7 Jun 2006 dwmw2   » (Master)

I have been politely requested to stop complaining. To be specific, I have been invited to:

"Stop polluting my RSS reader, and write about some of the other stuff I subscribe to your weblog for."

Since I don't actually know what it is that anyone would "subscribe to my weblog for", I find this request a little hard to fulfil. But I'll certainly make the attempt -- I'll try ranting about something that makes me happy instead of something that gets on my tits. I can't promise that I'll make a habit of this, though.

I comment a lot about telco incompetence. ISPs often aren't much better, but in response to the above request, I'll take a moment to reflect on an exception to the rule -- the ISP I use at home; Andrews & Arnold.

I ♥ A&A. They do constant monitoring of DSL lines with pretty graphs (can you see when I started the remote Evolution?), and this often allows them to notice problems before the users do and chase up BT¹ to get them fixed. Even when there are problems with BT kit which affect all ISPs, it seems to be A&A who are getting it fixed while the other ISPs haven't even noticed. Like this one for example. I hadn't actually noticed that one at the time; I just found it when I was looking back through the archived status posts for another example which affected the whole country.

They provide native IPv6 on the DSL line (or tunnels if your DSL router can't cope with IPv6 over PPP), they'll provide you with as many Legacy Internet addresses as you need rather than forcing you to use NAT, and they'll provide or delegate reverse DNS for it all.

Most of all, they provide a very transparent, no-bullshit service. Their support staff are clueful, helpful, happy to deal with Linux, and almost constantly available on IRC.

OK, so I've ranted about A&A, and it almost sounds like an advert -- so I'm sure someone else will now be contacting me to complain that I should go back to complaining instead of doing that. Oh well, you can't please them all... :)

(¹ BT -- British Telecom; monopoly telco in the UK who actually own the local loop in almost all cases. Most DSL connectivity is carried over their ATM network, whoever the ISP is.)

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