Hey Broadband Opinions?

Can anyone here give any opinions on Hey Broadband? They are currently the only Full Fibre provider on my street but I am reluctant to sign up to a 24 month contract with a company I haven't heard of before.

In reply to a post by Domark:

Can anyone here give any opinions on Hey Broadband? They are currently the only Full Fibre provider on my street but I am reluctant to sign up to a 24 month contract with a company I haven't heard of before.

Threads like this one may help.

Thanks but that thread is mostly going about peers and tracerouting and people logging their results. I am looking for actual recent opinions on things that your average user is more concerned about. i.e. stability, reliability, customer support, etc.

Edited by Domark (Mon 02-Dec-24 20:07:06)

That was one of the many topics I found by using the "Search" option in the menu bar and putting in "Hey". This forum has not been short on discussion about Hey! Broadband over the last few months.

I've been with them since March 2022.

There were a few outages early on which I put down to teething problems. These days the service is solid.

Bandwidth is great, and ping times are low. (see my BQM below).

For the price, it's more than worth it.

We have CityFibre currently building out, and Openreach planning as well, but I can't see any reason why I'd move away from Hey! if they keep their prices as low as they are.

Similar experience here with Airband, initially quite a few dropouts now been rock solid for a while...

In reply to a post by Domark:

Thanks but that thread is mostly going about peers and tracerouting and people logging their results. I am looking for actual recent opinions on things that your average user is more concerned about. i.e. stability, reliability, customer support, etc.

The average user on think broadband's forums is probably not the same as the average internet user, but I'm assuming you mean the latter.

In terms of stability and reliability, I've only been connected to their network for a little while but so far all seems fine. See:
- Monitoring of my connection via updown.io
- Monitoring of my connection via think broadband BQM

Hey!Broadband also publish their own network status page.

In terms of customer support, whenever I've emailed their team I've found them to reply quickly and sensibly (i.e. no "Have you tried turning it off and on again" where it isn't warranted).

In reply to a post by behuk:

In terms of stability and reliability, I've only been connected to their network for a little while but so far all seems fine. See:
- Monitoring of my connection via updown.io
- Monitoring of my connection via think broadband BQM

Ironically we had a wobble yesterday, in part of my own making. I contacted support about an issue and they tried allocating me a new IP address (fine), but they also accidentally removed my public IP and put me back on Carrier-Grade NAT (bad). The support team were very responsive in replying to my email asking for my public IP to be returned, which was good.

What is Carrier-Grade NAT and why is it bad?

In reply to a post by Domark:

What is Carrier-Grade NAT and why is it bad?

NAT is network address translation. It is not part of the basic operation of a router, but is necessary for home networks so you can have all of your kit on private IP addresses. For outgoing, any request from a machine on your network is sent out as though it comes from the public interface of your router. For incoming, the internet acts as though any request has come from your router and directs data to the router. The router then deciphers what IP address the packet is intended for and readdresses the data to that address.

Note that NAT actually alters the source or destination address on the packet, where as for ordinary routing, the addressing remains intact and the destination address is always sufficient to route across many routers. Also, the NAT router knows how to re address the incoming packet, because it has labelled the outgoing as coming from a particular port.

So that is NAT. CG NAT is when the ISP repeats the same trick because it does not have enough IP addresses for all of its customers. While NAT works well for the network of a single residential customer, when you use NAT to connect a substantial network to the internet, it becomes a bottleneck for the sheer volume of traffic.There will be a capacity problem in that 65536 ports might be enough for a residential network, but it is pushing things for a large number of such networks. Performance can become poor at busy times.

And what's more some cavalier ISP's use private network addresses, which are reserved for end users, despite there being a reserved CGNAT address range. And they don't tell their end users.

Finally, even if it works technically, I found that Google would frequently bother me with 'Prove you are human' click on the fire hydrant tests and other sites might block you because someone sharing the same CGNAT public address had been IP address blocked for some sort of abuse.

Put simply, you share a public IP address with many other users. So no way to host anything, access your networks from the internet etc. Limited port mapping for games etc.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

In reply to a post by Domark:

What is Carrier-Grade NAT and why is it bad?

NAT is network address translation. It is not part of the basic operation of a router, but is necessary for home networks so you can have all of your kit on private IP addresses. For outgoing, any request from a machine on your network is sent out as though it comes from the public interface of your router. For incoming, the internet acts as though any request has come from your router and directs data to the router. The router then deciphers what IP address the packet is intended for and readdresses the data to that address.

Note that NAT actually alters the source or destination address on the packet, where as for ordinary routing, the addressing remains intact and the destination address is always sufficient to route across many routers. Also, the NAT router knows how to re address the incoming packet, because it has labelled the outgoing as coming from a particular port.

So that is NAT. CG NAT is when the ISP repeats the same trick because it does not have enough IP addresses for all of its customers. While NAT works well for the network of a single residential customer, when you use NAT to connect a substantial network to the internet, it becomes a bottleneck for the sheer volume of traffic.There will be a capacity problem in that 65536 ports might be enough for a residential network, but it is pushing things for a large number of such networks. Performance can become poor at busy times.

And what's more some cavalier ISP's use private network addresses, which are reserved for end users, despite there being a reserved CGNAT address range. And they don't tell their end users.

Finally, even if it works technically, I found that Google would frequently bother me with 'Prove you are human' click on the fire hydrant tests and other sites might block you because someone sharing the same CGNAT public address had been IP address blocked for some sort of abuse.

Thanks. Does having a public IP mean you are more at risk of someone accessing your internal network? To be honest, I think I am being put off getting Hey Broadband as it seems a bit too complex for me. I just want a "plug and play" connection with no issues and to be fair my slow (relatively speaking) BT partial fibre connection has been just that.

In reply to a post by Domark:

Thanks. Does having a public IP mean you are more at risk of someone accessing your internal network?

No.

Since version 4 of IP addresses has run out, ANY new internet provider has to use CG-NAT to be able to operate. You should ask your chosen provider if they ALSO provide IP version 6 which in most cases would enable the multi-player game hosting that many require.

The older companies have a lot of IPv4 and so today don't have an issue, but as the internet keeps growing this problem won't go away.

In reply to a post by Domark:

Does having a public IP mean you are more at risk of someone accessing your internal network? To be honest, I think I am being put off getting Hey Broadband as it seems a bit too complex for me. I just want a "plug and play" connection with no issues and to be fair my slow (relatively speaking) BT partial fibre connection has been just that.

The risk arises from having something inside your network which also has a public IP address. Normally, the public IP address lives on the incoming interface of your router, which is fine. With CGNAT, the public IP address lives on the public interface of the ISP's Network Address Translator.

NAT and CGNAT are very much plug and play. Normally, for NAT, you only set up the internal subnet and even that is usually done for you. For CGNAT there is absolutely nothing for you to do [nothing you can do either apart from sit powerless and fume at the shortcomings of CGNAT if you are aware of them]

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Since version 4 of IP addresses has run out, ANY new internet provider has to use CG-NAT to be able to operate. You should ask your chosen provider if they ALSO provide IP version 6 which in most cases would enable the multi-player game hosting that many require.

The older companies have a lot of IPv4 and so today don't have an issue, but as the internet keeps growing this problem won't go away.

For the avoidance of doubt unfortunately Hey!Broadband don't provide IPv6 addresses.

In reply to a post by Domark:

To be honest, I think I am being put off getting Hey Broadband as it seems a bit too complex for me. I just want a "plug and play" connection with no issues and to be fair my slow (relatively speaking) BT partial fibre connection has been just that.

I wouldn't necessarily be put off -- I think it's unfortunate that the folks on this forum are quite technical. If you're just going to watch Netflix, browse Facebook, and play some "casual" games then there'll be no problem with choosing Hey!Broadband (or with CGNAT, for that matter).

In reply to a post by behuk:

For the avoidance of doubt unfortunately Hey!Broadband don't provide IPv6 addresses.

That’s is a reason to avoid. In my town most of the residential area can get Hey! or Toob, and Toob offer IPv6 as well as CGNAT for IPv4. Unfortunately neither have managed to solve the challenges of flats

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Unfortunately neither have managed to solve the challenges of flats

I have access to Hey!Broadband in my flat. Happy to chat in more detail over DM if that would be of interest.

(no toob sadly!)

Thanks it’s not the ISP that is at fault. The landlord (social housing assoc) is just not entering into any discussions.

Thanks for everyone's input on this topic. I've decided not to bother and instead wait for Openreach to install full fibre on my street which is expected some time next year. Between what has been said here and poor reviews on Trustpilot, Hey Broadband just seem like a bit of an amateur outfit to me.

I've also heard from multiple people that they cut through your existing broadband connection to make it difficult to switch away from them. Also heard people say when it comes to renewal they double your monthly payments even though they are offering new customers much cheaper prices. So I think I will stay away.

Edited by Domark (Sat 07-Dec-24 11:38:41)

As the person who started that thread I've ended up very happy with Hey. There was an initial period of disappointment with the input lag related to Xbox cloud streaming, but their support was responsive and it has now been fixed via direct peering with Microsoft. Whether that was as a direct result of my query or just coincidental timing is unknown, but I was impressed with their support rep who took the concern seriously and kept me in the loop as to their progress throughout.

Other than that I've had no issues with them and have just cancelled my existing Swish contract today. Happy to recommend.