
A UK ISP which is fighting against censorship - oakesm9
http://aa.net.uk/kb-broadband-realinternet.html
======
ZeroMinx
They're also XKCD/806 compliant!

[http://xkcd.com/806/](http://xkcd.com/806/)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrews_%26_Arnold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrews_%26_Arnold)

~~~
corobo
If they weren't so pricey I'd get their service for this alone

~~~
nagrom
They're really not all that pricey, I think - you're paying for an upgraded
service and bandwidth off-peak is cheap. If you don't want to pay for that
upgraded service (£10-20 per month?), it's probably not all that important to
you.

------
toyg
A&A are great, they've also fought tooth and nail against lame "Great
Firewall" projects and the three-strikes p2p aberration.

I really wanted to give them money, but they can't use the Virgin cable
network. My BT copper line goes over a far-west-style pole, because XIX-
century northern terraces weren't exactly built for telecom geeks, so ADSL is
no match for the underground early-1990s coax laid by NTL (now Virgin). When
I'll move somewhere with a decent copper link, I'll probably go with A&A
straight away; yes they are expensive, but it's not always about the bottom
line.

~~~
timthorn
You can ask them for an L2TP connection, using Virgin as a pure bearer to the
AA network and breaking out from there. Clearly any usage caps from Virgin
will still apply, but the IP provision will be from people who know what
they're doing.

~~~
mseebach
A variation of this that they could pick up and run with is to offer a VPN
solution so you can terminate your traffic at A&A regardless of who is the
better broadband provider in your area.

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betawolf33
I am a customer of this ISP, and I can recommend them.

They are much better set up for dealing with the technically-inclined customer
than mainstream providers.

~~~
timthorn
I know of no other ISP that designs routers from scratch - electronics &
software, including OS.

~~~
harrytuttle
They don't. They bought them all in.

~~~
timthorn
The Firebrick range is all custom dev. They'll sell you a commodity router
quite happily, but they're 50% responsible for Firebrick.

A presentation by their MD on the backstory:
[http://online.ipexpo.co.uk/Videos/Adrian-Kennard-presents-
Br...](http://online.ipexpo.co.uk/Videos/Adrian-Kennard-presents-Bricking-It)

~~~
harrytuttle
Ok didn't know that - thanks for the info!

------
alan_cx
Um could have this wrong, but as far as I am aware, most ISP are against this
filtering. This came up a few weeks ago, and they basically said no. This is
why now Camoron is banging on about threatening legislation to make them do
it.

That said, the ISPs objections are likely cost, rather than protecting
freedom. Much like Camoron, this is pandering and nanny stare, rather than
really caring about children. To him this is a tick box ticked which costs the
treasury nothing, he gets the ISPs to pay for his votes.

All quite seedy.

~~~
DanBC
Mobile providers already provide this filtering. I have to keep asking for
"Content Lock" (or somesuch) to be removed when I renew my 3g mobile broadband
dongle.

If that's all he wants it seems trivially easy to supply it. I'm gently
surprised the ISPs haven't already done so. That way they'd have a simple
example to point to when the government asks for more stuff. "Look, we already
did the filter, and it's hopeless, but it's what you asked for. Trust us on
this - what you're asking for can be done, but should not be done."

It's the classic example of clueless people asking the wrong question. "How
can I do $THIS?" "Well, you can do $THIS, but no-one in their right minds
would do this because it's stupid. You could do $THAT, and $OTHER, which is
better and covers most of what you want without so much stupid."
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working with UK Gov.

~~~
andygates
Giffgaff likewise default to "delicate sensibilities" mode. Of course, when I
tried to access a grown-up site, I assumed it was broken, raised it on the
forum. Trivial to resolve but IMO a bug not a feature.

~~~
jb17
Vodafone does that too. I found out when I was trying to look up a wine at
tesco.com and it was blocked.

------
TranceMan
They have already added the 'active choice' option:

Tell us which you would like:

* Unfiltered Internet access - no filtering of any content within the A&A network - you are responsible for any filtering in your own network

* Censored Internet access - restricted access to unpublished government mandated filter list - still cannot guarantee kids don't access porn

With the latter choice informing the user:

Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP. Our
services are all unfiltered.

[http://revk.www.me.uk/2013/07/active-
choice.html](http://revk.www.me.uk/2013/07/active-choice.html)

[https://order.aa.net.uk/h1order.cgi](https://order.aa.net.uk/h1order.cgi)

------
davidgerard
This is about right. The only ISPs in Britain which _do not fuck with your
connection_ are A&A and Zen. I'm with Zen, if I wasn't I'd be with A&A.

~~~
semanticist
That's definitely incorrect. ADSL24 don't apply filtering, and I imagine that
many of the small ISPs don't. There's no legal obligation for any ISP to apply
filtering.

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RossM
Definitely an interesting service. A bit of a shame that after repeatedly
encouraging the use of encryption, their site doesn't support HTTPS.

~~~
harrytuttle
Their content pages don't (they are entirely static) but their order form
stuff does, obviously.

HTTPS end to end isn't really worth it for some things.

~~~
cmircea
Not that it's particularly expensive either. A single domain cert can be found
for a few bucks, a wildcard for under 100.

~~~
nadaviv
Most of the cost for a high-traffic website is processing requests over SSL,
not the price of the cert.

~~~
cmircea
Really? SSL is dirt cheap to compute these days. Google saw a 1% increase in
CPU usage when they made SSL mandatory for Gmail.

[http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/2/10/dispelling-the-
new...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2011/2/10/dispelling-the-new-ssl-
myth.html)

[https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-
ssl.h...](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2010/06/25/overclocking-ssl.html)

~~~
hnha
it depends on the cipher and your software, I had tremendous trouble with some
free php forum stuff recently when it curled things with PFS.

~~~
cmircea
AES is implemented in hardware now. RSA is cheap to compute; SHA1 is not even
a factor. If you want forward secrecy, DON'T use DHE, use ECDHE; plain DHE is
expensive.

To be fair nearly all PHP forum software is crap.

------
andyking
They are also hideously expensive. I looked at them when I moved house a while
ago - but their pricing, for the transfer-capped service you get, is
extortionate.

And if all ISPs are to be legally obliged to "provide" this filtering, A&A
will not be an exception. So what are you paying the extra for - a few
platitudes on a web page?

~~~
blibble
they're only expensive if you're at home 9-5 during weekdays.

I never am so it's £20/month for about 100GB (and effectively unlimited
transfer in the early hours of the morning).

they now also offer a flat 50GB at anytime for £25/month.

you're paying extra for for native IPv6, beyond excellent service, an
excellent control panel with options most ISPs don't have, as many IP
addresses as you want (optionally PI), custom routing (want an AS for your
house?), ability to dual bond across different providers, ability to add 3g as
backup link, and much more...

they're truly excellent, here's an example of their customer service on IRC:

    
    
        1417.59| [bootc] ok, really long shot, but any staff tech around who fancy allocating me some more IPs?
        1418.27| [bootc] I already feel rather greedy but I'm using most of my IPs already :-/
        1423.30| [@AA-Paul] bootc: What login, and what size block?
        1424.14| [bootc] AA-Paul: abc1@a, and a /28 of legacy if possible?
        1424.21| [bootc] for @a.1
        1425.31| [bootc] I then need to re-number internally and expand my /27 sub-division of my /26 to the full /26 :-/
        1426.31| [@AA-Paul] bootc: Done. 1.2.3.4/28 will be routed to you when your router next logs in
        1426.57| [bootc] AA-Paul: many thanks, you're a star! have a great rest of your weekend
        1427.10| [@AA-Paul] No problem. You too :)
    
    

(no I don't work for them, but am an extremely happy customer)

~~~
harrytuttle
+1 for this. Another customer here.

Every time I call, the person on the other end knows their shit straight away.

They managed to un-screw-up my LLU phone service and broadband as well (screw
you Telefonica and OpenReach!!!)

They're really cheap for what you get. I pay £45/month for Home::1 which is
for me 150Gb + line rental.

O2 for the same was £37.50 dynamic IP and their support staff were fucking
muppets.

~~~
UVB-76
150GB/month usage?

I often push 150GB in a single night!

~~~
harrytuttle
That's just greed!

------
Nux
Wish there wore more ISPs like this in UK. Also I wish their offerings were
more in step with the times. :( Right now I get FTTC (80/20) from BT for £40,
unlimited and unthrottled[1]. I'd be willing to pay a bit more for a similar
service from AA.

[1] - whatever that means nowadays

------
andyhmltn
I would love to go with them! But sadly I live in a rural area that barely
gets 3mbps from the major companies so I doubt an independent would be able to
get even that :-(

~~~
timthorn
A&A uses lines from BT Openreach and TalkTalk Wholesale. They're great at
getting the most from a line - if you're getting 3mbps from a major, you're
likely to get as good or better with A&A.

~~~
ksrm
How do they do that?

~~~
timthorn
By not accepting poor performance from their suppliers, and by taking
advantage of the control available for things like the SNR margin:
[http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-trial.html](http://aaisp.net.uk/broadband-
trial.html)

------
chrisbridgett
Shut up and take my money!

~~~
therealrevk
Nice set of comments on this - scarily I think I have to say that someone is
not wrong on the internet ( [http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/) ) as
I think people have replied sensibly to concerns. We do try to do things right
at A&A. I know it costs a tad more, but I don't think it unreasonable for what
we office and we try to fit what people want (hence new Home::1 tariff, and so
on). See www.me.uk for more views.

