Recommendations - ISPs for ISDN? (sort-of relevant to DIY)

[The Natural Philosopher]

Mmm. I am tempted to switch as well. Clara are pretty good, and I know themn a bit personally.

[The Natural Philosopher]

They are averagely OK at teh moment. That is mostly you get connected, most;y the peering links are over stressed during teh working day, and outagse of 30 seconds or more are not uncommon. I used to play online games, and have been 'killed' more by demon than by other players. Adds to the spice.

Demon works, and if you want that fixed IP address its not bad. I am sure others are better. When I went for them they were the only one apart from Pipex to have BT anytime numbers, if clara now do, they are probably a better bet.

I can't rem,ember wheher teh Ascend routers someone was offering do NAT. You will need a NSAT capable touter IMHO, and built in hub is neater.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yerrs. And they are still losing money..

NTL broadband is not too bad. Frinds have it.

[Dave Liquorice]

Demon have had ups and downs but generally if they do get a down they work hard at getting back up. The last majr problems where the delays in mail between the punts and mailstore in the last couple of months. Caused by increased demand (I read that to mean spam/virus generated rubbish) being faster than anticpated but that's been resolved now.

A Demon Internet Founder Member and still with Demon.

[bill]

Well, if you don't need too many hours a month I'd go for BT midband. Tried a few other ISPs that claimed to offer bonded ISDN, including

123 and firefly, but found them to be unreliable. Not only did bonding often not work, quite frequently it would take several attempts to connect, which rather removes one of the advantages of ISDN, the quick call setup time.

I've found midband to be consistently reliable. and relatively inexpensive. You do need to make separate provision for news and SMTP email delivery though.

Bill

[tony sayer]

In article , [e-mail] writes

FWIW we have some premises which are 6 KM from the exchange chatting to a BT tech the other day he said that ADSL would work over that distance but only up to 512 down, and you couldn't expect anything faster...FWIW..

Agreed!...

[Huge]

Demon supports ISDN - indeed that's why you're reading this. They also support channel bonding to give 128Kb. All on the standard £10/month dialup.

[Huge]

[27 lines snipped]

In your (incorrect) opinion.

[tony sayer]

In article , Dave writes

Where the mighty nthell is based!....shame....

[Dave]

Thanks Bill, I hadn't heard of the BT offering and it sounds too good to be true... £10/month, 75 hrs at 128k (150 at 64k), 2 hr timeout.

They say that it's not ISP-based - how does it differ? Do you use a standard browser? Does it work with MSN (essential for teenagers)? Presumably the standard newsreaders work so it's possible to use one of the free news servers(?)

Dave S

[Dave]

...but are you paying 1 or 2p/minute for the connection time?

Demon told me yesterday that they will provide 128k at the normal connection charge rates but only 64k with BT surftime. ...did I get a duff salesgirl?

Dave S

[Will Cooke]

I use Quik Internet. They're based in Manchester (a franchise of a US com.) and they are very good. Take a look at

Have a look in the forums, and you'll see many other people who would recommend them.

[usenet]

... plus of course *two* 0845 calls at the same time for 128k ISDN. This is why I have just left Demon after being with them since soon after they started up. Paying £10/month *plus* 0845 call charges makes them distinctly expensive and also reduces one of the advantages of ISDN which is the fast call setup time.

An unmetered ISDN connection means that you can have what feels almost like an 'always on' connection and don't need to worry about how many times you disconnect and reconnect. With an 0845 number it costs you

5p (or thereabouts) every time you bring up the connection even if it's only for a few seconds. If you compensate by setting the idle time quite long then you're wasting 'contention bandwidth' and your ISP is likely to have to charge you more.

[bill]

Basically all BT provide is the connectivity. They don't provide web space, email or news services, but they don't appear to limit access to others.

Don't know anything about MSN, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Yes, the standard browsers, email clients and newsreaders work. You should be able to use free news servers.

Email was what initially gave me problems. If you have email accounts with other ISPs you can collect mail from them via pop3, but sending via SMTP is not completely straightforward. BT do offer an SMTP service for an extra fee, either £1.50 or £2.50 a month. There are various providers of mail facilities, including SMTP, for either nothing or fairly low fees. I'm trying Runbox at the moment. Not the cheapest at about $30 p.a. but it seems reliable so far. Alternatively you can use webmail.

Bill

[Lawrence]

What has happened around here is someone has stood up to coordinarte and then a group have gone door knocking and talking to other locals. The exchange has gone fom 32 to 136 sign ups in about 2 weeks. Ok the trigger level is 150. This suypprised me as I never expected to get broadband but it looks like it will happen. Chirton exchange in wiltshire did the same door knocking and goes live in January.

usenet at lklyne dt co dt uk

[Lawrence]

I used to use demon but got the hump when the official line with there mail system was that there where no problems with it. (I found mail downloads not triggering for a large part of the day). In the last month I was with them, notice period, a whole raft of updates where done to the mail system. I prefer openess and honesty which I did not feel I was getting.

Lawrence

usenet at lklyne dt co dt uk

[Lawrence]

static IP address is an option on plus net.

You just go to the account web page and select it. C>

Lawrence

usenet at lklyne dt co dt uk

[Huge]

No. It's all on surftime. Both channels are the same number, after all...

Probably. I must admit that I don't do channel bonding because the equipment at my end doesn't support it, but I am absolutely convinced that Demon allow it, because it's one of the oh-so-many things on my "To Do" list.

[Huge]

Well, yes. You're using two phone lines.

[5 lines snipped]

I have no choice where I live. ISDN is as good as it's likely to get.

[Huge]

Microsoft Messenger or Multiple Subscriber Numbering (a feature of ISDN)?