Topic: BT Business Broadband (UK)

[icpix]

Our two year old rural wireless broadband network company is about to be killed off, mainly by the imminent arrival and advent of BT's broadband activation of our small village's exchange;~/ I have pretty much decided I must throw in my highly independent towel and pragmatically sign up with the UK monopoly comms giant;~|

To run my (SoHo) SME Server 6.0.1-01's email server, various village & personal blogs, along with an ecommerce image library site my initial intention is to go with the BT Business Broadband 'Single' service with the BT 'option' of the necessary Static IP. I just want 'a connection - plain and simple' with no specific 'value added services' conventionally provided by an ISP.

My site consists of just me and a few workstations on an Ethernet (100Mbps) intranet. Hopefully my nearby location will allow the full 2Mbps (asymmetric downstream).

Reading between the lines it would seem that the 'Single' service's provided USB modem experiences a contention ratio of 50:1 whereas the 'Share' service's Ethernet hookup experiences a contention ratio of 20:1.

I am wholly unsure of anything USB connected to a SME... and would certainly very much favour a conventional Ethernet solution. Not least because it would continue the excellent operational service historically provided to me by my SME Server but also apparently engender BT's less occupied contention ratio (20:1)!

Has anyone met this obstacle, or could anyone suggest a suitable (high quality) Ethernet router/modem that is both BT-compliant and suitable for the SME Server?

I can't find if they (BT) will allow me to use SSL2 or whether they do anything 'tricky' like block ports and that sort of thing.

Your experiences would be welcomed;~)

best wishes, Robert

[brianr]

Robert

You are under no obligation or need to go with BT as an ISP, you can get much better support etc from many other ISPs in the UK.  I use one in particular that I would be willing to reccommend to you.  I can also point you in the direction of a low cost ethernet router which would do the job for you, avoiding the evil USB devices.

Email me off list, or call me, and we can chat!

[lizard23]

Hullo.

We always advise our clients to go with the 'single' setup as it is perfectly acceptable and much better value.

Any PPoA ADSl modem / router will see you right ... if SME is connected via ethernet it doesn't care what the device is.  The BT provided usb modems are especially rubbish and a swine to get to work with any *nix.

[icpix]

I thought so too.

Have opted for BT Business Broadband Single 2000. Felt safer with an Ethernet hookup and with it hopefully the lower contention ratio. So, I have already bought a Billion BiPAC 7402A router from the solwise people. I was highly impressed by the clarity of this router's PDF manual (located on the solwise web site and forum) that I bought it on-line there and then. And thanks for all those other tips Brian;~)

My domain Registrar people have allocated me an on-line control panel with which to manage all the DNS repointing, I've already pointed one of my unused domains over to the new static IP.

BT have given/sold me a new static IP from their net range. Checking up I find that their whole net range is ALREADY on the (RBL) lists;~| Unbelievable!? No, it's believable... after all I am talking about BT. At least it's only a single listing and that with the FiveTen-SG people with whom I have tried to make contact to ask for my IP's delisting in advance (no answer so far). I may be more successful after connection at which point I intend to insist of BT that they specifically identify me as the unique user of that single static IP so that FiveTen-SG can no longer claim that such identification is largely unreliable in these sorts of net ranges (and so de-list my IP).

My introduction pack arrived out of the blue. From its listed contents I don't even feel the need to burst the shrinkwrapping. And lizard23's comments haven't changed that impression.

The BT intro pack arrived by surprise as I haven't been able to read a single informative email that BT have been gracious enough to transmit. Not one. They're all in HTML, which my email reader Forte Agent cannot render (by design) into easily read text. The transmitting mechanism is automatic and does not respond to replies. Not once in the entire order placing sequence did BT bother to enquire how I would need or want my emails to be transmitted. They still haven't despite my copious attempts to contact them. By luck or design a couple of *Royal Mail* posts (aka snail mail) brought my oh-so-necessary account transaction and setup details.

SSL2 stuff unknown, just hoping BT won't be blocking any ports.

----best wishes, Robert

[brianr]

Hi Robert, thanks for the thanks.

I have a BT customer who is on "static" IP, but is clearly black listed and he has problems sending to AOL and some academic institutions.  We will move him from BT as soon as his year is up.

On the positive side, I haven't detected BT closing off any ports, I regularily SSL and HTTPS into the servers on BT ADSL.

Cheers

Brian

[dhardy]

Robert,

Brian gave you good advice. Now you're finding out why BT have a poor reputation - its because they do stupid things like giving you an address from a blacklisted block.

Your best bet is to get heavy with them by recorded delivery - threaten them with Ofcom, breach of contract and anything else that you can squeeze in. Demand they help you migrate to another isp. If they won't, sue them in the county court for breech of contract - they won't fight it because they know they'll lose.

Choose an ISP that charges a realistic monthly fee for the service you want - Zen will give you 1mb @50:1 for £58 setup and  £29 per month. Andrews & Arnold will do something similar for similar money. You have to pay a little bit more to get away from the bulk downloaders who just want to take all the bandwidth.

Staying away from the big companies will get you better service and faster fixes to problems. A&A will make changes on the fly for you if that's what you want. Zen will give you a single or 8 static ips for free, 16 only cost a one off £25.

Whatever you do, ditching BT as your ISP has got to be a priority.

For more on uk adsl issues and advice see http://www.adslguide.org

I have Zen 1mb at home, A&A 1mb at work (7 sites) and 5 Easynet LLU lines - Easynet are going, since the UK Online promotions started we've had horrible routing problems which they just can't fix. A&A works like a dream, Zen is always high up the speed charts at ADSLguide.

Hope you get it sorted without to much hassle.

David.

[icpix]

dhardy----

[Why BT]
I hear you;~) There are some heavily exonerating personal, professional and commercial/operational reasons for my (having to) opt for BT.

[Already blighted static IP]
Did some phoning around the various points within BT that might help me to sort it out. Met with some blank stares and I met with some sympathetic and understanding shoulders. I also tried contacting the listing people and so forth. Upshot was that this afternoon (ie when I last checked) I found that listing was no longer present... Good oh I thought. However earlier this evening I checked once more and the 'listing' was mysteriously back. BTW it doesn't seem to be an RBL type of listing per se but its very presence may put off some system administrators whose users come my way.

Intend to await full activation and then insist that BT themselves simply change my (reverse DNS) listing to identify me personally as the unique and legal user of that static IP (much like my present squeaky clean IP). I would then expect to be appropriately delisted as my new static IP would no longer fall into FiveTen-SG's published *misc.spam* category.

I understand what you're saying and the why, but it's probably a bit early for me to dig in for a pitched battle with BT quite yet;~)

----best wishes, Robert

[icpix]

Now activated. Worked out how to get myself on-line with a workstation up behind the router's firewall.

Still haven't worked out how to configure SME to come up running behind the router's firewall;~/ So no email and no sites running yet. I have shell access. Logs show ClamAV updating earlier this morning so SME is presumably seeing the internet.

For some (hopefully unconnected) reason I have been unable to access my domains' cpanel this morning to check the settings. Just twigged... the cpanel is https so it must be a port thing.

----best wishes, Robert

[icpix]

As header.

Took me the best part of 24hrs to get past that extremly unhelpful and somewhat disappointing conundrum;~/

Sort of ironic that it was Brian's help that led to my choice of specifying/purchasing this Billion BiPAC 7402A and Brian's site is all about the otherwise desirable disposal of all things Micro$oft...

Now have a internet-connected workstation in that it is directly attached to the router (behind the router's own firewall). The strange issue with tricky logins (like my domains' remote cpanel) continues though my own ecommerce site's https seems to be OK.

I have shell access (Putty). This is from the WAN side of SME and not from the LAN side, which is how I am used to seeing things. But the LAN workstations can't seem to see the internet, nor can they see the router (on the WAN side of SME). Which remains a PITA.

Have manually added rules to the router's config and these 'appear' to be forwarding ports 80, 443, 25, 123 and 110 to SME. And, for anyone, au fait with this Billion thing I have added complementary entries to the Virtual Server tables area.

SME *is* providing content from the sites though I'm not entirely sure precisely how!?

Email is not yet working.

The connection's downstream data rate is identified in the router's tables as being 2272000 and upstream 288000 though no units of scale are provided.

----best wishes, Robert

[brianr]

Robert - are you running the SME as "server" or "server and gateway"?

It should be the latter..

[icpix]

Brian----

Confirmed, I've always has been server and gateway (s/g).

Appear to be STILL awaiting full propagation of my changed DNS - maddening;~|

My email is highly erratic, have put off serious work on it now until there are ZERO propagation-related issues remaining.

That weird difficulty (unable to see/log on to my domain registrar's cpanel) was resolved when I manually opened port 8443 at the router's firewall.

The only full and proper aspect that is working 100% is a single workstation directly connected (RJ45) behind the router's firewall. This is working very well indeed. Router set to provide DHCP (and gateway DNS).

Router (port) forwarding to 192.168.1.200 and a number of ports (as per last post) and two 'DNS' orientated ports are manually set in the router's firewall rules.

The LAN workstation is still in its old position behind the SME which itself is largely unchanged except for its WAN interface is now 192.168.1.200 instead of my (new) Static IP.

From the SME's console I get good lynx eg the SME can see the internet (through the port forwarding router).

However the old LAN workstation (behind the SME's firewall) is wholly unable to see the internet anymore. It steadfastly remains so despite a LOT of permutations of intelligent ideas and sheer guessing;~/ Any ideas?

----best wishes, Robert

[brianr]

Is DHCP enabled on the server and the workstation set to pickup its Ip address automatically?

What does ipconfig on the workstation give you?

[icpix]

Brian----

DHCP enabled on router
(with its own firewall)
192.168.1.100 ranged up to .199
virtual server set at 192.168.1.200
with complementary manual firewall rules

DHCP enabled on SME
(server and gateway with its own firewall)
192.168.1.65 ranged up to .95
external (WAN) IP 192.168.1.200

old LAN workstation (systb) w2k/sp4
obtain IP auto
obtain DNS auto
ipconfig:
DNS suffix: foo.bah
IP: 192.168.1.67
sub: 255.255.255.0
def gateway: 192.168.1.1
eg the SME but have also tried
192.168.1.200 port forwarding IP and
192.168.1.254 which is the router's admin IP
[posting typo corrected (from 162) to 192]

----best wishes, Robert

[brianr]

aha - I sort of suspected that....

Your WAN side of the SMEserver is on the same subnet as the LAN side, I think that "messes up" the routing rules in the SME.  Move your WAN Ip addresses (WAN NIC on the SME and also Router IP), to a different subnet (use 192.168.2.0/16 for example).  Actually I always use ones from the 10.0.0.0/24 range.  

Cheers

Brian

[icpix]

Brian----

*Interesting* doesn't quite adequately describe my current feelings and as for <...messes up the routing rules...> well that doesn't quite cut the mustard either;~)

When an acceptable amount of hair grows back on my head I will attempt what you've described. I am approximately 6 days behind in just about everything else now. The thing I had feared (BT internet hookup) dropped into place without a murmur and everything else that I had expected to just click into place (including SME) did a fair imitation of a dress rehearsal of a bloody Armageddon;~|

Meanwhile, in rank desperation, I have embraced KISS plan B and recabled my workstations straight into the router (bypassing SME and my LAN switch). The router is now doing all the work for everything except for SME's email/web serving.

---best wishes, Robert