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tiresias
SMARTY Maverick
Joined 2 years ago
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Re: FTP is broken
Just to conclude this thread - it may be helpful to others in the future... Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately Zen.co.uk don't support sFTP, so I can't tell whether that would have worked better. I also wasn't keen to start using a VPN, so I don't know whether that would have helped either. Smarty seems to be great if you just need general web and email traffic, but there is something about their network (perhaps just the constantly changing IP addresses) that messes up secure FTP and makes logging into cpanel accounts a non-starter. Three always worked great with FTP and cpanel, so I have just started a new contract with Three again, and, as expected, it work great now. So regrettably I am terminating my Smarty account - it's a pity but its just unusable for me.1.8KViews0likes0CommentsRe: FTP is broken
Sorry, my misunderstanding. I thought I'd try SFTP, so I tried to log into my web site's cpanel so that I could set up a SFTP login, only to find it displaying numerous error messages about invalid logins and "Your IP address has changed". I could do very little in cpanel before it bounced me straight back to the login screen with the error message. I checked with my web site provider and they checked their logs - it seems Smarty is changing my IP address every 1-30 minutes during the same internet session, and it is triggereing cpanel's security checks and throwing me out. After a bit of a struggle I managed to get through to someone on smarty's chat facility who could only say that "Smarty uses dynamic IP addresses". My (perhaps incorrect) understanding about dynamic IP addresses is that you are assigned an arbitrary IP address when you first connect to the ISP (presumably when the router is switched on) but that IP address stays with you the whole time until the connection is broken (the router is switched off). What Smarty seems to be doing is changing the user's IP address every 1-30 minutes. Is that the way CG-NAT is supposed to work? You mentioned that Three is the only UK mobile network which don't use CG-NAT - does that mean that cpanel is likely to reject connections from EVERY mobile network except Three?2.1KViews0likes2CommentsRe: FTP is broken
Thanks for the reply. I tried active and passive settings - no difference. Changing to unencrypted/insecure FTP is definately not acceptable as all the traffic including the login password is sent in plain text. I don't think it's to do with IP address translation. The errors are intermittent. You may have 2 or 3 directory listings suceeding, then suddenly 1 or 2 fail with the errors mentioned above. If it was a problem with address translation I would expect it to always fail, but the fact that it succeeds maybe 50% of the time suggests something more buggy. I initially contacted Zen (my web host company) and they said the problem "was at the TLS/SSL layer". Looks like I'll have to contact Smarty. Really disappointed, as everthing else has gone so smoothly. If it isn't fixed I'll probably have to leave. 😞2.1KViews0likes4CommentsFTP is broken
I have a new Smarty sim to replace my Three sim. The Three sim is still in its notice period, so I can do easy comparisons for the next couple of weeks. All seems OK with Smarty so far, except for 1 thing which is driving me NUTS. I update the pages on my web site via FTP (TLS) and it has worked flawlessly with the Three sim for many years. But now using Smarty, my usual FTP program Filezilla (and WinSCP) keeps failing to list the files on my web server, and when I try to upload new files (e.g. new HTML files) I usually get error messages, and often the uploaded HTML file ends up being zero-length which is disasterous for a web page. Here are the error messages produced by Filezilla: Command: PWD Response: 257 "/public_html/cgi-bin" is your current location Command: PASV Response: 227 Entering Passive Mode (82,71,205,12,123,47) Command: MLSD Error: GnuTLS error -110: The TLS connection was non-properly terminated. Status: Server did not properly shut down TLS connection Error: Transfer connection interrupted: ECONNABORTED - Connection aborted Error: Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity Error: Failed to retrieve directory listing Status: Disconnected from server Status: Resolving address of www.mysite.co.uk Status: Connecting to 82.71.205.12:21... also... Command: STOR download.htm Error: GnuTLS error -110: The TLS connection was non-properly terminated. Status: Server did not properly shut down TLS connection Error: Connection timed out after 20 seconds of inactivity Error: File transfer failed Status: Disconnected from server I have switched back to using the Three SIM for now which still works fine and does not produce any errors, so the problem is obviously being caused by Smarty. A web search can't find anything definite, but it MIGHT be being caused by something monitoring the secure TLS traffic and messimg up the packets. So maybe Smarty are doing something to the packets on their servers that is breaking secure FTP. It's pretty much unusable at present. :((( Has anyone else enountered this and knows what the remedy is?Solved2.1KViews0likes6CommentsAdding a Uswitch deal to a Smarty group
I joined Smarty with a new sim which is working great so far. But now I want to transfer my main phone number to Smarty aswell. I'd like to have both new and transferred under the same email address, and I understand the way to do this is set up a Group and add the transferring phone number to the group as a "nickname". I'm assuming that when using the "new sim" method it will prompt me for the PAC to transfer-in my main phone number. However, there's a rather good deal for Smarty on USWITCH which I'd like to use for my transferring phone number. When I use the "new sim" method to add it to the group, will it allow me to select the USWITCH deal, or am I stuck with selecting only the deals on the main Smarty site?784Views0likes1CommentSpend cap (like Three's) ?
I'm new to Smarty having moved from Three. Three have a monthly Spend Cap setting, described here: https://www.three.co.uk/support/bills-and-contracts/your-monthly-plan-and-usage/spend-caps which I had set to zero pounds. It gave me the peace of mind that my monthly bills would never be more than the standard price, and there would be no bill shocks. Is there a similar setting in Smarty?Solved2.8KViews1like3Comments