Jeez, what a crappy setup/set of rules they have in that building 😕

@quickymart

Yeah, it's <sarc style="sarcasm-type: obvious">delightful, truly. Apparently, living in a low income apartment building means that you are, of course, completely non-technical and absolutely don't have SPARC servers from 1994, Dell 1U servers running Solaris, 40TB NASes, no absolutely not, you have no even remotely advanced networking needs *whatsoever*. </sarc>

@cyril7

We're hardly going to portforward anything like that, it's all on our local network. We were more pointing out that to even be able to connect those things at all to the apartment-provided wifi would be (A) pointless and (B) impossible.

ThatPrettyFreya:

 

@quickymart

 

Yeah, it's <sarc style="sarcasm-type: obvious">delightful, truly. Apparently, living in a low income apartment building means that you are, of course, completely non-technical and absolutely don't have SPARC servers from 1994, Dell 1U servers running Solaris, 40TB NASes, no absolutely not, you have no even remotely advanced networking needs *whatsoever*. </sarc>

 

I'd assume most people on a low income would be really happy to have (well priced) internet included in the rent.  My low income neighbours in the mid 2010s were really happy to get slow mesh wifi (double NAT) from me for free!  These days, if you need a public IP (let alone a static!), you're an outlier.  Many mass market broadband products won't cater to your needs.  The vast majority of people aren't techies.

And the vast majority of landlords aren't, either.  I have a housing-investor friend who provides discounted internet, through who knows how many layers of NAT, to his tenants.  They love it.  Mostly because of the discounted bit.

@deadlyllama

Well that's horrifying sounding, you got even some of our more non-technical Headmates to be like "oh hell no!" So well done, there. Yeah, this entire building is... very not technical. We tried to explain that the RFID badges they're using could highly likely be cloned with less than ZERO effort, nothing doing, they did not want to know. Asked if we could put a screenreader on the entirely inaccessible touchscreen intercom they have in the apartment, nothing doing, they had no idea what we were talking about. Ended up just giving up on getting anything out of them.

How did you get on with Full Flavour?

ThatPrettyFreya:

 

@SomeoneSomewhere

 

Nope, no copper in this building, already asked. It's "apartment building policy" that residents are not authorised to get their own internet connections. Go figure.

 

Policy doesn't trump law. Did you send them the fancy 'let me install fibre' letter? Did they send an actual legible response complying with the RTA? I wouldn't put it past them sending a handwritten note just to spite you, but...

I'd be happy to pop by and solder a few headers or cables onto the router PCB for you, but I don't think I've got any 1.8V serial gear. I'd consider 'experimental software' something of a last resort, though. I wonder if you can cross-flash it with a retail image instead of a locked down One image?

Perhaps also consider writing to your MP (Greens Tamatha Paul, so should be reasonably sympathetic) saying that you believe your landlord is required to allow you to get fibre installed, but they are refusing and want you to use their horrifically overpriced internet. Don't mention the option of 5G.

And again, contact My Full Flavour. 

@SomeoneSomewhere
Tried a retail 1.2.x(?) image from TP-Link UK, nope, nothing doing, errored out. Would very much appreciate a serial port being put onto this, but hnah we have no 1.8v serial gear either. We would gladly run the experimental software, even if to just throw the thing into bridge mode. We have a perfectly functional UniFi Dream Router that we would want to use but....... double nat. Damn, we just need another 5G *modem*, don't we?

As for the law and getting UFB.... we haven't even looked into it. We've been so out of spoons the past few months dealing with trying to get our gf out of Alaska. Same with fullflavour, we looked at their site and they seem to be pretty solidly rural focused

ThatPrettyFreya:

 

Same with fullflavour, we looked at their site and they seem to be pretty solidly rural focused

 

Given that you have rather specific requirements, I would suggest contacting them directly instead of just looking at their website - if I understand Tim correctly they may have something that could be a bit more suitable. Reason I say that is there are lots of rural-focused RSP's that also offer urban service. Worth a try.

@quickymart

ah, copy. that makes sense. One NZ's gonna slap us with one hella ETF is we do that though, ouch.

Well I guess you have to decide what's more important to you then - although (as someone else mentioned earlier) if they told you their service would do what you wanted and you say it doesn't you may have grounds to cancel based on it not being fit-for-purpose. However, I wasn't party to the conversation you had with Vodafone/One so can't definitively say if this would be the case.

I would suggest making contact with Full Flavour first to see if they can do what you want before you start looking at cancelling anything, though.

ThatPrettyFreya:

 

Same with fullflavour, we looked at their site and they seem to be pretty solidly rural focused

 

I'd have a chat to them. We've recently become able to sell One NZ FWA/Rural and we have both TAC locked and non-TAC locked SIMs. I'm assuming most providers will be the same. Now whether they'll sell it to you for "do whatever you want with it" use, is another thing, I know for sure we won't be giving out non-TAC locked SIMs without having them in a managed router (just not a Huawei or a TP-Link).

@CamH

What managed routers do yall supply generally?

ThatPrettyFreya:

 

@CamH

 

What managed routers do yall supply generally?

 

Generally, Cradlepoint or Mikrotik - have done some testing with Teltonika as well.