My review of Flip

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › My review of Flip

ageorge

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#196740 10-Jun-2016 21:01

3 Months ago I left Vodafone after a six month ordeal of them getting my billing wrong in their favour every time.

Now with Flip and I must say that apart from ONE BIG ISSUE they are far and away the best ISP I have ever had.

They actually seem to care for their customers and my ADSL speed is up from 10 to 12 Mbs even the uploads are a bit faster.

Billing has not been an issue with plenty of feedback as to what they are actually going to charge you - they are a complete reversal of Vodafone in that respect. Only Flip debits your credit card, whereas Vodafone bill you.
I'd prefer Flip have online billing allowing bank d/c but thats a minor niggle.

The problem I have and it wont get sorted is that they use CGNAT so your sharing an IP address with others. The downside is that the IP address changes as often as every 10 seconds. Normally this would not be an issue, but if you deal with sites like I do as a web developer, its a problem; some websites continually monitor the incoming IP to check its same and if it changes you get logged out.The only method to sort it is by using a static VPN, as Flip have told me they cannot (or will not) do anything about it.

If you are in the market for general household internet use I'd recommend Flip.

Regards,

Alistair.

FLIP 4 STAR RATING OUT OF 5 * * * * (a 5 if CGNAT was changed)

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#1576581 19-Jun-2016 15:19

I've been with Flip for 3 months and have found them excellent. $50/month for 40 Gb (rolled over), phone line, plus 60 minutes calls to national/mobiles (also rolled over). I thought my $70/month (now $78) from NOW was good, but this is just can't be beaten. Thank you Mr Hoogerbrug.
I have my payments direct debited from my bank account, not credit card.

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1588871 9-Jul-2016 15:56

Today arose to no internet, no phone.

Yesterday we had massive flooding and some soil subsidance. Our neighbours had internet and phone and after doing the usual resetting and disconnecting devices decided it was time to call Flip for help. Fully expecting the need for Chorus to come and sort out damaged cables.

Flip support starts at 10am and finishes 7pm which is fine.

Got answered immediately by support staff after 10am. The support gal took quite a while to figure that although there was no connection that there was a fault in the exchange which effected only some people in the locality. She advised it should be fixed by later today, but if not I could call back for an update at 5:30pm which did not really instill a great deal of confidence.

Good news was internet/phone was restored by around 3pm, so bottom line is that support is good and wait time for operator was excellent. Just try getting Telecom or Vodafone to answer promptly when the chips are down. My Mother is with Spark and I was amazed how poor their service was when she needed help and I happened to be there to assist. Very slow response, not returning calls when promised and so on.

BTW my other problem with Flip of their constant changing of IP is no longer an issue (for me) as my Web host service kindly removed the polling for IP address in their security checks so that I no longer get logged off. However, it will be an issue for some folks so be aware of that before joining Flip.

A happy camper!

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1647282 7-Oct-2016 13:30

Well today my opinion of Flip has taken an about flip!

Having hosting on several websites, suddenly Im finding that one of my websites was sending so much spam mail that no emails were getting through. The only method I could stop these hundreds of ongong spams was to backup and delete my whole website. At that point I could see where the spams were coming from and they originated from flip.co.nz and at similar time I could not access my website control panel and found that outside checkers were showing that my control panel was online, but I cant get it through flip!

EG my phone loads the control panel OK, but my desktop using flip isp wont.

After emailing and ringing them unfortunately their interest in the spam was nil, and lack of ability to get host was to blame the web hosting company.

If this changes, I will add a heads up here.

ubergeeknz

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Vocus

#1647290 7-Oct-2016 13:35

ageorge:

finding that one of my websites was sending so much spam mail that no emails were getting through. The only method I could stop these hundreds of ongong spams was to backup and delete my whole website. At that point I could see where the spams were coming from and they originated from flip.co.nz

Was it not your website sending the Spam? How does that relate to Flip?

xpd

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#1647303 7-Oct-2016 14:07

Were you able to run a test and access the webhost via another ISP ? Probably find that would fail as well. To me, sounds like Flip was running fine, it was your webhost having the issue.

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1647313 7-Oct-2016 14:21

Surely I am speaking English here: At that point I could see where the spams were coming from and they originated from flip.co.nz

The ISP sending the spams was flip I have no idea where or who they are coming from. Thats why I asked Flip to step in and would have expected them to have a modicum of interest in spam messages coming from their site.

Heres how it works: UNKNOWNSPAMMER->FLIP->MYSITE

If I switch MYSITE off and my only access to flip; my modem, the polls still keep coming from flip attempts to send spam. It is possible they are coming from anywhere, but regardless I need to know that Flip is actively checking their ports to see which port is directed to mine and sending spam. Not only is it killing my site, but its routing hundreds of mails to unwanted parties.

Regards,

Alistair

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ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#1647317 7-Oct-2016 14:25

xpd:

Were you able to run a test and access the webhost via another ISP ? Probably find that would fail as well. To me, sounds like Flip was running fine, it was your webhost having the issue.

Im now able to access my webhosting service/cpanel. Not sure what the problem there was but my previous post here re the spam still applies.

richms

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#1647320 7-Oct-2016 14:26

So was someone in flip IP space trying to relay thru your server and hitting some limits on what you had purchased or something?

IME ISPs do not really care too much if their public end user address space is spamming, Some block port 25, others will not. In anycase they should be in the PBL list so your spam blocker should just drop the connection when it comes in as those IPs have no business directly sending to a recieving server.

Richard rich.ms

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1647333 7-Oct-2016 14:42

richms:

So was someone in flip IP space trying to relay thru your server and hitting some limits on what you had purchased or something?

IME ISPs do not really care too much if their public end user address space is spamming, Some block port 25, others will not. In anycase they should be in the PBL list so your spam blocker should just drop the connection when it comes in as those IPs have no business directly sending to a recieving server.

At last someone who knows what they are talking about!

Any idea what I can tell my Host provider to do to stop the crap coming through from Flip? Or does it have to be done at Flip end?

Thanks vm.

Al.

richms

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#1647335 7-Oct-2016 14:47

People trying to relay is normal for the internet. Usually they give up after a while and move onto another IP to try. Im not sure why this normal background chatter would affect you. There should be no mail relayed thru as it would be from a dynamic IP going to port 25.

The only other way I can see it would be an issue is if your server admin is an idiot (Already proven that by their issues dealing with IP changes) and have pop before SMTP authentication still enabled, which was a kluge back in the 90;s for broken mail software that didnt do smtp authentication. That would mean that anyone on the same IP that you have access the mail server from could relay thru it. If that is the case then the solution would be for them to not allow that.

Richard rich.ms

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1647347 7-Oct-2016 15:12

richms:

People trying to relay is normal for the internet. Usually they give up after a while and move onto another IP to try. Im not sure why this normal background chatter would affect you. There should be no mail relayed thru as it would be from a dynamic IP going to port 25.

The only other way I can see it would be an issue is if your server admin is an idiot (Already proven that by their issues dealing with IP changes) and have pop before SMTP authentication still enabled, which was a kluge back in the 90;s for broken mail software that didnt do smtp authentication. That would mean that anyone on the same IP that you have access the mail server from could relay thru it. If that is the case then the solution would be for them to not allow that.

But if you are using something like wordpress or standard PHP sendmail(); functions, then they use POP or not? What Im thinking is they may have the kludge effect left on for compatibility with these common scripts?

I know I can enable smtp in wordpress, but thats by using a wordpress addon.

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ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#1647351 7-Oct-2016 15:16

Here is a graphic which shows whats been going on as you can see the culprit is flip:

richms

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#1647370 7-Oct-2016 15:42

Unfortunatly you need to have accepted the mail to see the headers to see what IP the server got it from, which is something that flip would be able to look at.

That is coming from mta3 which would be their mail server, which is weird since flip didnt give out emails when I last checked so have no need to be running a customer facing mail server? I thought you were seeing flip customer IP's directly connecting to you and delivering.

In any case, its blocking the emails so its job is done. Incoming spoofed emails is part of the internet so I dont expect much to be done. This is the hazard of running your own mail server which is why I would never recommend it to anyone when google and microsoft provide so much better solutions.

Richard rich.ms

xpd

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#1647375 7-Oct-2016 15:58

I learnt the fun way about running own mail server and relay.... :D Soon as I saw the thousands of emails waiting to go out, I killed them and fixed the issue but my ISP had already blocked my IP........ got that sorted quick. :)

XPD / Gavin

LinkTree

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 53

#1647376 7-Oct-2016 15:58

richms:

In any case, its blocking the emails so its job is done. Incoming spoofed emails is part of the internet so I dont expect much to be done. This is the hazard of running your own mail server which is why I would never recommend it to anyone when google and microsoft provide so much better solutions.

Not job done; Ive deleted all files on my webhost for that account in the meantime till can find a better solution.

Not sure where to go from here.

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