
No more XS4ALL is unthinkable - lucgommans
http://lgms.nl/blog-12-plain
======
nothrabannosir
XS4ALL is much more than a competent ISP. It is the essence of the Hacker. The
founders are a mix between the EFF and RMS.

This 10yo interview with one of the founders (Rop Gonggrijp) is fantastic and
covers their fight against Scientology, lock picking, privacy, governments
using terrorism as a pretext for power grabs, etc. (in Dutch)

1
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CptNDlLKYxA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CptNDlLKYxA)

2
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9e4rlKIFW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9e4rlKIFW4)

3
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fJMnrT4u0k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fJMnrT4u0k)

4
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bek2Rrefwlw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bek2Rrefwlw)

End of an era.

(Anecdote of what I personally greatly admired: they used to run a hybrid SSH
server on their main website, "xs4all.nl", on port 80. the SSH protocol is a
"server-first" one, but HTTP is "client-first", so if you pause the SSH banner
for a few seconds, you can basically host both on the same port. this allowed
me to defeat many a draconian proxy back in the day; nobody would block a huge
ISP like xs4all.nl on port 80. Truly unique.)

~~~
gpvos
Notably, this hacker culture has become more diluted over time after the
takeover by KPN. But some of it is still there.

------
secure
A similar ISP, very much alive and kicking, is
[https://www.init7.net/en/](https://www.init7.net/en/) in Switzerland. In
particular, with their fiber7 brand (see
[https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/](https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/)),
they tick all the boxes mentioned in the article: no caps, fully symmetrical
gigabit fiber, ISP actively promoting and pushing net neutrality, ISP actively
engaged politically, very knowledgable support staff, etc.

~~~
pstadler
I've been a customer of Init7 for several years. They're amazing. Some more
boxes to tick:

    
    
      - Use your own hardware, no crappy ISP router required
      - They host a Netflix cache server, in contrast to ISPs actively limiting bandwidth
      - They launched https://mirror.init7.net/ after Switch announced they would stop running https://mirror.switch.ch/

~~~
lucb1e
I don't know what mirror switch is, but XS4ALL also has Netflix boxes. I
didn't actually realize that it might be a special thing: why not reduce your
transit traffic? But now that you mention it, yeah, murica.

And XS4ALL is also fine with you using your own hardware, but so are all
German ISPs by law so that's not super special.

~~~
pstadler
> [...]all German ISPs by law so that's not super special.

Wow, I didn't know that. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case in
Switzerland where almost all ISPs force you to use their crap.

~~~
lucb1e
It's also not rocket science to clone their MAC and do the authentication
afaik. But I've never had to do it so I'm not sure if it seems easier than it
is.

~~~
fps_doug
In Germany before that law, they made sure you wouldn't get the credentials to
roll your own. There were some tutorials around how to extract your PPPoE
credentials from certain cheap DSL routers, but many were fixed over time, so
if you really wanted to do it, you had to open the box and read the EEPROM by
external means. Cable modems always have a certificate baked in and were tied
to your account, so just cloning the MAC didn't help.

------
timvisee
Has been (and is) my ISP for more than 15 years. It's so sad to see it go, as
decided by KPN. Apparently XS4ALL workers new about this decision just 30
minutes before the public announcement.

It's also the ISP I definitely have the best support experience with, always
happy to help, even with personal projects. It's tragic to see a brand like
KPN (which is generally considered quite bad) kill XS4ALL which is generally
seen as a quality provider. KPN says nothing will change for existing
customers, but I don't believe in that.

Sadly the alternatives are very limited. In the area I currently live in I
seem to have two other choices, one of which is KPN. Neither come close to
what XS4ALL _was_. These alternatives don't properly support IPv6, they force
you to use some obscure and locked down router, etcetera.

I hope some hardcore XS4ALL workers will fork the company to set up a new ISP
to provide similar activities.

~~~
Fnoord
Ziggo (Liberty Global) gives a good bang for the buck if you look at the speed
you get versus what you pay for. They give either native IPv4 or native IPv6,
not dual stack. They're a big multinational with a rather terrible helpdesk
(compared to Xs4all; not compared to KPN I guess). I mean you could even phone
Xs4all's helpdesk and ask them basically any technical question you had. Ziggo
don't give Usenet access anymore. They don't give shell access. However you
can put their modem in bridge mode, and you don't have to play around with
VLANs because DVB-C gives you the TV signal.

------
skrebbel
I really hope this customer petition effort has some effect. It's been amazing
that their parent company KPN (for context: a run-of-the-mill huge telco)
effectively let them alone, do their own thing, for so long. XS4ALL truly has
been a force for good in the Netherlands.

I wonder whether numbers are related - admittedly when faced with the choice
for a new telco I ended up not choosing XS4ALL simply because they're more
expensive than other offerings. Maybe they just gradually shrunk, year after
year? That'd be an acceptable reason to shut down, despite how great the
company is on other dimensions.

~~~
dtech
It's a shame they were stuck with DSL for almost all of the Netherlands. Fiber
deployment is very limited and DSL has been inferior to cable for 10+ years.

I and most other tech-minded people I know switched to Ziggo (the largest/only
cable provider) because they could provide 5-10x faster internet at around the
same price. XS4All became even harder to justify than when it was just a
slightly more expensive DSL ISP.

~~~
ftth2ftth
Incidentally, KPN announced yesterday that they are starting a rollout to 1
million households for FTTH.

~~~
dtech
That sounds really nice, albeit 10 years too late. It's a shame XS4All won't
be around when/if I finally get access to fiber.

------
danieldk
I am an XS4ALL subscriber and this was very sad news. They are a great
provider with a great history.

Note that The Netherlands had another (tiny) provider with a similarly long
history and hacker ethic, DDS:

[https://dds.nl](https://dds.nl)

Ten years ago or so, I was a DDS subscriber. I once send an e-mail to support
and was answered by a technically competent sysadmin. If KPN destroys XS4ALL,
I might move to DDS again (if they offer fiber in my area).

~~~
vanderZwan
DDS as in "De Digitale Stad"? Dang, that's pretty old school too.

Who knows, maybe the XS4ALL staff _and_ customers can find refuge with DDS
then.

~~~
mcv
This makes me all nostalgic about those early internet days. DDS was a
fantastic idea. I'm surprised it still exists. Who owns it now? Can we all
support it into something like xs4all was?

~~~
danieldk
Apparently they have recently been acquired by TransIP.

~~~
vanderZwan
Is that good, bad, or neutral? I'm not familiar with TransIP

~~~
the-dude
I think they are very good ( I host with them ). Excellent support.

------
mcv
I haven't been with xs4all since their earliest days because I had internet
through my university back then, but I do know them from when they were still
called Hacktic Netwerk.

They're great. Their helpdesk is widely known to be the best. I've got my
digital TV through them, and when I called their helpdesk because it failed to
record an episode of Doctor Who, their helpdesk could point me to a website
where I could watch it legally. They're geeks like me. In fact, I've known
quite a number of people who work/worked there.

I'd be really sad to see them go, and I agree with the article: it sounds
unlikely that KPN will fight for digital rights the way XS4all has done.

Wait, what is this going to mean for my email address? I hope they'll keep
xs4all.nl email addresses active, or this is going to cause a lot of problems
for me.

------
Carpetsmoker
> I lived in Belgium for a while, a country that still has data caps on
> landline connections, and moved to Germany last year. I have not been able
> to find an ISP even remotely equivalent across three countries.

I had the same issue when I moved to the UK; no equivalent ISP that I could
find. Very disappointing :-(

The entire thing reminds me of the Laurus debacle[1]; KPN wants to be a
"consistent" brand, but in doing so they are alienating a small yet sizeable
and incredibly loyal customer base. I was an XS4ALL customer for almost 15
years: from the moment I got my first apartment until I left the country. I
never considered switching.

[1]: [https://www.npostart.nl/andere-
tijden/26-05-2018/VPWON_12836...](https://www.npostart.nl/andere-
tijden/26-05-2018/VPWON_1283688) (Dutch)

~~~
radicalbyte
Demon Internet were the closest thing to xs4all. They were the only ISP who
could provide me ADSL when I lived in the UK. Back the BT had marked our
entire new build housing estate as being too far from the exchange to get it
despite the fact that we had fibre up to the last 100 meters or so.

For five years I was the only person there who had ADSL.

In The Netherlands I've been a loyal customer of xs4all for 12 years now but
with this move I've signed up to Ziggo. Got to hit KPN where it hurts.

~~~
contravariant
I would follow you except I made the move the other way around to hit Ziggo
where it hurts.

~~~
radicalbyte
That's why I originally switched to xs4all, because chello were being dumb.

But with Ziggo offering 500/50 lines for the same price as xs4all's ADSL and
this move..

It's sad that we're going into the dark ages over the internet :(

~~~
Fnoord
ADSL2 is max 24 mbit. You probably mean VDSL2. If you can get fiber, Xs4all's
500/500 costs only 3,50 EUR more than Ziggo's 500/50\. VDSL2 is max 200/20 and
that package costs 58,50 EUR. Which is 4,50 EUR a month more expensive than
Ziggo's 200/20 which is 54 EUR. If you want TV the comparison becomes terrible
(for Xs4all) but the interactive TV is KPN's anyway.

------
ratel
I have been a customer with Xs4all since I think 1993. When the uni decided it
it might be a good idea to have at least some security policy on their
network. Nowadays it just is small stuff I keep around for
historical/sentimental reasons. It is to the credit of the good people at
Xs4all that they kept their relative independence for so long after being
bought. I won't be signing any petitions to keep the label. I would like the
experience of a knowledgeable, innovating and activist ISP back which has been
slowly deteriorating since the buy-out. I don't care about labels. Keeping the
label around for service that is going to be far less is actually not a
compliment. Like Ben and Jerry's made by Unilever.

So thanks for all the help, discussions and service. It was fun while it
lasted.

------
gpvos
_> It's not some locked down rebranded stuff like with most other ISPs, it's
the real deal: your router, you configure it how you want it._

Well, they did once force a Fritz!OS upgrade when I wasn't ready for it, even
though I disabled the option that allowed them to do that. So they did have a
kind of back door on that router at that time. Still a great deal though.

~~~
cm2187
Is it wise (security wise) to disable auto-updates on a network facing
equipment in these days and age?

~~~
gpvos
You have a point of course, but AVM doesn't only send security updates, but
also functionality was added and sometimes removed.

------
kornelis
Even though XS4ALL uses the KPN network, XS4ALL uses their own routers,
switches, data centers, and can offer better service and privacy. Not a mere
label, the brand XS4ALL. I chose to pay the somewhat higher price (set by KPN
by the way) for that service.

What I've noticed the past few days is that quite a few people who bemoan
XS4ALL going away, actually chose different providers to get lower prices.
Seems hypocritical to me, but also in line with what most people seem to
prioritize.

~~~
Fnoord
VDSL2 speeds are not up to par in every region, city, neighborhood, or even
building. If you can get decent VDSL2 speed and don't care for TV the
comparison with Ziggo is quite equal.

------
dreamcompiler
Wait, what?

> XS4ALL hosts the the European copy of the Internet Archive since 2004. When
> I was in their datacenter I saw the box (it has a nice Internet Archive
> label), but did not realize that it was a complete copy.

Is this still true? No way does the IA fit in "a box" today. A building maybe,
but not a box.

~~~
detaro
Even back in 2008, it was described as two racks worth of machines:
[https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080903/full/455016a.html](https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080903/full/455016a.html)

Still, not sure this still exists or what scope it has - I thought
establishing a full secondary mirror was something the IA wanted to have, but
didn't achieve yet.

------
vectorEQ
really tragic. they brought internet to the netherlands and they get put down
by some old phone company one who's network they started to pirate internet...
it's the only really good isp in the netherlands even though these days is
still only a fraction of their glory days. love xs4all, very good and nice
company and did a lot of important work for the internet not limited to only
the netherlands

~~~
Angostura
I feel rather the same about Demon Internet, one of the earliest UK ISPs which
started as a 'tenner a month club' back in 1992. Got sold off in 1998, has
been shuffled around various corporate owners until it ended up with Vodaphone
- who have just decided to finally kill it.

~~~
vectorEQ
i used to hear about Demon internet in the old counter-strike days :D shame
these smaller players get put down like that. A lot of these bigger ones like
kPN in our case believe that all will become just a small handful of big
corporations. so they try to buy up a lot of smaller players and then just
gradually kill them off to try and keep ahead of the other players.

------
joelhaasnoot
The other thing to realize is there is essentially two main players on the
Dutch Internet market: ADSL (over phone lines run by KPN but any ISP can
wholesale their services) and Cable (run mainly by a Ziggo/Vodafone). Cable
requires a TV subscription and ADSL requires an active phone line. Both
parties have invested in their network quite a bit and have triple/quad play
packages (integrating TV, Internet, Phone and Cell Phone).

I can in some way understand KPN needs to slim down their offering in order to
better compete with Ziggo, but this will likely bite them in the but. Another
brand Telfort is also being shuttered: it's their no-support, cheap brand.
Generally services sold under KPN's brand are one of the most expensive.

I have FTTH from XS4All. FTTH has unfortunately not been rolled out enough.
One of the advantage is I can take just the internet line and not have to pay
for a phone line or TV service I don't use. There's other ISPs that I could
choose from, but Xs4all have a good package, not outrageously expensive.

~~~
fooblat
I am also a happy XS4ALL FTTH customer. I am considering trying out
heldenvan.nu if KPN kills XS4ALL. Have you any experience with heldenvan.nu?

~~~
lucb1e
I had not heard of them yet, thanks for mentioning!

------
fmajid
I ran technical operations for one of their competitors circa 1999-2000 and
many of my employees were fan of theirs...

------
newfriend
I used to play Quake 1 on an xs4all server I found on Qspy from the US. Have
not heard that name since the mid 90s.

~~~
lucb1e
Yep, they also hosted game servers until ten years ago or so. Also IRC I
think, maybe still do.

~~~
yqt
They have nodes in EFnet and QuakeNet and had one in IRCnet back in the day.

Doesn't strike me as odd, here in Spain most major ISPs had a stake in the
national IRC network, back when latency mattered and IRC was a selling point.

------
yqt
How weasily-worded:

>They were bought in '98 by the former state-owned KPN

As if they couldn't avoid it. The owners of XS4ALL sold the business to KPN.
They knew what KPN was going to do with it (dismantle all the "cool" stuff)
and didn't care, they just wanted their cash.

~~~
apexalpha
No they just couldn't survive on their own, too small, too niche.

~~~
joelhaasnoot
But that's partly because KPN is a monolithic monopolist. It's hard when you
can't get good rates on anything...

------
thijsvandien
As recent as yesterday I still saw an XS4ALL commercial on national
television. It doesn't make much sense to keep investing in a brand that will
soon cease to exist, but perhaps the campaign was planned already before the
sudden decision came in.

------
mrolla
I feel like this was doomed to happen sooner or later, but I wonder if this
happening now has anything to do with the new KPN CEO being appointed last
April.

------
LittlePeter
I have a not so good experience with them. They cut off our internet during
Christmas because allegedly our Windows XP computer was part of a botnet.

To me it looked like overzealous, self-righteous Internet policing, but OK.

I do not remember if they warned us that they will cut it off, perhaps they
did.

Proving that the computer was reinstalled and virus free proved to be quite
tedious. In the end I ended up cancelling them.

~~~
protomikron
> They cut off our internet during Christmas because allegedly our Windows XP
> computer was part of a botnet.

But isn't that the right step to do? From the ISPs point of view they had an
intruder into their network, so they have to deal with it somehow.

~~~
krageon
It is emphatically the right thing to do, but if you're an unknowing user it
is surely also very inconvenient to be booted off.

~~~
Tepix
Well, being DDoSed by a botnet is also awfully inconvenient.

------
matonias
I recently moved away from them since it was much more expensive. I now joined
T-Mobile (€40/month for 750mb/s) but they deliver their Wi-Fi with a Huwawei
router. A free spy device from China! When I wanted to change it, I found out
they do not support customers with different routers. What the ____.

~~~
consp
They are required by law since 12 December 2016 (actually earlier but it is
most definite since then). There is however a (continuing) consulting period
for ACM rules to clarify and synchronize the rules for all connection types
which has not been concluded and offers them a 'way out'.

Though, if you have a SFP module you should be able to acquire the login
details (through some googling, or [https://community.t-mobile.nl/t-mobile-
thuis-algemeen-490/gl...](https://community.t-mobile.nl/t-mobile-thuis-
algemeen-490/glasvezel-huawei-hg659-vervangen-door-je-eigen-router-305727))
and place the module in any SFP capable device of your choosing.

~~~
matonias
Thanks for the tips, currenlty playing with a Fritz!Box 5490. Let's see how
far we can get :)

It sucks however for non-techies that this option is hard to recreate at home.

------
rocqua
In my last move, I had to switch away from xs4all. I always was happy to use
them. The ability to open all ports, an essentially static ipv4 address, and
even full control over reverse-DNS.

I was sad to leave them, I'm even sadder they are shutting down.

------
jillesvangurp
Ah too bad, I used them back in 2000 for my first DSL connection. At the time
they were one of the first providers offering this.

------
rkagerer
Wow, just wow. I would like to buy some of your magic ISP beans please and
plant them here in North America.

------
roffel
Going to miss their expertise.

------
timwaagh
now i'll get to laugh at my dad for being with kpn of all things. and i will
no longer have to listen to his arrogant bs about xs4all. praise the lord.

~~~
treve
I hope your relationship improves!

~~~
timwaagh
my relationship with him is quite good actually. I just thought it funny.

------
nopacience
Plus they run an public IRC server on EFNET IIRC

------
walterbell
SpaceX is launching global broadband LEO satellite internet over the next few
years. They are developing their own silicon to reduce supply chain issues.
Hopefully they bring real competition to the last mile globally, both on
policy and price. Target latency is 35ms.

[https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/05/space...](https://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2017/05/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-will-launch-thousands-of-broadband-
satellites/)

~~~
stingraycharles
The "last mile" is not as much a problem over here in The Netherlands than it
is in the US. It's more that Xs4all was one of our first ISPs, always on the
forefront of freedom of speech (fighting tooth and nail against a court order
to block TPB or dragnet-like intelligence monitoring by our gov), highly
competent and overall a very well-known name.

~~~
mcv
Exactly. I don't mind paying a bit more to support an ISP that fights for our
rights and those of others, and gives us access to the full power of the
internet. Maybe KPN will continue the latter, but it's hard to imagine them
doing the former. I mean, if KPN does fight on the forefront of internet
freedom, that would be absolutely fantastic, of course. But it doesn't sound
like them.

