Squirrel Internet

Just wondering if anyone here is with Squirrel and if so what your thoughts on them are?

I got an email a couple of weeks back from them as they were the first provider to give the go ahead to order. They're a bit more expensive than the other providers, and the router they provide is apparently rubbish (so I'll be sticking with my own) but so far their customer support has been very responsive. Only downside is that the engineer was due in tomorrow and that's now been delayed over a week, which I can't say I'm too happy about.

In looking up all the different providers that Fibre Heroes are partnered with on here though it seems like they all have issues.

Hi, I have it, the service is great, their customer support brilliant to be honest. Only issue I had was installation was delayed by a month but I didn’t know this till I contacted them and they contacted Gigaclear, who neglected to to inform myself or Squirrel that they found a fault on their network build in my village, a multi junction box which was repaired fairly quickly.
When installation came round it was fast, my issues then were not with Squirrel but my own routers. I bought a TP Link BE65 WiFi 7 mesh system, it was giving my WiFi 6E devices over a gig in speed tests, but it was dropping IPV6 after 30 minutes despite all the relevant addresses being filled. I tried my old Eero Pro 6 and they just don’t issue a router IPV6 address to my devices. So I’ve sent the TP Link back and connected the Squirrel router which has no IPV6 issues at all and I’m running the Eero’s in bridge mode. When I liaised with Squirrel on this they were excellent but as it was a third party router couldn’t offer a lot of help, one operator did advise they used a Mikrotik router with no problems.

So I am going to wait for the Asus WiFi 7 mesh system to test. But so far speeds are great, touch wood no drops.

I’ve been with them almost 9 months, had a shaky start due congestion on the wholesale network (MS3) that took around a month to resolve. It wasn’t Squirrels fault, so I don’t hold it against them, and they handled it well waiving the months fee and offered to let us leave.

I don’t know how standard for ISPs it is, but they don’t ship their router out until after the wholesaler has completed the install which could be a bit of a surprise for some customers. It didn’t matter to me since I use OPNsense and Squirrel had activated in on their side within a few hours.

The customer support experience has been excellent, I sent a bunch of pre-sales questions and have had a few interactions since becoming a customer. I’ve received quick, detailed, and often technical responses. I hope they can keep the support levels up as they grow – I’ve noticed they recently added another 1024 IPs so looks like customer numbers continue to grow!

The connection has been consistently 900+ up and down, transferring several TB per month. However, there have been more (usually) brief connection drops than I’d had in years with the previous provider, some I’m certain are MS3 issues since I monitor Squirrel IPs on other wholesalers. Squirrel are quick to notice incidents and update the service status page on the website, I’d prefer if it showed a history of outages, but I have BQM for that anyway.

BQM goes via AS25369 (Hydra Communications) in both directions and has occasional packet loss https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/... it’s usually so infrequent I have not bothered bringing this up to them but from monitoring I believe it occurs on the hop between Squirrel and Hydra.

Static IPv4 and IPv6 /56 included is handy, with IPv4 I’ve experienced very few geolocation or reputation issues, not with major sites just occasionally outdated databases linking the larger IP block before it was sold/leased to smaller players.
I don’t have IPv6 enabled currently, they have fewer upstreams and I’d noticed a few bizarre routes via Cogent (BQM via France), but I haven’t tried it in the last 6 months so it could have improved.

I’d have no problem recommending them, I’m paying £35/month and see they’re now even cheaper on the Fibre Heroes and MS3 networks.

I'm with them via MS3 after years of virgin media i wanted faster upload and sick of the annual price rise dance i was thrilled when i saw MS3 coming to the area (would rather of been CF but we cant have it all ay lol), I contacted the few ISPs available and squirrel were 100% above the rest so decided to take a punt. I've been scored by smaller unknow ISPs in the past via the digital region network so was a little hesitant but based on their pre sign up responses i decided was worth a shot,

The service has been fantastic 24/7 full speed multiple TB a month no problem, I never got one of their routers as i told them when i signed up i planned on using my own PFSense setup and they said if i ever changed my mind they'd send one out next day, so im not sure how it fairs i know they have 2 types they send out though 1 better than the other so that's touch and go.

I've only had 1 little problem and that was IPV6 not working but within 15 mins they had realised it had been configured wrong on my account and was up and running. As another person said i have also had problems with IPV6 using a TP LINK router, i had to temp take my PF out of the network for some rework tweaking and hooked upto my archer X55 pro and V6 was constantly dropping so i guess avoid TP link routers

Id say give them a shot

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

I'm with them via MS3

Any chance of expanding what MS3 is?

Are they usually known by something else?

How do they appear on https://bidb.uk/ ?

Thanks

In reply to a post by think26872:

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

I'm with them via MS3

Any chance of expanding what MS3 is?

Are they usually known by something else?

How do they appear on https://bidb.uk/ ?

Thanks

MS3 are like city fibre and openreach they are a whole sale FTTP network that other ISPs sell on.

for me on bidb i get


MS3 Networks is live
Virgin Media is live
CityFibre is planned
FibreNest is local

then a whole bunch unplanned/unavailable

Thanks - if I looked at bit closer I should have seen it listed on the BIDB site like you say (in the unplanned section for me )

In reply to a post by acpsd775:

I'm with them via MS3 after years of virgin media i wanted faster upload and sick of the annual price rise dance i was thrilled when i saw MS3 coming to the area (would rather of been CF but we cant have it all ay lol), I contacted the few ISPs available and squirrel were 100% above the rest so decided to take a punt. I've been scored by smaller unknow ISPs in the past via the digital region network so was a little hesitant but based on their pre sign up responses i decided was worth a shot,

The service has been fantastic 24/7 full speed multiple TB a month no problem, I never got one of their routers as i told them when i signed up i planned on using my own PFSense setup and they said if i ever changed my mind they'd send one out next day, so im not sure how it fairs i know they have 2 types they send out though 1 better than the other so that's touch and go.

I've only had 1 little problem and that was IPV6 not working but within 15 mins they had realised it had been configured wrong on my account and was up and running. As another person said i have also had problems with IPV6 using a TP LINK router, i had to temp take my PF out of the network for some rework tweaking and hooked upto my archer X55 pro and V6 was constantly dropping so i guess avoid TP link routers

Id say give them a shot

I also had no IPV6 with my Eero Pro 6 or original Google WiFi not that that ever worked on IPV6 anyway. I’ve got a low end Asus router on order to test, if it works I’ll get an Asus WiFi 7 mesh system when it’s out, if not I’ll grab a Miktorik router and get a pair of Alta Labs AP’s. I suspect it is a case of having the right settings available to make IPV6 work.

Edited by markyr74 (Mon 29-Apr-24 20:12:04)

I wonder what the OP did back in October .

(It does seem to be a good provider to go with where it's available ).

u know i didn't even notice the post date haha