[WXC/VFX] xnet's speed issues

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [WXC/VFX] xnet's speed issues

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#163964 12-Sep-2008 11:06

JoeBloggs: It appears now that they don't filter traffic but rather have very fixed bandwidth which is thoroughly utilised during offpeak times by torrent users. Stupidly they haven't allocated bandwidth by plan, everyone just shares the same pool.

But what's the point of investing in hardware to do this, when there's only a small section of users who aren't on the torrent plan, using off-peak?

JoeBloggs

355 posts

Ultimate Geek

#164031 12-Sep-2008 16:48

Almost everyone I know uses the internet past 12 and before 8 several times a week. I suppose this would be acceptable if I was told in bold writing before signing up with Xnet: "Please note, access becomes slow, bordering on unusable from 12 to 8 every day", but I believe they do not do this. Instead customers sign up to what seems like a good deal but are severely limited during these 'torrent hours'. I would be furious if I had signed up and not been informed of this.

Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#164072 12-Sep-2008 18:31

nate: WxC purchases a set pipe of international capacity which is divvied out to all its customers. As mentioned here, WxC leaves it up to the customer as to what they use their purchased data allowance for. The Torrent plan charges customers more for downloading during peak times, encouraging heavy users to move their data usage to the early hours of the morning when the vast majority of us are asleep. To give lower priority to .torrent traffic (which is where the vast majority of data is going) over normal traffic would break what Cecil (WxC CEO) mentioned in his answers. It is a fair policy, if I purchase a set block of data, I should be able to use it for whatever (legal) purpose I see fit.

Personally I believe there are better ways to manage network preformance than the quite frankly brute force and inelegent methods used currently.

nate:
The reality is we are geographically very far away from where the vast majority of sites we use are based, and it costs a lot of $$ to get bandwidth to NZ. Once Telecom takes their cut for providing the DSL circuit, what's left over has to go on overheads + profit. It's a balance of providing affordable service vs. keeping overheads at a manageable level.

There is plenty of international capacity (the Southern Cross cable has a maximum of 12 terrabits/second) but it's the cost which is the biggest factor. To give you an idea, one of our datacenter providers charges around $350 a month per 512Kbps of international capacity. At that rate, theoretically, to guarantee a 7.1Mbps ADSL connection full international capacity, the cost would be $4,970 a month, a little more than the ~$50 WxC charge.

Why are you comparing what your datacentre charge you for international transit vs what WxC pay? Having dealt with ANC/Pacnet I can assure you their charges are significantly different from the ones you have quoted for the quantities of international transit capacity WxC would likely be purchasing.

nate:
To complain about speeds during off-peak when you know that those on Torrent plan have 75Gb of free data to use is completely pointless. Either move your browsing habits to on-peak times, or move to an ISP that also wants your tolls, charges you regardless of whether you use your full data cap or not etc. The probably reason why WxC haven’t posted here is the Torrent plan is doing exactly what they intended – speeding up the experience for 95% of its users, while keeping the other 5% of heavy users happy.

Finally, WxC is one of the few ISPs that contribute here, and a five page topic on this isn't going to encourage them to stick around. If you are really that unhappy, vote with your feet and move to another provider - I for one am sick of reading endless topics about speed - you aren't the only one, and there are plenty of others who have already mentioned it.

Amusing - you want forums where people dont whine? :P

But seriously, the value of forums is reduced if you dont have a certain amount of feedback. A lot of time due to human nature this is going to be negative feedback and I'm sure WxC staff are big boys and girls and can hold their own out there.

The other providers probably have a lot more negative feedback, which really shows what a good job WxC do in general.

JoeBloggs: It appears now that they don't filter traffic but rather have very fixed bandwidth which is thoroughly utilised during offpeak times by torrent users. Stupidly they haven't allocated bandwidth by plan, everyone just shares the same pool.

But what's the point of investing in hardware to do this, when there's only a small section of users who aren't on the torrent plan, using off-peak?

Or alternately the question could be why dont WxC disclose this information to users that they should expect poor network preformance between specific hours due to company policy. ho hum

retardinator

114 posts

Master Geek

#164108 12-Sep-2008 21:36

nate: the torrent option is a data pricing plan, ie its available to you on Stream/River/Flood. If you are on the normal plan, you pay $1/Gb anytime. On the torrent plan you pay $1.50/Gb between 8am-midnight, then free (up to 75Gb) between midnight and 8am, regardless of Stream/River/Flood.

Why are you telling us this?

Comrade: As for the River users and off-peak, how many of them are actually up and awake using this service? As a business, they need to cater for the majority, not the minority.

You're wrong.

Xnet have individual subscribers, not the collective group of comrades I think you may envisage. Therefore they have to supply to each of those subscribers the plans of which they chose for themselves, irrespective of what your collective is doing at the same time.

If they can't do that, then they need to increase the price to offer what they are advertising, or state they aren't actually offering FS/128 or FS/FS.

nate: International capacity is a huge overhead, and not really worth it for the few users who are up browsing at off-peak times. I think you will be unpopular here for suggesting WxC need to put up their prices.

First I knew of this being a popularity contest.

nate: What WxC say on their site is relevant to most people (other than GZ users, who else is online in the crazy early morning hours?)

And there we have it!, we are all Mushrooms! we are to sit quietly in the dark, and keep eating!

You're angle on this issue, isn't helpful, nor is it adding anything more than...

nate: "I for one am sick of reading endless topics about speed..."

Xnet aren't providing the speeds they advertised. That's why people are complaining.

I hope you understand that if we signed up for a plan called 'Trickle', with the description 'this is a plan with crap performance' We wouldn't have cause for complaint!

nate: I had this wrong initially...

Yeah?!... and what about now?

boby55

1539 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#164109 12-Sep-2008 21:58

retardinator:

Xnet aren't providing the speeds they advertised. That's why people are complaining.

No, there site advertises Fullspeed download / 128kupload or what not. read the fineprint, Full speed is as fast as your line / network can handle not full adsl speed.

cokemaster

Exited
4929 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#164110 12-Sep-2008 22:11

Yeah Right. Perhaps you should check the Xnet website.

webhosting

Loose lips may sink ships - Be smart - Don't post internal/commercially sensitive or confidential information!

retardinator

114 posts

Master Geek

#164112 12-Sep-2008 22:19

boby55: No, there site advertises Fullspeed download / 128kupload or what not. read the fineprint, Full speed is as fast as your line / network can handle not full adsl speed.

Very good, may I suggest you read my earlier post?

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=65&topicid=25463&page_no=3#163479

retardinator: The crux of this is... there are users expecting the connections they paid for (YES! I know of the limitations posed by the subscriber's line, and the ADSL1 tech delivery of the data) and they are not receiving it, and if they are it is statistically during times they aren't using the internet anyway.

EDIT mod (RC): Changed quote name back to original quote. Please do not change names in quotes.

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

nate

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#164135 13-Sep-2008 02:44

Fraktul: Why are you comparing what your datacentre charge you for international transit vs what WxC pay? Having dealt with ANC/Pacnet I can assure you their charges are significantly different from the ones you have quoted for the quantities of international transit capacity WxC would likely be purchasing.

Was just to illustrate that international bandwidth is a huge overhead. I was waiting for someone with more knowledge in the ISP realm (such as yourself) to enlighten us more

Ragnor

8219 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#164209 13-Sep-2008 13:29

WxC purchases a set pipe of international capacity which is divvied out to all its customers.

However it's not divided out to it's customers on a per active (at the time) customer basis it's per tcp/ip (or other protocol) connection. In practice Mr Web Browser using ~3 tcp/ip conenctions gets horrible performance and latency because Mr Torrenter is using 1000+ tcp/ip connctions.

nate

6473 posts

Uber Geek

Retired Mod

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#164220 13-Sep-2008 14:32

retardinator:Why are you telling us this?

Reread my post here, and what I posted about the torrent pricing plan was in response to your comment (I've quoted it above my response in that post).

retardinator:Xnet have individual subscribers, not the collective group of comrades I think you may envisage. Therefore they have to supply to each of those subscribers the plans of which they chose for themselves, irrespective of what your collective is doing at the same time.
If they can't do that, then they need to increase the price to offer what they are advertising, or state they aren't actually offering FS/128 or FS/FS.

This thread is of a similar topic to this one, and what I'm getting at is already mentioned here and here.

rscole86

4973 posts

Uber Geek

Moderator

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#164233 13-Sep-2008 16:25

Can we please keep this thread on topic, and leave all baiting/flaming/personal attacks out of it.

We will have to lock this thread if people cannot abide to the FUG.

pistolpower

139 posts

Master Geek

#164888 16-Sep-2008 18:14

Well guys im on xnet internet and I notice the internet does not allways go its best. It doesnt seem to go as fast as it should for things hosted over seas. It goes very bad on p2p aplications as well. Althought this is probably because im on there torrent plan and downloading at nights slow. But.. but its very slow on p2p apps at night. Much slower at p2p apps at night than web page content or single host downloads.

Well im hoping that orcons going to go through and build a fibre pipe from nz to ausie with telstra clear. Then orcon might have some very good and reliable plans. Im saying this because im guesing that the ausie international fibre cables would be cheaper to buy bandwidth for in comparison with our countrys partially telecom owned pipe. If orcon where then to charge cheaper data rates than they do now and have them not expire + own alot of bandwidth so that we get good speeds and nothing like p2p is shaped to much. Then i would like to join them :D. But unfortunatly there voip features lack behind that of xnet so they would allso need to improve that. And the data rates would have to be quiet cheap because they just recently increased there prices. And i havent heard much good about them recently which is a shame for me. But i think the problem with xnet is they need more pipe bandwidth but our pipes quiet expensive.

exportgoldman

1202 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#164980 17-Sep-2008 00:46

I'd seen this post and thought people were being overly dramatic, but suddenly my connection came to a jarring halt tonight trying to place my order at Think Geek for a retro handset (usb) real cool, see them here BTW

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/8928/

Anyways, I remembered this thread and checked the time, 12:14AM. My connection was timing out... Connection stable, can still ping and resolve names...

Oh, it's just cause there's not enough bandwidth to load web pages! I don't know if it's because I'm on the torrent plan (but now rarely use a few GB a month...go Freeview... Or if it's effecting everyone. Hmmmmmmmmm I never would have thought in my wildest dreams I would be having speed issues offpeak

Quite funny really, tomorrow I'll make sure all my browsing is done on peak so it's faster hehe

Tyler - Parnell Geek - iPhone 3G - Lenovo X301 - Kaseya - Great Western Steak House, these are some of my favourite things.

Kyro

74 posts

Master Geek

#165124 17-Sep-2008 17:32

Xnet just dont seam to understand what this Torrent plan is doing. The Torrent plan works out cheaper but with much more data allowance and doesnt suffer any penalties during the day time and gets free range during 12-8am.

HSI Pay Per Meg:

$1.02 per GB, you pay for every bit of your data allowance (except local traffic).

HSI Torrent:

$1.54 per GB, but you also get 75GB of free bandwidth between 12-8am.

On first glance it looks like its fair, the Torrent plan users have to pay 52cents more per GB than the Pay Per Meg users, but they get 75 "offpeak" data (Off Peak is more like 3am-8am).

But if you really look at it, the Torrent plan users are getting a much better deal than the Pay Per Meg users. Why?

They do not have any restrictions during the day or night (apart from the network slow down, but that doesnt really effect torrent's, it only really effects Low Latency reliant applications, Games, Voice, Video, etc).

They get more data per month because if you work it out your not going to be doing HEAVY torrenting during the day because your general web browsing will suffer, so heavy P2P users (and causual P2P users) will be almost always setting them to download a times they are not 'surfing' (3-8am). It turns out that shock, its not an inconvenience for the P2P users to set their downloads at off peak times (3-8am, not the piss poor judgment of 12-8) because THEY ALREADY DO THAT.

Of your monthly data-usage (talking to Pay Per Meg users), how much of that is large downloads that you set going at times you do not use the internet ? How much for just average surfing and the occasional download? works out cheaper to go with the Free 75GB and 1.54 per GB.

Xnet should impose restrictions on the Torrent plan, maybe things such as (not saying all of them, but maybe a selection):

Offpeak is from 3-8am not 12-8am. (I really feel this is the best solution, Torrent plan users still get their 75GB but PayPerMeg users also get the speeds, as do the Torrent plan users but they have to pay more [1.54 compared to 1.02])
Connection speeds are limited to a smaller number than their current real world max speeds Kbytes/s during 3-8am. (like 40% or something)
During onpeak times (eg not 3-8am) speeds are reduced to <a number> Kbps.
The amount of Free Offpeak data is reduced to 40-50GB and/or the price for Onpeak data is increased to $2.00 GB.
Torrent Plan users go into a 'group' and have lower priority (during offpeak times 3-8am) on their traffic.

I really believe Xnet could make a huge difference in this problem if they just changed the Off-Peak times to 3-8am, that way those who require low latency activities (Voice, Video, Games) are happy (along with the Torrent plan users) at the late hours of the day, while the Torrent plan users maintain their 'free' 75GB for Torrenting (which most likely is going to be illegal movie downloading, but we shall not get into that)

msian

93 posts

Master Geek

#165159 17-Sep-2008 20:01

thats insane. 12-am to 3am is peak? who wants to wait till 3am? if xnet does that everyone on the plan will probably move isp's. slingshot has unlimited after 1am.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9