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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 par

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
      - y4mi 9y ago
        and you can use the same IP across different providers? they would need to be on the same subnet... I don't see how its technologically feasible to implement across ISPs. (though strictly speaking possible with several routing protocols, just extremely unlikely) TCP Packet Streams are always directed at an IP, and if that IP changes, a new Stream needs to be established. This will cause a disconnect and its no longer a true failover once that has happened. Applications can be developed to gracefully handle IP changes, but a lot of them aren't.

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
    - y4mi 9y ago
      and you can use the same IP across different providers? they would need to be on the same subnet... I don't see how its technologically feasible to implement across ISPs. (though strictly speaking possible with several routing protocols, just extremely unlikely) TCP Packet Streams are always directed at an IP, and if that IP changes, a new Stream needs to be established. This will cause a disconnect and its no longer a true failover once that has happened. Applications can be developed to gracefully handle IP changes, but a lot of them aren't.