I joined the broadband revolution with Freeserve, who had a few name changes and are now called Orange. I never had any problems before this year, which seems quite lucky as it meant I didn't have to face their abysmal customer support.
This was all to change when Orange decided to cash in on Local Loop Unbundling (LLU), where they use their own equipment in the telephone exchanges that allow them to bypass BT altogether.
LLU has yet to be fully figured out, Zen Internet haven't activated it anywhere apart their local exchange because it is still testing. On the other hand, the big companies (Sky, Orange, Pipex, and Tiscali are some) are rushing to install their equipment across the country.
Orange went ahead and unbundled my exchange a few months ago, which effectively cut my connection to the internet. My problem was a strange one, in that I could access a limited number sites (Google was one), but the majority were not accessible. There were several days of unsuccessful customer support, until I found the solution on my own.
Ironically, one of the only sites that would load was
Orangeproblems.co.uk, which is run and used by disgruntled Orange customers like myself. It seemed the same problem as mine was quite widespread, but they had a fix: there is a link to
DrTCP which published an application that will change some settings on your computer's Ethernet adapter. Apparently the problem was that Orange's new hardware couldn't handle any packets greater than 1499 bytes. Data is sent over the internet in packets (small groups), the maximum size of these is governed by the MTU (
Maximum
Transmission
Unit), the MTU for Ethernet adapters is 1500 bytes. Evidently this number needed to be reduced to allow full internet connection.
Using the tool, DrTCP, the MTU values of your computer's Ethernet adapter(s) solves the connection problems. About a week ago, I reinstalled an operating system on one of my computers (this resets the MTU to 1500 bytes) and the connection was fine without changing any settings. Orange must have fixed the problem on our exchange.
If you are with Orange broadband, be on the lookout for a similar connection problem as they have not unbundled all the exchanges yet. Using the Speedtouch USB modem will avoid this problem altogether, as it seems to use a totally different MTU to Ethernet routers.
If you are looking for an ISP I would strongly advise against choosing Orange, there are cheaper packages out there, and the customer support of other companies cannot be any worse than Orange. I would advise choosing someone such as Zen Internet, they are a little more expensive than the big companies, but their support is based in the UK and they are all trained in the technical running of broadband.
If I were to rate Orange Broadband as a whole it would get: 0 stars, 1/10, very bad, and not recommended.
