Changing ISP from Synetrix

[Ultra_Charge]

Has anybody done this yet, so so fed up with all the issues we keep getting with Synetrix and have finally had enough, we host our own email, but website and internet with synetrix still.

 

soo has anybody changed from synetrix?

 

If so:

• Who did you go with?
  
• Did you experience any problems?
  
• How much time did it take?
  
• Has it cost the school a lot of money?
  

 

would be really interested to hear peoples opinions on this, especially after reading some of the other threads about synetrix.

[Edu-IT]

Do you also have your own filtering solution?

[Ultra_Charge]

we do indeed, host it all onsite.

[tom_newton]

Did someone say... filtering? As far as I know, most of our customers in Synetrixy areas have just replaced the filter, not the ISP bit. If I hear any different, I will let you know!

[GrumbleDook]

For our non-school educational sites that are not on EMBC (and a few that are) we are now sticking smoothwall on some old boxes as a test solution. Some of the lines are BT (other providers are available) and others are council lines.

 

But these are quite different to some of our schools. I still push schools to stick with EMBC / Synetrix and work with the LA to sort out problems. What is your LA's take on the problems?

[Ultra_Charge]

thanks for all the replys, we have been trying to get along with synetrix now for quite some time, but keep comming up against the exact same problems, but in a different disguise, the latest is the inability to send emails to certain other ISP's because Synetrix is so poor at filtering spam, many of their locations are now being used as Spam Relay points. this has puth them on a black list which some ISP's use. normally it wouldnt be a big deal however one of our Governors are using an ISP which has blocked Synetrix. Synetrix have so far no solution to the issue and predict this to take a very long time to solve.

which is just what i needed to hear.

[tom_newton]

You could route mail out of an external smarthost if that's your "only" (I say that advisedly ) issue with remaining on synetrix. Would cost a few $ to host, but not prohibitive.

[GrumbleDook]

Good practice on RBCs would be to block port 25 apart from their mail relay / filters so trying to use another smarthost is not likely to work.

[Abaddon]

thanks for all the replys, we have been trying to get along with synetrix now for quite some time, but keep comming up against the exact same problems, but in a different disguise, the latest is the inability to send emails to certain other ISP's because Synetrix is so poor at filtering spam, many of their locations are now being used as Spam Relay points. this has puth them on a black list which some ISP's use. normally it wouldnt be a big deal however one of our Governors are using an ISP which has blocked Synetrix. Synetrix have so far no solution to the issue and predict this to take a very long time to solve.

which is just what i needed to hear.

 

 

We are currently having the EXACT same problem with mail from school to a governor.. Synetrix blame the other ISP, the other ISP say it's not their problem...

[john]

Good practice on RBCs would be to block port 25 apart from their mail relay / filters so trying to use another smarthost is not likely to work.

Its all well and good them doing that but when there mail systems are junk and loose mail, take 2 days to deliver emails with logs to prove said delays, make examination paperwork arrive the day after the kids sat the exam (AQA do all stuff via E-mail now thus we get the sticker every morning via e-mail, well should!) and they cannot find it but know its going missing it means schools loose vital communications

 

No amount of complaining and asking them to fix the problems makes any difference (ask the guys at Smoothwall about our 6 month long issues with the upstream proxys loosing data.....)

 

I wonder how many users I can get sat on my ADSL with static IP using the email at home meaning I can cut them out of my email systems forever (yes Tony that "lovely" webmail you saw at BETT is going, 5 weeks and counting!)

[GrumbleDook]

@John

 

Just trying to point out that if someone is looking at sticking with an ISP then it is not just the filtering that might need tweaking. And yes ... I can see why there are issues with the email.

[tom_newton]

I would hope opening 25 to a specified smarthost might be easier than fixing a totally shot mail system

[GrumbleDook]

Some RBCs will not do this at all. The idea is that all mail in and out of the WAN *has* to go via the provided relay / filter. It removes the chance of mass-mailing trojans sending stuff out, it reduces the spam getting into schools, means that certain language is prevented from reaching kids ...

 

The down side is that should something be black-listed then it is a pain to sort and it affects a large group of people. Some ISPs are a tad lax with updating their blacklists and will not accept that some hosts have been sorted.

[tom_newton]

In fairness, *most* RBLs are complete tosh thes days largely because spam doesn't tend to come from open relays any more - rather it comes from botnets

[Ultra_Charge]

We are currently having the EXACT same problem with mail from school to a governor.. Synetrix blame the other ISP, the other ISP say it's not their problem...

 

Yeah, we discovered that synetrix is infact black listed as previously stated, it took us a long time for them to admit that they are actually at fault here.

[Ultra_Charge]

Thanks for all the reply’s on this, however although email is a large issue, it is not the only issue and therefore the reason why we are now looking to move.

we've also experienced issues with our web hosting and our internet feed provided by Synetrix.

we have actually gone through all the points stated above with opening and closing port 25 etc.

With port 25 open, we actually became blocked to AOL, MSN and Google, which was far worse as synetrix refuse to set up their server DNS correctly resulting in our external IP not resolving with certain vendors. a very large headache as you can imagine, everything set up correctly with FQDN on our 2007 Exchange, but blocked emails all over the place.

we also experience web page down time without prior notice, this is incredibly annoying, plus internet down time without prior notice. as a result we were not impressed.

 

we need someone more reliable and more professional to support our needs, especially in an emergency.

Edited March 9, 2010 by Ultra_Charge

[nicholab]

Easynet?

[gonzodad]

Hi ultra_charge

 

First up, i do work for Synetrix !

I ‘ve lurked around edugeek for a long time, but never felt the need to post, however i can see you’re obviously really with our service and wanted to try and help out, not by suggesting another ISP as per the thread title, but with the more immediate problems of the mail blacklisting.

 

Agree with Tom @ smoothwall that blacklists are not the most effective way, unfortunately a lot of mail providers typically used by parents (those that are free......) do still use blacklists and it’s a constant job to try and stay off them. There are many advantages to having a grid wide mail filtering setup; however one of the flipsides is that it only takes an issue at one school to trigger the blacklists. Typically this can be genuine and innocent reasons – we’ve been blacklisted before from a valid DL used within a school (also footers and signatures). Correct reasons do occur such as open relays etc, but the invalid reasons far out strip the valid ones nowadays.

 

I’m sorry if it’s taken a while to explain things and the messages you’ve got from us haven’t been clear – I’ve checked and we are currently being blacklisted by a couple of rbl , we know what’s triggered it in this instance and hope to get ‘whitelisted’ soon (although we are at the hands of organisations who don’t offer service levels or guarantees on turnaround to be ‘whitelisted’). There are more targeted things we can do, but I would need to know who you are – I think looking at your location and our call logs etc I know, but if you want to pm me I can see if we can get you sorted asap.

 

cheers

[jheynder]

Having real issues with Synetrix today. Gonzodad, I hope you can reply to my pm to you...

 

Thanks!

[gonzodad]

Jim - responded to your pm. Ill see what i can do.

[jheynder]

Jim - responded to your pm. Ill see what i can do.

 

Perhaps due to your efforts, we're looking in the clear now. All services appear to be up, and I'll send an all fac/staff text message in 30 minutes if all holds.

 

Thanks for your help-- I will definitely buy you pints at the Holly Bush if you are ever near Hampstead.

 

Jim H

 

(feeling much relieved...)

[Edu-IT]

Perhaps due to your efforts, we're looking in the clear now. All services appear to be up, and I'll send an all fac/staff text message in 30 minutes if all holds.

 

Thanks for your help-- I will definitely buy you pints at the Holly Bush if you are ever near Hampstead.

 

Jim H

 

(feeling much relieved...)

That must be costly for you? Curious as to why you have to send an SMS to all staff to tell them the internet is back.

[gonzodad]

np Jim, happy to help - you should of had a call to confirm everything ok? TBH the engineers were already working on it, the planned works got a little complicated due to a BT outage, hence the over-run of the maintenance window.

[jheynder]

That must be costly for you? Curious as to why you have to send an SMS to all staff to tell them the internet is back.

 

Not costly-- we have a rarely used Groupcall account with an annual quota of use them or lose them text messages, and it was a good excuse to test the system and and use up some of the annual quota. (We didn't have any snow days this year, for example.)

 

Since I had texted the fac/staff earlier in the day, and promised to text again when the issue was resolved, I bought in to doing two texts (including the all clear). We had a lot of faculty trying to access our services yesterday, and the first text message was to hold off and focus on something else. The second was to "come on back.."

 

Overall, it was an example of why we have Groupcall. We have text messaging as part of our on campus student information system, but it doesn't work when we're cut off from the Internet and our mail relays.

Edited March 14, 2010 by jheynder

[jheynder]

np Jim, happy to help - you should of had a call to confirm everything ok? TBH the engineers were already working on it, the planned works got a little complicated due to a BT outage, hence the over-run of the maintenance window.

 

Thanks again-- I did receive a call last night to see if all was fine. We were back in the clear about six p.m., and it did sound like the work at Camden became more complicated than expected.