Plain English Technical Advice

BT Broadband Speed Tester

When it works, the BT Broadband Speed Tester provides useful information to assist with the diagnosis of erratic broadband performance.

Trouble is, in my experience, it is quite slow to get going and generates a 'test error' more often than it completes the test.

Furthermore, BT will not allow more than one test every 3 hours.

To assist with the interpretation of results, there are quite a lot of useful notes such as:

The throughput of Best Effort (BE) classes* achieved during the test is - 5:20:75 (SBE:NBE:PBE)- These figures represent the percentage ratio while sententiously passing Sub BE, Normal BE, and Priority BE marked traffic through the network.

Total download speed achieved during the Best Effort test is sum of these three types of Best Effort traffic that were passed through the network for your broadband connection.

Sententiously speaking, that's as 'clear as mud'.

As Winston Churchill might have said, "Never use a long word when a diminutive one will suffice".

For a quicker and more-reliable test,  I use either mybroadbandspeed  or the ThinkBroadband Speed Test which provide slightly less information but work pretty-well every time. 

Note: You may be prompted to download the latest version of JAVA when using these tests.

Anti-Spam getting out of hand

Last week, I reported that Hotmail had blocked all email from Plusnet whose servers had apparently been 'blacklisted' for sending out 'spam'.

Following representations from Plusnet, this ban was lifted though Plusnet users were left unable to communicate with Hotmail users for something like 48 hours.

It may well be that some unwanted email was sent out via an individual Plusnet account but the entire user base suffered as an unintended consequence of the Hotmail anti-spam measures.

I had a similar problem several years back when I was unable to communicate with an important customer for several days because their spam-filtering service had blocked email from an entire Pipex server.

Plusnet themselves operate optional spam filtering which can either delete suspected email directly with the alternative of marking the item with [SPAM] included in the subject—I much prefer the second option because it identifies most (but not all) of the spam but still allows you to spot the occasional non-spam email.

Unfortunately, Plusnet have now introduced an initial filtering stage which deletes email based on the 'reputation' of the sender—this is exactly the kind of filtering which gave rise to Plusnet emails being blocked by Hotmail.

You don't actually get the chance to decide whether the items intercepted at this stage have been correctly identified as junk mail so the only way to prevent 'false positives' is to turn off spam filtering altogether.

Turning to my Typepad blogs, I have recently experienced some difficulty in setting up a new author and discovered, by trial and error (mainly error), that the recipient's domain name host (123-reg.co.uk) is apparently blocking administrative messages from Typepad.

A search of the 123-reg 'help' pages produced nothing about spam though there is a reference elsewhere to 'email defence' which appears to be non-configurable—i.e. you get it whether you want it or not.

According to 123-Reg, their email defence system is "one of the most comprehensive and effective email threat protection service on the market" which captures 98% of spam—as a confirmed cynic, I have to wonder exactly how they measure the 2% that escapes their notice and gets through.

It's a well--established fact that '83.75% of statistics are made up on the spot'.

In my experience, and despite multiple levels of anti-spam protection, most people still seem to get an awful lot of junk mail which, at the end of the day, is a bit of a nuisance but it generally doesn't do any harm—protection against malicious software is, of course, essential but that is a separate issue.

To read the earnest advertising of some Internet Service Providers, you would think that junk email has become one of the greatest threats to mankind, second only to 'global warming' and well-ahead of 'swine flu'.

With everybody jumping 'on the bandwagon' to blacklist everybody else, a far more-serious problem is the loss of email that you actually want.

Hotmail becomes NOTmail

Yesterday morning, I noticed that emails to Hotmail users were being 'bounced' with the following message:

The following message to xxxxxxxx@hotmail.comwas undeliverable.

The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'SC-004 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. A block has been placed against your IP address because we have received complaints concerning mail coming from that IP address. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, we recommend enrolling in our Junk E-Mail Reporting Program (JMRP), a free program intended to help senders remove unwanted recipients from their e-mail list:

As I am not in the habit of sending 'spam' email which might give rise to complaints, I found this rather offensive as well as inconvenient.

One problem with this high-handed approach is that many Internet service providers including my own (Plusnet) do not allocate each user a fixed IP (internet address) but dynamically allocate a 'free' address when the user logs on.

Consequently, any user could be penalised as a result of unwanted email generated by another.

The problem could potentially be resolved by disconnecting from the broadband service and logging-in again.

In this case, however, it is the Plusnet mail server that was 'blacklisted' rather than an individual user as suggested by the misleading 'delivery status' message above.

According to the Plusnet 'service status' page, Hotmail acknowledged this problem yesterday and have agreed to remove the blacklisting in their own sweet time which is expected to be this afternoon.

Ironically, these sort of anti-spam measures have little effect on the serious bulk-emailers who don't stick around at the same address for long enough to be bothered by any blacklisting.

In my opinion, losing emails that you actually want is a far more serious problem than receiving junk which is a bit of a nuisance but does no actual harm.

If the Post Office started witholding paper mail that they didn't think you should have, they would most likely be prosecuted, so why should it be different for email service providers.

Domain Name Dubious Practices

My friend Tracey is a fairly typical home user who manages quite well with internet and email without needing to understand the finer points of how it all works.

When I visited her the other day, she was quite concerned by a letter from the Domain Registry of America, headed 'Domain Name Expiration Notice'.

Nothing wrong with that on the face of it except that her domain name isn't hosted by that organisation who were pointing out the dangers of allowing it to expire and requesting an urgent (financial) response by July 2nd, notwithstanding that the actual expiration date was October 26th.

Of course, nearer the time, she would have been sent email reminders from the actual host which would have alerted her to the fact that there was no pressing reason to deal with DROA.

Additionally, the DROA renewal rates are actually substantially higher than those of the existing host.

To be fair, a thorough reading of the letter makes it clear that DROA are not the current host though that detail would probably elude many people given the urgent and alarmist tone of the communication.

There is also a lot of (very) small print on the back which appears to saddle the client with all sorts of legal obligations which non-lawyers are unlikely to fully-understand.

Even if the client were to return the form and pay for the transfer, it would normally be necessary to 'authorise' the existing host to allow the transfer—if the client were comfortable with logging-in and managing their account in this way, it is unlikely that they would see any pressing reason for a move to DROA.

Of course, DROA have this covered in the 'small print' and only guarantees to issue the transfer/renewal request.

While being very carefully worded to avoid presenting false information in the strict legal sense, these letters take advantage of those with limited technical knowledge by creating an impression that urgent action is required to avoid the loss of a valuable resource.

The extensive legal 'small print' on the back of the form essentially releases DROA from any obligation to provide the domain-hosting service and even suggests that the client should indemnify them in respect of any legal action arising from the transaction—most people, of course, neither read nor understand the legal conditions attached to this sort of contract.

My advice to Tracey, and to everybody else, is—don't touch the Domain Registry of America with a barge-pole.

Are you the only one out of step?

I must admit that I was 'a bit slow off the mark' back in May when I began to experience a series of broadband disconnections.

Because I have been generally happy with my broadband supplier (Plusnet) for several years, I was happy to report the problem and to let them get on with finding a solution.

Consequently, they ran various tests over several days and found no fault at all with any part of the system though they did discover that the problem had actually been occurring for some weeks—as my router, unlike some, spontaneously recovers from disconnections, I hadn't really noticed this until the service seriously deteriorated.

At this point, there was a heavy suggestion that the fault must be with my equipment or the telephone wiring and that a visit from BT would result in a large fee if this were found to be the case—since the BT engineering side became Openreach, the threat of swingeing fees seems to be a standard response to any fault report.

As the telephone line was working perfectly and I had already swapped the router and microfilter, I was not overly enthusiastic about a BT visit.

However, a BT engineer telephoned 'out of the blue' and happened to mention, in passing, that the telephone exchange was in the process being moved from Moorgate to Queen Victoria Street—other destinations, mentioned over several subsequent conversations, included Blackfriars and Farringdon.

Various engineers phoned or turned-up unannounced over the next few days with one offering the opinion that it would not be possible to get a broadband speed in excess of 1 mbps due to the routing of the service around 3 exchanges—the service provides, theoretically, up to 8 mbps though actual speed depends on line quality and distance from the exchange.

At this point, I was either using dial-up or getting about 128 kbps on broadband which is not much faster.

A quick check of the local community 'forum' revealed that a large number of local people were suffering the same problem, irrespective of the Internet Service Provider being used.

I also ran into my next door neighbour, an AOL user, who had endured several long 'try this and try that' sessions with the company's Indian call centre—he was quite surprised to hear that the most effective action was to 'do nothing' as the real cause of the problem was now becoming obvious, at least to the customers.

Happily, the broadband connection had now stabilised and I have been enjoying consistent speeds of about 5000-6500 mbps for a couple of months.

In my opinion, the lessons to be drawn here are:

1. Internet Service and Software Provider help-desks can be quite good at answering basic "how do I" queries but often have limited capacity or inclination to investigate issues with their own products.
   
   Often, they will work through the 'try this and try that' script until they reach the point of handing the problem back to you—'owning' the problem through to a solution is unusual.   
    
2. Whatever your problem, it is worth doing a few internet searches to see if anybody else has come up with a solution—this can save hours of 'trying this and trying that' which can itself generate more problems down-the-line.       

In this case, I could have saved myself a few days of argee-bargee if I had looked around, at an earlier stage, to see if others were suffering the same problem. 

Illegal Music Downloads

Illegal music downloads are a hot topic today with the news that the UK's six largest Internet Service Providers have teamed-up with the music industry to fight this dastardly practice—though the idea that the likes of Orange, BSkyB and Carphone Warehouse would slow-down their broadband service as a sanction made me chuckle somewhat (would anybody notice?).

Apart from the legal and moral issues involved, illegal download sites are a major source of adware, spyware and the like which can soon bring your computer to a grinding halt.

This is particularly true of those services based on Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks where the files are not coming from some sort of central database but from thousands of privately-owned PCs around the world—this provides very little control of the file quality or of any 'nasties' which might be transmitted with it.

I know a number of parents with teenage children who have paid-out more to have their PCs cleaned-up than it would have cost to buy the music from a legal source—though I believe that the 'culture' is now changing as people begin to realise that these sort of downloads are actually theft rather than 'a bit of a lark".

Also, when this activity started, there were no legal sources of music downloads but now there are a number including Itunes and the 'reformed' Napster.

For the past few months, I have been using www.we7.com which was launched in May 2007 by the musician Peter Gabriel and others.

The site has a huge and growing catalogue of music covering a number of genres including Pop, Classical, Jazz and Blues—in fact, I spotted several albums which I have on well-worn vinyl from before the days of CDs.

The charging model of WE7 is quite interesting in that you can either purchase the tracks (from Itunes) or you can download them for FREE with an advertisement tacked onto the beginning of the track.

At the moment, registered users can download up to 100 tracks per day and 500 per week which may change as the music industry assesses the value of advertising-based charging.

www.itunes.co.uk

www.napster.co.uk 

    

 

You've got to laugh (Orange again)

My Orange-user client, mentioned in an earlier post, was pretty-much ready to move to another supplier as she was quite interested in a package which included cheap phone calls.

Having identified a suitable alternative, I explained that the first step was to obtain a MAC (Migration Authorisation Code) from the existing supplier—there is an 'industry' agreement which obliges them to provide these though such applications often meet with determined resistance.

Asking for a MAC code tends to produce a knee-jerk reaction, usually involving a substantial cut in charges.

In this case, Orange offered the very-attractive 'HomeMax' package, which includes phone line rental with free evening/weekend calls and free broadband calls to 30 international destinations—all at a price around that of the previous broadband-only service.

I would explain that all PC-to-PC internet calls are FREE but this offer related to calling landlines using a mixture of conventional and internet phone calls.

On the face of it, a bargain not to be missed.

Although the existing broadband service was running well on a BT Voyager 2500V router, Orange insist on providing the customer with a 'Livebox' for the Homemax system—from the meagre instructions available, it is not clear whether this is technically necessary though they do suggest that the broadband phone service cannot be initiated until the Livebox is installed and recognised by the Orange server.

Normally, I would have set up the router by accessing it directly using it's IP (Internet Protocol) address but Orange simply provide a CD which is intended to guide you through the process.

Problem:   This particular customer had an Orange username containing a hyphen (-) and there was no way that the CD-generated form would accept a hyphen, either typed directly or copied and pasted.

Sometimes, you've got to laugh or you would cry.

Solution:   I got on to the help-desk using the number provided and spent about £5 on the pleasantries (hello, my name is Sally, what's yours, how are you today, etc) before explaining the problem which she obviously failed to grasp as her solution was to guide me through the process of typing a hyphen.

When I described the problem again, I was advised to call a different number where I could speak to a Livebox specialist (rather than a Keyboard Consultant majoring in hyphens).

Fortunately, my luck was in and I spoke to a competent person who, after another few pounds-worth of good-natured banter, was able to advise on setting-up the Livebox directly via it's IP address.

You also have to go through a 'pairing' process for every PC on the network rather than simply logging onto the network with a username and password.

In essence, they are operating MAC address control by default—each wireless network device has a unique MAC (Media Access Control) code and most wireless routers can be set up to allow only specific devices onto the network by reference to these codes.

Normally, you would set up the acceptable addresses directly into the router but the Orange Livebox goes though the process of detecting them though it still requires the username and password to make the connection.

To be quite frank, the Livebox is 'more trouble than my pet elephant' though most of the problems could be solved if Orange were to provide a comprehensive user manual.

Disconnections are frequent and the Livebox seems reluctant to recover from these automatically, unlike most other routers.

The usual solution is to reboot the router which can only be done by removing the power—literally, pulling the plug out. 

If you follow the Orange procedure literally, this involves pulling the power lead from the router, the telephone lead from the router, the microfilter from the telephone lead and the microfilter from the telephone socket—surprisingly, there is no 'eye of newt and toe of frog' involved in this ritual.

Recovery, at this point, usually involves the process of 'pairing' each computer to the router though I have discovered, by trial and error (mainly error), that removing the power lead and replacing it very quickly retains the previous settings.

My whole point is that we should not have to work-out the rules by 'trial and error' or expensive help-desk calls—they should be clearly written down.    

Staying sane with your own domain

For those unfamiliar with the term, an internet domain name is that part of your email address which follows the ’@’.

For example, a domain names of mydomain.com would be used for email addresses (anything@mydomain.com) and for the web site address (www.mydomain.com).

Many people opening an internet account for the first time will use an email address based on the domain name of the Internet Service Provider (ISP)—for example, longsuffering@aol.com.

The main problem here is that the address is lost if the ISP is changed.

Having worked though a dozen ISPs and web space hosting companies over the last 10 years, I can thoroughly recommend the idea of having your own internet ‘identity’ which stays with you no matter what. 

The advantages of having your own domain name include:

1. It is easier to remember (rather like a personalised car number plate)
    
2. You can change your web space hosting or internet service provider without changing your web site or email address—the domain name itself can also be hosted wherever you wish
    
3. You can have any number of domain-based email addresses
   
   For example, you could have email addresses for every member of the family (bill@mydomain.com, sue@mydomain.com, etc)—mail could be forwarded to each person's personal email account and a 'catch-all' address would be used to capture anything else
   
   The mail for these addresses can also be picked-up directly from POP-3 mailboxes, if provided by the domain name host
   
   I tend to favour the ‘forwarding’ method as mail distribution can be changed (from the domain host web site) at any time without altering the recipient’s email settings—you can also send copies to multiple email addresses

Domain name hosting is cheap though this is another area where there are wide variations in the packages offered by different suppliers.

For example, hosting a .co.uk domain with www.123-reg.co.uk costs just £2.79 (plus VAT) per year which includes unlimited email and web forwarding.

A .com domain with the same provider costs £8.99 (plus VAT) per year.

Sky—No visible means of support

I thought that Orange (voted Worst Internet Service Provider by BBC Watchdog) were pretty bad until I donated an old computer to a friend and tried to set it up with her new Sky Broadband account.

Firstly, there are HUGE issues with the Sky-supplied wireless router which has it's own firmware, apparently to stop free access to various Sky services

I buggered about for ages trying to get the wireless connection going and the helpful advice of the help-desk was "talk to your PC manufacturer".

In the end, I just relocated the PC and used a network cable.

There also seems to be a major issue with Sky email which appears to send but not receive for many users—this also seems to be the case with the webmail service which can be accessed from any computer using an internet browser.

The problem cannot therefore be attributed to incorrect email settings or any other software issue with the individual PC—however I tried to access the Sky account over 3 days, there was simply no email coming into the inbox.

Another call to the help-desk started down the ‘try this and try that’ route when I mentioned that an internet search had revealed dozens of users with the same issue.

Although this resulted in an immediate admission that there was a ‘known’ problem, no time-estimate could be given for any resolution so I simply paid-out a modest sum for an external POP-3 mail service which works just fine with the Sky connection.   

So how do Sky compare with Orange?

1. In both cases, the ISP have tried to suggest that their broadband service is 'FREE' or very cheap and are clearly having difficulty in coping with the response
    
2. In both cases, there are huge numbers of users suffering identical problems though the support staff seem to treat each issue as if it were unique and probably the user's fault
    
3. In both cases, the help given is not particularly helpful
    
4. In both cases, the same issues seem to remain unresolved for months

Compare this with a problem that I recently sorted-out for a new Plusnet user—I was unable to upload to the user's free web space so I contacted Plusnet technical support through the on-line help system and received a response, within two minutes, advising that they had identified the fault and taken corrective action.

Plusnet are not perfect but do actually admit to problems and address them—they were recently voted ‘Best Overall Provider’ in a Uswitch survey.

Given the huge amount of information available on the internet, it is astonishing that Internet Service Providers offering piss-poor service continue to attract new customers.

A few Google searches (on 'Orange problems', 'Sky Problems', 'email problems', etc) before signing-up with an ISP would save a huge amount of grief.

For independent information on ‘all things Sky’, I can thoroughly recommend www.skyuser.co.uk

A great source of information on broadband suppliers, their offerings and performance can be found at www.thinkbroadband.com

Orange email problem hopefully solved

"You get what you pay for”, as my old Mum used to say, is certainly true of those supposedly-free broadband services provided as part of a telephone or television package.

Recently, I was asked to investigate an Orange email problem which had persisted for several weeks—essentially, the user was unable to send email though the incoming service was fine.

Several time-consuming calls to the Orange help-desk had not improved matters though my client is now an expert on the art of fruitless faffing with email and internet settings.

Being unable to resolve the issue immediately, I checked with another Orange user who had precisely the same problem though he occasionally succeeded by setting his Outlook email client to ‘send and receive’ every five minutes. 

A quick search of the internet using terms such as 'Orange email problems' revealed dozens of people with similar difficulties

I also discovered an excellent web site dedicated entirely to Orange service issues— www.orangeproblems.co.uk 

Quite clearly, the Orange servers were not coping with the volume of email generated by the lure of ‘free broadband’ though sporadic success can create a false impression that some of the 'try this and try that' advice provided by the Orange help-desk actually works.

Provided that the email service has previously worked and no changes made, there is little to be gained by messing about with settings, re-installing software or changing your email client.

Fortunately, I discovered a workable solution advertised on the Orange Problems site—for an entry-level fee of £14 per annum, www.authsmtp.com provide an outgoing mail server which is independent of any Internet Service Provider.

This is also handy for ‘mobile’ lap-top users who generally have difficulties when using the outgoing email server of one ISP with the internet-connection of another.

For Orange users, It may seem galling to pay for a service which you should already have but this small investment solved the problem 'instantly'

Setup instructions were very clear and the service was fully operational in a couple of minutes.

Give it a try—Authsmtp do offer a 'money back’ guarantee.