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For context, this is Adrian Kennard's blog. He's the CEO of AAISP (which I'd highly recommend for UK residents, they're extremely ethical and transparent; altho

For context, this is Adrian Kennard's blog. He's the CEO of AAISP (which I'd highly recommend for UK residents, they're extremely ethical and transparent; although I would not recommend their mobile service for different reasons).

jstanley 9y ago
I recently switched to AA from Virgin Media due to the unreliability of Virgin's service, but have found AA's to be no improvement. I currently subscribe to both services and toggle back and forth whenever one of them stops working. I recommend AA for their philosophy, and the debugging tools in their web interface are second to none, but in my brief experience the quality of their actual service is no better than anyone else's.
- nalllar 9y ago
  If you're seeing frequent drops in connection, contact their support. [0] They're very good at getting openreach to fix problems. Another option for you in particular (if you're willing to keep paying for both virgin and AAISP) is to set up a router with multi-WAN support which can load balance between both wans and handle failures, instead of swapping manually. [0]: http://aa.net.uk/support.html http://aa.net.uk/support.html
  - y4mi 9y ago
    You probably already know this, but I think it should be pointed out for others: this is not a true fail-over. The connection still gets dropped and needs to be reestablished. So, an online game will disconnect and a video stream will stop. You will however be able to reconnect or refresh right away.
    - blibble 9y ago
      AA provide true fail-over if you buy multiple lines from them with different backhaul providers, and have a separate solution that will provide true fail-over with lines from other ISPs(!!) I had it for 2 odd years: you get a few dropped packets before the system realises a line has become unavailable if it hadn't been for the email telling me I'd never have noticed that a line dropped: connections remained established and downloads continued (at a lower speed)
      - y4mi 9y ago
        yes, you can get true failover if you get two lines from the same provider. This will rarely give you an improvement of service though. To visualize it, this is (simplified) how the network looks on the ISP site. WAN County ---- WAN City ---- WAN Street ---- HOUSE |--------- HOUSE The problems are mostly on the WAN Street level, were both failover lanes would end. This isn't always the case! just most of the time. And if both Uplinks are connected to the faulty device, they'll both have the same problem and cant failover. let me repeat: it is possible to get real failover from the same ISP. It will however be extremely costly, and just getting two lanes from the same Street Router only gives you marginal improvements in uptime
        falsedan 9y ago
        So in the UK it's a bit weird: all the lines from the cab or exchange are owned by OpenReach, but carriers can set up their own backhaul from the exchange. Thus, if you have an upstream issue with one provider, your other provider may be still unaffected. I would have drawn the diagram like this: Network // Carrier // OpenReach // Network Provider1 Internet <--> <--| Exchange <--> Cab |-> CPE Provider2 Internet <--> <--| BT and TalkTalk operate their own carrier networks for back haul, and networks like AAISP can let you choose which carrier to use for a line, hence why they offer the dual WAN CPE.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
        blibble 9y ago
        it is not extremely costly, it cost me an extra £20/month the only shared infrastructure is the cable under the street being in the same physical duct, the copper wire electrically terminates in physically different equipment owned by a different company they also offer a 3g backup on top of those two independent lines, which is completely independent of the physicality of the path of the copper pairs they'll even let you announce BGP if you want to multi-home your (existing) PI address space yourself it's not a normal ISP we're very lucky in the UK that the way the telecoms industry is regulated allows a small techie focused ISP to operate on a national scale, instead of in one town
- joncrocks 9y ago
  In my experience (been using them for a few years now), the difference is that if you contact them (via phone, e-mail or IRC) then they are significantly more likely to provide useful support vs. "Hmm, I don't see a problem. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" They are still beholden to Openreach, but they will actively manage them vs. just take them at face value/accept what they are being told.
- scrollaway 9y ago
  > in my brief experience the quality of their actual service is no better than anyone else's. It'll be better simply because they're better at finding issues and following up on them, but like most ISPs in the UK, they do not have their own infrastructure. There are three networks in the UK: British Telecom (BT, copper), TalkTalk (TT, copper) and Virgin Media (cable). Virgin Media, in my experience, is the most reliable network but unlike BT it is not available everywhere. AAISP use both the BT and TT networks, and will offer you what is available, or let you choose. But if there are issues with BT/TT, you're outta luck. You can get, if you like, two lines and have a failover or whatever, AAISP will in my experience support you way, way more than any other ISP.
  - MrAlex94 9y ago
    > There are three networks in the UK: It’s getting better though. Various smaller towns have access to Gigabit internet at home now, but it’s still a tiny percentage of the population (around 1.67%). https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/09/ultrafast-fibre-optic-fttp-broadband-networks-cover-1-1-million-uk-premises.html https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/09/ultrafast-fibr...
  - edmundcraske 9y ago
    There are way more than three networks in the UK, but BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are by some measures the most popular and broad in reach... Vodafone and Sky are two other common ISPs that have unbundled the local loop in the same way as TalkTalk (i.e. they have equipment in BT exchanges so that no BT backhaul is needed). See https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/ https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/ for what is available in your area (may not include other mobile, satellite, fibre providers)
  - falsedan 9y ago
    BT & TalkTalk both use OpenReach's infrastructure for last-mile; they have separate backhaul networks but the limiting factor is always the copper from the cabinet or exchange. I would say, the UK has 2 major infrastructure networks (OpenReach, split off from BT, formed from the GPO; Telewest:NTL, now absorbed into Virgin Media) + some minor, growing networks (CityFibre).
- falsedan 9y ago
  Can't wait for CityFibre & Vodafone to get busy blowing cable everywhere and leaving OpenReach in the dust behind. Coming from SF & Sonic's tremendous quest to run fibre in Sunset, the state of broadband in the UK is atrocious. There's 4 street cabs between my house and the exchange, which is 200 metres away, and none of them have fibre (BT are planning to build 2 more).

jstanley 9y ago

I recently switched to AA from Virgin Media due to the unreliability of Virgin's service, but have found AA's to be no improvement. I currently subscribe to both services and toggle back and forth whenever one of them stops working. I recommend AA for their philosophy, and the debugging tools in their web interface are second to none, but in my brief experience the quality of their actual service is no better than anyone else's.

nalllar 9y ago
If you're seeing frequent drops in connection, contact their support. [0] They're very good at getting openreach to fix problems. Another option for you in particular (if you're willing to keep paying for both virgin and AAISP) is to set up a router with multi-WAN support which can load balance between both wans and handle failures, instead of swapping manually. [0]: http://aa.net.uk/support.html http://aa.net.uk/support.html
- y4mi 9y ago
  You probably already know this, but I think it should be pointed out for others: this is not a true fail-over. The connection still gets dropped and needs to be reestablished. So, an online game will disconnect and a video stream will stop. You will however be able to reconnect or refresh right away.
  - blibble 9y ago
    AA provide true fail-over if you buy multiple lines from them with different backhaul providers, and have a separate solution that will provide true fail-over with lines from other ISPs(!!) I had it for 2 odd years: you get a few dropped packets before the system realises a line has become unavailable if it hadn't been for the email telling me I'd never have noticed that a line dropped: connections remained established and downloads continued (at a lower speed)
    - y4mi 9y ago
      yes, you can get true failover if you get two lines from the same provider. This will rarely give you an improvement of service though. To visualize it, this is (simplified) how the network looks on the ISP site. WAN County ---- WAN City ---- WAN Street ---- HOUSE |--------- HOUSE The problems are mostly on the WAN Street level, were both failover lanes would end. This isn't always the case! just most of the time. And if both Uplinks are connected to the faulty device, they'll both have the same problem and cant failover. let me repeat: it is possible to get real failover from the same ISP. It will however be extremely costly, and just getting two lanes from the same Street Router only gives you marginal improvements in uptime
      - falsedan 9y ago
        So in the UK it's a bit weird: all the lines from the cab or exchange are owned by OpenReach, but carriers can set up their own backhaul from the exchange. Thus, if you have an upstream issue with one provider, your other provider may be still unaffected. I would have drawn the diagram like this: Network // Carrier // OpenReach // Network Provider1 Internet <--> <--| Exchange <--> Cab |-> CPE Provider2 Internet <--> <--| BT and TalkTalk operate their own carrier networks for back haul, and networks like AAISP can let you choose which carrier to use for a line, hence why they offer the dual WAN CPE.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - blibble 9y ago
        it is not extremely costly, it cost me an extra £20/month the only shared infrastructure is the cable under the street being in the same physical duct, the copper wire electrically terminates in physically different equipment owned by a different company they also offer a 3g backup on top of those two independent lines, which is completely independent of the physicality of the path of the copper pairs they'll even let you announce BGP if you want to multi-home your (existing) PI address space yourself it's not a normal ISP we're very lucky in the UK that the way the telecoms industry is regulated allows a small techie focused ISP to operate on a national scale, instead of in one town
joncrocks 9y ago
In my experience (been using them for a few years now), the difference is that if you contact them (via phone, e-mail or IRC) then they are significantly more likely to provide useful support vs. "Hmm, I don't see a problem. Have you tried turning it off and on again?" They are still beholden to Openreach, but they will actively manage them vs. just take them at face value/accept what they are being told.
scrollaway 9y ago
> in my brief experience the quality of their actual service is no better than anyone else's. It'll be better simply because they're better at finding issues and following up on them, but like most ISPs in the UK, they do not have their own infrastructure. There are three networks in the UK: British Telecom (BT, copper), TalkTalk (TT, copper) and Virgin Media (cable). Virgin Media, in my experience, is the most reliable network but unlike BT it is not available everywhere. AAISP use both the BT and TT networks, and will offer you what is available, or let you choose. But if there are issues with BT/TT, you're outta luck. You can get, if you like, two lines and have a failover or whatever, AAISP will in my experience support you way, way more than any other ISP.
- MrAlex94 9y ago
  > There are three networks in the UK: It’s getting better though. Various smaller towns have access to Gigabit internet at home now, but it’s still a tiny percentage of the population (around 1.67%). https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/09/ultrafast-fibre-optic-fttp-broadband-networks-cover-1-1-million-uk-premises.html https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2017/09/ultrafast-fibr...
- edmundcraske 9y ago
  There are way more than three networks in the UK, but BT, TalkTalk and Virgin Media are by some measures the most popular and broad in reach... Vodafone and Sky are two other common ISPs that have unbundled the local loop in the same way as TalkTalk (i.e. they have equipment in BT exchanges so that no BT backhaul is needed). See https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/ https://availability.samknows.com/broadband/ for what is available in your area (may not include other mobile, satellite, fibre providers)
- falsedan 9y ago
  BT & TalkTalk both use OpenReach's infrastructure for last-mile; they have separate backhaul networks but the limiting factor is always the copper from the cabinet or exchange. I would say, the UK has 2 major infrastructure networks (OpenReach, split off from BT, formed from the GPO; Telewest:NTL, now absorbed into Virgin Media) + some minor, growing networks (CityFibre).
falsedan 9y ago
Can't wait for CityFibre & Vodafone to get busy blowing cable everywhere and leaving OpenReach in the dust behind. Coming from SF & Sonic's tremendous quest to run fibre in Sunset, the state of broadband in the UK is atrocious. There's 4 street cabs between my house and the exchange, which is 200 metres away, and none of them have fibre (BT are planning to build 2 more).