VPN use

I'm thinking of moving from Pipex to Zen. I do sometimes need remote access to my office via a VPN connection, and noticed that At Home Zen 8000 Active does not mention VPN, but under Small Home Office Zen 8000 Active VPN *is* mentioned.

Therefore, are these Zen 8000 Active accounts one and the same and VPN will work fine, or is there any differences (the pricing is the same, just quoted with/without VAT)?

VPN works fine between two Zen accounts. (extremely stable)

I have a VPN connection with an up time of over a month
(using the VPN connection manager on two DrayTek 2600 series routers)

The products are the same and VPN works fine.

I connect via VPN to sites on BT, C&W and Plusnet from my Zen connection regularly.

As others have said, VPN works fine on Zen 8000 Active. I regularly use VPN over my Zen Active connection to remotely access my work's network.

As far as I can see, VPN is actually mentioned on the Zen Lite, Active and Pro pages.

the main reason the office products are more suitable, is they have traffic prioritisation (over the home products), and also have higher upstream bandwidth, so a faster/better VPN connection.

but yes, vpn will work on any zen product

In reply to:

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is they have traffic prioritisation (over the home products)

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Worth pointing out - just to avoid confusion or misunderstanding - that the "traffic prioritisation" talked about here is a BT thing and not something implemented or controlled by Zen.

In reply to:

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As far as I can see, VPN is actually mentioned on the Zen Lite, Active and Pro pages.

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Yes, that's correct, but only the business versions of the pages. The home pages don't mention VPN.

On the Home pages it is only mentioned for Pro.

OK, that would be good since it's the same price as "Home". However, I can't see any difference in the specs, so how is it different to BT, i.e. different contention to 20:1; is it classified as a business connection in some way?

I went throught the initial sign-up screen, and there is no choice for business or home type of connection, only Zen 8000 Active, implying one type?

Is there really any difference - I can't find it on the web site?

Right, I see VPN on Home Pro.

The only difference is that on the Business pages the price is listed without VAT, and on the home pages the price is listed with VAT.

Basically when you click an option it's showing you what, out of all our packages, are suitable for the majority in that category - with Business products shown without VAT.

The ADSL products we have are:

ZenADSL Home 250
Zen 8000 Lite
Zen 8000 Active
Zen 8000 Pro
Zen ADSL Office 500/1000/2000
Zen Office 8000
Zen Office 8000 Max

Active/Pro will appear in multiple categories with/without VAT and with different advantages mentioned - but the products are the same. This is basically a reflection of the fact that residential users aren't looking for VPN connectivity or other features.

regards,
Phil.

Not that I'm aware of. Home "anything" - whether under the "Home" or "Home Office" section - is the same product, the only difference is that the business-oriented products are quoted without VAT. So Zen 8000 Active is the same product whether you go through the "Home User" pages or the "Home Office" pages.

Under the "Home" pages, the products probably don't mention VPN as it isn't something most home users would want/need/understand (as opposed to "home office" users where again the target audience implies business use).

ADSL doesn't have a specific contention ratio anymore, instead there are different "traffic prioritisation" levels applied by BT. However as a rough rule of thumb, Zen Active (as a "home" product) would approximate to the old 50:1 and the Zen Office products would approximate to the old 20:1 ratio.

That was my conclusion, and thank you for clarifying.

Re: "and also have higher upstream bandwidth...."

Which office products have a higher upstream bandwidth? I can not find any.

Zen Office 8000 and Zen Office 8000 Max
Look on the Medium large Business links http://www.zen.co.uk/Broadband/ML_Business.aspx

Thanks.

Yes I know about those. But the OP was talking only about products priced the same as Home products.

The same. Zen don't care what you do with it (so to speak).

Office 8000
Office 8000 Max.

Yes, I was asking about the "Home" and "Small / Home Office" products, which are Zen 8000 based and are the same price (because they are the same product as clarified above).

The "Medium / Large Business" Zen Office 8000 are the business products, and they have the higher upstream speed and carry the appropriate price adder! I can't justify the extra cost, even though the bandwidth would be nice

I use VPN from zen all the time - I actually have a legacy contract so only get 2MB, but it's actually quite fine.

I've used them for a few years now, and never had problems connecting to work (which currently hangs off C&W). The service is usually responsive enough to allow a radmin session to be tunneled over the top and access my desktop at work