Search the Community

Hi, As part of my home network project I am looking to setup Exchange at home using SBS 2011 on a separate AD domain which will host (ideally) all of the mailboxes for my domain. I own the rights for my domain name, and have it hosted with NameCheap. However, my IP at home is Dynamic and hosted with Virgin Media. I have heard about using Smart Hosts and various other ways of getting this to work with DDNS etc, but I haven't managed to get it to work. Is anyone able to help me with setting this up? My ideal goal is to have SBS running Exchange to host emails, with my own domain and for me to be able to send emails to other people (presumably via a Smart Host) with no fuss. I have all the ports SBS requires opened on the firewall, so it's not a port block error. Virgin Media doesn't block port 25 also, so no issue there. Hope you can help? Whistler.

im stumped (and not sure if this has already been mentioned) we are looking at renewing out broadband package and are a little confused my some mentioned packages we're looking at 2 main companies...BT and Virgin both offer 50Mb superfast broadband (FTTP) and 100Mb Fibre Fibre is being priced at CONSIDERABLY more for the setup cost( Superfast - ~£1500...Fibre - ~£3000) could someone enlighten me to the difference if BOTH are going to the premises??? also another confusing matter...BT is charging ~£8000 setup for Fibre vs Virgin's ~£3000 setup any feedback will be appreciated

Hi everyone, Wondering if anyone here would be able to give me a few pointers on what exactly I'd need to achieve what I want here?! Long story short is we're moving from Virgin Media to Sky. Virgin Media had installed the Coaxial for the (not so..) 'SuperHub' into the Loft, where we have our main TiVo box also. With the move to Sky, we're wanting all equipment to be moved into the Garage where my existing 'HomeLab' equipment is. However, all of the Ethernet drops to all Rooms are terminated in the Loft, and therefore we're not going to move that. We currently have a UniFi 16-port Gigabit Switch installed which deals with all of this (in addition to our Main UniFi AP). I'd like to connect the Core Switch (from the Garage) to the Loft. I am wondering if you'd recommend Fibre or Ethernet for this (given it's being used in a Home). The cable would have to be external, and would have a run of about 50 metres. With regards to throughput, Gigabit would be fine at the minute; however in terms of future proofing the ability to have 10 Gigabit to the Core would be, somewhat beneficial (for bragging rights only! ). Evidently if I was to run a Cat 6a line between both, that would be able to 'handle' 10 Gigabit fine, however was unsure as to if any of you would recommend fiber for this use? I'm aware the current UniFi 16-port Switch doesn't support SFP+ currently, but having the physical wiring in place may help eventually should I choose to upgrade to the 48-port model when I see one at a good price. I'm not at home all of the time, and the reason I keep referencing UniFi is that my Parents are able to manage it given it's 'dumb' interface (i.e learning UniFi is bespoke in itself and doesn't require a large amount of knowledge to get working). Would be interested to hear everyone's thoughts! Cheers. Tom

Hi All has anyone else noticed a shift in how LGFL support works ? previously when an outage happens the LGFL team jump on it straight away, they do their checks ie check if there is an outage in the area check if they can connect to the router or the firewall or any of the equipment update me with their findings and let me know if they need anything from me onsite, ie to check the lights or to restart the hardware, they usually message me and call my number nowadays and specifically the last few months they don't bother and refuse to check anything on their end without me telling them first which lights are doing what on the equipment, I mean surely there is some checks they can do and they did in the past before even getting to the stage of which lights are which... I've had better ISP support from talk talk.... anyone else or is it just my imagination :/

Most Birmingham schools have probably seen this already. For those that haven't........ "Virgin Media have advised us that with effect from 20 June, they will be increasing the price of their Centrex telephony lines from £5 per month to £9.50 per month. There is no justification for this price increase and despite many years of customer loyalty, Virgin Media are unwilling to negotiate to improve this offer. To counter this unwelcome news, Link2ICT are now accelerating deployment of a fully cloud based VoIP telephony solution which will provide schools with a far cheaper alternative that includes all call charges. This will be available during the autumn term." We don't subscribe to Link2ICT's services but do have their Virgin phone lines (non VOIP). So for us, line rental has doubled. Anyone mind posting what you're paying for your VOIP service, and how much bandwidth its using up. I'm reading its around 1mbps per 10 concurrent calls. Doubtful that its worth it for us as we've got less than 20 phone lines. We do however have a 50mbps leased line which is plenty.

i have a sagem router which i got from sky, im now on virgin, the internet has been activated but the sky router won't work, how do i make it work with virgin? Virgin have told me it can be done but won't tell me how, Please help thanks.

Our BT broadband via Synetrix will soon be replace by Vigin as part of LGFL2. Virgin will be laying their own fibre. So when cut over, we will have a 'spare' broadband fibre courtesy of BT. I can either leave it in the ground or potentially use it for broadband resilience? Would imagine that this would not be cheap but given the importance of broadband to be forever up might be worth considering. Any thoughts welcome. Steve

Bonus Daughter #2 mainly works from home for a large finance firm, who mandate Cisco AnyConnect. Unfortunately this doesn't play ball with VM. Although it should be their IT getting this sorted, this has been going on for months so I thought I'd see if anyone here had any idea fixes. It seems as if during the working day, things are incredibly slow (4Mbps slow), but it's fine in the evenings. This would suggest something the firm's end if it weren't for the fact that it only seems to affect VM users. BD2 spoke to a VM engineer in the UK(!) who said they use Cisco themselves without problems, which would seem to rule out traffic shaping (though the engineers may get business lines?). I've tried the various internet fixes apart from modem mode/a different router as the (Cisco/Linksys!) router I had to test wouldn't seem to allow connection to the internet when the VM Hub was in modem mode. (Didn't have enough time to fully investigate). Any ideas, peeps?

Hi all, Our Virgin leased line is down this morning. Anyone else got this ? We're North Birmingham. Their helpdesk say they don't know the fault yet and have no ETA for a fix !!!!!!!!