Spaceman

It will be like looking in a mirror:-)

Another broadband question!

BT have enabled our exchange so I can get BB at work (and home is getting it in Feb 04 - wayhay!!!). When I look, it says 30 for one user, 70 for 2 (business use). Surely it can be connected to one machine then across the (small) network we have without paying 70 a month. Or am I missing something?

Tia.

You're missing that BT would like you to think that you need their business solution if you are running a network, but you're quite right, with a router or internet connection sharing you don't. However they will probably insist on you not using their home solution for business use. The business solution does have a better contention ratio (30:1) than the home one (50:1) but that is not yet of any practical value since there are not yet enough people using broadband.

I would advise against using BT which are more expensive and slower than other suppliers. Pipex is 23.44 a month for home use, see http://www.pipex.net, and also Plusnet, Nildram, Eclipse and Zen which are top of the speed polls. Look at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ for user feedback, comparisons and a lot more.

Thanks Kayak, Brilliant reply - all the info I need and more. I suspected as much. The BT home and the business solutions are the same price for one user, however I had thought that I would look to a different supplier anyway but need to get my head around how broadband works. NTL are dominant here with cable but they wanted 100 per month business use !!!

Business is actually 20:1 contention not 30:1 and the CPE devices in the Exchnage have a much bigger pipe from the exchange to BT's ATM backbone, so you're connection to the Net is much less likely to get throttled. Also as business's tend to do 20:1, and they do not share the same exchange connection with home users, you will find that in the evening when you want use the web you pretty much have it all to yourself.

For info. the 50:1 contention is nothing to do with the service provider. It's related to how many people connect to the same CPE in the Exchange in your area. A good rule of thumb is if you're area has cable then most user's will be on that so you are less likely to see contention creeping in. If you are in a built up area where broadband has been around for a while and there is no cable then you will notice things slow down especially in the evenings.

Seymour ... my 2Mb business Adsl is only 78 inc.vat per month. 512k is normally around 37.50inc vat so in the scheme of things only 12 more a month than the 50:1 service.

Thanks Technet, what I didn't make clear is that the business is my own, we have three sites some miles away from each other which I want on broadband so can have am "always on" but in the evenings I go home so come Feb I'll be able to have broadband there as well - presently have two lines at home, one a dedicated dial up internet connection but sometimes can't get on between 8-10pm. Also intending to be able to connect to my work machines from home.

Thanks for the responses. Time to trawl google and find general background out.

Seymour - if you use Draytek or Cisco routers in each site you and set up a secure VPN over broadband to each of them making them seem as one big network.

Thanks Technet, was wondering about something like that. We are in the process of looking at new software so this needs to be taken into account when choosing our s/w. Oh, and we use dedicated software, can't get anything off the shelf :-(

Edit I feel like I'm at the beginning of a big exciting adventure into the world of broadband. Thanks for all the info. It is quite a minefield so this sort of help has pointed me in the right direction and saved me a lot of time.

Hi, can anyone help.. Can I set up Outlook Express to do automatically dial up to send and recieve messages/ e mails, and then disconnect. Like the AOL flash sessions? Its NTL Dial Up. I have broadband with BT but want to keep my e mail address which I have organised with them. I can recieve to my NTL e-mail through BT broadband. But it won't let me send or auto forward.

david2000, send your messages through the BT server, but in Tools/Accounts for the BT account, specify your NTL email address and not the BT one. The messages should be sent looking as though they are coming from NTL. This trick works for most but not all ISPs, but I used to have BT ADSL and as far as I remember it worked with them. So when you send/receive on your BT connection you will be receiving on the NTL account and sending on the BT account.

I've just taken the basic BT Braoadband package Kayak. So no e mail account. I hoped IE had a flash session but cant find it. Thanks anyway Kayak

You don't need an email account with BT, david 2000. Just set up an account in Outlook Express, specifying your NTL address as the email address, mail.btopenworld.com as the pop and smtp servers, and Bob's your uncle.

Kayak's sea of knowledge makes mine look like a puddle.



;-:

Kayak/david 2000,

BT sent out an email to all (business?) customers recently asking for the domains from which they will be sending emails out from, which gave me the impression that they are only going to allow people to send email with a non-bt domain through their servers if they know in advance that is does indeed belong to at BT customer.

I dont know how much further they are in implimenting this tho.

J.

No need to use their outgoing SMTP server, of course - just run your own!

the troll/kayak/david 2000,

for windows I know people who have had very good success with MDaemon, assuming that is the OS you are running. However, some ISPs block outgoing port 25 connections to servers other than their own.

I think this may start coming more into play now with the onslaught of virii which have their own built in SMTP servers...

J.

Windows 2000 comes with an SMTP server (part of the add-ons on the installation CD), although I've never tried it. I assume that XP does too. I've never seen the point of running your own, though. Perhaps someone could enlighten me?

Kayak,

It means that no matter what ISP you use, you set your email client to use the local host (127.0.0.1) as the SMTP server.

When your STMP server recieves an email, it will normally look up the mail exchangers for the recipient domain itself and deliver directly to them, without using an intermediatory step (your ISPs mail server)

However, attempts to run services like this may be blocked by ISPs, indeed there are some that block it already.

J.