CityFibre - Zen or Air Broadband?

After digging up my road nearly 2 years ago, looks like City Fibre is finally available to me, via these two ISPs.

So I go with the more tried-and-trusted Zen? Looking around on here there seems some confusion as to whether their service is symmetric or not - eg when I try signing up they offer 500 down 70 up for £38.99. AFAIK Zen include static IP as standard?

Or airbroadband.co.uk - new to me, anyone have experience with them? They suggest 500 down and up for £37.50 but +£3 for static IP.

Do you get IPv6 with airbroadband?

In reply to a post by jelv:

Do you get IPv6 with airbroadband?

Doesn't say so I guess not? I don't really need it. I was just curious if anyone had any feedback since I've never heard of them...

One of my friends went with airbroadband the only issue they had was a mix up with the install his home was already ready to go but they was told it needed to be a complete new install this ended up meaning a 2 day delay.

I asked him about customer service etc he said he cant say anything he has never had to deal with anything it has worked from day one and he has just paid the bill which has ben the same no changes like you see form even the big providers.

The other difference is he is with them on a different network to what you will be on the upload and download are not the same his is OFNL 300 down and 30 up its poor really and he is paying £45

Given that Zen only provide a written guaranteed upload speed of 70 Mbps on Cityfibre 500/500 when in reality it should be 500, I would be inclined to go with Air Broadband. Main reason being that if you were ever to see a reduction in upload speeds on Zen d/t a fault somewhere but upload remained more than 70 Mbps, Zen would just fob you off saying the upload speeds are still more the 70 Mbps estimated/guaranteed figure.

Trust me, quality of Zen support is not great anymore and then of course you have the congested gateway(s) and packet loss issues which seem to be affecting some customers as has been well documented on these forums.

In reply to a post by Baggio:

Given that Zen only provide a written guaranteed upload speed of 70 Mbps on Cityfibre 500/500 when in reality it should be 500, I would be inclined to go with Air Broadband. Main reason being that if you were ever to see a reduction in upload speeds on Zen d/t a fault somewhere but upload remained more than 70 Mbps, Zen would just fob you off saying the upload speeds are still more the 70 Mbps estimated/guaranteed figure.

Trust me, quality of Zen support is not great anymore and then of course you have the congested gateway(s) and packet loss issues which seem to be affecting some customers as has been well documented on these forums.

Many thanks for the helpful reply - never used Zen, so had the perception they are good - so good to know that may not be the case. Also Air has 18mo contract vs Zen's 24.

It's worth taking a look at the problems being posted about on the Zen forum here. They've been going on for quite a while. (Note forums here are often not supported by the ISP but other users tend to be knowledgeable).

In reply to a post by Baggio:

Given that Zen only provide a written guaranteed upload speed of 70 Mbps on Cityfibre 500/500 when in reality it should be 500, I would be inclined to go with Air Broadband.

Zen have to give a guarantee that low as they are signatories of the OFCOM speeds code of practice and have not yet met the required proof of higher speeds on CityFibre.

When Airbroadband sign up to the OFCOM speeds code of practice you can level that same criticism.

In reply to a post by ajays:

Hi John, thanks for reaching out.



This is all linked to our obligations as a signatory of Ofcom's speeds code of practice.

Ofcom require Zen to advertise speeds based on the results of speeds tests run under a set of defined principles.

Along with TalkTalk, Zen are the only signatories using City Fibre's network.

Before we're allowed to advertise the increased upload speeds we need to connect and measure the speeds from a panel of test customers. The panel needs to be sufficiently large that it is statistically representative for each of the different speed packages we offer and so that it takes into account any differences between cities.

Our CPE doesn't have an Ofcom approved speed testing service built in, so we use SamKnows white boxes to gather the evidence we need to provide to Ofcom.

In the meantime the speed test data we have is based on Openreach FTTP. Hence the speeds you see on our website and that our sales teams are obliged to provide.

So, in summary, customer's upload speeds are not capped at the Openreach profile rates. But until we have the appropriate evidence to back clams of higher upload speeds, we are continuing to advertise a single set of profiles across both networks. Better to under promise and over deliver than the other way around.

I hope that all makes sense. And believe me it's quite frustrating that we can not shout about the higher upload speeds in the way we'd like to.

Best regards,

Andrew

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In reply to a post by Baggio:

Given that Zen only provide a written guaranteed upload speed of 70 Mbps on Cityfibre 500/500 when in reality it should be 500, I would be inclined to go with Air Broadband.

Zen have to give a guarantee that low as they are signatories of the OFCOM speeds code of practice and have not yet met the required proof of higher speeds on CityFibre.

When Airbroadband sign up to the OFCOM speeds code of practice you can level that same criticism.

That's if Air Broadband sign up to Ofcom's 'speeds code of practice', considering its purely voluntary. Which I doubt they ever will because its mainly the larger ISPs who've signed up to this (12 out of ~ 700 ISPs).

In reply to a post by mwrobot:

After digging up my road nearly 2 years ago, looks like City Fibre is finally available to me, via these two ISPs.

So I go with the more tried-and-trusted Zen? Looking around on here there seems some confusion as to whether their service is symmetric or not - eg when I try signing up they offer 500 down 70 up for £38.99. AFAIK Zen include static IP as standard?

Or airbroadband.co.uk - new to me, anyone have experience with them? They suggest 500 down and up for £37.50 but +£3 for static IP.

For me, Air broadband, simply because they use DHCP/IPoE and not PPPoE which can go die in a fire for being a pointless protocol with silly CPU overhead.

Air use CGNAT unless you pay for a static IP, they do offer IPv6 by default. Zen do NOT offer IPv6 on CF.

In reply to a post by jelv:

Do you get IPv6 with airbroadband?

Zen don't offer it on CF.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

For me, Air broadband, simply because they use DHCP/IPoE and not PPPoE which can go die in a fire for being a pointless protocol with silly CPU overhead.

Air use CGNAT unless you pay for a static IP, they do offer IPv6 by default. Zen do NOT offer IPv6 on CF.

Really helpful, many thanks! Any downsides to CGNAT? Assume eg DDNS etc will not work. I'm still not sure if I need an IP - I am used to having one but there are other workarounds.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by jelv:

Do you get IPv6 with airbroadband?

Zen don't offer it on CF.

Citation Needed™. Have Zen published anything saying that they do not provide IPv6 over Cityfibre?

Both Openreach and Cityfibre wholesale networks are transparent at layer 2, and completely able to carry both IPv4 and IPv6, native or PPPoE.

I believe Zen use PPPoE, in which case, the availability of IPv6 should only depend on the BRAS that the session terminates on.

This conversation has happened before https://forums.thinkbroadband.com/zen/f/4699601-3-xb...

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by jelv:

Have you asked Zen to enable IPv6 on your connection?

https://support.zen.co.uk/kb/Knowledgebase/Does-Zen-...

Last I checked Zen don't offer IPv6 on Cityfibre yet.

In reply to a post by UKFOB:

I spoke with Zen last Friday and they put the request in with CityFibre Monday morning. Had an update yesterday to say the request to enable ipv6 had been actioned and they would update me when CF had done it.
Having read up on ipv6 a bit and got the basics, I believe this will resolve my issues as NAT is no longer used and effectively each device gets its own IP within the static range supplied by Zen.

In reply to a post by jpm:

That's interesting that Zen have to ask CityFibre about it - would suggest there's an element of L3 that CityFibre are responsible for, and they don't just hand the subscribers over to a Zen-operated switch.

In reply to a post by UKFOB:

Finally got an email this morning to say IPv6 had been enabled. Rebooted everything and now works perfectly. No additional config was required and just left everything as default.

Thanks All

It's always been the case that Zen only enable IPv6 on request: https://support.zen.co.uk/kb/Knowledgebase/Does-Zen-...

Saying that they needed Cityfibre to enable it on a given line was a total red herring. It was only Zen that needed to enable it on their side.

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

For me, Air broadband, simply because they use DHCP/IPoE and not PPPoE which can go die in a fire for being a pointless protocol with silly CPU overhead.

Air use CGNAT unless you pay for a static IP, they do offer IPv6 by default. Zen do NOT offer IPv6 on CF.

As above, Zen do offer IPV6 on Cityfibre. As with all Zen connections IPV6 isn't enabled by default and needs requested.

While I'm no fan of the use of PPP, the CPU overhead for PPP on modern routers/processors is negligible, even at gigabit speeds.

I'd MUCH rather have a globally routeable IP over PPP than have CGNAT over DHCP.

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by nemeth782:

In reply to a post by jelv:

Do you get IPv6 with airbroadband?

Zen don't offer it on CF.

Citation Needed™. Have Zen published anything saying that they do not provide IPv6 over Cityfibre?

Both Openreach and Cityfibre wholesale networks are transparent at layer 2, and completely able to carry both IPv4 and IPv6, native or PPPoE.

I believe Zen use PPPoE, in which case, the availability of IPv6 should only depend on the BRAS that the session terminates on.

I was basing it on a conversation with Zen when I was hassling them about CF rollout here in Ipswich, I have an FTTC connection with them with IPv6 and they told me I'd lose it and couldn't have IPv6 on CF. Was a while ago tho.

In the end I wrote them off for using PPPoE when other options do not.

In reply to a post by mwrobot:

Really helpful, many thanks! Any downsides to CGNAT? Assume eg DDNS etc will not work. I'm still not sure if I need an IP - I am used to having one but there are other workarounds.

Lots of down sides. DDNS does indeed not work.
It makes accessing your home connection from the wider internet very difficult. Hosting anything from your connection or connecting to home CCTV etc is problematic.
IPV6 can help but personally I'd be paying for a static IP if choosing a provider running CGNAT.