We apologise in advance to customers calling in and experiencing what sounds like loud drilling. We'll do our best to cope, but may need to call you back at times.

In other news, we'll having air-conditioning installed and working by the end of the week.

Thinkbroadband have conducted a massive survey which asks a lot of important questions about the way people view their broadband. Well worth a read.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband-survey.html

There are some impressive stats relating to AAISP, e.g. pages 28 (value), 29 (speed), 31 (reliability), 32 (customer service), even 34 (social media use), 38 (loyalty).

However, the survey covers much more than just rating ISPs, such as people's views on parental controls for Internet access, how long they spend accessing the Internet per day, and what things are most important to them...

Well done everyone at Thinkbroadband - it is an impressive survey. And thank you to our customers who completed the survey

As you know there are some warnings for bad weather which may mean we do not have the full complement of staff in the offices on some dasys - as usual we are arranging that staff can, where sensible, work from home, so as to try and ensure the usual levels of cover.

Please bear with us, especially right at the start of the day, if there are delays answering calls and emails, as staff discover whether they are able to get to the office or not.

In an effort to move our services to use a single domain (aa.net.uk), we are now running our billing system from https://accounts.aa.net.uk/aal/

We have finally created a new World of Warcraft Guild for the Horde on Thunderhorn: AAISP Darkside

Brand new guild so no rank yet but customers welcome to join.

As some of you may know, we have SSL certificates on many of our servers and services that make use of CACert as a certificate authority. Some time ago we changed the certificates for our accounts pages and ordering pages, and now we have also obtained certificates for many of our web servers under aa.net.uk. These use a "known" CA and so no longer cause the same warning in browsers if you do not have the CACert root certificate. They are no more secure as a result of this change, and in some ways are slightly less secure, but this avoids the warnings and so we have bowed to the "protection racket" that is certificate signing. The new certificates do not cover use of aaisp.net.uk based domains.

Ironically this change has caused some concern amongst customers. However, it should generally mean less queries on the matter.

As a result we are gradually changing URLs used for some things, e.g. ordering is now on order.aa.net.uk not www.s-s-l.co.uk. We will soon be changing the accounts pages over as well, probably to accounts.aa.net.uk, but wil be keeping the old URL as well for the time being.

At the moment SSL based email servers (web and TLS on SMTP, IMAP, etc) are not changing, and will continue with CACert based certificates.

in the long term we expect DANE to take over from CA certificates, and we plan to have proper DANE support for our secure web sites soon.

Sorry for any concern caused.

We have been automatically posting updates from our Status page to our facebook page, however, we've decided to separate out our Status updates from the other posts on Facebook. So, from now on Status posts will be on a separate Facebook page, AAISPStatus:

http://www.facebook.com/AAISPStatus

Do 'Like' the page if you want to be kept up to date with Status posts whilst on Facebook.

We are currently experiencing problems in the office meaning or connection to the internet is down.

We are back.

It seems the issue with odd DD notices was not as simple we we expected and a number of customers have DD notices for collections which are not on the right dates. We are clearing and re-issuing all DD notices today.

I do apologise for any inconvenience caused.

A small number of people recieved a blank Direct Debit notice when they do not in fact pay by Direct Debit. Obviously this is a mistake and payment will not be collected from such people. Pay as normal.

We're upgrading the wiki software (and various extensions) on our customer facing wiki - http://wiki.aa.org.uk. There may be occasions where you'll see error messages or pages being unavailable this morning.

This has been completed. Unfortunately the WYSISWYG editor has had to be removed for the time being, but a 'history' line has been added to the top of pages showing the pages you've recently been on.

We have a new member of staff! Alex Bloor started today as 'Business Development Manager'. You'll see him in IRC, but he'll mostly be working behind the scenes working on and improving the way we do business as a whole.

We've updated SSL certificates for our customer facing servers this morning (email, control pages).

Users who don't have the CAcert root certificate installed may see errors. Details on http://aa.net.uk/cacert.html

We have made some minor changes to clarify our terms and conditions in a few places. See http://aa.net.uk/legal.html

The main change is the Customer Complaints Code which details how to make complaints and how to take then on to ADR or court. The change includes a list of things we need from you when making a claim.

We don't think this is an onerous list - basically it is detailing exactly how much you are claiming and why. It does ask what we have done wrong and how we have breached our terms.

We thing this will help people focus on exactly what they are claiming and make it easier for us to address any complaints.

It is worth noting that we get very few formal complaints.

2012-01-12 13:35:00, updated 2012-01-26 15:13:14

It is impressive what you can do on a short bit of copper

We have a number of customers on the FTTC 80Mb/s trial now. One has 79.7Mb/s and another has 57Mb/s. This is pretty impressive. The uplink is around 20Mb/s as well...

The trial is not going badly - the lines are syncing up at nice high rates, and the rates are correctly coming through to us.

There are a few minor teething troubles getting the profiles right in the middle somewhere - but this is a technical trial, so not at all surprising.

This part of the trial is expected to last until the end of the month, where the second phase of the trial starts. The second part is expected to be open to the whole country (where FTTC is currently available)

Here is a speed test result.

-a number of speed tests were carried out, this was the highest download result, the results did vary though, and the upload isn't as high as we'd expect - should be nearer 20Mb/s.

The end user will be trying a new router to compare.

We're now listed on the World IPv6 Launch website:

http://www.worldipv6launch.org/participants/?q=2

(Along with 18 others at the moment!)

Like the day last year, this event is organised by the Internet Society but this time the idea to encourage networks and websites to turn on IPv6 and to keep it on.

Good news for IPv6! From our side there is nothing we need to do, change or enable on our network as we're already offering and supporting IPv6.

The date this happens is June 6th.

We have a page on our main website regarding the launch event now:

http://aa.net.uk/world-ipv6-launch.html

We get pretty good reviews on the ISPReview website, and we're often number 1 in their top 10 list too - They also list us in their recent 'Editors Pick - UK Best Broadband ISPs for 2012' article:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/articles/12_Best_UK_Broadband_ISPs/

Thank you to all those who vote and review us!

That's all folks, just a test

Once again Christmas week (25th Dec to 2nd Jan inclusive) is unmetered for broadband use (BT and BE lines). This will be listed as a special Christmas rate on the usage stats.

Here are the opening times for the Christmas holiday period

• Friday 23rd December - Open as normal but with fewer staff
• Monday 26th December - Closed
• Tuesday 27th December - Closed
• Wednesday 28th December - Skeleton Staff
• Thursday 29th December - Skeleton Staff
• Friday 30th December - Skeleton Staff
• Monday 2nd January - Closed
• Tuesday 3rd January - Open and back to normal!

Customers are encouraged to contact us via email, IRC or SMS over the holiday period. Phone lines will be open on 28th, 29th and 30th but with a small number of staff on duty.

The last day we're able send out post will be Friday 23rd.

We do try our hardest to give the best support and advice when customers contact us. We now have a feedback page where customers can tell us what they think!

http://feedback.aa.net.uk

This is for customers to give us some quick feedback after you've contacted us for help, with a query etc.

You can use the feedback page whenever you like. We'll start sending out 'feedback' requests (in a polite manner) from our email ticket system, and soon from our Fault reporting system.

We do try to answer the phone as soon as possible, but we're making some changes and improvements to our support phone line (03333 400999) in the way that calls are handled.

From the customer point of view there should be little difference, but we'll be better managing the queue internally.

We'll be making this live this afternoon, if you have problems calling in, then do call our sales number (03333 400000) who will put you through - but we don't anticipate any problems though.

We have a position, or 2, in our support department, send a pgp signed email to jobs@aa.net.uk

We are pleased to confirm that, thanks to new Firebrick FB6000 routers, the company hosting these status pages (Watchfront, deliberately off our network) now have IPv6 connectivtity, and as such the status pages now work via IPv6.

We're looking for an enthusiastic individual with interest in networking & Internet technologies & protocols...

Full job description and application details here: http://aa.net.uk/job.pdf

(Job Centre Plus reference: BKN/28268)

We're now mirroring Ubuntu and CentOS, updating every 4 hours and available from:

http://ubuntu.aa.net.uk/
http://centos.aa.net.uk/

The SSL certificates that we use are due to expire next week. We'll be updating the certificates across our servers (web, email etc). 

Customers who have not installed the 'CACert' root certificate may get a warning.

More details on our certificate can be found on http://aa.net.uk/cacert.html

For those of you that did not realise, it is World IPv6 Day today.

This really should make no difference to any of our customers.

If you have working IPv6 on your network then some places, like facebook, will be accessed via IPv6 today. You already had google on IPv6 anyway. There are many other major players involved as well.

If you don't have IPv6 set up then nothing changes.

If you had a broken IPv6 setup, which is what this test is all about, then you already had problems with our web site, email servers, and google, anyway, so this is kind of unlikely.

If you think you have problems, please let us know. We're interested to get feedback on any issues people have.

As nominet have today started providing DS data records for DNSSEC delegation of UK domains to name servers, we now support this.

To make use of this you have to send support the exact dsdata records you require adding to your domain. Staff will most likely call you to verify what you are asking to be sure, or to check your PGP fingerprint.

You need to understand DNSSEC properly, and have the means to set up a zone file correctly otehrwise things are likely to break. If we find customers have issues we may set up a test domain that we can delegate to you to test your DNSSEC fu.

As I am sure you can imagine we have a lot of staff off this week, however we have key staff in all departments every day.

We also have the Reading beer festival to which we are providing some connectivity, so some of the staff that are in are tied up setting that up some of next week.

This may mean slower responses to email and calls, but we expect volumes to be much lower as it seems half the country is taking the week off.

So please bear with us.

As usual Monday and Friday fall squarely in the definition of "Monday to Friday" for the usage based charging. It is not Christmas!

We're looking for an enthusiastic individual with interest in networking & Internet technologies and protocols...

Full job description and application details here: http://aa.net.uk/job.pdf

We are running our IP course on Thursday - there are still spaces left!

"Filling in the gaps in most network admin's knowledge - covering Ethernet, Switches, VLANs, IPv4, IPv6, ICMP, UDP, TCP, and DHCP. An intensive one day course."

www.aaisp.net.uk/support-training.html

You may have heard that the IANA IPv4 address pool exhaustion has finally happened. This is a major milestone in the history of the internet and the internet industry in the UK is marking it with a major celebration at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden commencing at 18.30hrs on Tuesday 22nd March.

AAISP is a major sponsor of this event and as a customer you are cordially invited to the party. IPv6 is going to be an evolving story which is likely to be in the news for the next year or two and is something that you need to know about. The event will include a retrospective look at the early days of the internet and a look into the problems being encountered in rolling out the new IPv6 based architecture – what IPv6 might mean for you and your business. We are also having a ceremonial rerun of the handing over of the last IPv4 address block by IANA to RIPE.

You will learn something at this event but just as importantly it will be a memorable on for its historic nature.

The event site is at www.bringonipv6.com

The event is by invitation only – you can register at http://bringonipv6.eventbrite.com  - emali support@aaisp.net.uk for the password.

I am pleased to say we have finally caught up the backlog of initial orders for FB2700 and should have stock in hand tomorrow so we can ship orders on receipt. Thank you all for your patience.

We have also added to the broadband order pages giving a router option for FTTC now.

The FB2700 is still listed as "early adopter" as we have yet to complete the pretty web interface, but is now at a stage where almost all of the key functions are in place and anyone able to work a simple XML config should be able to use them.

As a result of a idea on our Ideas website, we now have a 'wiki' that customer can contribute to.

http://wiki.aaisp.org.uk

This is a semi-official wiki for AAISP products and services. Customers are welcome to add content. AAISP Staff will monitor and will also add content. So as to have some kind of control over the content, you will need to register before you're able to edit pages. This wiki will remain unofficial whilst an initial set of content is added - we'll review this in a few months time and will then decide whether to carry on with the project.

As you can see we have changed the layout of the status pages.

We hope you like them and find them more logical.

For some time we've had an ideas website - http://ideas.aaisp.net.uk- the idea was that it would be a good way for customers to submit their suggestions regarding our products and services, to comment and vote on other ideas. It has been used well by customers - thankyou!

However, the website had been let down by the fact that parts of it has been broken - eg inability to 'vote' on ideas! We are working today on migrating the existing 'Ideas' to a new site and we'll re-launch the 'Ideas' site later today or on Monday!

The new ideas website is now live, same URL as before:

http://ideas.aaisp.net.uk

We have had a few reports lately that people calling sales or support have been waiting on the phone for ages with nobody answering, eventually giving up. Obviously this is a concern.

Generally there are enough staff to handle calls reasonably quickly, and we deliberately do not put them under high-pressure call centre stats so that they can spend the time helping customers when necessary.

It is also the case that if there is a major outage then lots of people call, and even if we had a call centre full of people you would still have trouble contacting someone. This is why the support number has a message at the start to tell people of major issues.

Even so, the reports we have been getting are hard to explain.

The good news is that we have done some digging through the logs and thanks to some very good detailed reports from a customer that was waiting a long time, we have managed to find an anomaly. It looks like there is a loophole where a call can get in a state where it just rings out but we have no phones ringing. It is a complicated interaction between the specific phones we have and the phone system, and involves some people on calls and some one do not disturb and a delay, and, well, complicated.

We are working on a short term fix now, but we think this is an opportunity to review the way call queuing works on the new call server. The call server is quite simple on this now, but could be significantly improved. When completed we'll announce details of how it works and our VoIP customers can benefit from this feature improvement.

Thank you all for your patience.

Obviously the recent routing issue is a concern and we have been investigating possible causes.

The good news is that we now have some feedback through LINX that suggests there was MAC leak problem related to the carrier that normally routes our traffic between Maidenhead and Telehouse and it may possibly be at the root of the problem. LINX are tightening up their port security we believe. It was not LINX's fault, but explains why the problem appreared to be LINX related.

At this stage we have not managed to work out the exact scenario of how this happened, but it is the right time and the right sort of fault to cause a black hole route like this and is far too much of a co-incidence. LINX are apparently taking steps to stop this sort of thing happening. They have also confirmed that this looks a very likely explanation of the issues.

We're planning to test bringing up the route server peering at the weekend, but in light of this issue it is likely that will "just work" and not have any impact.

We'd like to thank LINX for helping us track this down.

Because of the move of clueless, and due to some staff off sick and on leave, we expect to be busy Wednesday morning. We'll try and ensure calls, etc, are all handled as quickly as possible. However, some key support staff will be concentrating on babysitting the new server in the morning to ensure all services are running smoothly for everyone.

Having said that we do not anticipate any major issues.

We can change terms and prices at any time and we update our web site with the changes.

We believe the terms are quite clear and very reasonable as they allow you to insist the previous terms (and price) apply if you want to cease a service because you are not happy about the change (within one month of the change).

We have today made minor changes to the wording of terms on the web site to combine the descriptions for changes to price and changes to terms in one place. This also clarifies what happens for any services that have a minimum term, which was not previously very clear. Basically, we can either agree to apply the old terms and price for the rest of the minimum term, or we can allow you to cease early with no penalty. This will typically depend on whether we are tied in to paying a supplier for a minimum term.

We have also clarified exactly when call prices for telephone services apply (at the time of the call).

We hope you find this clarification useful.

Sorry for short notice, but something strange is up and so we are rebootting clueless.

Should be a few seconds when you cannot access the control pages.

The reboot went fine - did not fix the issue, but we think we have found the cause now. This will fix the graphs not archiving too.

Side effect is texts/emails on line up/down, some BT fault updates back to BT, some line rate change pick up on BE lines, and all sorts of things were not behaving quite as normal over the weekend. We have found the cause now (file permissions!)

Occasionally these status pages are blank!

The server in question is located in Amsterdam. This deliberately well off our network so that you can get status updates even in the event of a major issue. However the hardware has proved to be flaky so it will be replaced. We hope this will be some time in June.

In the mean time we do automatically monitor the status pages and alert staff when the problem happens so it can be addressed promptly.

Sorry for any concern this has caused.

Whilst Barry left our employ back in 2006, I know several customers will have spoken to him and will remember him. I'm sorry to say that he was the victim of a motocyle accident on Friday.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/archive/2010/04/27/News+%28news%29/8121995.Crash_victim_is_Lane_End_man/

Customers may remember the <i>Barryons</i> which were thought to be magic particles he emitted that meant that when he went to the data centre things would mysteriously break! Obviously a co-incidence, even when an hp switch actually caught fire when he was there (after the infamous redbus power surge).

Shame.

From time to time we have customers email in feature requests, we also chat about our services on the IRC channel. To move this forwards, we've put together a website where people can post their suggestions and other customers and staff can comment and discuss them.

The site is: http://ideas.aaisp.net.uk

There is a help page http://ideas.aaisp.net.uk/using which gives an overview of what it's all about.

Feel free to post your ideas, and to comment on the ones there already...

Our control pages now allow LOC records to be entered. Once entered you can even check the record with a map link.

Just to explain - a LOC record allows a precise location to be recorded in DNS. e.g. the LOC for aaisp.net.uk is

51 24 54.930 N 0 45 55.300 W 0.00m 30m 1m 1000m

We have added OSGB grid reference (easting/northing) to/from WGS84 long/lat (GPS co-ordinates) conversion tools to the free software section of the web site. http://aaisp.net.uk/kb-other-free.html

A small number of people who have non-regular amount direct debits and requested taking direct debit on the 9th of each month will find that they have an extra month to pay. i.e. this month's money will be collected 9th of May.

Obviously this is good! but it may be a surprise when you get to pay for two months in one go next month. If you would rather pay this month's invoice this month, email accounts and we can change the payment date for this payment.

Just to explain why this happened: We follow the DD rules very carefully! To collect on the 9th, where the amount is not the same as usual, we have to give 5 working days notice. With an invoice on the 1st that makes the 12th April due to bank holidays. Our system (quite reasonably) thought that was rather late for a 9th April collection date, so pushed the date on to the 9th May instead as the next chance to collect.

We'll see if we can work on this to try and make it a bit more sane in future, though it may be some years before we get this exact scenario again.

Sorry for any confusion it may have caused.

In some cases the same invoice has been emailed twice (or more) today. The invoices do have a unique reference number (invoice number) so this should be obvious. Do check the on-line accounts if you are unsure. Sorry for the duplication.

It is also the case that some delivery receipts sent back to us have bounced today as well. We think we have found the cause of this so should be better next month.

Sorry for any concern this has caused.

Our time server, time.aaisp.net.uk, is now on new IP addresses:

• New IP4 = 90.155.53.32 
• New IP6 = 2001:8b0:0:53::5a9b:3520
• Old IP = 81.187.81.101
• Old IP6 = 2001:8b0:0:81::51bb:5165

The old IPs are being portmapped to the new IPs, but please do update your settings if you are using the old IP address. (If you are using 'time.aaisp.net.uk' in your settings, then no change is needed)

Our time server will still be at "Stratum 2" level.

Michael Maher, who works in the Sales Department, is leaving us today. He's moving do a different country, he'll be missed by his colleagues but we wish all the best for his future!