Fluidata UK Business ISP Interview - Page 2 - UK ISPreview
Fluidata UK Business ISP Interview
By: Mark Jackson - October 17th, 2011 : Page 2 -of- 3
"We made the decision back in June that all customers taking service from us will receive both an IPv4 and IPv6 address blocks"

fluidata officefluidata uk3. The High Court of Justice in London recently ruled in favour of Rights Holders by forcing BT Retail to block a website (Newzbin2) that facilitated internet copyright infringement (piracy). Does your ISP take any measures to block/censor such website already and what are your thoughts about the issue in general; do you expect the outcome to affect your provider?

Fluidata (Piers Daniell):

Luckily at the moment we are still too small for this kind of legislation to directly impact us. However we have always been firm believers in using the internet for good and have always co-operated with the authorities should one of our customers be up to no good. But that is very rare as one our government is slow to respond and we are reactive rather than proactive to threats on the Internet and two our clients, being businesses, are self-regulating as most have a dedicated IT manager whose job it is to secure and ensure the business conducts its affairs on the Internet legally and morally.

That isn't to say we aren't against net neutrality, and probably have one of the most restriction free networks in the UK, just that to steal or abuse someone is illegal in any other form of our society and there is no reason it shouldn't be the same over the Internet. There is more ISPs can do to help but I think without clear direction on what is and isn't acceptable from government over and above the obvious it is very difficult to regulate, so you end up with the odd situations such as BT Retail having to block one site, when there are probably a dozen more doing the same thing and their users will just turn to those sites instead.

4. Current estimates predict that the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) for the UK and Europe (aka - RIPE NCC) will exhaust its last remaining IPv4 internet addresses during either March of February 2012. In your opinion, what will this mean for UK based internet providers; especially those that fail to adapt, and are you fully prepared for its replacement (IPv6)?

Fluidata (Piers Daniell):

We made the decision back in June that all customers taking service from us will receive both an IPv4 and IPv6 address blocks; configured by us onto their router. We are lucky in that the vast majority of our customers pay for more expensive Cisco hardware which fully supports IPv6 so it has been an easy thing to implement.

For us though at the moment very few customers actually use IPv6 because there is very little on the internet requiring it but it will change and more people will start to adopt it. In terms of connecting customers from a business perspective most want more than one IP address so it means having to fully justify the use.

We have never charged for IPs and have no plans to; we just make sure that any request is genuine. I don't think there is any ISP that will fail to adapt but what you may find is less consolidation or acquisitions of user bases if the purchase doesn't include IP addresses as it will be difficult to give customers service without them.

5. Fujitsu, Virgin Media and TalkTalk announced a new plan in 2011 to rollout an alternative open wholesale rural broadband/telephone network for 5 Million UK homes by using, at least in part, BT's own existing cable ducts and telegraph poles (PIA) infrastructure. What are your thoughts on this and do you think that the project will ever become a reality?

Fluidata (Piers Daniell):

I believe there are many different ways in which to achieve rural connectivity and what is a required is a mix of different solutions. The Virgin initiative is probably the best-publicised example but it is still looking to deliver a similar product to BT, which is fine, but not all locations are best served by FTTC style technologies. Some will require wireless, because of the geographies involved, but at least it keeps BT on their toes and the market competitive.

I do think however Virgin needs to ensure it doesn't get bogged down in using the issue of rural connectivity to force BTs hand in giving access to infrastructure, especially when they won't currently share in the same way. My understanding in what was proposed was for most of the BDUK money, which never was going to be a reality, so I hope it still sees the light of day with less government support.

6. The UK government is known to be considering an extension to its existing Data Retention (i.e. website and email access log) powers, which could potentially result in all UK ISPs being forced to log customer activity on social networking sites, multiplayer games and instant messaging services (the data would be used by the police and other authorities). Would your ISP be able to cope with such a requirement and is it viable or even ethical?

Fluidata (Piers Daniell):

In the same way is it ethical to bug phones or open people's post? But in reality the likelihood of this becoming a reality is, in my view, limited, not just because of the ethical question but more from a technical perspective. We are talking about serious amounts of processing power and storage to successfully capture this information. We have many gigabits across our network and we aren't serving millions of consumers.

We could put it in place if required but if would take a serious investment to maintain the speeds customers expect especially with dealing with business customers who routinely have over 100 Mb/s pipes and many hundreds of users behind each service. I believe at the moment the way of identifying a customer through the IP address they are using is sufficient as it is not the point of going though many millions of perfectly legitimate traffic just to find a little bit of bad traffic. And, anyway, once this becomes law people who want to break the law will just do that through a proxy or VPN which then defeats the whole object and investment.

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