very Talk Talk that. Score one for new management

Since my professor ‘power user’ does not go near the technical garbage and thinks that removing a desktop shortcut to the recycle bin was the reason the error i deemed it was not the professors fault.

So – its ring up aol which the professor does and i think in the ‘english’ language a man halfway across the world parrots some instructions from a script which after ‘tuning’ into his local dialect  with a very difficult difficult accent means

• the connection is deleted and
• then reinstalled

Via some buttons and wham bang thank you mam the thing works, quite why no dhcp lease was being obtained from aol seems to be something that the talk talk hell users suffered from.

It seems that aol is going south, god bless Charles Dunestone i say.

* reason he screwed up “FREE” broadband

Humourous British India (BT) story

Associates visiting elderly relative last week when BT rang (probably trying to flog bt broadband) with a thick Indian accent behind it.

Eldery relative said:

I’m sorry i can’t understand you goodbye*

Who then put the phone down.  Now whether the technical or the indianess failled i leave to your own imaginations.  Our experience of British India’s (British Telecom) to mere mortals is here

I would not – but then I am Bananas in the Falklands.

* true story.