Using BE Unlimited with another modem

Posted by Phil Lavin on Jan 16, 2012 in Blog | 2 comments

I’m canceling my BE contract and need to return the BE Box to them. I’m getting a VDSL2+Wikipedia: Very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line 2 (VDSL2) is an access technology that exploits the existing infrastructure of copper wires that were originally deployed for traditional telephone service a... connection with an ADSL2+Wikipedia: ITU G.992.5 is an ITU (International Telecommunication Union) standard, also referred to as ADSL2+ or G.DMT.bis+. Commercially, it is notable for its maximum theoretical download speed of 24 Mbit/s. backup, for which I needed a standard ADSL2+ modemWikipedia: A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The... for. Because it was going cheap on eBay, I went with the  D-Link DSL-320B. This is actually a really good modem in such that it has a decent web interface supporting many different types of connection as well as telnetWikipedia: Telnet is a network protocol used on the Internet or local area networks to provide a bidirectional interactive text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection. User data is i... access to a powerful command line to do things like static routes.

To configure a modem such as this on BE Unlimited, you need the following settings:

Type: 1483 Bridged IP LLC
VPI: 0
VCI: 101

Note that this is NOT PPPoATMWikipedia: The Point-to-Point Protocol over ATM (PPPoA) is a network protocol for encapsulating PPP frames in AAL5. It is used mainly with DOCSIS and DSL carriers. or PPPoEWikipedia: The Point-to-Point Protocol over Ethernet (PPPoE) is a network protocol for encapsulating PPP frames inside Ethernet frames. It is used mainly either: and, as such, doesn’t require a username/password.

Following this, you can then assign your router your issued static IP address(es), or set its WAN interface to use DHCP, if you have a dynamic IP.

My DSL-320B reports the cable status as being “Up” but the ADSL status as being “disconnected”. I assume that this is because it has not dialed a connection. It works fine, despite this.

My sync rates with the new modem are about what they were before:

Downstream Line Rate (Kbps) :	17301
Upstream Line Rate (Kbps) :	2342

My speedtest.net results show higher upstream than before, however this may just be the way the cookie crumbled with the speed test:

 

 

 

 

 

BE Unlimited – less IP addresses surely means less money

Posted by Phil Lavin on Nov 10, 2011 in Blog | 2 comments

I was recently contacted by my ISP, Be UnlimitedWikipedia: Be Un Limited is an Internet service provider in the United Kingdom with the trading names "Be There", Be Unlimited or simply Be. It was previously part of Spanish group Telefónica Europe, which also..., notifying me that in order to make upgrades to their core network they were going to change all of my IP addresses and re-allocate me 14 instead of 16. Naturally, this is because they’ve decided to subnetWikipedia: A subnetwork, or subnet, is a logically visible subdivision of an IP network.[1] The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting. properly rather than giving me addresses as part of a /22, but a price drop is surely inevitable… right? I’ll not even touch on the time it’ll take to migrate services to different IP addresses or the downtime that this will cause. It pains me to think about it.

My e-mail to them is below. I’ll update as the conversation progresses.

Dear Sirs,
I write in response to your recent e-mail “Important Update about the Changes to BE’s Network”.
I am pleased to hear you are preparing your network for IPv6. I am, however, a little disheartened by your insistence on changing my IP addresses as well as reducing my allocation to 14 usable addresses from 16.
I presume any attempts to obtain compensation for the vast quantities of time you are causing me to spend migrating services to other IP addresses will be futile, so I will let that lie for now.
I currently pay £19.91 per month for 16 usable static IP addresses. I assume that, when you reduce my IP allocation to 14, you will also reduce the price by 1/8th.
I look forward to receiving my £2.49/month (£29.88/year) discount when the migration happens.
Kind Regards
Phil