Leaving Virgin (Part 2)

With the first part now over, I can let you know how things have gone so far.

We had an Openreach engineer attend our house and check the old BT phone line, which is probably over 20 years old.

The engineer advised that the line was still connected to the box, so there was no need for an a line installation. After a change the the fascia and face plate he was ready to check the box in the street.

I could see the engineer at the box, which is not too far from the house and after a short while the new phone line was activated.

As I had an extension from the Virgin phone line to where the BT line came into the house, I asked the engineer if he could reverse the extension so that it connected from the BT Openreach line to the old Virgin box. He did this but left the connection loose at the Virgin box as the Virgin line was still active.

As we had the Virgin broadband for a while I did not change over the Orbi WiFi at this point, leaving the connection to settle, with only my iPhone and MacBook connected for testing.

What we found, which matches my expectations, was that the Virgin phone line remained active for about a week. The Virgin phone line only received phone calls from people on Virgin, calls from mobile phones (including Virgin Media) and anyone not on Virgin (ie on BT openreach’s network) came through on the recently reactivated line.

Once the Virgin line went silent, it was a simple job to pull the Virgin connections out of the old phone socket and connect the two wires that the Openreach engineer advised. A quick test and everything worked fine. (To be honest I left some of the old Virgin wires connected originally, but some caused quality issues and others caused a double ring, so they were soon disconnected.)

After another week or so, it was time to move the Orbi over. This was simple when with Virgin Media allow their router to be put into “Modem” mode. However when on Vodafone you have to disable the router functionality of the Orbi and put it into “Access Point” mode.

Whilst I have lost the router functionality of the Orbi, the connection appears to be fine and using the inbuilt speed test shows that I am getting the speed expected (Upload 16-20Mb Download 70-76Mb).

So in summary, the move away from Virgin Media has been fairly easy and although the area I live in does not provide high speed internet access for the Openreach companies in order to compete with Virgin Media’s high speeds, the speed we are receiving is suitable for our needs (including Ring devices, Smart home devices, and streaming media device).

I think there may be some issues, but I think this may be due to Vodafone’s DNS setting. I previously used more reliable DNS instead of using Virgin Media’s default DNS, but with the router functionality disabled on the Orbi we don’t currently have that functionality. Something for another day.

Leaving Virgin

Just like many, after nearly two decades with Virgin Media (previously Telewest), I have decided to leave.

A recent communication about price increases, along with recent service outages (and failure to upgrade their older equipment) was enough for me to decide that I was not getting the service I expected for what I was paying.

I have posted before about some of my past experiences with Virgin Media but when comparing what they offer to their competitors, it’s clear that they are falling behind on all fronts except speed (which I expect the rollout of Fibre to the Premises [FTTP] will allow the rest of the market to catch up).

When we first started with Virgin Media (then Telewest / NTL) they were far ahead of the competition, with fast speeds, TV and a land line phone. Since then, broadband speeds provided by their competitors have caught up and streaming services offer a better choice of TV programs. Even Virgin’s nearest competitor (Sky) have been moving from Satellite broadcasting to streaming services (Now TV) and appear to be refocusing on pure streaming services. Even when it comes to storing TV shows, We have been stuck on the old TIVO service and to upgrade would be an additional charge, where as a quick look on RicherSounds you will find PVR devices that will record any of the freeview channels whilst providing better functionality (and space) that the old TIVO box.

When I started looking into what other broadband providers were offering, I could get “up to” 74 Mb (guaranteed minimum of 55Mb) upload (Virgin’s basic is 50MB) and an upload of 18Mb, which is higher that Virgin’s pitiful 10Mb.

When you compare pricing:

Virgin offered Broadband & phone for £35 (absolutely lowest price they could offer us, discounted from £50), New customers can get the same package for far less (£27).

Vodafone offered Broadband & phone for only £20. (better deals may be available now)

Comparing the above Vodafone and Virgin pricing, that’s an annual saving of £180 and with most savings interest still extremely low (under 1%) and Fuel prices expected to almost double soon, this money will be sorely needed.

Some providers (Vodafone) may also provide a 4G backup dongle to plug into your router (Sound familiar?). This vacan act as a fallback in case there are issues with the normal broadband, so you are never without internet (except if you have a power cut and don’t have a UPS or mains Battery system). There is an up charge for this, but it is something that they offer, because they understand that more and more people are reliant on their Broadband, unlike Virgin Media.

I am excited to see what this change will bring. I have a slight worry that I may have made the wrong decision, but it is easier to move Broadband provider again once we are back on an Openreach service rather than being stuck on Virgin.

I’ll keep you updated with the process, the changes and challenges that come with such a big change.

Which port in a storm?

I’m sure I’m not the only IT support person that has got frustrated when they move into a new role or location and find that the coms cabinets are a mess, with patch leads of various colours and lengths randomly patched into the nearby switches.

I recently found myself in this situation (again) and without valid documentation.

As is usual for such an organisation, I was not provided with any networking tools beyond a simple “pairs tester” and the possibility of getting hold of a Fluke or NetAlly (previously NetScout) handheld network tool was highly unlikely.

So, as I do, I thought “there must be a way to get the switch port details for a ‘known working’ connection. After all the network tools must get their data from somewhere!”

A quick search online (mostly looking at the Cisco Discovery Protocol [CDP] or Link Layer Discovery Protocol [LLDP]) brought up a lot of interesting possibilities, most relied on having CLI access to the switches or relied on *nix.

Before I go further, I want to acknowledge one of the most interesting pieces of kit, that I have seen relating to this issue, which would definitely help any IT people out there with networking issues…. “Pockethernet”.

Pockethernet is a small (pocket size) network tester and analyser that comes with it’s own wiremap/Loopback adapter and it only costs €249 (possibly less in some countries)

Connecting Pockethernet to your ethernet cable will advise on not only the port details (VLAN, Port, Speed etc), but it can also test the cable (using the adapter) for faults, breaks etc and all this data (and More…) is made available via your mobile device.

But let’s get back to the issue at hand…. What I needed was a way to get the Switch Port details from any Windows PC, without having to buy anything (I could only buy from certain suppliers, who put big markups on anything specialist like network test equipment).

The solution came from a piece of software from Chris Hall called “LDWin” (available on github).

LDWin is a tool Chris created using my old IT support hackers goto tool “AutoIt” and the freeware tool tcpdump.

If you want to understand how it works he has left the uncompiled AutoIt script on GitHub, which can be opened in your favourite text editor.

The basics of the tool are that you copy the program and files to a folder on a Windows PC, run the software, which opens to a basic Graphical User Interface. You select the network device you want to use (eg the wired ethernet) and let it do it’s thing.

In the background TCPDump is looking for packets that the switch sends (CDP or LLDP) advising which port is in use. [there’s a lot of factors that can stop this working, but that’s for you to look into 😉 ].

After 60 second (or less) the GUI should show details of the port in use and some basic information [including Switch Name, Port, VLAN(s), Switch IP, port Duplex, switch model and VTP domain].

For IT support people who can’t get hold of a Fluke / NetAlly / Pockethernet or similar, this small software tool is a brilliant workaround to a common issue.

(Let’s just hope it doesn’t get flagged as PUA or Malicios software by those overbearing Anti-virus/security scanners).

I hope this helps someone in a similar situation.