Of dogs, kitchens and suppliers.

Our consumer premises equipment (CPE) is going to be a new router from Mikrotik - the 951. Its a lovely piece of kit and ticks all our boxes. So basically we might have something on a consumer's roof, and we'll definitely have this 951 inside, replacing the consumers normal ADSL box.  

Its a tiny (physically) wee thing, but still manages to pack in a very good wifi signal as well as four or five consumer ethernet ports. And goes like the wind. 

Unfortunately, as its so new, we've had to wait a week or two for our initial supply of units to come in. Thankfully, they're here now, and being programmed up. 

This means that over this weekend, we're going to install our new central routing hub, bonded redundant connections, and the authorisation/accounting/access system. So expect a wee bit of downtime - we'll be in touch with our test consumers soon.

Dogs ? We found that in our primary backhaul site - the place where we get the internet - something (perhaps something furry!) had damaged a cable, and caused some downtime. And in one of our central redistribution premises, a new kitchen meant that the power was off for most of Monday. Not good news.  

We''ve now got an installation date for our new ADSL backhaul, and an UPS has been installed on the second site, so that should alleviate these issues. All part of our (steep) learning curve, I'm afraid, and its these sort of unforeseen circumstances that can really disrupt services. Thankfully, we're still in testing phase, so at least we've been able to work around these issues without too much disruption. 

We're still looking for a second uplink site in Montrose - so if you happen to have premises that can see Hillside from Montrose, and are far enough out of town that you are connected to the new Fibre cabinets there - we need to talk. 

Once that second backhaul site is in place and functioning - and that may take 2-3 weeks thanks to BT's slothlike installation period - we're ready to open the floodgates and go to phase 2 - live customer service. 

Thanks to everyone for their incredible patience whilst this has got off the ground.