Recently in adsl Category
Eircom, one of Ireland's largest ISPs, has sent an email to its DSL customers to offer an apology and explanation for their outages and service issues that plagued the company in recent weeks:
Dear Customer
As you are aware, eircom customers experienced disruption to their Internet service over the last two weeks. On behalf of eircom, I apologise for the interruption to service and would like to take this opportunity to update you on the current position.
In early July we saw an increase in incidents known as 'cache poisoning'. This is a malicious activity by a third party to redirect customers to fake websites. We took immediate steps to protect our customers from this activity. This involved strengthening of the filters that block unwanted or suspect traffic. Unfortunately many customers could not, as a result of the incidents, access the internet or experienced delays for a number of hours on two specific occasions.
While our preliminary investigations have shown that, in general, our systems worked as intended when the attack occurred, we are taking additional steps to further protect our customers and their internet service. This involves upgrading and replacing some of our server equipment. Service has been fully operational since 14th July and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We want to reassure customers that eircom treats the issue of Internet security very seriously and will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure that an incident such as this does not reoccur.
We sincerely thank you again for your patience over the past two weeks as the measures outlined above were put into place, and apologise again for service interruption. We know that our customers have made eircom Ireland's largest ISP because of its reputation for reliability and its ability to resolve issues when they arise.
Should you have any queries or indeed any comments on this matter, please do not hesitate to contact our customer care team at eircom_DNS_info@eircom.net
Thank you for your continued custom and support,
Kind regards
Gerry Culligan
Director
Consumer Market
(source)
On the plus side, Eircom have made some effort at communicating with their customer base, but on the negative side.. Should this really have happened?
Wasn't "cache poisoning" the focus of Kaminsky's DNS security hole discovery a year ago?
Dear Customer
As you are aware, eircom customers experienced disruption to their Internet service over the last two weeks. On behalf of eircom, I apologise for the interruption to service and would like to take this opportunity to update you on the current position.
In early July we saw an increase in incidents known as 'cache poisoning'. This is a malicious activity by a third party to redirect customers to fake websites. We took immediate steps to protect our customers from this activity. This involved strengthening of the filters that block unwanted or suspect traffic. Unfortunately many customers could not, as a result of the incidents, access the internet or experienced delays for a number of hours on two specific occasions.
While our preliminary investigations have shown that, in general, our systems worked as intended when the attack occurred, we are taking additional steps to further protect our customers and their internet service. This involves upgrading and replacing some of our server equipment. Service has been fully operational since 14th July and we continue to monitor the situation closely. We want to reassure customers that eircom treats the issue of Internet security very seriously and will continue to take all necessary steps to ensure that an incident such as this does not reoccur.
We sincerely thank you again for your patience over the past two weeks as the measures outlined above were put into place, and apologise again for service interruption. We know that our customers have made eircom Ireland's largest ISP because of its reputation for reliability and its ability to resolve issues when they arise.
Should you have any queries or indeed any comments on this matter, please do not hesitate to contact our customer care team at eircom_DNS_info@eircom.net
Thank you for your continued custom and support,
Kind regards
Gerry Culligan
Director
Consumer Market
(source)
On the plus side, Eircom have made some effort at communicating with their customer base, but on the negative side.. Should this really have happened?
Wasn't "cache poisoning" the focus of Kaminsky's DNS security hole discovery a year ago?
According to Adrian Weckler Dublin City Council will not be pursuing its plans to introduce free wifi throughout the city.
A report commissioned by the local government suggests that the provision of wifi could infringe on European Union legislation.
Irish broadband ISP Magnet Networks has announced its plans to pull back from the residential market citing issues with incumbent telco Eircom.
Prior to the story breaking on ENN, Irish blogger and broadband observer / activist, Damien Mulley, had already suggested that Magnet's move was to be expected.
While existing subscribers and certain housing estates will not be affected by the company's move it is still very worrying.
When will there be true competition in the Irish market?
IrelandOffLine's Damien Mulley sent this out yesterday evening:
In the Irish Independent today, it was announced that the Department of Communications has killed off the group broadband scheme. Despite stringing-along groups since mid-2005 with the promise of another funding round and the Minister himself telling people in media interviews to apply for group broadband funds as recently as a few weeks ago, no new round has opened since April 2005. The third round was promised and promised and now it seems that those who were told that it was coming have been seriously let down by the Department. Despite not offering another round for almost two years the Minister squarely puts the blame on consumers for their lack of demand. > From the Independent: "In the two years since the Group Broadband Scheme was started, only 7,200 subscribers have signed up - the potential pool of subscribers is about 400,000 people. It will end following the second phase of the scheme. Mr Dempsey said yesterday that the take-up was very low and the roll out too slow" We do not believe that this spin on the facts is true, since all applications were refused since April 2005. If you have been part of a community group trying to get broadband for your area, or were about to set something up, I would very much like to hear back from you. Please email me at this address and include you area and whether you formally contacted the Department of Communications and whether your local broadband coordinator worked with you to prepare for round three of the funding. In the meantime as this is an election year I strongly suggest you contact every one of you local political representatives and explain your feelings about the broadband situation in your area and in the country as a whole.
Last year was an interesting year for the broadband market in Ireland.
Early in the year there was the takeover (again) of Eircom, while in the autumn Smart imploded.
What will happen in 2007?
In the latter half of 2006 there were plenty of rumours regarding mergers and acquisitions in the ISP market. Since most of the ISPs are making a loss some level of consolidation is inevitable, though what form it will take is another matter.
Rumours of who is likely to takeover Smart are still in the air, though there doesn't seem to have been any further progress on its supposed merger with Imagine.
NTR owns a sizeable shareholding in Irish Broadband (IBB). While the company may have improved its customer service over the last few months it's still not profitable according to some media reports and maybe sold. Rumours abound that Clearwire maybe a potential buyer.
According to today's Sunday Business Post there is a chance that Smart may merge with Imag!ne.
The story could be pure speculation, but it does leave a lot of questions unanswered.
Smart's business had more than one string to its bow and included several corporate accounts, whereas Imag!ne seems to have focussed more on the domestic market.
One of the things that can be quite irritating is when ISPs insist on charging for a "fixed IP" or a "public IP".
In most cases, however, the charge is either a onetime setup fee or part of the monthly bill.
Italian ISP Fastweb, however, has taken the concept a step further.
Their "lucky" users get "access" to a fixed IP for a certain number of hours per month:
L'indirizzo IP pubblico permette di rendere il proprio PC visibile anche dall'esterno della rete FASTWEB. Con l'IP pubblico si può installare un server sul PC di casa (ad esempio un server FTP) o utilizzare tutte le applicazioni per cui è richiesta la raggiungibilità diretta del proprio PC. La richiesta dell'indirizzo IP Pubblico può essere effettuata anche da remoto, sia come singola sessione che come sessioni periodiche. Per questo sono disponibili due modalità di utilizzo del servizio di IP pubblico: * a consumo, con tariffazione in base ai secondi effettivi di utilizzo; * giornaliero, con un costo fisso per 1 giorno di utilizzo (per massimo 10 giorni consecutivi). Il servizio è disponibile solo sottoscrivendo l'opzione MegaInternet "Giorno e notte", che include già 20 ore al mese di IP pubblico gratuite* Nota Il servizio non è disponibile con FASTWEB Full in modalità Ricaricabile. Il servizio è attivabile esclusivamente dalla MyFastPage, il portale dei servizi per i clienti FASTWEB. Quanto costa il servizio IP pubblico? importo: 4 Euro/giorno o Euro 0,50 all'ora (tariffazione al secondo). Tutti i prezzi si intendono IVA inclusa.To summarise the above... Depending on your package you may get a public IP for up to 20 hours a month included in your normal bill. Alternatively you can opt to pay an extra €4 / day or 50 cents per hour to have a public IP. To add insult to injury you can only have a public IP for 10 consecutive days! Considering that Fastweb were giving their users access to ipv6 four years ago, run a huge network in most of Italy and have plenty of IPs from RIPE it seems like a really odd way to do business. Disclosure: I work for a member of RIPE
Damien Mulley provides an interesting price comparison table with pricing in several countries compared to the "best" deals in Ireland
