Thanks for looking up!
Not sure about other Dutch ISP's. I assume Ziggo (previously UPC, owned by Liberty Global [doublespeak ;) ] will be difficult, if only practically as a TV-cable modem is needed.
Regards, Nico
On vr, 2015-11-27 at 09:16 +0100, André Ockers wrote:
Op 26-11-15 om 09:29 schreef Matthias Kirschner:
- Paul van der Vlis paul@vandervlis.nl [2015-11-25 22:32:21 +0100]:
Another point is the "routerdwang". In the Netherlands you get "for free" a router with modem from your ISP. So people who would buy such a device have to pay double. Because of that, not many people will buy such a device, what makes it expensive.
But you are allowed to use your own router instead, right?
Regards, Matthias
I contacted XS4ALL and it's legal to use your own router :-)
Best regards,
Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:09:35 +0100, Nico Rikken wrote:
Not sure about other Dutch ISP's. I assume Ziggo (previously UPC, owned by Liberty Global [doublespeak ;) ] will be difficult, if only practically as a TV-cable modem is needed.
My parents used to have UPC (now Ziggo). They used to have a cable modem. That got changed (a year or something ago) to a modem/router/access-point combo that's remote managed by default. In order to keep their networking setup working I had to disable the router and access-point bits. As for the remote-management: at the time I didn't succeed at disabling that, though I cannot remember what the reason for that was.
I assume you refer to the 'Horizon Box'? I'll probably end up with such a box in the near future. My only hope is to put up a separate router to get some separation. Ideally I would be able to select my own router, as that would imply connectivity is more standard and strict. Then again backdoors and security weaknesses are real, certainly in hardly updated modem-routers.
On vr, 2015-11-27 at 14:55 +0100, Giel van Schijndel wrote:
On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:09:35 +0100, Nico Rikken wrote:
Not sure about other Dutch ISP's. I assume Ziggo (previously UPC, owned by Liberty Global [doublespeak ;) ] will be difficult, if only practically as a TV-cable modem is needed.
My parents used to have UPC (now Ziggo). They used to have a cable modem. That got changed (a year or something ago) to a modem/router/access-point combo that's remote managed by default. In order to keep their networking setup working I had to disable the router and access-point bits. As for the remote-management: at the time I didn't succeed at disabling that, though I cannot remember what the reason for that was.
On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 00:15:04 +0100, Nico Rikken wrote:
I assume you refer to the 'Horizon Box'? I'll probably end up with such a box in the near future. My only hope is to put up a separate router to get some separation. Ideally I would be able to select my own router, as that would imply connectivity is more standard and strict. Then again backdoors and security weaknesses are real, certainly in hardly updated modem-routers.
Yes, I was referring to the "Horizon Box". And while I believe it to be legal to use your own router (i.e. you needed your own before and my parents did _not_ change their contract), it's definitely not appreciated. I.e. my father had some problems with this "Horizon TV" Android-app and the UPC/Ziggo help desk just took remote access to the box and declared the "unusual" routing setup to be the cause of the problem and basically refused to investigate further without switching back to the box's default setup. (Everything else worked, and a month or so later when my father reset his phone this app suddenly started working. Of course at UPC they still blamed the unusual network setup.)
So my conclusion: even if it's legal according to your contract to use your own router, you still risk being treated as a second class customer.
On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 10:37:31AM +0100, Giel van Schijndel wrote:
So my conclusion: even if it's legal according to your contract to use your own router, you still risk being treated as a second class customer.
That risk might be half a blessing, sir.
In my experience customer support is so pitiful (in telcos in general, I don't know about NL) that anything that drives them to quickly ignore you is better than the usual deal of ignoring you after wasting a long chunk of your time.
After all the goal of customer service is not solving problems, is just convincing customers than calling customer service is useless, so they get fewer calls and quality statistics improve. This of course does not include any customer service paid by the minute, then the goal is to keep you happily/hopefully/relunctantly/in-that-mood-that-just-doesn't-feel-right-but-what-else-is-one-to-do-now-that-it-has-come-to-this talking on the phone until you've paid enough.
On Tuesday 1. December 2015 14.42.21 xdrudis@tinet.cat wrote:
On Tue, Dec 01, 2015 at 10:37:31AM +0100, Giel van Schijndel wrote:
So my conclusion: even if it's legal according to your contract to use your own router, you still risk being treated as a second class customer.
That risk might be half a blessing, sir.
In my experience customer support is so pitiful (in telcos in general, I don't know about NL) that anything that drives them to quickly ignore you is better than the usual deal of ignoring you after wasting a long chunk of your time.
Agreed. However, the lack of "separation of concerns" is a serious issue.
Fortunately, my service is provided through a dedicated cable modem, and the router behind it is not provided by the ISP. In fact, when I first subscribed, I think the idea was that customers would only have one computer using the Internet, and I think that UPC (as it was then) were trying to sell routers to "allow" multiple computers to use the Internet at the same time: such magic!
I haven't pushed the boundaries of what kind of routing I could achieve, and one could easily argue that the ISP should be imposing any necessary restrictions on the equipment in their possession, not logging into people's routers (or their routers in other people's possession) and messing around.
It all sounds like another mechanism for denying proper service: the network drops out but they point to your router configuration, as if that's the reason why you can't access the Internet and not some fault at their end (which is almost always is).
Paul