Is a fixed IP address standard, or does it come with a monthly charge? Not sure I need, or could justify, 900 Mbps, and their 500 package costs >20% than Zen.
I’m currently seeking clarification on out-of-contract pricing, as I’m fed up of haggling and switching services every year or so. I’m happy to pay more for good service.
Static IPv4 and IPv6 IP addresses are standard.
I agree they’re not the cheapest. However, their customer service is UK based and, in my experience, it has been first rate.
Having dealt with VM’s lacklustre off-shored call centre service for years, iDNET has been a breath of fresh air.
I believe the fixed IP address (IPv4) and IPv6 prefix is standard on the IDNet FTTP packages hosted on Openreach or CityFibre. On the Openreach network, their pricing is similar to that of Zen
If you are in a CityFibre area you may be able to get a cheaper service:
£40/m for a symetrical 900Mbps up and down service compared to £55/m for the 900/115 service on Openreach - but they don’t offer a 500mbps service on CityFibre. Unfortunately, that is not available in my area 
IDNet also get good reviews at ISPreview Top 10 (Top right panel). In fact, if you look at the Zen internet reviews, their services seems to have degraded of late.
I’m in a CityFibre area, and these are the prices I’ve seen (£33 + VAT pcm). That’s the same price as Zen.
It’s a shame that they don’t offer a 500 package; my earlier comparison was for their Openreach FTTP package.
I’ll call their customer services team tomorrow to get a feel for their service.
I’ve just requested an upgrade to the Fibre 1600 service. It’s a few pounds less than the out-of-contract price I was paying for the Gbit service.
Edit
iDNET has confirmed my appointment in a couple of weeks’ time for an engineer to come out and swap out the existing 1GbE ONT for a 2.5 GbE ethernet capable unit to support the higher speed.
Already have the uprated 2.5/10 GbE SFP+ module installed in the UDM-Pro.
A comparison from thinkbroadband:
Not much between IDNet and Zen.
I’ve checked other companies that use CityFibre, but the costs are either low with abysmal service and reliability, or very high. No One looked promising, but recent reviews are dire, and I then discovered that TalkTalk bought them in March. Say no more.
I wonder if I could host my web server (VPS) at home with an FTTH 1000/1000 connection. What’s the latency like for these services?
There are two aspects to customer service - direct, technical and billing etc. from your ISP and indirect, where there’s a fault on the infrastructure.
For the former, iDNET has been superb IME. For the latter, you’re in the same wholesale provision boat as anyone else who provides ISP services over Cityfibre or Openreach infrastructure.
We had an outage last year for a couple of days. I contacted iDNET and they weren’t aware of any issues. Cityfibre also wasn’t aware of any issues. Two of my neighbours are on Cityfibre, one via TalkTalk, the other via Vodafone. They had also lost service. Once I passed that info back to iDNET, they relayed back to Cityfibre, who traced it to a fault in a fibre cabinet in the street around the corner.
Latency tests are pretty good here.
I ran some tests on my phone via Wi-Fi and they’re typically in the 10 - 20 ms range.
I ran some further tests via https://speed.cloudflare.com/ on my desktop PC in the Man Cave which is connected via two 10Gbps fibre hops to my Ubiquiti UDM-Pro:
Performance isn’t too shabby at all.
Really narks me I have the choice of one provider. I know other streets around my area seem to have evaded the VM monopoly.
The ‘unloaded latency’ and ‘Latency during download’ appear to be comparable to my 500/73 BT Openreach connection (Maybe very slightly faster).
The ‘Latency during upload’, however, is much better. This is mine:
So, in answer to @mjw’s question about suitability for a home hosted server, I would say that the CityFibre hosted connection would appear to be as good as you are going to get.
What app/ webpage is that your using to measure latency?
You may fare better with another Openreach provider. Sky is one of the better companies, with UK-based support. Certainly, the best company I’ve dealt with recently. TalkTalk and Virgin were the worst by some distance. Now Broadband, who I currently use, is a rebadged Sky offering, and they are equally good.
What was the renewal offer for the 900? Was there a price hike, or the same as the published £40 pcm?
I think I’m leaning toward the 900 package from IDNet as it’s on a 12 month contract, and probably worth moving my website, which is proxied by Cloudflare, so it only serves dynamic content. This easily covers the additional cost of from the 160 to 900 package. It’ll also speed up my remote backups, and mean I can set up a reliable SSHFS connection.
At least I have the choice between the Openreach FTTP hosted ISPs and VM (on Docsis).
The VM Docsis services seem to be even more asymetric. I was on a 1000/100 service. At least with Openreach I can get 500/73 (as I am on currently) and 900/115 which are slightly better balanced - but still not good enough to run anything but the most lightweight internet facing server.
Also, as I alluded to in my earlier post, DOCSIS modems inject a severe latency so the VM service is definely second to the Openreach FTTP.
If CityFibre was avaialble in my area, I would definitely chosen one of the CityFibre hosted ISPs. Symetrical download/upload really appeals.
The one linked by @Graeme_Finlayson: http://speed.cloudflare.com
Our original contract was 18 months 1000/1000 for £51/month. Seems this is now £33.33 per month!
We came out of contract in May this year.
It seems the available offerings and pricing has changed since our contract commenced.
The new 1600/1000 service will be £47.50/month.
Excluding VAT. £40 per month inclusive of VAT.
Thanks, that’s all I need to know. They offer you the same deal as everyone else on contract. Of course, you are showing the price ex VAT.
Ah, I didn’t spot that. So our new service will be £57 VAT inclusive.
Still, for an 800 Mbps minimum guaranteed speed, I’m not complaining.
I wouldn’t either. In fact I’d probably bite their hand off in my eagerness - except, maybe, that it would mean that I would have to upgrade my ASUS RT-AX88U to an ASUS RT-BE88U in order to support the >1Gbps internet connection.
For its spec, the RT-BE88U isn’t badly priced at all. Future-proof too.
It cost me £39.99 to add a 1/2.5/10 GbE SFP+ to the UDM-Pro. I’m good for the future up to ~3.5 GB/s which is the router’s maximum throughout with IDS/IPS enabled.
Crazy to think that my very first cable broadband (Telewest) was 512 kbps. It was, however, an impressive upgrade over the maximum 56k dial-up of that time.
I cant they dont offer Fibre in my area its dominated by VM and no one else.
