Blog
Unchained ISP at RIPE 77 in Amsterdam
We’re very happy to announce that we will be attending our first RIPE meeting (RIPE 77) on October 15th 2018. It’ll be good to hear from other businesses in the region and meet some new faces!
If you spot our Managing Director, Keith Rogers, please say hello! He’ll hopefully be wearing a branded t-shirt and a name tag so shouldn’t be too difficult to spot.
What is a RIPE meeting?
A RIPE meeting is a 5 day event where internet service providers, network operators and anyone else from around the world gather to discuss policies and procedures used by the RIPE NCC, participate in working group sessions and share experiences. The meeting is open for anyone to attend, please see here.
What does RIPE do?
RIPE is an independent, not-for-profit membership organisation that supports the infrastructure of the Internet through technical coordination in their service region (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia). They act as the RIR or Regional Internet Registry providing Internet resources such as IP addresses (IPv4 and IPv6) and AS numbers to members in the service region. As such, members tend to be comprised of Internet service providers (ISPs), telecommunication companies and large organisations. You can find out more about them by following this link.
Finally, we look forward to meeting you on the 15th of October.
An update to our broadband pricing
We’re pleased to announce some changes to our pricing structure!
Across all of our broadband products we have reduced the pricing of 1 month contracts to be in line with our 12 month contract products. In addition, our business broadband has seen a price reduction by making ‘enhanced care’ an optional extra for customers who feel they need it.
Finally, we have reduced the pricing of our Standard ADSL Broadband packages to be just £25/month.
If you’d like to know more or have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!
Why choose our broadband?
When choosing a broadband provider your choices aren’t limited to the big six. These do cater to a wide audience and as a result sometimes suffer from poor customer service and other issues. In this article, I want to talk about our services, where we shine and how we differ from the broadband giants.
Target demographic
Our services are geared towards power users and businesses. These categories of users tend to have similar requirements, such as:
- Predictable performance;
- An ISP who won’t read from a script;
- Technical staff members to talk to about issues if and when things go wrong;
- Control over their connection and statistics about its performance;
- UK Based Support;
- Fair contract terms!
So, why choose our broadband?
Choice of carrier
We have two network carriers available for broadband and double that for leased lines. The majority of our customers are provisioned on the TTB LLU backhaul products but we do offer BT Wholesale as an option for slightly more money. Some of our customers take one connection on each backhaul carrier to provide resiliency in case of any issues. If you would prefer to use one carrier over another or want a connection on each carrier for resiliency, please do let us know at the time of ordering.
Our Control Panel
One of our goals was to provide customers with as much control as possible over their broadband. This includes visibility and transparency of any connection issues, sync speeds, latency and more. As such, we’ve designed our own bespoke control panel to fit the needs of our customers and we continually take on board feedback to improve it. Some of the features currently available are as follows:
- Set reverse DNS for any IP addresses assigned to you;
- View your latency plotted on a graph in near realtime;
- See broadband session history;
- Analyse your current and previous sync speeds;
- Easily view router settings so you can configure your own router for the service;
- Check authorisation logs if you’re having trouble connecting;
- Configure free SMS alerts to monitor your connection.
Please keep an eye out on our blog for a more detailed article on this coming soon!
Static IPs
All of our services come with static IPv4 and IPv6 addressing as standard. This allows you to host services from your home or office such as a VPN or Mail Server.
In addition to the above, you can request additional IPs if sufficient justification is provided.
Short Contracts
Our ADSL broadband and FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) broadband services both come with 1 and 12 month contract options. As we mention on our homepage, “do business with us because you want to, not because you’re tied in.”
No Filtering
We don’t currently have in place any filtering to prevent access to certain websites and we we’ll do our best to keep it that way!
Enhanced Care
All of our Business broadband products come with enhanced care and premium traffic weighting as standard. This is also standard on our Home FTTC products but is an optional extra on our Home ADSL broadband.
As you can see, we have a lot to offer you as a customer and hope that we can do business with you soon. In the meantime, if you have any questions or would like to discuss your requirements with us, please do get in touch.
Cloud Server or Cloud Hosting: Which do you choose?
Should we host our application on a cloud server or cloud hosting? With our announcement of these new exciting products just recently, we delve deeper into this question so you’re not left scratching your head!
We often get customers coming to us and asking us this. Of course, there isn’t always a straightforward answer! For that reason, we’re going to discuss some of the common use cases for each type of service and provide scenarios based on our experience for each.
Cloud Hosting
Cloud Hosting is a complete service that offers e-mail, website hosting, and a control panel to get everything setup. This service is suited to you if you want to get started with a basic website and have your own e-mail addresses.
We class a ‘basic website’ as something like the following:
- A personal or business blog using a CMS like WordPress or similar;
- A website site that acts as a front door to your business which advertises your services or provides information;
- Where you’re not wanting to store private information, such as name, address, billing details, etc;
- Not requiring a lot of server resources to be effective at delivering the content it provides.
Cloud Server
A Cloud Server is a portion of a whole. Taken from a larger server computer and dedicated to you. This service is a step-up from traditional cloud hosting affording many benefits.
We would recommend a cloud server over cloud hosting if for example, you want to:
- Use an e-commerce solution such as Magento;
- Store customer information like name, address, billing details, etc.;
- Use software that a cloud hosting service doesn’t offer or would conflict with other cloud hosting users;
- Guarantee high levels of performance or predictable performance for your application or website;
- Use specific versions of software;
- Setup custom configurations for server software;
- Tweak security settings such as those required to meet strict PCI compliance standards;
- Host an application written in-house that requires specific software that doesn’t work in a cloud hosting environment.
When the wrong choice is made
In a few cases, we have seen examples of e-commerce systems running on busy cloud hosting environments. This isn’t always a problem, but where complex e-commerce solutions like Magento have been concerned it often outgrows a cloud hosting setup. So, what are the common problems that arise when this happens:
- The cloud hosting server can crash under heavy load;
- Updates to server software like PHP can cause incompatibilities with systems like Magento and break a store;
- It can be difficult to follow security best practices;
- File and folder permissions issues can cause problems with the e-commerce software.
How do we differ?
We work closely with you to identify your requirements and suggest the best solution, as a result all of our cloud packages come with managed backups, OS updates, and monitoring. Furthermore, you can rely on our technical expertise to guide you and support you when needed.
In conclusion, if you’re unsure which package would best suit your requirements, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us as we’d be more than happy to help identify a solution for you.