Thinking of moving to IDnet

[lmartin]

Hi guys,

Been reading this forum with interest and thought I would ask a few questions, if I may :-)

We currently have two DSL lines into our office.  Both of them are currently with PlusNet.  In the main, i'm happy with the service I get from PlusNet (i used to work there!) but I would like to migrate one away to give me extra resilience in case of problems within the ISP network.  Our telephony services are based on VoIP to a PBX in Docklands so having lines with more than 1 ISP is more important to us now.

a) What is VoIP like on IDnet?  We are obviously using it in anger from the hours of 9 - 5 often with 7 or 8 concurrent calls over a single Max Premium line.

b) What capacity issues do IDnet customers have, if any?  Is there any traffic management in place and if so, what does it do?  I'm not averse to traffic management, I actually prefer it where it's used correctly - but it's worth me making enquiries so I know what I'm signing up to!  Do IDnet publish anything regarding the type and amount of capacity (in terms of centrals) that they have? (i.e. 155s / 622s etc...)

c) Speeds during the day across varying protocols - are they good?  I don't want to join another Entanet with a rediculous policy of throttling down as low as 2Mb (right now no gateway is performing above 3Mb on http://noc.enta.net)

d) Support.  What are your experiences?  PlusNet have Business Support available during Business hours which I've had good experiences with.  Very quick to answer calls, no more hanging on the line that we used to suffer.  Is IDNet support decent.

e) Enhanced Care.  Is it available?

f)  Would someone connected via IDnet mind doing a traceroute to pbx.originalorganics.co.uk and pasting the results?

I'm looking to join the £69.99/month Max Premium Business Service.

Regards,

Liam Martin

[Simon]

Hi Liam, and 

I can only answer some of your less technical questions, but I can confirm that there is no traffic shaping or throttling on IDNet's services.  More info here. 

Speaking as a residential customer, support is excellent, as well as being friendly and personal, and they will sort any problems out for you very quickly. 

IDNet are not Entanet resellers.

Someone else will be along soon to help with your other questions. 

[Adam]

a) What is VoIP like on IDnet?  We are obviously using it in anger from the hours of 9 - 5 often with 7 or 8 concurrent calls over a single Max Premium line.

I haven't had any issues using VoIP over IDNet.

b) What capacity issues do IDnet customers have, if any?  Is there any traffic management in place and if so, what does it do?  I'm not averse to traffic management, I actually prefer it where it's used correctly - but it's worth me making enquiries so I know what I'm signing up to!  Do IDnet publish anything regarding the type and amount of capacity (in terms of centrals) that they have? (i.e. 155s / 622s etc...)

There aren't really any capacity issues as far as I am aware, and there is no traffic management. IDNet don't publish much/anything about their network, which is something I've raised an issue with in the past.

c) Speeds during the day across varying protocols - are they good?  I don't want to join another Entanet with a rediculous policy of throttling down as low as 2Mb (right now no gateway is performing above 3Mb on http://noc.enta.net)

My speeds, day and night, never feel throttled and are pretty close to what I'd expect from my sync. You do get the occasional contention, but nothing noticeable.

d) Support.  What are your experiences?  PlusNet have Business Support available during Business hours which I've had good experiences with.  Very quick to answer calls, no more hanging on the line that we used to suffer.  Is IDNet support decent.

IDNet support, for me, has been excellent so far. They are willing to go beyond many other ISPs to resolve issues in a speedy manner.

e) Enhanced Care.  Is it available?

I believe it is available on the premium/business services.

f)  Would someone connected via IDnet mind doing a traceroute to pbx.originalorganics.co.uk and pasting the results?

Tracing route to pbx.originalorganics.co.uk [77.240.48.125]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  * [*.*.*.*]
  2    45 ms    56 ms    44 ms  telehouse-gw2.idnet.net [212.69.63.55]
  3    45 ms    46 ms    44 ms  telehouse-gw3-gi0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4    45 ms    44 ms    45 ms  w-s-1.lon1.arbinet.net [213.232.64.56]
  5    44 ms    44 ms    44 ms  Gi10-0.lon-wal-core-1.interoute.net [217.118.119.21]
  6    44 ms    46 ms    45 ms  Gi0-0.lon-002-inter-1.interoute.net [84.233.152.182]
  7    44 ms    57 ms    44 ms  linx-hex.hotlinks.co.uk [195.66.226.52]
  8    45 ms    44 ms    44 ms  ge-0-1-0.me-julie-thn.hotlinks.co.uk [217.14.130.65]
  9    49 ms    45 ms    46 ms  teleappliant-gw.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.79.22]
10    49 ms    46 ms    45 ms  77.240.48.125

Keep in mind the above results are over a wireless connection, and my line is interleaved.

Hope those help.

[psp83]

Heres a non interleaved trace route

Tracing route to pbx.originalorganics.co.uk [77.240.48.125]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  telehouse-gw2.idnet.net [212.69.63.55]
  3    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  telehouse-gw3-gi0-1-400.idnet.net [212.69.63.243]
  4    15 ms    15 ms    15 ms  w-s-1.lon1.arbinet.net [213.232.64.56].
  5    19 ms    17 ms    17 ms  Gi10-0.lon-wal-core-1.interoute.net [217.118.119.21]
  6    17 ms    16 ms    15 ms  Gi0-0.lon-002-inter-1.interoute.net [84.233.152.182]
  7    18 ms    19 ms    17 ms  linx-hex.hotlinks.co.uk [195.66.226.52]
  8    19 ms    18 ms    16 ms  ge-0-1-0.me-julie-thn.hotlinks.co.uk [217.14.130.65]
  9    17 ms    19 ms    17 ms  teleappliant-gw.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.79.22]
10    19 ms    17 ms    18 ms  77.240.48.125

Trace complete.

If your in doubt, give idnet a call.. they answer your questions and not dodge them like most ISPs

08000267237

[lmartin]

Those routes are fine for me :-)

Just interested to know what happens when the network fills (and that must happen!).  I guess thats where the monthly contract comes in handy.  I'm sure it'll be fine but it leaves me free to shift if I need to.  It's really important that our VoIP traffic gets decent throughput and if there is any packet loss it makes VoIP calls quite unworkable.  I like the prioritisation that PlusNet do on VoIP but I don't believe anyone else does similar - so we'll have to see what happens! 

Do you know what %age of IDnet customers are Residential and what %age are Business?  Trying to visualise the split in capacity usage and when the busiest times are likely to be.

With IDnet, how do they distribute capacity between customers?  Do you have a login which connects you to a specific gateway? Or do they use round-robin connections to their multiple gateways (so you can effectively hop from one gateway to another)?

Sorry if the questions seem a bit much but having previously worked for an ISP I'm interested in the technical detail!  Needless to say, I think I probably will be joining IDnet once the MAC key comes through.

Regards,
Liam Martin

[Adam]

With IDnet, how do they distribute capacity between customers?  Do you have a login which connects you to a specific gateway? Or do they use round-robin connections to their multiple gateways (so you can effectively hop from one gateway to another)?

It's never really been explained how IDNet handles the connections, though I'd bet it is a login to gateway mapping. I always seem to get gw2, which would back that up.

Sorry if the questions seem a bit much but having previously worked for an ISP I'm interested in the technical detail!

I was asking similar things when I first joined and was informed that network information wasn't given to customers. If you do get any information please do share it as I'm interested due to networking being my line of work.

[psp83]

I think contacting IDnet tomorrow would be the best way to get 100% correct answers..

http://www.idnet.net/contact/

I know IDnet monitor there network quite closely and always upgrades before problems start.. They've just updated there routers/switches http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=5368.0

[lmartin]

What is the login realm in your usernames?

The downside to being assigned to just one gateway means if there is congestion on a particular gateway, it's not possible to 'balance' the pipes without reassigning realms or shifting realms around.

Might not be the sort of problem that occurs though.

[psp83]

I think IDnet do balance the pipes sometimes on the home bb if theres any problems.

my login name is @uk.idnet.dsl4

[g7pkf]

Those routes are fine for me :-)

Just interested to know what happens when the network fills (and that must happen!).  I guess thats where the monthly contract comes in handy.  I'm sure it'll be fine but it leaves me free to shift if I need to.  It's really important that our VoIP traffic gets decent throughput and if there is any packet loss it makes VoIP calls quite unworkable.  I like the prioritisation that PlusNet do on VoIP but I don't believe anyone else does similar - so we'll have to see what happens! 

Do you know what %age of IDnet customers are Residential and what %age are Business?  Trying to visualise the split in capacity usage and when the busiest times are likely to be.

With IDnet, how do they distribute capacity between customers?  Do you have a login which connects you to a specific gateway? Or do they use round-robin connections to their multiple gateways (so you can effectively hop from one gateway to another)?

Sorry if the questions seem a bit much but having previously worked for an ISP I'm interested in the technical detail!  Needless to say, I think I probably will be joining IDnet once the MAC key comes through.

Regards,
Liam Martin

I use voip very heavilly, Although i am a residential customer my company use voip for there hosted system and i quite regularly have to run test's on it.

Regularly my wife is on her sipgate voip phone calling companies, My daughter is on her sipgate chatting to friends add to that my parents live with us and they are on there sipgate account as well.

one time while they were all chatting i started up a 5 call test to our companies voip hosted (and monitoring it)and did some browsing ADD to all that i run my own mail+weserver and no one complained about any lag or glitches and the traces ran well. did it just to see what happened and the network handled it well (idnet).

voip was one of the only reasons i went for supermax package with the higher upload speed.

I was worried that the 2700 did not have QOS on it seems i need not have worried.

[Lance]

Welcome to the forum, Liam

I'll just add, as there is quite a lot of talk about congestion on centrals etc, that IDNet guarantee absolutely no contention across there entire network. In fact, a week or two ago they upgraded a load of internal switches to much faster ones - not because of any problems now but to ensure no problems in the short to medium term! They also forward plan their BT central requirements and try to make sure that they have sufficient capacity for before they actually need it.

Any congestion you experience will be as a result of your local BT exchange, something no ISP can do anything about!

[lmartin]

Just signed up to Max Premium Protected :-)

[Rik]

 

When do you migrate?

[lmartin]

Not sure to be honest. Within 3 working days, I guess.  If I had one comment so far it's that there could be more information provided.  The welcome email wasn't really a "welcome to IDnet" more of a "check these direct debit details".  But still... if the connection is solid that all I need :-)

[Rik]

Did you not get your login name and password? That will then allow you to set up your email accounts. I don't think I got a welcome email, I did get two phone calls though.

[lmartin]

Just got it now :-)  Almost exactly an hour after signup.

Username is @idnet.gw5 so I guess you do login directly to the gateway specifically.

Activation is Jan 29th.  I look forward to it :-)

[Rik]

Damned weekends, always getting in the way. I'm on DSL4, myself.

[g7pkf]

Just got it now :-)  Almost exactly an hour after signup.

Username is @idnet.gw5 so I guess you do login directly to the gateway specifically.

Activation is Jan 29th.  I look forward to it :-)

your on the same gateway as me hope your not a HEAVY USER

[Adam]

I think .dsl4 should be dedicated to light users, and me. Everyone else can go on gw5.

[g7pkf]

I think .dsl4 should be dedicated to light users, and me. Everyone else can go on gw5.

You got that the wrong way round i trust.....



and lmartin have a karma from me....no one hardly ever gives me any   

[Adam]

You got that the wrong way round i trust.....

I'm happy with it being the other way around so long as I'm also placed on gw5.

and lmartin have a karma from me....no one hardly ever gives me any   

Have one from me.

[rgt247]

Hi Liam

Welcome   

        I moved to Idnet from Plusnet in February last year I found the whole Internet improved. I have never used VOIP but In general I never had any problems with capacity, speed etc. It just works !

[Rik]

and lmartin have a karma from me....no one hardly ever gives me any   

You're doing OK, Dean, your karma/post ratio is 1:15. Look at mine! 

[lmartin]

Hi Liam

Welcome   

        I moved to Idnet from Plusnet in February last year I found the whole Internet improved. I have never used VOIP but In general I never had any problems with capacity, speed etc. It just works !

I used to work for PlusNet so I am a bit biased!  The service has improved and I'll still be keeping one of my lines but I need another for some extra piece of mind / resiliency... so IDnet is my choice.

Thanks for the Karma! I don't think I can award Karma just yet...

[Rik]

One more post.