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| message from Paul on 23 Jun 2005 |
Up to 2Mbs (whatever the line supports)
Unlimited downloads
No annual contract
Only 14.99 a month
Its seems there is no downside, and I've heard the service is good.
I look forward to any opinions on PlusNet or recommendations of other ISPs.
Thanks
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| Well_i_Wonder replied to Paul on 23 Jun 2005 |
Hi, likewise I did a lot of research and no ISP seemed able to compete with
Plusnet.
I've been with them a month so can't comment on long term issues but the
initial set up couldn't have been more efficient. I was notified as to what
was happening at every stage, the modem arrived 3 days before connection,
and I was connected on the 7th day after signing up.
I'm currently on the Pay As You Go option to judge my usage, and I may
change to the unlimited if need be. I've used it for P2P and bit torrents
etc and have experienced excellent download speeds even at peak times.
Usenet also seems to be more reliable than when I was with Wanadoo.
If you go with them and you'd like to save me a few pence a month my
referrer ID is 'skintnminted'.
W.
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| Marky replied to Paul on 23 Jun 2005 |
Best thing Since slice bread
If in doubt do a email to support on all the main ISP's and see which one
replies back 1st, I had a reply from plusnet in under 2hrs ... wanadoo took
about 8 days... BT yahoo I'm still waiting and AOL ask them a simple
question and they go to pot.
"Paul" <nomail@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:d9egq8$q05$1@gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk...
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| "David G. Bell" replied to Paul on 28 Jun 2005 |
On Tuesday, in article
Who owns a domain name depends on contracts, but there's nothing to stop
you from buying your own, being the registered owner, and paying to have
it point to an ISP web page and email address. It's what I do.
When I started, there were things happening which made a change of ISP
seem a possibility, so I wanted to be sure I had an email address which
didn't depend on my ISP. With Gmail and Hotmail and the rest, that's
not so critical, but I'd still recommend avoiding your ISP for buying a
domain name.
I started with the original Gradwell operation, and now use 123-reg.
The original Gradwell op was sold -- something about finishing a
university degree, as I recall -- and the current Gradwell is the same
person, so I feel I can recommend both.
There are others.
Going direct to Nominet is wildly expensive, and a reputable reseller
will register the domain in your name, and arrange all the facilities
needed to make it work.
Looking at the broadband market, and some of the stories flying around
about how people can be messed up, a personal domain name looks like
good insurance.
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| AJH replied to Paul on 27 Jun 2005 |
Hmmm. I feel moved to say "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition" :)
It's a personal website, just for use by me and my friends and family,
and is also going to be the place where I learn CGI and stuff, 'that
OK?
And what I didn't mention is the Plus Net "domain for =A31/month" add-on
that I'm taking, which is <anyname>.co.uk
Thanks for the feedback.=20
Alan
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| Phil replied to Paul on 23 Jun 2005 |
Remember that Plusnet's broadband plus service uses traffic shaping at peak
times on P2P downloads. Which basically means they throttle P2P download
speed when their network is busy. I am on Plusnet's Premier
2Mb(£21.99/month) service which doesn't have any traffic shaping. The
service is great 100% uptime since I joined 2 months ago, great speeds and
customer service is good.
If you don't use P2P much then Broadband Plus will be fine for you but if
you want to use P2P a lot then go for the premier package
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| AJH replied to Paul on 24 Jun 2005 |
For me, it was the extra webspace storage and features with the PAYG
option.
I want to host a website and mess around with CGI etc.
And I have registered a fax2email number, it will come in handy.
Alan
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| AJH replied to Paul on 28 Jun 2005 |
Understood, no offence taken, lots of good advice duly absorbed.
The Plusnet Domain for =A31/m is truly mine AFAIK. I can't register it
until they take over the ADSL though "in case the ADSL changeover
fails, in which case we'd have to cancel anyway and the registration
fee would have to be charged back, so we don't do that".
Thanks
Alan
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| AJH replied to Paul on 23 Jun 2005 |
I just signed up with Plusnet yesterday, with an ADSL migration date of
18th July (my choice as I've just paid BT for another month - lead
time is allegedly 5-7 days). I have my e-mail account and dialup
already and they work. I chose Plus because of the consistently high
ratings on www.adslguide.org, and I'm impressed so far. I've gone for
the PAYG option (=A314.99 for 1Gb with extra Gbs at =A31 pre-paid or
=A31.25 post-paid) as I'm a light user but I've added on the .co.uk
domain for another =A31 per month.
Will keep you posted.
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| Spack replied to AJH on 23 Jun 2005 |
Any particular reason why you didn't got with the BB Plus service? If you're
on PAYG you're obviously not aiming to download GBs every month, so a little
bit of P2P traffic shaping seems like it wouldn't affect you anyway. It's
£14.99 fixed per month, no need to buy extra GBs as it's "unlimited". The
Plus product has more contention, but that appears to rarely, if ever, have
any affect.
I've been on the 21.99 - well, less with referal credits :) - Premier for a
few months now, very happy and customer service is much easier to deal with
than when I was on Pipex.
Dan
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| Spack replied to Spack on 24 Jun 2005 |
Ah, OK, make sense. Although I'd never risk my own site on my ISPs space (I
guess you haven't read the horror stories in the PN forum about the last
time all the webspace got wiped), and a couple of hundred MB isn't enough
for my needs anyway, plus CGI is old hat and these days I work with ASP/PHP
and SQL Server/MySQL database driven sites. I'd never both with fax2email
either, I don't know anyone who'd want to send me faxes :P
Dan
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| David Bradley replied to Spack on 24 Jun 2005 |
Always seems odd to me that people that create web sites using the freebie web
space of their ISP, don't seem to consider the long term consequences of
taking such a route. Quite apart from the bloody awful URL that comes with
the teriartry, often with a ~ [tilde] in their somewhere, you slave away to
get recognised in cyberspace and just as you get a listing in Google, changes
occur with your ISP that causes your URL to be no longer valid. Or perhaps you
may decide to do things "properly" and run with a hosting agency taking out a
Domain name along the way. With your listing, you are back to square one.
Usually, unless you use pre-installed scripts you cant use CGI to its fullest
extent, and indeed a careless configuration can have serious security
implications. So what did you have in mind with "mess around with CGI"?
David Bradley
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| Bill replied to David Bradley on 26 Jun 2005 |
Agree with the sentiment, but with a low cost host / domain registration
to address these points, the ISP can take the 'storage' loading.
Nice url, search stable, free space.
Bill
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| David Bradley replied to David Bradley on 27 Jun 2005 |
My comments were simply based on the error of my ways when way back in 1999 I
created a web site without really thinking about who would actually view the
site, or indeed how they would find it if I did not personally give them the
URL. It was hosted by Freeserve using their freebie space and had the URL
xngc.freeserve.co.uk
Much to my surprise it quickly established itself by having 30 to 40 hits a
day and started to appear in countless links pages of many other sites. This
meant it quickly rose up the ranking in Google making it eaiser for many other
pontential cyber visitors to find it.
Subsequently I wanted to add a lot more material to the site but hit the glass
ceiling of the allocated space which could not be increased. At that point I
was obliged to register a Domain name [which in 2000 there was not a lot of
information around of how to do just that] and then find someone with a web
server to host it [lost of choice then to spend a fortune to achieve that aim
but very difficult to find bargan basement prices - things are a lot different
now].
Those two acts destroyed the healthy Google placement I had, so I was back to
square one. Then I knew nothing about URL redirection or backward link
searches which would have savedd the day to retain my search engine
placements. Time has healed those problems and I remain happy with the number
of visitors I get which seldom is less than about 60 a day. However five
years on my original URL is still to be found on the links pages of over a
dozen sites with the owners of the sites failing to respond to requests for an
update. Sad that.
So far from giving you "the Spanish Inquisition", I was only trying to make
you think out of the box as to where your poking the toes in the water might
actually take you and to help you get there a lot faster.
David Bradley
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| Peter M replied to David Bradley on 28 Jun 2005 |
Seems he was ahead of you, insofar as using a domain name, anyway (which
wasn't obvious, but more and more ISPs offer support of them, so to make
the assumption "it would be webspace with a nasty long URL and likely to
use a tilde", is one you might care to sling in the bin, now)... Peter.
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| David Bradley replied to Peter M on 28 Jun 2005 |
Yeah, you are right there, but examples still do exist. Meranwhile if you do
pay an extra subscription for your own Domain name to be hosted on your ISPs
server, who actually is the owner of that name and how difficult [and costly]
is it to move it onto someone elses server?
I also wonder if those that have sub-domains realize that they are non
transfereable to another server, such is my now defunct xngc.freeserve.co.uk
David Bradley
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| Bob Eager replied to David Bradley on 28 Jun 2005 |
Generally it's registered to you...you can check this by using
'whois'...exact method depends on the TLD. I have known ISPs who
register it to themselves and 'rent' it to you but I don't think that's
common these days.
As far as moving it to someone else's server...that depends exactly what
you mean. If you simply want the domain name to point to another server,
but registration to stay with the original ISP (i.e. you are just using
webspace elsewhere) then it's a trivial operation that many ISPs allow
you to do yourself via some kind of web 'control panel'. Some of the
more grasping ones might charge a small fee.
If you are actually moving ISP, and taking the registration with
you...you get a 'tag' name from the new ISP and give it to the old one.
They should then change the tag, and that's it - *should* take no time
at all.
But some ISPs charge an 'exit fee' - which may be to cover costs (e.g.
if you pay a monthly fee, however small, they need enough to cover what
they have laid out - a small number of pounds). However, some take the
piss - e.g. Zetnet, who had held a domain for just two months, had paid
out nothing at all, and charged me 75 pounds to move it (after I left
because they'd raised other prices rather excessively).
So, ask the ISPs what they charge. It varies.
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| Peter M replied to David Bradley on 28 Jun 2005 |
So that's presumably a 12 quid, per year, each year you stay with PN,
and some transfer fee at the end when you change to another ISP... to
allow a change of the IPSTAG.
I have not done this myself (I've used alternative web hosting) but if you
could see the past posts (*) in plusnet.service.customer-feedback you would
see confirmation that without changing the IPSTAG from another service, you
can get Plus.Net to enable the hosting, by setting nameservers to use those
of Plus.Net (ns1.force9.net and ns2.force9.net I think)...
So you would pay someone like 123-reg.co.uk or ukreg.com under a tenner for
2 years registration and not have any transfer-away fee to pay Plus.Net at
the time of switching (some way down the line, I hope!). Peter M.
(*) sign up for an Essential account (free for 3 months) and you will get
mail and news - see http://www.plus.net/btbroadband/ (+ fax -> e-mail)
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| Peter M replied to David Bradley on 24 Jun 2005 |
However, some 'enlightened' ISPs (such as Plus.Net, Demon, etc) can add
customer domain(s) to their servers, so being ISP-hosted is therefore seen
by an outside search engine as just any other hosting service - one reaches
the pages as www.username.plus.com or www.yourdomain.co.uk (AFAIK).
Knocks out the 'horrible URL with a tilde' argument, somewhat. I am not
advocating use of an ISP's web space for anything serious - paying hosting
company fees and it being independent of your internet connection is what I
would usually recommend, in case of disputes with one or other party, (and
keeping the registration separate from the hosting means one could change
the DNS entries if the hosting service was being unhelpful, whereas having
both registration and hosting from one firm might allow them to lock access
to the DNS entries and thus suspend access to the website and stop e-mail).
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| Tiscali Tim replied to Spack on 23 Jun 2005 |
Whilst BB Plus has the advantage of not being capped - there are a few other
features which you *don't* get compared with BB Home PAYG (or Premier).
These may not matter to a lot of people but - if they do - might influence
you towards one of the other products. With BB Plus, you don't get:
* A fixed IP address
* A fax2email facility
* Quite as much webspace
* Free speed upgrade when BT 'do' your exchange
* (Possibly other things which I've forgotten - check out the PN site)
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| Ron replied to Tiscali Tim on 23 Jun 2005 |
Why do you call yourself Tiscali Tim? Do you work for them?
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| Tiscali Tim replied to Ron on 23 Jun 2005 |
It's a throwback to when I used to use Tiscali SmartTalk for cheap phone
calls - before I discovered 18866. I have no other connection with them, and
have never used them as an ISP.
I ought to think up a new handle - but I'm too idle! <g>
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| Ron replied to Tiscali Tim on 23 Jun 2005 |
How about 'Idle Tim'
or 'Too Idle Tim'?
Oh, I thought you were assocaited with them... I was gonna tell you want I
think of Tiscali, so you could pass it on to your colleagues.
It wasn't going to be good, but I won't bore everyone.
Ron
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| Martin² replied to Tiscali Tim on 24 Jun 2005 |
Piscali Pim ;-)
If you have router the IP address stays the same anyway, even if you reboot
the router.
Does anyone still use fax ?
Most people never use the webspace.
AFAIK you DO get free upgrade, roll on July, faster, faster...
Regards,
Martin
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| Tiscali Tim replied to Martin² on 24 Jun 2005 |
I recently came to the end of a 12-month Easy Start contract - and was
debating whether to switch to PAYG or Easy Start. During this dialogue (via
the ticket system) PlusNet explicitly told me that whilst Plus is available
at speeds of up to 2M, once implemented it is FIXED speed and not upgraded
for free.
That was end of April/early May - so of course they may have moved the
goalposts again in the meantime.
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| Andrew Sayers replied to Tiscali Tim on 23 Jun 2005 |
True. And for me it's not an issue, but...
With this I understood that the "up to" included the possible upgrade to 2meg free if
your line will support it.
Perhaps Plusnet will clarify?
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| Dr Teeth replied to Paul on 26 Jun 2005 |
Depends on which way the wind is blowing as to what +Net calls
'unlimited'.
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