Thinking of switching

I'm in the final month of my FTTC contract with Plusnet and I'm looking for a reliable ISP that uses CityFibre. I was initially going to go with Vodafone but I hear their customer support isn't great and like many ISP's they increase prices every April. Zen was supposed to be good, but reading through trustpilot reviews it seems like things have taken a nose dive recently? Is it just a blip or is Zen on the way down?

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

Is it just a blip or is Zen on the way down?

Yes, no. Usual suspects moaning, same with anything. Zen have been reliable and provided really good service. They gave me a new router when asked, no charge. Connection is rock solid (but OR FTTC, not CF). Absolutely no hesitation is recommending them. Zen & CityFibre is a no brainer.

In reply to a post by Woolwich:

Usual suspects moaning

Wow, you could have said you had a good experience but to say everyone who is unhappy with Zen are just moaning is very dismissive. Those that had a 6+ month battle with Zen to rectify a throughput issue were not just moaning but had a valid right to complain about the slow resolution.

So to answer the OP's question, yes Zen have taken a nose dive but is their support better than else where you will have to decide that for yourself as everyone's experience is clearly different.

Edited by deleted (Tue 06-Jun-23 11:03:58)

We've used Zen for many years, bar a break for a couple of years while we used 4G for reasons not related to Zen. When we went back to a fixed line (FTTC) in 2021 we chose Zen again, and their service seems to me to be good as ever.

The problem is that you're going to get anecdotal comments.

I had Zen for some time and they were excellent. Then they changed me from BT wholesale backhaul to their a own.

Problem after problem. Eventually back to BT's then they swapped me back, then swapped, then re-swapped.

No one semed to be able to own the problem.

Wouldn't touch them with the proverbial barge-pole.

I've been with Zen for 7 or 8 years. Went with them after looking for a decent ISP once Be Un Limited / BeThere got bought over and folded into Sky's customer base (1).

They've been pretty decent- rolled me onto an IPv6 beta years ago, followed up on a latency issue I was having. It's mostly been pretty hands-off, particularly since moving to FTTC.

I'd love to stay with them, but they don't offer it in my area yet (as I've been asking about in my thread in these fora). From your perspective, I'm happy enough that I've been "one more month"-ing with Zen since about December 2021 rather than jump to a CityFibre package with another provider, even though I really want a symmetric connection.

----

(1): As an aside, Sky folding in BeThere customers -- who went to a lesser-known provider aimed at technical users who want to fiddle with line profiles for greater speed -- to their userbase seemed asinine to me. Sky's config is/was well known to sacrifice throughput for stability, and their support was, um, not great. I'm not still bitter...

For those of us who are not gifted with a pair of Rose Coloured Glasses the answer to your query is that Zen did have issues but are now mostly OK.

However, the jury is still out because all is not always good, slow browsing/web page and slower speeds (down to 500 mbps), but nowhere near as bad as it was just over a year ago with really low speeds..

When Zen have blip I still I find my finger hovering over the transfer to BT button even though I have Price for Life but I am not sure that BT would be better.

I do not know anything about CityFibre as it is not available in my area.

Interesting mixed comments.

I see people are having issues with certain gateways being overloaded at times and that doesn't really worry me too much as I experienced the same issues in the past with Plusnet and it's always a matter of time before it gets resolved.

With CityFibre there are a lot of small ISP's to choose from with some very competitive prices. Octaplus for example are offering 1GB for £32/month. My worry is that their network, support team is small and limited and their peering arrangements won't be as established or robust as a more established ISP such as Zen. While I've seen a lot of negatives about Zen and I'm sure there are some issues, I suspect it's like any company growing fast and things will settle down.

Looking through complaints with all CityFibre ISP's it generally seems to be more with CityFibre than the ISP and this is to be expected with a brand new Fibre network.

Am I correct in believing Zen issue proper a IPv4 address and not CGNAT? I see mention of a static IP is that something that is standard or do you have to pay extra?

From their website

"A single, static IPv4 address is available free of charge with all of Zen's broadband services"

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

Am I correct in believing Zen issue proper a IPv4 address and not CGNAT? I see mention of a static IP is that something that is standard or do you have to pay extra?

That's right a static IPv4 address is standard and no restrictions (they do scan for open mail relays and a few other things though) You can also request IPV6 there is another thread in this forum with details on that.


Zen has been solid for me (Since 2004), very rairly had any issues. Im just hoping they will enable CityFibre for me, I have been looking at the other CF ISP's and most use CGNAT!

I will says their support feels less personal then it did in the past, but I think its gone from Excellent to Good, where other support went from Good/Ok to Poor (VM or VF for example)

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

Am I correct in believing Zen issue proper a IPv4 address and not CGNAT? I see mention of a static IP is that something that is standard or do you have to pay extra?

That's right a static IPv4 address is standard and no restrictions (they do scan for open mail relays and a few other things though) You can also request IPV6 there is another thread in this forum with details on that.

Is there any specific no-no's documented anywhere? I was planning on building a multi-use home server mostly, nay entirely for personal use with ftp/http and possibly a trackmania game server which is pretty low bandwidth.

Edited by LeJimster (Wed 07-Jun-23 18:37:55)

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

Is there any specific no-no's documented anywhere? I was planning on building a multi-use home server mostly, nay entirely for personal use with ftp/http and possibly a trackmania game server which is pretty low bandwidth.

Not that I am aware off, I just tried looking on their help site but no mention of anything. I have had and have lots of different service running and never had a problem, I only know about the open mail relay as an old modem for some unknown reason use to listen on port 25 (even though it did not relay) and it was picked up by a Zen scanner who emailed me advising me to close it down which is totally understandable.

Yeah, I couldn't see anything in the AUP that prevents me from running the services I wanted, just wanted to know if you knew anything different. The open mail relay could be used for mass spam so I'm totally fine with them scanning for that. I don't really plan on setting up an email server, but I guess it is possible just not as open mail relay.

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

That's right a static IPv4 address is standard and no restrictions (they do scan for open mail relays and a few other things though) You can also request IPV6 there is another thread in this forum with details on that.

I've been given an IPv6 address without asking! Its been confirmed by Zen as a fixed address (like my IPv4).

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

In reply to a post by RichTea23:

In reply to a post by LeJimster:

That's right a static IPv4 address is standard and no restrictions (they do scan for open mail relays and a few other things though) You can also request IPV6 there is another thread in this forum with details on that.

Is there any specific no-no's documented anywhere? I was planning on building a multi-use home server mostly, nay entirely for personal use with ftp/http and possibly a trackmania game server which is pretty low bandwidth.

There will be some standard terms (as with any ISP) that anything unlawful remains unlawful if you use their connectivity to accomplish it. And if they receive a notification they will pass it on,but I've never had an issue on a home connection.

As regards your home server given that you probably don't want to open your home server up to the Internet for FTP, you would want to use VPN to access that. The Fritz!box supplied router has a few VPN options
Or you could run something like Wireguard on the home server and then the incoming connections are just over UDP on a single chosen port.
Or even Tailscale / Zerotier if you had multiple locations to link.

Yes the WAN interface receives an IPv4 as a fixed public /32 and the IPv6 as a fixed /64
with a fixed LAN delegation of a /48 prefix
of which your router configures the first (0th)) /64 on your LAN interface (alongside your private v4)

The IP configuration is received automatically with no manual addressing required, unless you want override the supplied DNS for example.

Edited by prlzx (Fri 09-Jun-23 00:07:36)