Building a broadband Britain

[Cabe]

Ok i ask you are NTL a complete bunch of whores?

I was given this helpful piece of advice.

[Tom]

The only reason being that our telephone company is ****e. No doubt you will have heard me rant on about them in IRC.

[Sandy]

Apart from being in a low paid job and having resits, this comes a close third in the things that piss me off catagory.

I live 10 miles from a major city (Edinburgh), and have been sitting patiently for over a year now.

I dont see the advantages of doing the adsl rollout as slowly as bt are currently. Probably in 10 years time adsl will start to be outdated (cable has much higher potential throughput), so timewasting at this stage (most profitable time) just doesnt make sense.

Damn i hate BT much ... so very very much ...
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sandy.thomson/available.jpg

[minioak]

The strange thing is, that even some new exchanges that BT are building aren't capable of supplying ADSL. A little lack of foresight there I think.

However, I am one of those "broadband whores" :-P

Rock on Telewest Cable :-)

Regards

John

[KermitTheFrag]

Well NTL arent too bad. Their DHCP implementation is a bit sucky though and sometimes you dont get an IP address so you have to go and manually renew your lease.

I get solid 79k/sec to anywhere on the cambridge pop no problems at all.

Service sucks though, so dont expect them to have it working properly until at least a week after you get it.

Apart from that they're ok.

[Jazza]

Don't trust the NTL website, you may already be able to get it. As there site said for 4 months, that I couldn't get it, but they had already been to my house and installed it ;)

[commodore]

Originally posted by KermitTheFrag
Well NTL arent too bad. Their DHCP implementation is a bit sucky though and sometimes you dont get an IP address so you have to go and manually renew your lease.
Service sucks though, so dont expect them to have it working properly until at least a week after you get it.

The situation is much the same with Telewest and Blueyonder. Customer service is absolutely terrible - I even had to complain to a supervisor about one guy because he was being so rude (and I won't even begin on the stuff I've written about them in my column)

Also had a terrible time getting the thing installed and working. It died 2 minutes after they eventually installed it (which was a month late) and it took nine appointments - five of which they never showed up for - before it was finally fixed. Besides that, the extremely unreliable news and mail servers (thankfully I use mailboxes from another hosting firm) and the flaky IP leasing - its OK. When it works - I do get excellent transfer rates.

Chris

[Mouce]

ALL BROADBAND COMPANIES ARE WHORES!!!!!

[Sandy]

To test your bt line dial 17070, select option 3,1 then 2. The system phones you back and lets you know if your line passes or fails. It also quotes the line distance from your home to the exchange :D

If the line distance is under 3.5km you should in theory be able to recieve adsl.

Unfortunately bt are hopeless fools who will never upgrade my exchange ...

[KermitTheFrag]

Oh yeah, couple more NTL notes:-

a) their mail hosting sucks.
b) their web hosting sucks.
c) their news hosting sucks (esp news.cable.ntlworld.com)

I just use them for internet access. My hosting is all colo via Newnet (http://www.newnet.co.uk/). Expensive, but with 10Mbit out the back of our colo box into a core switch rack at LINX, you cant complain :D

[Tom]

You think BT suck?? You wanna get to know Kingston Communications. LOL!

The prices I have to pay to get an ISDN (read as: 56K) is rediculous.

I am about to pick up the phone and give NTL a ring because there have been a lot of NTL vans around recently and someone said above that the site lies. :mad:

[Triprotic-Acid]

ADSL, the range for it is 5.5km (now) from the exchange to b able to get it!

i live 4.2km from an exhange that has ADSL!

BUT! (and here comes the killer) im not on that exchange, im on a different one, so i cant get it :anger:

alos according to a reliable friend who works at BT, they wont bother to put ADSL at my exchange for a long time :(

bah, looks like i'll have to move to get any sort of broad band net connection :/

[LordPhil]

My area must be the only place you don't get hassle. I am in the radius of my local exchnage for ADSL. Plus my freind (lives up the street) has Btopenworld and he says his pings on CS are around 40.

I must be lucky!

[Sandy]

Originally posted by Triprotic-Acid
ADSL, the range for it is 5.5km (now) from the exchange to b able to get it!Your talking about RADSL, the technology that BT says is current but in fact is more like 5 years away (ive been told) ... so BT are whores

[wishy]

I think you mean extended reach ADSL, which can do 5.5 and is availible now.Just the upload rates aren't garenteed.

[Sandy]

yep your right...
i think it is technically called RADSL, and maybe it is available now ... ?

BT are still whores though!

[KJ^]

I think RADSL is available now, i know some1 who is using it anyway.

No probs 4 me as i live 0.3 of mile away from my local exchange, giving me a ping of 29 on some UT servers :)

BT ADSL is v.nice indeed (well when it's working)

[wishy]

/Me thinks the price cut and the unavailiblity of Cable has wooed me to ADSL at the beginning of october

[KermitTheFrag]

I'd love ADSL if they came up with an ethernet ADSL modem without charging so much extra on the base subscription. BT ripoff bastards again. Unfortunately my router only has ethernet (dedicated box) and cant have USB.

[wishy]

As soon as my server has a USB supporting OS (IE Win2k Adv Serber) then i can use ADSL. Which reminds me, Kerm, did you strip that ram?

[KermitTheFrag]

nah ... The machine wont run with less RAM with the amount of motherboards its got :p:

[wishy]

Ah well.
*Wishy Sneeks up to another room, where mothers PC is. "No No, there was only 16 meg of ram in there at the beginning" "It says 32 on the sheet?!?!?!" "Guess the person we bought it off sold some on" :D

[WhiteKnight]

Ar5e b0ll0x f**king gitting pants !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just done the BT test...

I`m 5.44 KM from the exchange !!!

Nackers :(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(:(

So will RADSL work ?

...and does it use the same turquise frog thing they the ordinary ADSL uses ?


Oh and Wishy...

OMG :eek: !!!! You`re stealing 16mb ?!

16Mb of ram is liek 20p in todays market.. you could get 256mb for what you`d pay for 16 this time last year..

[wishy]

Btopenworld have the tweaks to check, give it a try. Yes, you do get the daft looking modem.

[Idylla]

I live 2.37km away from my exchange, so it really does annoy me when BT say the following:

Sorry, but your telephone exchange doesn't have the new broadband (ADSL) technology yet, but it may do soon.


Its very annoying that i'm in one of the smaller groups that live very close to their exchange, yet that i can't even receive damn broadband cos they havn'#t updated my dark-ages exchange

I have however seen quite a few bt vans around recently digging up things, so you never know

Ah well :(

[pukka]

Every one who has ADSL or NTL Cable modems HACKERS ARE AFTER YOU!!!!! If you leave your computer on 24/7. A hacker might be in there now...... have a look URL=http://www.smoothwall.org]Here[/URL] it is a linux firewall!! and it's FREE (yes that right FREE) it is dead easy to setup. All you need is a 486 16mb ram and a 200mb hdd and some network cards realtek 8139 work the best i have found.. and it works well, even works with USB Modems!!! LOL get a proper NTL Modem then you get a normal connection.

[Cabe]

i shall have to abuse the NTL: w4nkers tommora. I NEED TO GET OFF FCUKING AOL!

oh and BT are bigger whores than Squire.

[pukka]

i found a web page a work which can use. you buy a wireless card for you computer and possibily someone else some where near you set's up a wireless base station and you can get free internet access most people use a 512k line or higher most of the time it is network admins giving free access at night when the line is not in use.. if you don't know what i am going on about email me and i will give you more info i will find the web page tomor when i am at work and post it on here. at some point.... keep checking back.............................................. Email p.crookes@ntlworld.com

have fun now

[KermitTheFrag]

Originally posted by pukka
Every one who has ADSL or NTL Cable modems HACKERS ARE AFTER YOU!!!!! If you leave your computer on 24/7. A hacker might be in there now...... have a look URL=http://www.smoothwall.org]Here[/URL] it is a linux firewall!! and it's FREE (yes that right FREE) it is dead easy to setup. All you need is a 486 16mb ram and a 200mb hdd and some network cards realtek 8139 work the best i have found.. and it works well, even works with USB Modems!!! LOL get a proper NTL Modem then you get a normal connection.

I'd agree 100% with that. I get scans and crack attempts daily on my OBSD firewall. Runs on a Sun SS2 (25MHz/16Mb/500Mb) which I paid a whopping £30 for and keeps the script kiddies away (and still idles at 0.1% load when routing thousands of fragged packets :) ).

BTW, personal firewall software WILL NOT completely protect Windows machines as the TCP/IP implementation is so weak. Thats also why Windows NT/2k firewalls are so bloody useless. Windows XP is better, but not quite there yet.

[WhiteKnight]

Kermit...

How will a NT firewall not protect your machine..

assuming i`m using a stealthing firewall..

any requests qill be dropped so any machine at the other end will get no replies to anything..

if they wanna get in, they can only do it by coming in on the reply to packets that have been sent out.. (not script kiddie stuff..) and even then, if the software has proper packet inspection, it doesnt get you very far..

?!

Please explain...

(BTW: I use win route pro... which aparently works as above)

[wishy]

WK, I missed that comment on why i'm stealing 16 meg ram. Well its 72pin. IE i don't have any decent sized stuff lying about.

I'm using winroute. Its quite nice, i've had no problems with it.

[Groodles]

Our local Tesco has now got a cybercafe, so I checked the BT site and my local exchance has recently been upgraded. I ordered the USB ADSL last week. :)

I use winroute atm sharing my ISDN connection it's built-in firewall is a bonus. Apparently it supports the right protocols to be able to share a USB connection also. Not sure if that breaks the ADSL ToC though. ;)

[KermitTheFrag]

WK: The main problem is that the firewall software only works as a kernel loadable module. It's only allowed to hook the kernel TCP/IP abstract functions at that ring level rather than at the TCP/IP driver level. The IP stack is vulnerable to malformed packets still as the NT kernel parses the packets before the ipfilter/firewall does. They get to the kernel but not the applications and services.

You're still relying on Microsoft to deliver a bug free TCP/IP stack and kernel implementation. It's a design floor, yet a little pointed out one (comparing UNIX/BSD reference std to NT/2K):-

Windows NT/2k:-
physical media <--> ipstack <--> kernel interface <--> ipfilter

Unix (BSD anyway):-
physical media <--> ipstack+ipfilter <--> kernel interface

when you pass a UNIX IOCTL to the ipfilter, it reconfigures the TCPIP stack up rather than parsing the packets like in NT. That means that BSD's kernel never sees the duff packets. The advantage for NT is you dont have to rewrite the IP stack code every time you make a change or add a new IOCTL equivalent. It's also one reason BSD is so much faster at network ops.

Anyway... you prolly wont get hacked...I'm just paranoid.

[WhiteKnight]

Yeah thats what i thought..

But surely malformed packets would only crash the Firewall box and not open a backdoor ??

I dunno..

Its not like anyone`s gonna spend the amount of effort required to hack past that just to get my MP3 collection, and a few personal files.. lol

[Efex]

Apparently I live 8km from the exchange, but I drove it out in my car from my front door and I got just under 5km. I wonder if BT dilibertly run cables in circles for a mile or so just to piss people off. Does anyone know if I have any hope for future access to Broadband. What broadband cud I get at this distance?

Cheers

BT ARE *S*UCKING WHORES!!!!!!!

Efex

[karetaker]

well any form of BT bb solution looks unlikely for you so, what cable companys are in your area. Try phoning em up and see what they say. And cable will have a better future as it is built on fibre optics and has a much higher head room. ok so adsl can go to 2mbps im sure cable will reach much higher than this

[Sandy]

someone quoted me some figures about this in a pub once. ADSL has a potential max throughput of about 8Mbits/s, wheras cable has a max throughput of about 27Mbits/s. This is what i can remember from being half drunk :D

[Efex]

Ive phoned NTL and they dont have any lines out here. What I need to know, does anyone here know of any future potential of adsl working at 8km?

Efex

[pukka]

a few months ago i spoke to one of the head men at NTL, and they were saying the once they have got all the analog set top boxes, and they are all digital this will free up bandwith on there systems, they hope this will be 4gb to the house!!!!!!!!! yes i know it's a lot i was gobbe smacked as well. this wont happen for a few years yet but it will.... this service inc fiber to you house, they are running the trials in london at the mo.. if you phone them up you could join the trial..

[Efex]

Im no where near london, im in Lincolnshire, just outside Grantham. Even tho that sounds pretty sweet ;)

The gayest thing of all is the ntl website tells me I can get ntl cable according to my postcode, but I called them and they told me it was wrong.

Later
Efex :cool:

[KermitTheFrag]

Originally posted by WhiteKnight
Its not like anyone`s gonna spend the amount of effort required to hack past that just to get my MP3 collection, and a few personal files.. lol

The problem occurs is:

a) Do they know who you are or what you hide until they've broken in and buggered it up.

b) 1337 h@x0rs (or script kiddy twats) like mp3s.

[WhiteKnight]

a) i would have thought they would know who i am (or at least who my provider is) before they hacked otherwise why would they be hacking me ?

b) script kiddies tend to take the easiest option (steal others utils as opposed to write their own) so i`d have thought they`d go and use Morpheus or E-Donkey rather than spend ages trying to haxx0r my l33t 56k modem.

[KermitTheFrag]

a) i would have thought they would know who i am (or at least who my provider is) before they hacked otherwise why would they be hacking me ?

They'll most likely just harvest a days worth of scans and try anything interesting. I would ;)

b) script kiddies tend to take the easiest option (steal others utils as opposed to write their own) so i`d have thought they`d go and use Morpheus or E-Donkey rather than spend ages trying to haxx0r my l33t 56k modem.

LOL....

As **** happens, I've been got by Sub7 before so I am paranoid as feck about security. Nothing quite like watching someone eject your CDROM drive a few times. A nice modem yanking, a quick run with NAV and clean trousers solved that one!!

[wishy]

I've Been planning spooky goings on at college, such as all CD-ROM's opening at the same time :D

[KermitTheFrag]

Bah cdrom ejecting not chaos. This chaos:-

The funniest prank we pulled on Uni:- setting the unix motd to the following (from my archives):-

SunOS 5.7 generic sun4u (c) 1997 Sun Microsystems

Information Services Announcements:

12/06/1997 10:04AM - IMPORTANT SERVICE NOTICE!
All data on the master NFS filestore has been erased due
to the high amount of pornography stored in the mail spools
and user home directories. If you wish to retrieve any work
from before the weekend, please contact the support center
in person and fill in a tape archive restore request form
IS429.

Oh those UNIX admins loved us that day. 400 people asked them for restores... hahaha!

[Jez_Gafys]

Hmm Trust me no one is getting past my fire wall, its a deidcated machine running NAT and a copy of checkpoint firewall1 (not some crappy zone alarm bollox) www.checkpoint.com

Really if yah names (ip/port) not down then yah not coming in.

[Cabe]

i managed to get all the cd trays in college to the the "Knight Rider" swoop across 12 machines

[WhiteKnight]

How the F*K can you afford that ?

I thought the regestration was tied to the mac address of the machine and registered online with checkpoint... i.e. cant crack it..

?!

i could be wrong... and if i am.. where do i get it.. i used that at my old work place... so i know all the ins/outs of it :D

[Big Giant Head]

Worth pointing out that there have been 4 major flaws found in Checkpoint firewall-1 this year and 11 found last year? :)

[wishy]

Kermit, That message is truely inspired. You get caught?

[KermitTheFrag]

Yes, but being unix admins they thought it was funny...

[Cabe]

and Solaris admins are the nuttiest of the lot.

[Jez_Gafys]

Yes checkpoint is a pricy bit of software, but I got it paid for my my company. And BGH like any program out there, they do if flaws/bugs no software wil ever be release without a these. Just make sure you always have the latest versionbs/service packs that fix the problem (sadly sometinmes they bring more).

[Jez_Gafys]

I find that zed adsl have the best availability online check for adsl find it here http://www.zenadsl.com/availability.asp , unlike BT its actually states a date when/if your exhance will be upgraded.

Broadband has not been enabled on this exchange.

Your exchange is due to be enabled by the end of September 2001.

Please contact our sales team on
01706 713714.


RAHHH

[Sandy]

* Sandy sighs BT are just such whores
-----------------------
Broadband has not been enabled on this exchange.

There are no plans for your exchange at this time.

Please contact our sales team on
01706 713714.

[KermitTheFrag]

Checkpoint sucks biggo. I've heard about the people at Defcon getting through it in no less than 3 minutes AND opening it up to allow additional traffic incoming.

[fenDahL]

Hmmm... well I'm currently working @ ntl: (contractor) and eventually got meself a CM last October having waited nrly 4 yrs since getting cable itself :( But it actually hasn't been too bad amazingly enough!

The actual technical limits of the CM itself is 34Mb/sec although these are limited depending on the package you buy - currently 64Kb/s or 512Kb/s.... although there are rumours about a 1Mb service being brought in l8r in the yr to compete with the premium 1Mb/s ADSL services offered by other ISPs. Whether they'll increase the u/l speed from 128 to 256 (or 512) is unknown.

As with most phone co's the customer service is carp..... its bad enuff 4 me and I can actually ring departments direct as they do actually publish phone numbers on the internal intranet - unlike the customer-facing one :mad: [nb that aint an invitation 4 ppl to ask me 2 look 4 them ;) ]

ntl:'s major problems are its still trying to merge all the diff cable co's its bought (and all the disparate systems that entails - diff regions = diff systems) and the fact that until recently it was seen to be better to get new products out even if they couldn't support them properly or get them to work properly (eg ntlworld free axs debacle last year). Thats wot happens when u let marketing control things and ignore the techies :rolleyes: They are actually working to get the quality and service improved... but I guess time will tell on this one.

[ziggy12345]

Just had Tele2 installed in the office in Reading. Its a microwave link thingy and it brilliant!

Had to upgrade to the business package to get a fixed IP so a bit expensive but 512 K is pretty good

They will be rolling out in other areas. Looks like Microwave is the way to go.

Anybody else got Tele2?

[Tom]

Ziggy, Ive been looking into Tele2 aswell. Looks like a good service, just that I'm not in the correct area. I'm getting used to hearing that.... :(

[pukka]

we have tele2 at work it is very nice!! it is very fast.. we have the £50.00 a month one....... the support is very good. and fast what more can i say

[ToiletDuck]

Had Tele2 since February, & it doesnt seem to be too bad. Got the 150K connection (£10/month) so downloads still take a while, but pings on TFC are down in the 40-60s.
If you've got the money then getting one of the faster Tele2 services may be worthwhile, especially as upload speeds are v. good. Tele2 customer support doesnt exist AFAIK, but the service has certainly improved since we got it.

[Say_Ten]

Until they become oversubscribed like every other broadband provider :)

[Jez_Gafys]

Hmmmm its always rumours isnt it. RE: Checkpoint firewall.

"I hear this was broke into in such and such time"

"I hear this is the crappest Firewall out there"

Theres statements mean **** all without proof. I bet you havent even tried it. Only becuase u cant download it as a warez software, etc. www.checkpoint.com.

A little quote

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., - September 5, 2001 - Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), the worldwide leader in securing the Internet

Now I know a lot of companies can say that, but when it comes from a different company, they dont get those sort of remarks for been crap, like that zonealarm thing that was found to have had a back door on it early last month.
CHKP
They own around 67% of the internet security system. when u put that into prospective with all the other firewalls out there, then that really is a large market sector.

Try big companies such as ICM(www.netserv.net), PSI(www.psi.net), Compaq(www.compaq.com)

thats just to name a few and if you goto there websites youll see that it mentions protection by checkpoint firewall. And two of those companies are internet suppliers with psi being one of the major internet backbone suppliers....you dont see them using something like Zone Alarm. Speak to MSCE ppl, and when talking about firewall security theyll recommend Firewall 1. All because it is proven to outshine the rest. But saying that Im not saying its invincable. like any computer software it was made by man, and theres the downfall.

[Jez_Gafys]

This is outta a computer mag, Internet Magazine


BT are to begin taking orders for the new SDSL lines, in late October. The first 100 orders will be have free line installation (does not include the bandwidth plus package).

Looking into this its sounds worth it.
For those ppl that don't know what SDSL is, its a digital subscibber line, but unlike adsl it offers uploads speeds at the same rate as download speeds.

The first 100 free users will have there lines in around December, whilst mainstream orders will not be available until around Jan/feb 2001, so those lucky customers in December will have had it upto 2 month before the rest.

The bandwidth plus package that is not available for free install is the 5Mb and 10Mb versions of the line. These apparently require a whole new route to the exchange so they say doesnt come cheap. they did estimate that the 5Mb line will cost around 295/month isnt the 2Mb line around that price now for adsl, if thats the case we may see other adsl line come down in price as more ppl opt for the better sdsl service. We can only dream...

[KermitTheFrag]

Hmmmm its always rumours isnt it. RE: Checkpoint firewall.

"I hear this was broke into in such and such time"

"I hear this is the crappest Firewall out there"

Theres statements mean **** all without proof. I bet you havent even tried it. Only becuase u cant download it as a warez software, etc. www.checkpoint.com.


No, we're an MoD contractor and it failed ours and our customers evaluation criteria (which I cant disclose). We did use it previous to one of the contracts but it was cracked wide open so the warez kiddies you talk of could use it as an ftp server. Thats reason enough for me not to use it. It wasnt due to misconfiguration either as the config was approved by various people...


snip press release ****e


a) Never trust a companies own press release. They omit facts. Look at a competing product "Microsoft ISA Server"... 4 major vulnerabilities in the default unpatched install yet they dont mention it on the marketing sites/material.

b) Just because they have x% of the market share doesnt mean they are any good. Look at Microsoft's current security record.

c) PSI supply our internet connection and yet they DONT use FW1 on any of their public connections. Only within their offices. Thats enough sponsorship and backing for you? Also, Zone Alarm is NOT a commercially viable firewall product -- its not designed to protect anything but personal machines.

d) MCSEs are inadequately trained in network design and infrastructure. It's too Microsoft-centric rather than focusing on REAL non-idealised systems... Networks evolve - they arent trained to do more than slap something on the end and not know about the consequences. I've seen it happen SEVERAL times. Cant beat personal experience.

e) I dont like them from a personal principle. If the software ****s up it's still your problem, not theirs.

Theres my evaluation criteria. I go on what the product DOES rather than what everyone else tells me it does. I trust 50 sysadmins complaining rather than one person saying its good. (check usenet for moaning about fw1).

As you say, nothings invincible but there are better things out there. It takes less of my time to get something better than to diagnose problems with something that I'm not sure about.

[pukka]

go look at http://www.smothwall.org. it is very good it run's on linux ( a cut down version) and it's free!!!! smoothwall is very easy to setup and use.. it is better than some of the £2000 version.. i know i have used them.. it just needs a crappy p100 16mb ram and a 200 hdd thats it oh and network card/isdn cards ... thats it my friends what more di i need to say.

[KermitTheFrag]

One lesson on firewalls for you all who assume that once you've got a firewall that you're safe from all the evils:-

The firewall is fecking useless if what it's hiding is hideously broken. A good example (which I demonstrated) is allowing access through two non-passive http proxies and 2xbaltimore 3DES cryptos, 2xBaltimore `black-box' firewalls to an intranet site. Pretty fecking secure eh?

That remote intranet machine was running Exchange Server on NT SP6a with IIS4. Their intranet site's scripts directory was vulnerable to the old malformed url trick, so I whacked in the url in my 1337 h@x0r copy of IE5.5 (ooh baby all those stunning hacker tools) and started poking around in their exchange mail directories. Wham bam, US restricted mail delivered here to my desk in the UK (and the resident MCSE crapping themselves over in the US)...

Cant remember who said it (think it was Gates of all people) but: "Security is useless without foresight and common sense."

[BesigedB]

Congratulations. You have been forwarded to blueyonder broadband internet which is available inyour area from Telewest communications.

You're within reach of a telephone exchange which has broadband (ADSL) technology. You can order now online or talk to us on 0800 169 6922 (home use, 8am-10pm, daily) or 0800 783 6340 (business use, 8am to 6pm, Mon. to Fri.). On completion of your order we'll start line checks and keep you informed.

They must love me.

[Dwarf_Pr0n]

One of the only "broad band" ISP's left is Homechoice.
They sell their product as a TV package.
What a lot of people don't see is that it has Internet with it.
At the moment it's limited at the server end to basically the same speed as ISDN but it is an ADSL line and when they get a larger user base they are gonna lift the restrictions to full ADSL speed.

[Mouce]

BlueYounder = good
NTL = Ok
BT = ****