Full Fat fiber internet

Purchase Proposals
1

Proposal Type:
Small

Proposer:
alex bennett

Description:
a better internet connection to the space it, the current connection is terrible. the building has a fiber connection for tenants that we aren’t using
speed will be 50/50 Mb 100/100/Mb is £32.50 pm

Explain how it will be achieved- Who will buy, install, run, maintain etc
it will have to be paid out of the account the board uses via direct debit as a cost like with the webiste hosting. as for mantaince i would take that issue along with Richard

What are the benefits?
the whole internet comes a standstill when ever somthing is downloading or you need to upload anything this will make it less of a problem as more bandwidth and can add redundancy using the original connection.
less buffering watching youtube

Proposed Purchase:
*We call this number 0845 052 1354 and or this email support@digitalutilities.co.uk and pay a one of £60 setup fee *

Proposed Installation:
the ISP run a cable into the hacspace and its their responsibility for the cable and this comes with a router

Budget:
£77.50
Will there be an ongoing consumables cost?
£17.50 per month
Funding type:
Fully funded by Hackspace *

Health & Safety
not needed. its the internet connection so i guess you shouldn’t lick the Ethernet

Supporters

Small Proposal < £150 - 2 Board Members and 5 Members

Supporting Board Members:
x DominiqueTink
x

Supporting Members: (delete number as appropriate)

  1. alex bennett
  2. garlicbread
  3. JakeCausier
  4. cat
  5. Harvinder_Atwal
2 Likes
2

+1

3

Better internet would be good!

Before I add my support have we tried replacing the modem first? I know the modem we have can sometimes crap out.

Also do you have a link to the package they offer? Be good to see if there’s any tie in, and extra details :slight_smile:

4

we have a new modem but don’t have the PPP infomation to install it

5

+1!

6

Ah!

I searched for it and found this:
https://support.aa.net.uk/PPP_DNS_Addresses

If that doesn’t work I can hit A&A up and see what settings we need?

7

+1

8

+1

9

Can we get the info and stick it somewhere? It seems pretty useful regardless if it’s used straight away or not.

10

Happy to lend my support to this, but before we go ahead and submit an order it would be useful to understand how we’ll actually set it up, and who is going to do it?

Some questions that spring to mind:

  • What networking kit do we currently have?
  • Are there going to be any networking config changes we need (either in existing kit, or the new router)
  • Will we need to run ethernet between existing kit & wherever the new router will come into the building?
  • I believe we have a server in the space? Are there any public-facing DNS settings that will need updating to point to the space’s new IP address?
1 Like
11

+1 I hadn’t realised until last night when I was the only person in the space doing research on my laptop and videos weren’t loading :thinking:

12

@DominiqueTink , didn’t you say at the meeting that the more expensive wifi you were paying for upstairs in your studio was also terrible?

13

That must have been when I moved into the studio and there wasn’t a router on my side of the building, a very long time ago.
Then they added more in the hallway and it’s great now.
I think maybe you heard me say I tried to get an external company to come (BT) and they wouldn’t do it.

  • Short answer, no it’s good :+1:
14

Ok. This proposal also has my provisional support, but i’d like to see Rob’s points answered before we spend any money or sign any contracts.

15

How do proposals work for subscription items?

Do we factor in the total cost of a year or a monthly cost?

If there’s a minimum tie in of say 2 years then that total cost should be factored into the proposal type right?

16

I think generally for infrastructure subscriptions like this it should be voted on at a members meeting once the board and members have had chance to review them.

I guess that makes it automatically a large purchase proposal, so needs majority board support as well.

Other recurring things like software etc. can either be done at a members meeting if someone wants to make it an autorecurring thing, or via a purchase proposal each year for the single annual cost.

1 Like
17

We’ve been having some serious problems with the existing internet going up and down all the time. As a short term measure I’m going to try and replace the adsl filter, after wiggling the cable into the asdl filter a bit and blasting all of it with the air compressor I think it may have improved things a bit

But I think we need this sorting out asap as our existing internet still seems randomly unreliable.

18

After reading Robs post I have some of the information in relation to the above

Are there going to be any networking config changes we need (either in existing kit, or the new router)

  • If it’s a brand new internet connection then the rest of the kit should just work by hooking up to it / auto getting an ip address via DHCP
  • If it’s a new router but the old internet connection then we need the PPP information (password) to hook it up

Will we need to run ethernet between existing kit & wherever the new router will come into the building?

We’ve already got ethernet running to the front entrance where the existing kit is located.
There’s currently 3 ethernet cables running into the back of the existing router, this is located near the front door.

I believe we have a server in the space? Are there any public-facing DNS settings that will need updating to point to the space’s new IP address?

I don’t believe so, I checked the NAT settings but didn’t see any mapped IP’s located there
All the members stuff is located on a server in a DC from what I remember.
What we could do is just keep the old connection running while the new one is setup to check as I think we get that one for free anyway.

The two things that I think would need copying across

  • Assigning certain mac address’s to certain internal IP’s (such as the printer, cnc, 3d printer etc), (dhcp ip mappings)
  • I’ve heard that some folks have some form of remote vpn into the space, but I couldn’t locate a setting for that on the router so I’m not sure how they’re doing that at the moment unless it’s some form of ssh tunnel

What networking kit do we currently have?

ADSL Router

In the front door area in a small metal box (near the entrance to the toilets)
this is where the ADSL internet router is located.
It’s a ZyXEL ADSL router model VMG1312-B10A

It has 4 Ethernet ports on the back, 3 of these are wired up to the rest of the network within the hackspace
I can be reached via http://172.16.0.1/index.html which I’ve got the login details for
although there are some setup details hidden as mentioned above if we wanted to replace it.

I believe this acts as the DHCP server, IP Range 172.16.0.50 - 172.16.0.200
DNS is also set here for google to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
The inbuilt wifi for this device is disabled as we use a seperate wifi endpoint

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Switch Rack

Next point of call would be the switch rack which is where most of the cables probably end up
Multiple network switches here, including an NTP server I donated ages ago.

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WIFI Router

I don’t know the login for this one, but it does reset when the adsl router reboots
It’s 2.4Ghz and I suspect looking at the wiring may be using power over ethernet
Ideally we could do with something running on 5Ghz as well, I have something at home I might try and bring in / setup in addition to this one.
The current one is fastened to the ceiling in the main area.

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3 Likes
19

The ADSL router is definitely dodgy - the power switch for it is an excellent example of quantum physics - where it is both simultaneously on and off until you look at it, at which point it will be in one of those states but entirely at random.

I think solving the easy problems to solve is the best first bet while someone thrashes out the detail for the full fat fibre offers available to us

1 Like
20

I’ve now got a new filter, should have a new adsl 1m cable arriving on Saturday
I agree the on off switch is dodgy as sin, even after I tried blasting the dust out.

As far as replacing the existing router I’m afraid the link on PPP_DNS_Addresses isn’t much use unfortunatley. It’s just listing the DNS address’s which is used to lookup hostnames, currently we’re just using google’s dns’s of 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
What we actually need is certain passwords used for the connection which is something different altogether.

I can create a backup of the router’s config, but the password is encrypted there, I remember there were tools to decrypt it online but the last time I tried it didn’t work that well, might give it another go.
Also I remember Jim (@Omniatus) mentioned he knew a way to extract it possibly, but I can’t remember the method

Edit
There is mention on a different page

We allocate a password, but you can change this on the Broadband Control Pages. If you change the password on our system your lines will go off line until you change the password on the router as well. If your router cannot handle the length of password we provide, please contact support who will be happy to set a shorter password.

That suggests that there’s an online portal you can log onto to alter the password from there
If we could find out which email address that’s attached to (maybe board?) then we could do a password reset on the portal, logon, then set the password for the router from there.