My ISP is closing and I’ve received a withdrawal letter from Vodafone who bought the brand stating my service ends in May.
I’m looking at a few different providers.
CityFibre are installing a 900Mbps Fibre to the premises network in my area
CPE is a Calix Gigapoint 801Gv2 and a THG3000gv2. Not sure as VF are tardy getting started with IPv6 and they might not get to my street in time.
BT Superfast 2 I believe comes with a BT Smart Hub 2.
Sky Fibre Max comes with a Sky Hub or Sky Q Hub?
My current ISP supplied router Thomson STS 585 was always problematic keeping contact with the Unitiqute.
Are any of these ISP-supplied FFTC routers problematic for uPnP streaming with Naim streamers out of the box? I’m not sure which are manageable and if the line is tied into their use.
I’ll get a gigabit switch at some point but due to funds it’ll be later rather than sooner and I don’t want to give up listening until I can buy a decent one.
I don’t think the internet provider makes a difference to anything other than reliability over another. You generally have no choice in modem/router you get what the ISP has a deal with manufacturer wise. Some you can just use as a modem others it will be an all.in one. Always use a decent switch in between your router and hifi such as the Cisco ones loved on here an all will be fine.
This sounds exactly like my situation with Vodafone ceasing their Demon service in May!
I’m looking at either BT or Vodaphone both fibre to the cabinet, the Vodaphone pricing is very attractive…but I wonder what their “Superouter” is like?
I would choose your ISP based on the internet service they provide, rather than the router. You can always hook up your own LAN hardware to their router, then if the send you a pile of junk with poor WiFi etc. it won’t matter, as you’ll be using your own.
I would avoid BT like the plague based on their dreadful customer service, Plusnet are much better even though owned by BT. It makes no difference to available speeds which supplier you choose as all the fibre going to the cabinet is supplied and managed by the other part of BT. So I would choose based on cost and customer service.
You can only speak as you find Glasnaim, but I don’t agree. I do accept BT’s customer service was pretty dire & a few years ago I did spend a lot of frustration time with them. But in recent times I have used them twice helping with problems on other peoples lines, both were sorted & reasonably quickly.
Mike you may be right about recent times, I gave up after being a BT customer for over 35 years about 7/8 years ago, then the customer service was dire, so eventually I left. Plusnet’s customer service has been good so far.
I guess we all have a tale to tell about ISP service. Years ago, I had unbelievably bad service from Demon and left them at the earliest opportunity. Plusnet were dreadful for me, too. I’ve been with Sky for a few years now, and have had pretty good service from them.
Chris, yes it was Demon I was with for 25 years.
I’m not too keen on Vodafone after the short notice they gave customers on unbundling the e-mail service. I was away, had computer problems and was unable to migrate my email from Turnpike to Outlook and Thunderbird so now can’t access any of those e-mails.
They don’t have IPv6 anyway.
I’m really only looking at BT and Sky(with call anytime packages as they both have IPv6 + IPv4 dual stack.
Thanks for the info.
I was lucky, I managed to switch the e-mail service painlessly, but had to buy my Demon domain name.
I think BT look like the best option in my case, there are a lot of reports of poor customer service from Vodaphone, their bundle is very cheap but there’s probably a very good reason for that!
I have one choice only on my street for fibre and that’s virgin. I know some people have had issues with them but for me they have been rock solid and always seem to get most of my bandwidth of 200mb even at peak times. I only use their kit in modem mode though, always use my kit for the rest.
Though Vodafone’s prices were competitive I wanted IPv6 I just ordered Sky with a call package.They and BT have IPv6 of sorts dynamic can be made sticky but no static allocation, kind of defeating one of the ponts of IPv6. Andrews Arnold and Zen who offer IPv6 static and IPv4 static are out of my budget. Oh well, perhaps in a few years if more consumers have home clouds, webservers, IOTNS to make use of higher speed ISPs might get round to a full iIPv6 mplementation. I can always us no-ip, dynDNS.
I won’t be in a position to buy a decent switch for several months and in fact I’d rather not and just use the supplied CPE while I can. I’m not made of electric.
A new switch will mean a new PDU, shelving, reorganising my desk/bench space, then I’ll want to install additional structured wiring and so on - the little jobs always grow arms and legs.
I’ll be glad to see the back of the Thomson STS585 Demon router. It’s so frustrating my Qute not seeing the Asset share or the share dropping out
I switch over to Sky Fibremax on Monday and have today received an e-mail that their ‘hub’, a Sky Q ‘hub’ is on its way.
Typical! I saw a sign at the bottom of the road for the first time today stating not to park between certain dates as Cityfibre are laying fibres [FTTP]. The dates are before when my current ISP is shutting down so I could have maybe got the Gigafast 2 /
5 / 900 Mbps in time.
The SkyQ box has only two Ethernet ports so I’m going to have to buy a switch or two or an L3 switch. In time I’ll buy a proper NAS / backup server and to run backups I’ll be looking for more speed than my current unmanaged 100Mbps switch Is 1BdE good enougg for running backups?
Wish List:
Cisco
Managed
Fanless (I’ve a 2950 / 24pt hardly used because it was so loud)
12 ports preferable
L3 preferable
Gigabit (predominant port speed)
A couple of 10G RJ uplinks for NAS and PC
PoE a bonus
I guess if the IPv6 holds up at least there will be fewer broadcasts so perhaps a L3 switch is won’t be as necessary but it’s as much for tinkering as for operational requirements… Deciding between a 2960G-8 used, a 300 used and a new compact WS-C3560CX-12PC-S 8 which would give me the L3 to play with…