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Hi Thanks for all the helpful posts. It seems I was wrong about 21CN. I misunderstood an email they sent me a month back. It is just an "upgrade", to ADSL2+. The problem has indeed been caused by BT, and EntaNet are finally beginning to take it seriously, and have been calling with updates on BT's progress, which is good. It is day 4 of the outage though. No word from UkFsn yet. I'm still tempted to move to Virgin because I hate BT so much. I consider them to be a parasite that damages its host. I hardly use the landline and resent paying for it just so I can have ADSL from another supplier. My use of an Acer Aspire One as a gateway is, of course, temporary. I'm using a mobile broadband USB dongle (I tried an E172 on Vodafone and an E220 on Three. Both work, though slowly). Both work out of the box on Ubuntu 8.10, a big improvement on earlier releases. For those who wanted to know how I'd set up a mobile broadband gateway, here it is. Comments / criticisms welcome: I have a low-power Atom based server (it was a VIA C3 running Gentoo till the capacitors died) which does all my email (IMAP Server), and runs a PIM (a wiki based thing I wrote back in 2001), my svn repos, and other data storage. This also runs dnsmasq and provides my local DHCP and DNS. I am working on a ThinkPad T43, and the AAO is set up in a room which can see a mobile signal. All machines are running Ubuntu. On the AAO I have set up NAT routing, and set the mobile broadband as the default gateway. There is a common fault I've found in mobile services, where they report a bogus DNS server, so I have to override it. I have been using OpenDns. Therefore, on the mobile gateway machine: as root: echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward // Set up NAT routing $sudo iptables -t nat -F $sudo iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE // Set the gateway as the modem $sudo route del default $sudo route add default dev ppp0 // Override the bogus resolv.conf $sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf.opendns /etc/resolv.conf Where /etc/resolv.conf.opendns contains: # opendns servers : nameserver 208.67.222.222 nameserver 208.67.220.220 You have to do the same route trick on other machines, so they know to route through the gateway machine. I haven't automated this, as I'm hoping it is a temporary measure, but it gives me some connectivity at least. My ISP (UkFSN) seems to block outgoing SMTP requests coming from a different IP address. This is a simple and common enough security measure. To get round this I ssh tunnel to another server I control, and port forward the SMTP. I usually use this trick to send emails via my home server when I am away, so I don't need to change the settings on each email client: they are already configured to use a tunnel on localhost. Cheers D On Wednesday 11 February 2009 16:39:27 Rob Beard wrote: > Dave Berkeley wrote: > > Hi All > > > > I've got a broadband account with UKFSN. They are retailers for EntaNet. > > > > EntaNet notified me that they would be upgrading to 21CN last Monday and > > that this would mean a downtime of 10 minutes. > > Sounds like you're getting the runaround. Unless you're in Wales or a > big city as far as I know you won't be on 21CN for a year or two. You > can check the exchange using the Sam Knows Broadband checker here - > http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php > > If you enter your phone number it should give you some more exchange > details. For instance on my exchange > (http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/WWSHIP) the 21CN switchover > date is set for Q4 2010. I'd have thought it would be more likely that > you've been switched to Wholesale Broadband Connect (WBC) which as far > as I know all Enta customers who aren't on 21CN (not sure about the ones > that are) should be on now. > > > The connection went down for around 30 hours. You can't phone UkFSN and > > EntaNet's technical support was poor. They said it was a problem with BT > > at the exchange, which may well be true. > > Get yourself registered on the ThinkBroadband forums > (http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/) and go into the Enta sub-forum. > Jason at UKFSN is generally on there and is pretty quick at responding, > chances are someone else might have had the same problem. From what I > gather Enta's technical support has gone down somewhat over the past > couple of months and they're now into the habit of fobbing customers off > (hence the 21CN suggestion that they gave you). > > > Today my connection went dead again. Can't get through to UkFSN. EntaNet > > contacted BT who said that I had been online today (this morning; I had) > > and the problem was resolved. It was only when I phoned again (this time > > using their wholesale broadband freephone line 0800 804 8041 - they put > > you through) that they realised that it was a second fault that I talking > > about. > > You could try using the BT test login which disregards Enta's network > alltogether, you can find details here: > > http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/bttest.htm > > It does require though that you enter new login details in your router > so make sure you note down the username and password before you try it > (I've got caught out on this before and had to run around trying to find > the paperwork from the ISP). > > > Still no connection. Has anyone experienced similar problems? > > The only problems I've had recently with Enta is slow speeds in off-peak > times. From what I understand they have a facility now where if a lot of > bandwidth is being used on one of the nodes it will throttle everyone's > speed down in chunks to give everyone a reasonable connection. There has > been speculation on the ThinkBroadband forums though that the throttling > is over agressive and slowing users connections down to about 100KB/sec > or worse (I have had this myself, logging the router off and logging it > back on seems to fix it - I found this works better than pulling the > power or phone line out of the router and putting it back in lots as it > make's BT's systems think there is a problem and it switches you to a > lower speed profile and slows your connection down which requires a call > to Enta support to be reset). > > > Can anyone recommend a better provider? Virgin Media say they can provide > > me with a fibre connection. Has anyone any experience of this? I would > > really like to ditch those incompetent wasters at BT. > > I wouldn't touch Virgin Media with a 10ft barge pole. If you download > over a certain amount during certain times of the day your connection > speed is throttled down (see more here > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/11/virgin_media_throttle_extension/). > > If you check on Sam Knows Broadband for your exchange details it may > tell you if there are any LLU providers on your exchange (for instance, > Sky/UK Online, O2/Be, Talktalk etc) who could possibly provide a cheaper > and better connection (O2/Be are unlimited and can provide up to about > 20 Meg's a second depending on your line length, Sky and Easynet can > provide up to about 16 Meg, Talktalk can provide up to about 24 Meg if > you pay extra for it). > > > Incidentally, I had lots of fun setting up an Acer Aspire One netbook as > > a mobile gateway, forwarding my server traffic through it, and using it > > as a gateway for the home network. In the process I found that the last > > Ubuntu kernel upgrade has broken the eth0 driver. I also had to route > > round my ISP's SMPT so I could send email. So I have a nest of routing > > modifications, DNS resolver mods, NAT etc. > > Are you using some sort of mobile broadband dongle to do this? > > Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html