5 ms·

A similar ISP, very much alive and kicking, is https://www.init7.net/en/ https://www.init7.net/en/ in Switzerland. In particular, with their fiber7 brand (see h

by secure 8y ago

A similar ISP, very much alive and kicking, is https://www.init7.net/en/ https://www.init7.net/en/ in Switzerland. In particular, with their fiber7 brand (see https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/), they tick all the boxes mentioned in the article: no caps, fully symmetrical gigabit fiber, ISP actively promoting and pushing net neutrality, ISP actively engaged politically, very knowledgable support staff, etc.

kalleboo 8y ago
And Sweden has bahnhof.se
Youden 8y ago
To give an idea about how great support is, I as a customer emailed them asking for them to peer with a particular network I was heavily using and within about a day they actually did it. On another occasion I was having problems with my own equipment and they were able to help diagnose it and loan out SFPs to see if they helped. The equipment's manufacturer was not so generous (buy more stuff or fuck off).
- delroth 8y ago
  Same experience here. Tweeted at them saying my latency to Hetzner had regressed by 10ms (w/ smokeping graph as proof). They replied the next day saying "we fixed it", and actually improved latency by an extra 5ms from my previous baseline :-) It's still a magical feeling for me to have a stable 0.8ms latency to 8.8.8.8 (0.7ms if I plug in directly to my media converter without any switching equipment in the way).
  - Tepix 8y ago
    You may want to switch to 1.1.1.1 instead of letting Google know even more about your surfing habits.
    - delroth 8y ago
      I'm perfectly comfortable sending my DNS traffic to 8.8.8.8. I have a pretty good understanding of how Google handles my DNS data, and I don't have any specific reason to trust Cloudflare better.
    - Youden 8y ago
      I concur with the other reply regarding privacy but I'll add that according to SmokePing, until 5 days ago, CloudFlare took 6ms total to resolve a query, compared to Google at 900 us and Init7 itself at 106 us. Init7 is covered by Switzerland's braindead data-retention bill due to being an ISP so it's out, leaving Google the best acceptable performer for me.
pstadler 8y ago
I've been a customer of Init7 for several years. They're amazing. Some more boxes to tick: - Use your own hardware, no crappy ISP router required - They host a Netflix cache server, in contrast to ISPs actively limiting bandwidth - They launched https://mirror.init7.net/ after Switch announced they would stop running https://mirror.switch.ch/
- lucb1e 8y ago
  I don't know what mirror switch is, but XS4ALL also has Netflix boxes. I didn't actually realize that it might be a special thing: why not reduce your transit traffic? But now that you mention it, yeah, murica. And XS4ALL is also fine with you using your own hardware, but so are all German ISPs by law so that's not super special.
  - pstadler 8y ago
    > [...]all German ISPs by law so that's not super special. Wow, I didn't know that. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case in Switzerland where almost all ISPs force you to use their crap.
    - lucb1e 8y ago
      It's also not rocket science to clone their MAC and do the authentication afaik. But I've never had to do it so I'm not sure if it seems easier than it is.
      - fps_doug 8y ago
        In Germany before that law, they made sure you wouldn't get the credentials to roll your own. There were some tutorials around how to extract your PPPoE credentials from certain cheap DSL routers, but many were fixed over time, so if you really wanted to do it, you had to open the box and read the EEPROM by external means. Cable modems always have a certificate baked in and were tied to your account, so just cloning the MAC didn't help.
  - 8y ago
bjelkeman-again 8y ago
In Sweden, the equivalent would probably be Bahnhof. A focus on privacy and open access. (Yes, we use them at my company.) https://www.bahnhof.net https://www.bahnhof.net
nubero 8y ago
Certainly the best ISP – by a very wide margin – in Switzerland!
Haiperlink 8y ago
Can confirm. Happy customer for years.

by secure 8y ago

kalleboo 8y ago

And Sweden has bahnhof.se

Youden 8y ago

To give an idea about how great support is, I as a customer emailed them asking for them to peer with a particular network I was heavily using and within about a day they actually did it. On another occasion I was having problems with my own equipment and they were able to help diagnose it and loan out SFPs to see if they helped. The equipment's manufacturer was not so generous (buy more stuff or fuck off).

delroth 8y ago
Same experience here. Tweeted at them saying my latency to Hetzner had regressed by 10ms (w/ smokeping graph as proof). They replied the next day saying "we fixed it", and actually improved latency by an extra 5ms from my previous baseline :-) It's still a magical feeling for me to have a stable 0.8ms latency to 8.8.8.8 (0.7ms if I plug in directly to my media converter without any switching equipment in the way).
- Tepix 8y ago
  You may want to switch to 1.1.1.1 instead of letting Google know even more about your surfing habits.
  - delroth 8y ago
    I'm perfectly comfortable sending my DNS traffic to 8.8.8.8. I have a pretty good understanding of how Google handles my DNS data, and I don't have any specific reason to trust Cloudflare better.
  - Youden 8y ago
    I concur with the other reply regarding privacy but I'll add that according to SmokePing, until 5 days ago, CloudFlare took 6ms total to resolve a query, compared to Google at 900 us and Init7 itself at 106 us. Init7 is covered by Switzerland's braindead data-retention bill due to being an ISP so it's out, leaving Google the best acceptable performer for me.

pstadler 8y ago

I've been a customer of Init7 for several years. They're amazing. Some more boxes to tick: - Use your own hardware, no crappy ISP router required - They host a Netflix cache server, in contrast to ISPs actively limiting bandwidth - They launched https://mirror.init7.net/ after Switch announced they would stop running https://mirror.switch.ch/

lucb1e 8y ago
I don't know what mirror switch is, but XS4ALL also has Netflix boxes. I didn't actually realize that it might be a special thing: why not reduce your transit traffic? But now that you mention it, yeah, murica. And XS4ALL is also fine with you using your own hardware, but so are all German ISPs by law so that's not super special.
- pstadler 8y ago
  > [...]all German ISPs by law so that's not super special. Wow, I didn't know that. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case in Switzerland where almost all ISPs force you to use their crap.
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    It's also not rocket science to clone their MAC and do the authentication afaik. But I've never had to do it so I'm not sure if it seems easier than it is.
    - fps_doug 8y ago
      In Germany before that law, they made sure you wouldn't get the credentials to roll your own. There were some tutorials around how to extract your PPPoE credentials from certain cheap DSL routers, but many were fixed over time, so if you really wanted to do it, you had to open the box and read the EEPROM by external means. Cable modems always have a certificate baked in and were tied to your account, so just cloning the MAC didn't help.
- 8y ago

bjelkeman-again 8y ago

In Sweden, the equivalent would probably be Bahnhof. A focus on privacy and open access. (Yes, we use them at my company.) https://www.bahnhof.net https://www.bahnhof.net

nubero 8y ago

Certainly the best ISP – by a very wide margin – in Switzerland!

Haiperlink 8y ago

Can confirm. Happy customer for years.