OK, I didn't really know where this could fit, so I thought "General" might be a good idea.

For once I would like to report on the great efficiency of a company: Cablecom! I ordered online a package for telephone plus hi-speed internet a few weeks ago. Next day I had in my mailbox a letter from them saying they were happy I chose to subscribe bla bla bla... and the day after I had my brand new modem in my hands. True, my block of flats already has cable tv from them and true, on the instructions they said I had to connect the modem to the "radio" socket while I had to connect it to the "TV" one, but still I've never ever experienced something like this in my life!!!!

Just thought to share this positive experience with you.


Cheers.

Hi devcat - thanks for sharing that - it's nice to say some positive things once in a while!

I'm really glad that Cablecom are in the marketplace. My experiences have not always been positive. When it works it's great, but when it doesn't it can often be a circus trying to deal with them. I remember stories a few years back of people waiting 6-12 months for their cable internet to work properly!

I've been with them for a couple years and I appreciate the fact that they are always turning up the heat on the Swisscom-based ADSL monopoly in this country! I also appreciated the fact that their digital phone product was the first that allowed me to give my Swisscom fixed line the flick!

hispeed.ch - world famous for never dropping price but chucking bandwidth at us loyal users...

I too am happy to have left Swisscom. That'll learn 'em

Have to say that the product is great and I'm looking forward to the free upgrade to 3000 in June/July. No arguments there.

Just watch out for the minimum contract periods and notice periods for leaving them. Our old flatmate (Swiss) got burned quite badly when she tried to get out ending up with a bill for nearly 5 months of unused service. The customer service helpline (admin, not tech) was diabolical.

the contract is clear so I don't think she could have complaints....but they are draconian in their tie-in method.

Best way to get 1 days notice is leave the country. They don't seem to quibble then

... I should say before I add my piece, I am not a neutral, as I work for a telco here.

It is very difficult for anyoe to break the Swisscom monopoly
(1) they have bundles of cash to defend their position
(2) the swiss govermnet is a major shareholder, so they have defended Swisscom's position from a regulatory point of view. ie. All other telco's have to pay money to Swisscom when delivering phone calls, as they own the so called "last mile" - the cable going into the house.
(3) Because the Swiss Government are a major shareholder, the swiss people believe that they by giving their business to Swisscom, they are actually giving back to themselves - who can argue?

I should also say, that I do have a cablecom box, and it works very nicely. The one support issue I had was resolved very quickly. I have heard a few nightmares regarding thier support from others though, and indeed from every other provider....

I hope this spawns some interesting discussion )

having been here 11 years, I can say that the telco sector has "loosened up" but that last mile issue is still, erm, an issue.

They need something akin to what happened with Orange - I believe to prevent Orange putting a gazillion masts up for their service, Swisscom Mobile were forced to allow them space on their platform?

Is the last mile an issue with cablecom's digital phone service? It shouldn't be as they use VoIP over their cable connection and they are effectively bypassing all Swisscom's infrastructures. But maybe I'm wrong.

you're not

What is the difference between hispeed.ch and cablecom? I thought they are the same?

Are there any other alternatives to Swisscom, by not having a Swisscom fixed line?

Hispeed.ch is Cablecom branded broadband. They also own swissonline.ch, I think.

Bypassing the last mile is done like this:
1. have no phone
2. have cable internet with phone
3. have cable internet and use VoIP service

Has anyone on Cablecom noticed we are being constantly attacked?

At least I am, I have about 1100 attacks in a week, of which 75 are highly rated by Zonealarm. Mind you, translated to online time, this means I have about 10 high rated attacks an hour!

I also have someone scanning my ports several times a day. I have never had this in Australia, and I do not have it at all either on Sunrise in another kanton.

So my hypothesis it is somehow linked to Cablecom. What do you think?

Bear in mind that cable segments are shared, whereas ADSL connections are not. In network terms this means layer 2 is a shared bus topology with cable, whereas in ADSL it is a star, point-to-point topology. Don't worry if this makes no sense to you, it's not important.

But the main difference is that when you were on ADSL you probably had a router and ADSL modem in the same box. This router effectively hid all this scanning activity from your PC due to the nature of something called NAT (network address translation).

My guess is that you haven't bought a router for your cablecom setup, and your PC is sitting exposed on the internet due to the fact that it connects only through the cable modem (which doesn't run NAT).

My suggestion: go buy yourself a cheap router, then you can turn off the firewalls and stuff on your PC, and you won't see any scans.

As for not happening in Australia - trust me, it was! This sort of thing has nothing to with where you are located - the scanning comes mostly from compromised machines, and since there are idiots all over the world, there are compromised machines all over the world

You should see how many times this server gets hacks attempted on it! Some of them have been quite nasty - but it sits exposed on the internet, unlike a home PC.

I read somewhere that some (maybe most) ISP servers will "ping" you occasionally...

Aha that completely explains it. Thanks . I am behind a switch at the moment but will go hunting for a router, as three firewalls is a bit too much (I run Windows firewall, Zonealarm and Sygate together without any problem which is quite amazing in a way. Sygate is good if you want to share an internet connection in the absence of a hub, as Zonealarm does not allow this, at least it did not use to in the past).

And you are right, both in Australia and here at the other Swiss address we had an ADSL router.

This is quite a sexy beast if you have a cablecom connection:

http://www.toppreise.ch/prod_57540.html

It won't give you 100's of meters of range, but you probably don't need that. The price is also hard to beat! I have one. Once installed turn off all your firewalls, relegate Internet Explorer to somewhere where you'll never run it, make sure your emails are with an ISP that filter them for viruses and you are all set!

There are also routers available with VOIP ports if you want to go down that road.

Two questions:

1) Can one turn off the wireless if one does not want to use it?

About voip routers, I have never seen the point. Why not use pc based voip only? I can call most European countries and Switzerland for free, from pc to landlines from my PC using voipcheap.

2) Apart from the convenience of using your normal phone, why use a voip router??

1> Of course.
1a> PC-based voip isn't for everyone!
2> Well you might already be paying cablecom 20 francs per month for the same service, you can unplug the cable from the cablemodem and put it into the router for 1.50 per month. Great for extra lines like for a fax machine, teenage daughter etc. In the case of a small business it would allow dialing out, while keeping the mainline free for inbound calls. Totally independant from a PC. Travelling? Just shove the router in your suitcase and plug it in wherever you are - your phone goes with you.

When Cablecom's digital voice (which is just VOIP) first appeared it caused quite a stir - for the first time it gave people the choice to ditch their Swisscom line. Now that the VOIP providers have sprung up and routers are coming with voice ports it simply means that the choice extends further so you don't have to be tied to cablecom's voice service.

Another advantage is that you may want those voice ports to be hooked up to voip providers in other countries - giving you the ability to have inbound local calls from another country going directly to a real physical phone. But like I said - it's not for everybody.

my neighbour thinks it's great I've got an English phone number. He wants one too - or did until I told him that his family would have to call him internationally....

"it's not for everyone" said I. Not yet at least.

btw three firewalls....did things work correctly?!?!?
and I turn off logging at the firewall. No need to bother really.....perimeter is secure; no need to unleash the hounds

Ok, since you guys recommended it, I got myself a router/firewall. Works great, no more attacks. Great! Still will keep the three software firewalls though .