So a month ago I signed up for the new Qwest 40Mbps/20Mbps DSL service when it became available in my area. It's based on VDSL2 instead of the older ADSL service Qwest has been selling since the 90s in the metro. Basically they run fiber to the little box at the end of the alley and your line distance is from your DSL modem to that box, whereas ADSL it's your DSL modem to the phone company local office. The speed is great, but unfortunately it's still run by the most incompetent phone company ever.
I said I'd give it a month. Installation was cake, they reconnected the line out on the pole and re-ran a few feet of phone wire and we were in business, the full 40Mbps/20Mbps connection. The junction box is about 150ft from my house so that helps a ton. The first thing my inner-geek demands is that I bridge the modem and have my D-Link DIR-825 do the PPPoE signon. That way there is only one NAT, I can setup my IPv6 tunnel, and fiddle with port forwarding and whatever other crazy network stuff I feel like without their Zyxel Q100 getting in the way.
So then comes problem #1. After 10/15/20 hours my connection speed plummets to around 5Mbps down, and 5-1Mbps up. No idea why. No errors on the DLink. Nothing. When I disconnect & reconnect PPPoE on the D-Link the speed comes back (and the IP address changes). But I'm not seeing a speed drop when the Zyxel Q100 does the PPPoE connection - it stays at full speed no matter what I throw at it.
That leads to problem #2. With the Zyxel doing PPPoE I have to DMZ everything back to the Dlink and I end up with a double NAT. I hate, *hate* double NATs. My whole frustrating experience with BHI was mostly due to dealing with IPsec VPNs failing across double NATs. You're trying to do some fancy encapsulated networking (VPN), encrypting it (IPsec), then rewriting each packet (NAT 1) and then doing it again (NAT 2) and if any of those parts hiccup or miss a beat the whole thing stops working.
This is also a big part of why the net over the cellular network still sucks too. The cellphone companies have very few real IPv4 addresses and end up single/double/triple NATing all their phones. Not so bad if you're only pulling down a web page or an email, but it makes 2-way connectivity with your phone a nightmare. Everything has to be done client/server (not device-to-device) where your phone talks out to a real server on the net and the server has to juggle everything and push data back to your phone, relying on your phone to keep the connection alive. Something like Qik where a phone should be connecting directly to another phone instead has to go all the way out to some server on the net first and then back down to the receiver.
Problem #3 then steps in. You can't setup a 6in4 IPv6 tunnel over a double NAT. It's temperamental as hell and runs into a lot of the same problems a regular VPN (it is basically a VPN) has with jumping double NATs. That's if the tunnel provider (tunnelbroker.net in this case) even lets you set it up, and they won't if you try to tell them your real IP is in private IP (192.168.x, etc) space.
Problem #4 is that Qwest support hasn't changed at all since I last tried them. I first asked about the speed issue and if they could check the PPPoE service, but the moment I mentioned bridged mode and my DLink the conversation ended with a 'it must be your router and it's unsupported'. It's a heavy duty router, and after skimming DLink's site I find that PPPoE with Qwest doesn't work for most people using DLink routers. But just Qwest - other ISPs doing PPPoE don't have a problem. Then again Qwest just switched to PPPoE a few years ago and prior to that they used PPPoA which nobody and nothing supported. Way to make your backend equipment standards based guys. For fun I also mentioned IPv6 and when they would have it available. I might as well asked in Greek. I think the lady thought I was talking about wireless on the DSL modem. Utter fail.
Problem #5 is I went to create my account on their website to pay my bill. Their website is so poorly done that when I could reach it (it's offline a lot for some reason) I could never create an account. I finally was able to get the 'right' code needed to create my account after a phone call, online chat, and another phone call. All to pay the bill online.
In the end Comcast may not be the fastest service but they're cheaper, they give me a real IP with DHCP, there's no NAT on their cable modem or network, they already are doing IPv6 trials, and their support people can be dicks but they're knowledgeable dicks. VDSL2 tech I believe is a huge improvement over ADSL, but in the end it's Qwest's decrepit backend services that make even shiny new tech look like shit. The phone company fails again.
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