Don't touch Orange with a barge pole!

Ok, my internet ISP is orange.net.

Here is a list of what I cannot do with my Mobile Office Card at the moment, and haven’t been able to do off and on for the last three weeks.

• Send emails from my gmail account (I can receive them and read them)
• Post my blogs
• Send my order to Tesco online
• Use Ebay
• Use hotmail
• Enjoy a game of hearts in MSN Gamezone
• Connect to MSN
• Make posts on my favourite forum
• Connect to any secure sites (https)
• Connect to orange.net (haha)
• Upload files to my server via FTP (I can download them!)
• Use my optimisation software
• Get updated web pages (cached ones are served to me, I have to put a ? after the web addy to force a new page all the time

After numerous phone calls to Orange, they admit they have a network problem at the moment, and are trying to resolve it, and they have kept me sweet by offering me a large credit on my next bill…. but that is not what I want! 

Discussing this with friend Ron, says he..

“If I were orange I would be looking at the configuration of the network routers; 512 Bytes is about the smallest payload in a packet - it is a power of 2 ( 2^8 ) which makes it suspicious....

I also think that there may well be a number of 'transparent' proxies in the system - which cache the web without telling you... this can cause all sorts of problems with connections to secure websites.”

Above was in response to me showing Ron this chap’s blog… also having the same problems..

“I also need to make big updates to two of my websites. But this Orange Datacard problem means that the FTP won't work on files larger than 512 bytes. It's this fact that makes me think it's something Orange are doing wrong rather than just a reception problem. If the amount a connection can upload is limited to 512 bytes then FTP will fail and also viewing Yahoo emails will fail because the Yahoo cookie is 800+ bytes.”

I also have a dial-up connection that I can use, and have done so to do any or all of the above when needby.  It has become very frustrating keep swapping sim cards and connections, along with the fact, my tariff restricts me in that I can only use dial-up at certain times .

So if you are thinking of using Orange.net for a data connection DON’T at the moment is all I can say.