Questions about AAISP

It's been a couple of years since I researched the market and am looking at the various options. I wondered if anyone could answer a few questions for me about AAISP?

1. How does AAISP fair during peak usage times like evenings and weekends? I use VoIP and Videoconferencing, but don't use/care about P2P... so I am interested in network performance at busy times particularly in terms of latency and network congestion.

3. What are ping times like for AAISP users in the south to London sites like jolt? I currently get about 11 to 12ms through UKFSN/Entanet.

3. Where AAISP's network operations? Do they have a presence in London at Telehouse?

4. From what I am reading, obtaining a set of /29 IP addresses is no problem and no extra monthly charge? I assume me running a couple of servers on my home office network won't be a problem?!?

Any other thoughts, impressions and advice would be useful. I don't mind hearing the bad and ugly too. No one is perfect.

TIA for any assistance you can give!

Doc Holiday

1. I've never noticed any problem - but take note of the rather low (compared to others) daytime usage caps.

2. (bonded lines)
traceroute to www.jolt.co.uk (82.133.85.65), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * (*) 0.164 ms 0.130 ms 0.077 ms
2 careless.aaisp.net.uk (81.187.81.72) 10.434 ms 8.632 ms 11.619 ms
3 aimless.aaisp.net.uk (81.187.81.2) 11.081 ms 9.622 ms 11.377 ms
4 ge-2-0-216.ipcolo1.London1.Level3.net (212.113.10.125) 18.079 ms 9.937 ms 10.857 ms
5 ae-12-55.car2.London1.Level3.net (4.68.116.144) 10.758 ms 10.183 ms 19.348 ms
6 telia-level3-ge.London1.Level3.net (4.68.111.182) 9.967 ms 11.477 ms 9.939 ms
7 pipex-104666-ldn-b4.c.telia.net (213.248.100.214) 13.263 ms 12.498 ms 12.486 ms
8 gi2-48-5.ar01.tn5.bb.gxn.net (62.72.140.14) 11.001 ms 16.758 ms 51.678 ms
9 ge-0-0-0-3801.jolt-gw.cust.pipex.net (212.241.241.14) 11.832 ms 14.570 ms 15.481 ms
10 secure.jolt.co.uk (82.133.85.65) 11.321 ms 12.454 ms 11.115 ms

3. No idea.

4. No problem.

I noticed the day time limits. I have been trying to figure out exactly how much my usage would be during the day... that's a tough one especially as I am working from home more and more!

Thanks for the traceroute. That gives me a good idea.

In reply to:

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1. How does AAISP fair during peak usage times like evenings and weekends?

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The peak period is during the working day (09:00 to 18:00 mon-fri), evenings and weekends are offpeak

Thanks. I'm curious what sort of performance AAISP has during peak periods. Basically, I am looking for an ISP that maintains a high level of service, even during peak periods of use.

1. AAISP is primarily a business ISP and treats "office hours" (0900-1800 Mon-Fri) as peak time. I'm on Max-C Premium (3Gb/month peak quota) and haven't noticed any difference in performance between peak or off-peak time - VoIP and video work without a hitch, so I doubt I'm hitting any congestion/latency issues. Max-C Standard also works well, I just went Premium for the higher upstream speed.

2. From my line in Cardiff, ping times to Jolt are typically 35ms (interleaving is set on this line) ;

3. AAISP's HQ is in Bracknell, but they have colocated facilities in London (somewhere in Docklands, but I think they're scaling that back) and Maidenhead ;

4. IP address blocks are free of charge (they'll ask you how many you're likely to need when you place an order), but if you want anything bigger than (say) a /28 you might have to justify that so that RIPE don't throw a hissy fit. You can also request an IPv6 address block at no extra cost.

Running servers isn't a problem if you can live within your peak quota - otherwise, it can get very expensive very quickly !

Plus points:

1. Currently unmetered outside of peak hours (this will soon change to 100Gb off peak, with 0200-0600 staying unmetered) ;
2. Clued-up, UK-based tech support that can actually fix things ;
3. No issues with latency/overloaded links (unless you're unlucky to be on a congested exchange) ;
4. Lots of things included in the account at no extra charge (24x7 line monitoring, access to BT line test diagnostics, static IP addresses, IPv6 support, one .uk domain with web and mail hosting etc) that would cost you extra with another ISP - if they even offered them in the first place !
5. No ports filtered, no packet-shaping and no throttling ;
6. Free router included if you need one ;
7. Staff use blogs to make announcements, report BT MSO outages etc.

Minus points:

1. Low peak quota, and excess bandwidth costs serious money ;
2. Web site and user control panels are a bit "Klingon" - they don't coddle to the weak and feeble !
3. Telephone support only operates during peak hours - but support mailbox is monitored out of hours and they have alternative methods of contact (e.g. SMS, IRC).

I work from home occasionally, and I've managed to stay within 3Gb a month, except for one occasion when I went over quota by 80Mb !

Chris

Hey Chris, a HUGE thanks for this response. It was comprehensive and I think pretty balanced giving the good and weaknesses!

I'm on the 3GB package and I've never gone over 3GB. The nearest I've got is about 1.5GB because of the way peak hours are defined.

The other thing that I don't think has been mentioned is that you don't get charged immediately if you go over quota. You are allowed to go up to 10GB over your quota and 'work it off' over subsequent months.

You can also set up alarm messages if you approach quota.

Your hourly usage is available to view in your control panel. You can also see separate figures for each IP address you have. Useful if you're trying to find which machine is causing the traffic.

One other thing - upload is unmetered. Some ISPs count upload as part of your allowance.

Ian

In reply to:

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The other thing that I don't think has been mentioned is that you don't get charged immediately if you go over quota. You are allowed to go up to 10GB over your quota and 'work it off' over subsequent months.

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This is very helpful information about the quota!

My average peak usage for the last seven months is 4.42 gb /month. One difference though is that this is using Entanet's peak definition, which is four hours later that AAISP. So maybe if I trim off another .30 gb to allow for that difference, I'm at 4.1 gb /month. This puts me squarely in the Max D range at £34.99.

I think I read somewhere that they are going to start metering their after hours, but that is of no consequence to me because I am not a heavy downloader.

doc_holiday, the changes to metering (not in force yet) are detailed at: http://aaisp.net.uk/newubc/

Ian