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Internode used to be a high quality home internet brand
Back when Simon ran it, sure. That's a looooong time ago though. iiNet also used to be a really good home internet provider. Like Internode, they were an ISP built by techies, for techies.
So far, I'm still happy with Aussie BB. But, they're listed now. That means they have shareholders to keep happy. That said, on my FTTP, they (very quickly) passed on the nbn price cut to me, which was nice.
I'm a shareholder and a customer, i'll fuck 'em coming and going
@DeltaTangoLima @WaterWaiver Internode was quality when @NewtonMark was running the network...
Been with Internode for over 20 years, not looking forward to changing provider...
Just for internet, or something more complicated? Also it looks like they're nuking their email service if you're using that.
Also it looks like they're nuking their email service if you're using that
Their mail service has been garbage for 6 months or more now. I have a large IMAP account with them and mail is usually delayed anywhere from one to ten hours. I typically get batch delivery of the previous day's worth of email around midnight to 2am.
So that's super fun for all those password reset and account signup emails that expire in 60 minutes.....
Finally got fed up with it at the end of November. I built my own mail server with my own domain and for the next few months I'll be slowly migrating my 20 years of signups using my internode email to my new account.
I've been using a shared hosting provider for my email. I'd love to hear how your self host goes. I know there are some loud opinions on the web about how hosting your own email is hard, but also some quieter ones that say it's working fine for them and isn't any harder than deploying something like MailInABox.
I've been self-hosting email for 10+years. I can confirm it's a pain in the arse... Harder from a dynamic IP too (since you basically can't get any reputation, or you might get an IP that's banned for 'x' reasons)
Postfix + Dovecot here
Edit: Didn't really give you an opinion. It's doable if you have the time and patience. I work in IT too so I'm pretty good at troubleshooting etc. but sometimes it's a LOT of time fiddling and debugging.
I used postfix and dovecot as well.
Basically walked through Linuxbabe's excellent guide and was done in about 1.5 hours with SPF/DKIM/DMARC.
https://www.linuxbabe.com/mail-server/build-email-server-from-scratch-debian-postfix-smtp
I have my own domain and a static IP with one of Linode's nanode sizes servers for USD5 a month, works pretty good.
I use FreeBSD so used the guide here:
https://www.purplehat.org/?page_id=4
Sadly it is a little outdated and 1 step will fail right now until a new package is committed in to the FreeBSD repo (HTMLPurifier) which was removed as it was PHP7 only for a while. But yeah, have SPF, DKIM and DMARC running too. Took a little fiddling since I technically host for 2 domains but trial and error and all good now.
IMO the only truly difficult part of self hosting is mail delivery because you end up at the mercy of big stupid companies (eg Microsoft) that don't give a shit. It is possible and possibly advisable to use a paid service for delivery and let someone else deal with the bastards.
With a bit of research and a methodical approach I think just about anybody comfortable setting up other linux network services should be fine. I am very lazy and have been doing it for 2 decades. I like being in control of my own mail store. I choose to do my own delivery and the only persistently difficult provider is Microsoft's free email offerings which I care about about as much as they care about running a reliable mail system for their users. They seem to penalize infrequent low volume senders. I have always been signed up to their spam monitoring bullshit and have never had a negative report but they don't seem to communicate there so you can be blocked and nobody knows how or why. They blocked most of my hosting provider once so I routed my outgoing email with correct dkim, spf etc from a server hosted elsewhere. Easy to do with Postfix.
Yeah I found both Google and MS will arbitrarily act like dicks. Have it all sorted these days but still keeps me on my toes. Interestingly I can't email myself from my work email address because the MS mail service they use fails SPF checks...
All fun and games at the end of the day! :)
As mentioned below, have a look at Linuxbabe's guide and see what you think. It was basically set up and forget (so far).
The server I get through linode has a relatively small amount of storage. So I repartitioned the available storage of the default install and created a separate ZFS filesystem with compression enabled to hold the mailboxes. It's compressing at about 65% of original size and even with 20 years of IMAP mail in there there's heaps of room left.
And holy shit it is so much faster than Internode's server. I've enabled forwarding on their server so everything gets dumped to my new account, and just opening and browsing the folders/mail is so much faster now, both on my phone with the Gmail app and using thunderbird on the desktop.
Yeah i'm 90% done in that process with my ihug acct. It's not fun.
Make sure you set gmail or similar secondary backup with your domain registrar
I have a power plan with static IP (host my own servers) etc.
Will be interesting to see if that gets brought across. If not it looks like Aussie BB can cover those requirements if needed.
I'm on a semi-static IP. It has never changed (3 years now) but might theoretically. An actual static ip is an extra $5/mon addon last I checked.
When I signed up I was on CGNAT (default for all new customers). I called them, explained why this didn't work for me and they changed me to a proper IPV4 address without any hassle.
Awesome, thanks for the info!
when @NewtonMark was running the network…
Now there's a name I haven't heard since my SAGE-AU days...
@DeltaTangoLima @WaterWaiver I've been on internode but thinking I might move to Aussie Broadband. Last time i needed tech support from Internode after my connection was somehow disabled was an unpleasant weeklong saga
The end of an era indeed.
Internode WOULD NOT move you off a grandfathered plan.
I rode that until I had to move somewhere without FTTP :-(
Any recommendations as an alternative? I don't think I should surf them into the next repurchase?
According to whirlpool.net.au forums these guys seem to be the best quality for home users:
They won't stay good forever, however.
You can also add Exetel, which is owned by Superloop and uses their infrastructure (so has a lot of the same benefits).
For online gaming, Superloop and their reseller Exetel are particularly good as they take the fastest route to Asia. You'll get significantly lower ping on Tokyo-based servers, which opens up more options if you play competitive PvP games or MMOs. Others like Aussie Broadband only take that route one way so you'll have higher ping overall.
I use launtel, I pay a premium i think, but I don't know because I've go no desire to change.
Upvote for Launtel. I love their charge per day prepay model.
I am using Ozot. Small new company and no complaints with anything.
Sad times. I remember spending a lot of time playing CS on internode servers.
Aussie are already headed down the toilet. They changed his they billed me without asking and then denied it for 6 months. TIO complaint ensued where my desired outcome was an apology and that they would notify others before changing billing parameters.
TIO eventually left it with Aussie to sort and they refused to help.
It was an unusual situation, their change to least cost routing incurred transaction fees on my (very) small business account, which lead to issues with my subscription accounting package on a basic plan that had limited line items it could reconcile (about 10 per month I think).
It's a specifically shitty situation, but my setup at the time was reasonable given my circumstances.
Had Aussie told me they were switching I could have changed to direct debit, but remember, it took 6 months to figure out it was them while they denied it the whole time.
I do tech support on an occasional basis when I'm well, and even dismissing my past history with Aussie I still find them going down hill with regards to inflated pricing and slowing support.
Their support is still above average, but at the prices they're adding it bloody should be.
I'm a bit lost sorry :/ Least cost routing for phonecalls? Or did you peer through them?
It's a feature for payment processing. Aussie began using it about 5 or so years ago.
I have nothing against it generally.
But what it did do is switch my payments from Visa debit to a type of cardless EFTPOS cash out type transaction that incurred a fee with my backward bank.
Had I known they intended to change how they charge I'd have taken the card off file with them and used another method.
Their support has some absolute dumbarses. I had fun and games when they somehow tangled my personal home account with me being an authorised rep on the client services that my workplace provided. Still no idea how the fuck they managed that. The only point of intersection is my name.
Yeah that sounds like modern Aussie.
They're trading on the reputation they had years ago. So many people blindly recommend them it's concerning.
There isn't much to differentiate ISPs anymore. It used to be a huge benefit to have unmetered, low latency game servers, streaming radio mirrors, usenet feeds, IP phone services and ISP email. Internet offered a huge amount of extra value through the dialup, ISDN, ADSL1, ADSL2 era. They offered IPv6 early which was interesting to a techie early adopter and were rolling out ADSL2+ in some exchanges and wireless systems. I stuck with Internode for a long time because if your system just works there isn't a lot of incentive to chase other providers who are more or less the same. In the NBN era they were a bit slow to deal with congestion a couple of times and I ended up moving to Superloop. I don't know that Superloop are anything special but that is kind of the point these days. The industry is commoditised and as long as their network and billing is competently run all the NBN resellers should be fairly comparable.
Latency is particularly important to me. Indirectly this means congestion, available bandwidth and buffering policies.
I run SQM on my home router, this keeps things like web browsing buttery smooth even if someone starts torrenting. The ability for SQM to have control over the connection relies on it being the weakest/slowest/most controlling link (I configure it to a bandwidth slightly slower than my normal connection speed). If a router somewhere in the NBN/ISP networks starts buffering my packets heavily (ie my connection speed drops) then my SQM loses its control and ability to fix things.
That's quite a mouthful :P All I know is that with Aussie things have been OK, but that's also probably because I'm on one of the lower tier speed plans. Higher speeds might fluctuate.
ISPs would definitely compete if they ran on different medium; but mobile broadband is hit an miss and I don't see any other affordable alternatives to the NBN at the moment. Starting up a community WISP sounds romantic but I'm sure it's a lot of work and I live in the suburbs, not the urbs, so it'd probably be hard to find participants.
cries in ihug
Honestly, they were on the verge of falling apart. All their gear was old.
Had ihug not been bought when they were, their Internet service would have collapsed within a year.