More on IP changes

Today, I found out how to tell a DNS slave to update from the master, how to tell godaddy and networksolutions about the existence of a new name server, and lots more.

This isn't entirely a waste of time caused by Daisy forcing me to change my IP address range. It's an investment for the future. Next time my contract with Daisy comes up for renewal (I think it's a year or so), they'll be competing with every other packet transit provider. Now that I've learned how to change IP addresses, it'll be a lot easier for me to switch from Daisy to someone else.

And there's even a possibility that I can switch to using fiber broadband, a service that Daisy won't be able to match on price with a leased line. Virgin, for example, will give me a 100 mbit link for £35/month. That gives me download at 100 mbit, upload of 10 mbit. Halve that because things are never as good as promised, and that means 50 down and 5 up. Currently, I have a 2 mb line, that's 2 down and 2 up, so it's still good.

They throw the word "unlimited" around, but ... "Usage will be monitored daily between 10am and 3pm, then 4pm to 9pm. However, customers will have to have to use between 3.5GB and 20GB of data, depending on their package, during these times to trigger the throttle."

But I can't get fiber yet. Coming soon ...

So, looking at copper broadband,  And looking at BT, I can get "up to 16mbit" download, "unlimited usage" for £36/month. Virgin reckon 13.5-20.5, which is about the same.

I also tried looking at the Talktalk web site (my broadband is currently with them), but it hangs when I click the "can I get fibre" button, which kind of rules them out!

Daisy offer 76mbit download, 19 upload. Again, halve that. But it's £50 per month, a lot more than Virgin. And to find out if it's available in my area, I have to give them my name, address, phone number and email. I'm guessing they don't offer fiber either; all of them are reliant on BT installing a green box somewhere near me.

And while I was doing all this research, I suddenly found I couldn't access google! Oops. I soon tracked the problem down. I had a static on the pix allowing outside information to come in to my local nameserver, but I had it misnamed as being one of my power cyclers. But that power cycler doesn't work, so I deleted the static as being unnecessary, not realising that it was actually needed for my name server. Easily fixed, but for a moment, I thought I'd lost connectivity somehow.