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How can I find out what providers are available on my exchange?
 
I've been with BT for donkeys years, currently get 25 - 30 mb but the maximum possible from the exchange is 35 mb I never accept increases and always shop around and re negotiate at the end of each contract and wouldn't hesitate to switch if I could get a better deal. One day maybe we'll get higher speed fibre here but I'm not holding my breath and we're better served than many.
My current costs for BB plus anytime calls is £13.50 a month excluding line rental which I pay 12 months upfront. I've stayed as I've had very few issues however for several years I had to deal with the problems of my inlaws using TalkTalk and they are by far the worst shower I ever had the misfortune of speaking to.
 
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According to Sam, It's only BT resale from my present exchange. There's an awful long list of what's not available
I'd double check elsewhere as well, Sam says ZEN isn't available to my house but the ZEN site says it is and has quoted me price, package and available speed.
 
We were with Talk Talk for 5 years. The only reason we changed was because we got a better deal with the promise of no price increases.
Two faults on the underground cable in that period were sorted by Openreach after contacting Talk Talk using a borrowed mobile phone.
 
I'd double check elsewhere as well, Sam says ZEN isn't available to my house but the ZEN site says it is and has quoted me price, package and available speed.
I think that just means that Zen doesn't have their own hardware in the exchange, they're still available to you, but over BT backhaul, not their own.
 
It appears that Zen is available at my backwater exchange, offering the same speeds as EE @ 150% of the cost.
It may be worth it though if the service was more consistant.

Can anyone explain to me in simple terms the value of a static ip address.
 
Can anyone explain to me in simple terms the value of a static ip address.

TLDR:
Simple answer is "if you don't know you need one then you probably don't".

Long winded explanation, probably inaccurate in some details and simplified to match my understanding. Anyone who cares to correct me please do:

A static IP address is a sequence of numbers that identifies your connection to the internet so that external computers/people can communicate with you.

Normal conversation with the web is done by request-response.

You request a web page and the response contains the web page. You send an email and the response tells you if you were successful. In each of these cases the server knows where the response should go because it holds onto your request until it has sent the response. When it has sent the response it forgets that the conversation ever happened (well, not quite but allow me to simplify).

This means that your computer can make sure that only responses to requests are handled. If any message comes to your machine that is not a response it is ignored. This works well for almost everyone, and it provides a level of safety.

In certain circumstances this is not enough - the server that you send a request to needs to accept your request for example. So your sever has a static IP address that you can send your request to. It is a well-known place that is ready and waiting for requests.

Unless you want unsolicited web traffic and the security headaches that go with that then you do not want a static IP address.

It can be useful if you want to run your own server but if you are going to do that you already know that you need a static IP address.

HTH
 
Static IP address - for most users probably doesn't matter either way. If you are doing things like running your own mail server or file server it can be useful. (You can access your own router remotely using an ip address).

There used to be security issues but as long as your router is running a decent firewall (all new ones do) then its not really a problem. I've had static ip for 20 years + with Demon and later Zen, never had an issue.

I did use the static IP to access my NAS remotely, don't really need that now we have onedrive, dropbox etc. cloud storage.
 
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Unless you want unsolicited web traffic and the security headaches that go with that then you do not want a static IP address.
....

Interesting as I've had the same IP address for years and suffered no intrusion. That's not to say that some folk with a static IP address have had problems. I'd be more concerned about the poor security on the majority of 'smart' things in the house and to that end (and as an official member of the Tin Hat Society) I run a two-router setup with a DMZ between them into which any 'smart' things go. All our computers are behind the second router, safely tucked away.
 
It appears that Zen is available at my backwater exchange, offering the same speeds as EE @ 150% of the cost.
I forgot to say that they only offer FTTC which by a strange anomaly, at least to me, is slower here than ordinary BB
 
It appears that Zen is available at my backwater exchange, offering the same speeds as EE @ 150% of the cost.
It may be worth it though if the service was more consistant.

Can anyone explain to me in simple terms the value of a static ip address.

A static IP address is one that doesn't change each time you connect to the Internet. In the old days, using dial up modem, each time you connected to the Internet you may (or may not) have different IP address associated wiith your connection. As most people only made connections out of their home to websites or to mail servers, this was fine and of no issue. An IP address that changes is a dynamic IP address. Your ISP provider would be responsible for changing your IP address.

Since most people do not run services that other people, outside of their connection, connect to (web servers, mail servers, NAS boxs, FTP servers, SSH access), this isn't a problem. The fact that in the morning you have a dynamic IP address of 1.2.3.4 and in the afternoon 1.2.3.5 is unimportant. You will still make connections and things will work OK.

This becomes a slight issue when you have a service you want to make available to the world, e.g. a web server. People don't remember IP addresses, they remember names, such as news.bbc.co.uk or www.apple.com or whatever. The system known as DNS (Domain name Services) looks up the name you type in on the URL line of your web browser, converts it to a number, e.g. 1.2.3.4 and that number is used to find news.bbc.co.uk. There is no issue if the BBC website changes their IP address as we work on names and not numbers.

The issue for dyamic IP addresses is that you have to change the DNS entry each time your IP address changes. There are plenty of systems that do this for you automatically but it's a bit of a pain when things change as it can take some minutes to propogate through the system, so you could lose traffic.

Unless you have a need to connect to allow yourself or other people services at home (FTP, mail server, web server, NAS box etc), there is no need for a static IP address. However I do check IP addresses and these days, its unusual for your IP address to change very often if it is a dynamic address, but there is no guarantee that they will stay the same from day to day, but they often do.

For the picky and pedants on here (not that there are any) -

I have tried to simplify the answer so that we don't have to get into the complexities of DNS systems, routing, firewalls, gateways, IPV4 and the lack of address ranges, IPV6 and why we really, really, really should move to it, address blocks, proxy servers, Dynamic DNS, propogation timings, multiple DNS servers, non routable IP addresses, round robin DBS, load balanced DNS, edge servers and the like.
 
House broadband here is with TalkTalk - the speed is under 1Mb/s constantly. Saying that I'm not sure it's their fault as the quality of the landline is terrible too so I think it's an infrastructure issue and all providers would probably struggle.

I just bought a 4G broadband connection from Three - it's running at 30Mb/s and is faultless, the signal strength sometimes dips to 4/5 but is often 5/5. At 22 quid a month I can't complain - it's not like there's really any need for landlines any more anyway, it's only there because my mum's scared of mobile technology.
 
I just bought a 4G broadband connection from Three - it's running at 30Mb/s and is faultless, the signal strength sometimes dips to 4/5 but is often 5/5. At 22 quid a month I can't complain
I had something like that from BT a few years ago but it was metered and I had to keep topping up.
It got expensive enough to put me off gaming. lol
How much data do you get for £22?
 
Useless fact of the day........did you know that ADSL will still work with just one wire to your house ?
Yes, it's to do with the frequency of the signal I believe, almost acting like a radio wave and the router can still decode it, speeds will be much reduced however. Thus not needing the full loop continuity or any real flow of electrons as speech would require. Quite a common phenomenon.
 
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