Broadband swap?

[Dafe]

I'm sick of the slow speed of Xtra.

A few nights ago, I installed a PC at my father in laws. I noticed his ADSL was humming with Telstarclear. Xtra is such a drag in comparison.

However, tonight I had to download a game patch so I logged onto the ICONZ server to get the patch and bugger me - I was averaging 160kb/s for over 15 minutes.

I also noticed that ICONZ is a service provider.

Does this mean that if I switch from stink ass Xtra to ICONZ, that I could expect much faster speeds? Even though they're both running down the same medium.
Does ICONZ have more bandwidth per customer? How does it work???

[Marmoot]

If you're on Go Large plan, apparently you'll be looking at a nice refund.

[Skunk]

I'd go with cable if you can... 3.7mps. If not you should switch and see. I can't see why it would be faster with them tho, they only lease off Xtra.

[Fatjim]

Yep, cable is the biz, 4 meg down, 2 meg up. Kicks the little brown pellets out of DSL every time. Cable will even go to 30 meg down if your the right person.

There's 4 things that throttle dsl generally,some of these affect other technologies as well.

1. noise on the local loop. This has increased with the go large because of the greater download speeds. ADSL2+ may or may not fix this. noise is the reason Telecom uses interleaving with inserts a minimum of 40msec latency ( IIRC) on the local loop. (another reason to go with cable)

2. ATM Backhaul to exchange. The DSLAMs in the roadside cabinets can be fed by as little as 2meg links. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that if there are 4 subscribers (or more) sharing that 2 meg link then sometimes you'll struggle to get 2 meg. This doesn't affect cable so much because the cable terminators (CMTS) run Ethernet (100 meg) backhaul (and they're in the exchanges)

3. subscription rates on the ATM backhaul. Telecom allocate a certain bw per subscriber, this is a fraction of the rate that you purchase. I'm unsure of the minimum, but it could mean than 100's of suscribers are contesting for BW through circuits only able to supply 2 of them at full speed. (cable subsription rates very rarely cause congestion, again because the backhaul is 100m per CMTS.

4. infrastructure capacity. ATM is the main backhaul to the core of the network and to other ISP's. These links are called legacy and the equipment is costly to upgrade if it's possible in the first place. The links on ATM networks tend to be heavily over used. Most smaller ISP's don't tend to rely on ATM, however their interconnects to the 2 main players (Telecom/Telstraclear) are not free, so they tend to be managed frugally. Other areas of infrastructure such as overutilised routers may also cause problems.

One last thing, who nows what the telcos are doing to throttle your traffic after all the above has shat all over your throughput.

[MOTOXXX]

iconzs has free nat traffic as far as i know

i know a gov dept that uses it and it works sweet as

[Dafe]

I've no doubt that Telstra is the way to go. I used to have it in my last house.

There is no Telstra in Tawa unfortunately. So crapshit Xtra it is.

[Nasty]

Have you checked out Ihugs offerings .. we are them and find them fine.

[Deviant Esq]

If you go with iHug, be prepared to get useless phone service, if you ever need to phone them for any reason. I was with iHug for a year before I left NZ, and the service was not good. Sometimes I would have to wait on hold over half an hour when trying to phone them, and after listening to their hold music tracks loop around to the beginning I'd just hang up. I wouldn't recommend iHug.

[Nasty]

Hey Deviant ... thats weird cos I get reasonable phone service .. but don't often need it as the internet service is fine ... but I have been with them since they started in business about nine or ten years ... I think we are too lazy to change ... I now run multiple accounts with them .. and all seem to run fine for those involved :)

[Lias]

If your a heavy user, Go large (or woosh reselling Go large) are still basically your only reasonably prived option.

If I change to any other ISP I drop to a pathetic 20gbish cap. Hell even with go large sucking nuts so bad I still do 80-100gb a month on it.