Other then the increase in speed since upgrading from Bonded Fusion to FTTN, I am at the point where I can say that I don't think the upgrade was worth it.
The restrictions on what can and can't be done on the circuit are a pain. I gave up fixed IP addresses with a block of 8 IP's for my single dynamic IP. True it does not change much, but I had good reasons for wanting fixed IP addresses. Having port 25 blocked ( in and outbound ) has been much more of a nightmare than I imagined. Working around that has added additional complexity to my mail server to the point where it is no longer reliable. On top of that the ATT U-Verse modem does not seem to forward ports correctly, so my DNS has been broken for months. I have also discovered that the ATT U-Verse modem did not like to play withy my Apple Airports, and It has additional issues with at least 1 model of TP-Link 802.11ac range extender.
I have a friend who is a manager at ATT, and he likes to remind me that if I had ATT U-Verse, they could unblock port 25 and give me a fixed IP address. Grrrrr. I can understand why Sonic's deal with ATT might exclude these services in the interest of simplicity, but I'm not about to sell my soul to ATT. I also believe in supporting Sonic for all the good things they do for their customers.
I'll be the first to admit that as an 20+ year IT veteran with my background in supporting Unix/Linux, that my network may be a bit more complicated that the average Sonic customer. Having said that when I had fixed IP addresses, no blocked ports, and could use whatever firewall I chose to use, I had everything working smoothly for years.
After the switch to FTTN, everything has been a challenge. For the first time in 10 years or so, I have had to tell my wife that we can't use our own domains mail server, because the DNS is so screwed up that at lest 1/2 of the mail sent to us bounce. The jury rigging needed to get outbound mail working only works about 90% of the time. Thats not good enough. My wife is letting everyone know to use her new gmail address. Humiliating.
I was looking into switching back to bonded fusion, but my FTTN line has a 1 year commitment on it, and I'm past my 30 day money back guarantee.
I have seen or heard some of these concerns from other users too, but truth be told, if you are a typical ISP customer, who just wants to surf the net, use gmail, or Sonic mail for e-mail, and play the occasional game, then the FTTN is probably going to be great for you.
My mistake was following the more bandwidth mantra and not taking into account what the changes might mean to all that I had configured. I was hoping to cut my cable service and I wanted to be certain I had enough bandwidth to do it before I took the plunge. Instead, I have spent waaay to much time troubleshooting things that used to work just fine, and now don't work without a significant time commitment on my part ( time that I just don't have these days ), don't seem to work at all, or are now extremely ( laughably ) limited subsets of what I was using before.
Here's hoping that Sonic manages to get the ability to get unblocked circuits, fixed IP addresses, and a better CPE device from ATT before my 12 months is up.
Thanks,
James "Zeke" Dehnert
--
mailto:jdehnert@gmail.com James "Zeke" Dehnert
-= Eschew Obfuscation =-
"Life is racing. Everything else is just waiting"
The restrictions on what can and can't be done on the circuit are a pain. I gave up fixed IP addresses with a block of 8 IP's for my single dynamic IP. True it does not change much, but I had good reasons for wanting fixed IP addresses. Having port 25 blocked ( in and outbound ) has been much more of a nightmare than I imagined. Working around that has added additional complexity to my mail server to the point where it is no longer reliable. On top of that the ATT U-Verse modem does not seem to forward ports correctly, so my DNS has been broken for months. I have also discovered that the ATT U-Verse modem did not like to play withy my Apple Airports, and It has additional issues with at least 1 model of TP-Link 802.11ac range extender.
I have a friend who is a manager at ATT, and he likes to remind me that if I had ATT U-Verse, they could unblock port 25 and give me a fixed IP address. Grrrrr. I can understand why Sonic's deal with ATT might exclude these services in the interest of simplicity, but I'm not about to sell my soul to ATT. I also believe in supporting Sonic for all the good things they do for their customers.
I'll be the first to admit that as an 20+ year IT veteran with my background in supporting Unix/Linux, that my network may be a bit more complicated that the average Sonic customer. Having said that when I had fixed IP addresses, no blocked ports, and could use whatever firewall I chose to use, I had everything working smoothly for years.
After the switch to FTTN, everything has been a challenge. For the first time in 10 years or so, I have had to tell my wife that we can't use our own domains mail server, because the DNS is so screwed up that at lest 1/2 of the mail sent to us bounce. The jury rigging needed to get outbound mail working only works about 90% of the time. Thats not good enough. My wife is letting everyone know to use her new gmail address. Humiliating.
I was looking into switching back to bonded fusion, but my FTTN line has a 1 year commitment on it, and I'm past my 30 day money back guarantee.
I have seen or heard some of these concerns from other users too, but truth be told, if you are a typical ISP customer, who just wants to surf the net, use gmail, or Sonic mail for e-mail, and play the occasional game, then the FTTN is probably going to be great for you.
My mistake was following the more bandwidth mantra and not taking into account what the changes might mean to all that I had configured. I was hoping to cut my cable service and I wanted to be certain I had enough bandwidth to do it before I took the plunge. Instead, I have spent waaay to much time troubleshooting things that used to work just fine, and now don't work without a significant time commitment on my part ( time that I just don't have these days ), don't seem to work at all, or are now extremely ( laughably ) limited subsets of what I was using before.
Here's hoping that Sonic manages to get the ability to get unblocked circuits, fixed IP addresses, and a better CPE device from ATT before my 12 months is up.
Thanks,
James "Zeke" Dehnert
--
mailto:jdehnert@gmail.com James "Zeke" Dehnert
-= Eschew Obfuscation =-
"Life is racing. Everything else is just waiting"
The 10 and 172.16 address spaces are what I use at work. We use the 10 space globally, and the 176.16 space shows up in our labs along with the 10 space.
