Choosing your internet service provider

You can quite often read the question "Which is the best internet provider in the area?" on social media groups.

After living a few years in Nuevo Vallarta progress knocked on the doors of our area in form of an alternative internet service provider in the spring of 2021. In the past we didn't have any choice, really. Well, the only choice was if we want internet, or not. All underground lines were in the hands of Telmex until then. Unfortunately these were old copper lines which allowed only ADSL internet service. In our particular case this meant maximum data transfer speeds of around 13Mbps down, and 0.6Mbps up.

By the end of 2020 the new kid on the block called Totalplay offered to our little neighborhood of 4 streets to put new fiber optics lines into the ground, and to install the connections into the residences, while offering new internet plans of up to 500Mbps speed.

Of course the majority of neighbors were happy to finally get hooked up to more performance and possibilities due to the higher transfer speed.

Sounds great so far, doesn't it?

After a few days of using the new service I noticed the downfalls of Totalplay.

Totalplay, just as most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) requires their own modem/router to be used which would pass all traffic through a gateway that made sure that the user has an active subscription to the service. That's not unusual. However Totalplay goes 2 steps further.

1. They do active DNS hijacking.
   This means all outgoing traffic from your home to the internet will be routed to their own DNS (domain name server). So basically subscribers lose the ability to pick their own DNS server because Totalplay will enforce that all traffic from your home will hit their own DNS server.
   Why is this important to know?
   Well, internet used to stand for the freedom to use the world wide web in the way your prefer. Sometimes this requires to use a DNS of your choice. This could be to access particular services, to navigate around stupid country restrictions, or just to use DNS masking services to protect your own privacy. Gone with Totalplay. No more picking a DNS of your choice.
   Clever home network users would now say "hey, if they hijack the traffic to their own DNS, I'll set up my own router". Read on.
2. They restrict their own modem/router and block setup options.
   This is unfortunately another big deal. As I mentioned above you can't replace the Totalplay modem/router since it constantly checks if you have an active service subscription. That's very normal with pretty much all ISPs. But Totalplay even blocks some of the modem setup options, so even though you can access the modem's BIOS (setup), they have the most important options blocked. One of those options is to put the entire router into a bridge mode. Bridge mode would mean to disable important functions (like DNS settings), assuming that you connect your own router and let this one handle these functions. In practice it means yes, you can add your own router, but your own router will only take care of your home wifi network. All outgoing traffic will still go through the Totalplay router with its own settings applied, where they again force you to hit their DNS servers.
   I've contacted the Totalplay support 4 times in order to request unblocking my Totalplay router remotely. Every time they told me that they will need to assign a static IP address to my particular router, but that they don't have any IP addresses available. Well, after weeks of waiting, and wasting hours in the support chat I eventually gave up.
   

Please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to bash Totalplay. I'm very happy to finally have a performant internet connection. And if you have no idea what DNS, VPS, or IP adresses are, all of this won't be a concern to you. But if you're a home network geek, an advanced internet user, or a professional who depends on certain networking routes to connect to a company server or to coworkers, then this article should be interesting and concerning to you. Especially when you get into the situation of making the right choice between available internet services.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article I used to be a Telmex ADSL customer before Totalplay came around. Telmex didn't have the restrictions I described with their own modems. It was no problem to choose a DNS, or to put the entire router into bridge mode. Unfortunately Telmex doesn't have fiber optics lines in our area, and I'm not willing to go back to 13Mbps down and 0.6Mbps up speed.
However in other areas you might actually have a variety of good and performant choices.

Feel free to drop a comment about your own experiences below.