Slingshot

[SMOKEU]

I currently have TelstraClear cable broadband, but I managed to find a better deal with Slingshot who will do 100GB per month for $50 + another $10 since we have our phone line with Telstra and don't want to change the phone company. I called up Slingshot and they said there are no extra charges above that, and the broadband speed is as fast as the line will allow. Have any of you had any experience with Slingshot?

I live in a residential suburb of Christchurch, but I've never had ADSL at this address so I don't know how fast it will be since it depends on the wiring, distance from exchange etc. I'm not really worried about speed as much as ping, since I do a fair bit of FPS online gaming I need a low ping, which TelstraClear provides. I'm getting a ping of around 20-25ms to the ON3 BF3 servers at the moment, so do you think ADSL will increase that time by much compared to Telstra cable? I'm looking at this here http://www.slingshot.co.nz/internet

[Akzle]

WxC/ xnet is fastest terrestrial bb. FLS (sound liek what u'v got) and GB for GB best value (was 5 years back anyway)
plus there's no way in hell they're ever going to f*ck you for pirated content or "unreasonable bandwidth", unlikely to get rate capped, everyone at their call centres/tech support are stoners and usually playing COD at work. (but good at what they do).

singshot were dicks last time i was dealing with them, i wanted dial up, then they wanted to charge me 200$ for connection etc, i told them to GTFO, they sent me bills and reminders for about 3 months (without having actually provided any service)... after probably 5 emails from me telling them they hadn't actually done anything they could bill me for they stopped sending them. no appology, not "sorry our automated system blah blah".
a55holes.

i don't know whether i should add to my "pissed off with aucklanders" or start a new "pissed off with asians" - 3 stores today where the asian attendants have been rude or hardly spoken english, or given me the wrong damn thing, while nodding and saying yes yes yes [it's the right thing].
wtf. maybe i have to start buying stuff online =S (but i hate paying extra for RD >< ! cnutty!

for what it's worth, PB tech, CRTNZ and Advanced computers in penrose.

[ducatilover]

There are a lot of mixed opinions on Slingshot, I've been with them at 4 or 5 different addresses on differing plans and each time they've been great to me and the interwebz has always been fast enough for anything I can throw at it.

[iYRe]

Having worked in Slingshot's network operations (Callplus), I can attest to the quality of the network.

However, cable does have a better ping time.. its symmetrical bandwidth (the same up and down), where ADSL is not. Speed is dependant on upstream as well as downstream. Clog up the upstream pipe and your downstream will suffer..

For gaming, cable is rawk.

[marmel]

Do yourself a favour and head over to www.geekzone.co.nz.

There are sections dedicated to all the major players including the ones mentioned above.

Personally after being a member at geekzone for 5 years or so I wouldn't even consider xnet or slingshot, too many issues over the years with crap speeds which is often a lack of bandwidth.

The only three I would give my business are Telecom, Vodafone or Telstraclear cable if you can get it. I would also consider Snap if I was going to run with naked broadband.

[iYRe]

Do yourself a favour and head over to www.geekzone.co.nz (http://www.geekzone.co.nz).

There are sections dedicated to all the major players including the ones mentioned above.

Personally after being a member at geekzone for 5 years or so I wouldn't even consider xnet or slingshot, too many issues over the years with crap speeds which is often a lack of bandwidth.

The only three I would give my business are Telecom, Vodafone or Telstraclear cable if you can get it. I would also consider Snap if I was going to run with naked broadband.


haha, yeah geekzone.. where wannabe geeks try and tell the actual geeks what's broken in their own networks..

Slingshot has something like 50,000 ADSL customers (at least it did a couple of years ago.. probably more now). Probably 100 of them even have accounts on geekzone.. same goes for all the major ISP's.

I'd trust geekzone for actual intelligent comment like I'd trust KB for advice on, well.. pretty much anything. (geekzone is the ISP version of KB.. alot of what is said there about stuff is truly ignorant - actually network engineers who know their stuff avoid places like that like the plague..(mostly because they are busy making stuff work and not wasting their time talking to noobs)).

[SMOKEU]

TelstraClear is giving us 40GB a month for around $65, and 40GB is nowhere near enough. The service always has been excellent in the 5 or so years we've been with them, and I rung up Telstra today and said that Slingshot will give us over double the data cap for around $5 less per month, and I asked them to match it for the same or a similar price, but they said no. Fuck I hate data caps.

[MOTOXXX]

i use slingshot, dont expect the same quality of internet as telstra cable. their call centre is terrible to say the least.

its a cheap oversubscribed service. ive never had any massive issues but you get what you pay for.
i do love the plan im on - it doesnt exist any more. and can easily get a good 250gb of data down a month..

[tigertim20]

we have been with slingshot for ages. they do cheap internet, and when its workin, its good as gold.
however.
when something isnt going well, you're properly fucked. By far the worst customer service Ive ever had. on more than one occasion their incompetence has driven me to the point where Id have stabbed some cunt who worked for slingshot on sight - they are fucking awful.

If you can deal with that, they are good in all other areas

[iYRe]

Its weird, because I have been using slingshot (despite working there and leaving) since 2006, and in that time I have had 3 outages caused by slingshot.

Whilst working there in the early days we had huge problems with telecom's interconnections. We would quite often be reporting DSLAM outages to them long before they even knew about it..

9 times out of the 10, with the larger ISP's the issues are outside of their networks. They have so much inbuilt redundancy that a major customer effecting outage should be extremely rare.

(note, I also worked at telecom (14 yrs including working on the original ADSL project), ihug, and maxnet) so I do have some experience).

[bogan]

we have been with slingshot for ages. they do cheap internet, and when its workin, its good as gold.
however.
when something isnt going well, you're properly fucked. By far the worst customer service Ive ever had. on more than one occasion their incompetence has driven me to the point where Id have stabbed some cunt who worked for slingshot on sight - they are fucking awful.

If you can deal with that, they are good in all other areas

+1 to that.

The bonus is they do reimburse for downtime.
The downside is there is enough of it that it is worth getting a reimbursement :mad:

[SMOKEU]

Would a Slingshot customer please ping at least 1 of the following IP addresses and let me know the ping:

203.97.27.203

203.97.27.199

203.97.27.200

203.97.27.201

203.97.27.202

It would also be good to know what part of NZ you're in and if you're rural or not.

[Bald Eagle]

for comparison heres a telecom paraparaumu beach result

rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 33.264/33.987/36.381/0.732 ms

[Oblivion]

With all the experiences that Friends and family has had with slingshot, although, their plans are brilliant for massive internet usage households, like a few of their rivals, customer service was poor.

Had a friend who rang up slingshot to ask about why her internet was getting slower. The reply she got from them was "Not our problem". :brick:

Its good. Up until you have to deal with CS.

[iYRe]

PING 203.97.27.203 (203.97.27.203) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 203.97.27.203: icmp_seq=1 ttl=122 time=6.79 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.203: icmp_seq=2 ttl=122 time=7.71 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.203: icmp_seq=3 ttl=122 time=6.73 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.203: icmp_seq=4 ttl=122 time=7.47 ms

--- 203.97.27.203 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.739/7.179/7.714/0.426 ms



PING 203.97.27.199 (203.97.27.199) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 203.97.27.199: icmp_seq=1 ttl=122 time=7.20 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.199: icmp_seq=2 ttl=122 time=6.70 ms
^C
--- 203.97.27.199 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.703/6.955/7.208/0.265 ms


PING 203.97.27.200 (203.97.27.200) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 203.97.27.200: icmp_seq=1 ttl=122 time=7.11 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.200: icmp_seq=2 ttl=122 time=7.14 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.200: icmp_seq=3 ttl=122 time=7.30 ms
^C
--- 203.97.27.200 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2002ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 7.110/7.185/7.302/0.083 ms


PING 203.97.27.201 (203.97.27.201) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 203.97.27.201: icmp_seq=1 ttl=122 time=7.21 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.201: icmp_seq=2 ttl=122 time=6.72 ms
^C
--- 203.97.27.201 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1000ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.721/6.969/7.218/0.262 ms


PING 203.97.27.202 (203.97.27.202) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 203.97.27.202: icmp_seq=1 ttl=122 time=7.26 ms
64 bytes from 203.97.27.202: icmp_seq=2 ttl=122 time=6.73 ms
^C
--- 203.97.27.202 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 1001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 6.737/7.001/7.265/0.264 ms



I'm on slingshot naked (yes, I am wearing clothes)

[SMOKEU]

Thanks for pinging those IP addresses for me - they're for the TelstraClear BF3 servers that I play on. My ping is currently around 23ms on average for those servers, which is great for online gaming, but I wouldn't want it to be any more than 30ms for those servers. I sometimes play on the Aussie servers as well so a higher ping is to be expected, but if it's low on the NZ servers, then it shouldn't be too bad on Sydney based servers.

[iYRe]

Thanks for pinging those IP addresses for me - they're for the TelstraClear BF3 servers that I play on. My ping is currently around 23ms on average for those servers, which is great for online gaming, but I wouldn't want it to be any more than 30ms for those servers. I sometimes play on the Aussie servers as well so a higher ping is to be expected, but if it's low on the NZ servers, then it shouldn't be too bad on Sydney based servers.


so you can expect a 16ms improvement, approx.. then :P (mind you, I live next door to the cabinet too.. well.. 500m away.. I get max speed)

[SMOKEU]

so you can expect a 16ms improvement, approx.. then :P (mind you, I live next door to the cabinet too.. well.. 500m away.. I get max speed)

As a matter of interest, what are your download/upload speeds like?

[iYRe]

As a matter of interest, what are your download/upload speeds like?

Mine are fine. You cant torrent on slingshot though, they have cisco SCE's which cripple it nicely for you...

I have a server in europe, torrent to it, ftp it to home (FTP being a "legitimate" protocol, not restricted). I do something like 100GB of stuff a month between midnight and 8am (dont want to slow things down while actually using the connection).

Rarely have need to upload anything - do that at work If I need to.

[marmel]

haha, yeah geekzone.. where wannabe geeks try and tell the actual geeks what's broken in their own networks..

Slingshot has something like 50,000 ADSL customers (at least it did a couple of years ago.. probably more now). Probably 100 of them even have accounts on geekzone.. same goes for all the major ISP's.

I'd trust geekzone for actual intelligent comment like I'd trust KB for advice on, well.. pretty much anything. (geekzone is the ISP version of KB.. alot of what is said there about stuff is truly ignorant - actually network engineers who know their stuff avoid places like that like the plague..(mostly because they are busy making stuff work and not wasting their time talking to noobs)).

Maybe you should hang around geekzone a little more and you would realise there are a lot of IT engineers, including IT guys from the telcos that participate in the forums. There are plenty of guys that have worked in IT for years that are willing to lend advice.

With regards to the number of Slingshot users that post on Geekzone I can't tell you how many that would be. What I can tell you is that as a snapshot of NZ community the numbers on average participating on Geekzone are probably a good reflection of the percentages held by each telco in NZ.

I have had xnet as a broadband provider and if can spare 10 minutes see if you can find a thread on geekzone under the xnet section which details the appalling international speeds which went on for MONTHS and MONTHS. A lot of customers simply lost faith and found themselves gravitating back to one of the big 3.

There are also plenty of threads about the appalling customer service of Slingshot although I appreciate this isn't a strongpoint for a lot of telco providers.

There is a reason why Telecom and Vodafone hold such a large proportion of the NZ market, you may be able to save a little more elsewhere but generally it is like bikes and gear, you normally get what you pay for.

[SMOKEU]

Mine are fine. You cant torrent on slingshot though, they have cisco SCE's which cripple it nicely for you...

I have a server in europe, torrent to it, ftp it to home (FTP being a "legitimate" protocol, not restricted). I do something like 100GB of stuff a month between midnight and 8am (dont want to slow things down while actually using the connection).

Rarely have need to upload anything - do that at work If I need to.

Have you tried using a VPN with them?

[Nova.]

SMOKEU bro stay with telstra, probably the best ping you're going to get in nz atm without paying massive dollars.

[iYRe]

Have you tried using a VPN with them?

yep.. need to VPN to work all the time. (incidentally, Slingshot network staff and management need to vpn when working from home... :P)

[iYRe]

Maybe you should hang around geekzone a little more and you would realise there are a lot of IT engineers, including IT guys from the telcos that participate in the forums. There are plenty of guys that have worked in IT for years that are willing to lend advice.

With regards to the number of Slingshot users that post on Geekzone I can't tell you how many that would be. What I can tell you is that as a snapshot of NZ community the numbers on average participating on Geekzone are probably a good reflection of the percentages held by each telco in NZ.

I have had xnet as a broadband provider and if can spare 10 minutes see if you can find a thread on geekzone under the xnet section which details the appalling international speeds which went on for MONTHS and MONTHS. A lot of customers simply lost faith and found themselves gravitating back to one of the big 3.

There are also plenty of threads about the appalling customer service of Slingshot although I appreciate this isn't a strongpoint for a lot of telco providers.

There is a reason why Telecom and Vodafone hold such a large proportion of the NZ market, you may be able to save a little more elsewhere but generally it is like bikes and gear, you normally get what you pay for.

I'm sure its wonderful.

I meet a lot of people call themselves "IT engineers". The IT industry in NZ is very small and we pretty much all know each other..
(note, I am not an IT engineer...)

[imdying]

Slingshot... well, you can consistenly get at least 750GB a month from them (for your $60 a month or whatever it is), but I've never seen a whole 1TB come down in a month.... yet... That's torrenting, but only during the free off peak times. Ran over your allowance during the on peak and it rapes the arse out of it though... not worse than dialup, but close.

[SMOKEU]

I might try out their unlimited plan for a month if there's no contract and see how I go.

[skippa1]

we have been with slingshot for ages. they do cheap internet, and when its workin, its good as gold.
however.
when something isnt going well, you're properly fucked. By far the worst customer service Ive ever had. on more than one occasion their incompetence has driven me to the point where Id have stabbed some cunt who worked for slingshot on sight - they are fucking awful.

If you can deal with that, they are good in all other areas

+1 on that.........I actually timed the hold time on one call to the call centre, 58min, then I got put onto a "trainee" who said the question was too technical for her, could I call back tomorrow. The worst....without a doubt, the most hopeless bunch of bastards I have ever came accross.

[iYRe]

should be noted that none of the big ISP's have a "helpdesk" - they all have a call centre who can help with basic stuff.. and like 3 "actual" technicians. If you want proper tech support you'll need to go to one of the smaller, more personal ISPs.
Xtra, TCL, Orcon, VF, and Slingshot are the biggest.. and none have a "helpdesk" - people like Maxnet, Inspire, etc do.

[MOTOXXX]

dont use torrents, get into usenet. goes over ssl, supernews does a good deal for $10 per month.
anything you download will basically max out your connection - my stuff comes down at 1.8mb second minimum.

[iYRe]

i use www.feralhosting.com - web based torrent client on a server.. 5 TB data, 1 GB/s down, 500MB/s up.. 500GB HDD.. untraceable to me by our antipiratey friends.

[Hopeful Bastard]

Slingshot is the worst internet company i have ever been with!

Speeds are slow. Net is guaranteed to drop out at least twice a week. Generally when you are right in the middle of shooting someone, for around 5 mins...

a 3.2gb file using Utorrent with 10,000 seeders and 400 leechers - I had a download speed of 280Kbps :/ Use your maths to get the time that woulda taken......

We are living in Petone and are on their "Fastest your line can handle broadband"


Soo cant wait till that contract is over and move to Telstra Clear or Orcons cable/fibre...

[iYRe]

torrenting is crippled on purpose. Its in their T&C for most of the plans. Your fault for not reading it.

and.. well.. they have no control over your net dropping out.. there are a gazillion things that can cause that, most commonly a line fault. Call your telco.

[SMOKEU]

Maybe a good VPN could raise the torrent speeds by bypassing the ISP speed restrictions.

[iYRe]

Maybe a good VPN could raise the torrent speeds by bypassing the ISP speed restrictions.


nope.. it inspects the packets.. deeply..

[jrandom]

I'm on Slingshot at home. Uncapped data plan. They traffic-shape (ie, throttle) the fuck out of it. It gets fast, occasionally, during the week, but basically most of the time we're screwed.

The performance I see gives me the impression that they're simply oversubscribed. Dunno where the bottleneck is, but there sure is one somewhere. Every so often our internet here rips along like greased lightning, but a lot of the time, P2P traffic is obviously being throttled to near zero.

At least they straight up say they do that in their ToS (http://www.slingshot.co.nz/terms):

"If you are on an “uncapped” or “unlimited” plan the total amount of data you can upload or download is unlimited. We may use traffic prioritisation policies for these plans and our capped plans at any time to improve the overall performance amongst our customers."

Translation: If a significant number of other Slingshot customers are on Skype and X-Box Live of a Saturday afternoon, forget about trying to download yourself a movie.

Their system works OK if all you want to do is web-surf. But if all you want to do is web-surf, why would you pay for an uncapped data plan?

Oh, and then there was the three-day stone-cold outage we had once. No internet whatsoever for anyone, boom.

I'd like to move to another ISP, but someone went and signed a 12-month contract...

[jrandom]

Maybe a good VPN could raise the torrent speeds by bypassing the ISP speed restrictions.

Depends how they prioritise VPN traffic. It'd quite possibly help.


nope.. it inspects the packets.. deeply..

Inspect the packets? You can't see inside a VPN connection if you're not one of the endpoints. That's why it's called a virtual private network. Encryption. Cunts in the middle not being able to see inside it. All the ISP knows is that there's a VPN connection from A to B and data's being transferred. That data could be anything.

[SMOKEU]

Unlimited pr0n downloads :tugger:

[Hopeful Bastard]

torrenting is crippled on purpose. Its in their T&C for most of the plans. Your fault for not reading it.

and.. well.. they have no control over your net dropping out.. there are a gazillion things that can cause that, most commonly a line fault. Call your telco.



Even for a download for an update? 360mb gaming update took me 45 mins :/

[Smokin]

I have been with Slingshot for years and the amount of problems ive had have been minimal.
Only been twice that I can remember where I lost my connection and average 1.5mb a second
on my Motogp torrents, and around 500 to 800kb on public trackers.
Private trackers are flat out at about 1.8mb.
Im on a 100Gb plan and between myself and my son there is bugger all of it left every month.
He does complain about a little lag sometimes when Im downloading tho.

[imdying]

Yes, Slingshot has a drop out most nights... Reconnects by itself straight away, and only ever notice it if I hear the router click, but would be a regular piss off for a gamer.

[imdying]

nope.. it inspects the packets.. deeply..With it's magical decryption system :rolleyes: I can only assume you've no idea what a VPN is or how it operates.

[iYRe]

With it's magical decryption system :rolleyes: I can only assume you've no idea what a VPN is or how it operates.


If it drops out, its a line fault.

Yes, I know what a VPN is.. and I can tell you from experience that torrenting over a VPN at C+ (slingshot) will not help.

[imdying]

No, drop outs do not have to be solely related to line faults.

And no, I do not think you actually know what a VPN does, otherwise you would know that it definitely does help with downloading vast amounts of data via Slingshot, and why, and why they can't inspect those packets.

[iYRe]

No, drop outs do not have to be solely related to line faults.

And no, I do not think you actually know what a VPN does, otherwise you would know that it definitely does help with downloading vast amounts of data via Slingshot, and why, and why they can't inspect those packets.

ok.. well.. you're obviously more expert than me.. so what ever..

keep on doing what ever you're doing..

[imdying]

ok.. well.. you're obviously more expert than me.. so what ever..

keep on doing what ever you're doing..

Clearly, every time I read a post in this section from you it's either mostly wrong, or completely wrong, or slanted with some queer arse bias that results in bad advice.

And I will... it'll be a a TB this month or damn close to it.

[iYRe]

Clearly, every time I read a post in this section from you it's either mostly wrong, or completely wrong, or slanted with some queer arse bias that results in bad advice.

And I will... it'll be a a TB this month or damn close to it.


right.. that's because you're an expert.. and I'm not...

As long as you're happy.. I'm happy..

[St_Gabriel]

I havent really had too much of a reliability issue with Slingshot, customer service however is another story.

Speed has been fine, was downloading a linux distro last night, was called game hunger or something... and was achieving a speed of 1.9 MB a sec, not bad for the 1.3/1.4 gig file. I have 8 hours a day of free download with a 40gig plan, set your torrent program of choice to run in the free download time and cap shouldnt be an issue.

[chrisht]

Slingshot...worst experience of a provider we have ever had - slow,inconsistent & not shy to charge over the odds.Signed up in October last year & at first was awesome..lasted about three months before started having issues & cannot get any sense from anyone!Waste of time, now looking at alternatives....

[iYRe]

FWIW

If you are using some kind of packet inspection/management system (such as a CISCO SCE or similar), what you do is this:
Divide up your pools of bandwidth appropriately. Include two pools for VPN - one for "normal" users, and one crippled pool.
Include in your daily reports the top bandwidth users in "VPN-NORMAL" - remove them and put them in "VPN-ABUSERS". You have now crippled their ability to download.

This works for any identifiable packet type.

"Appropriate use for a VPN connection is generally accessing office internal networks for files, mail, and so forth. This does not generally include downloading huge quantities of data." (not an official statement from anyone).