FibreX 200 in Chch

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citrofia

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#208636 20-Feb-2017 22:49

Just wanting to gauge the opinion of those in chch who have moved to or are on fibreX 200.

I'm in chch east and have naked cable 50 which has been pretty reliable and meant that I've had minimum contact with VF customer support (always a bonus).

The temptation of more for less is compelling (saving $10/month), but I've got no desire break something that doesn't need fixing.

From a quick skim of the forums it seems that Wellington fibreX can be patchy with some people reporting reduction in speeds after upgrade.

So how are people finding 200?

Thanks

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meow
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#1723395 21-Feb-2017 00:08

Are you in an area with UFB available?

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citrofia

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#1723398 21-Feb-2017 00:18

Yes, UFB has been available here for about 9 months.

yitz

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#1723402 21-Feb-2017 00:48

Not on it myself but haven't heard of many problems with FibreX cable in Christchurch. I say go for it, just don't go for the 24 month contract (not sure if you get more of a discount).

UFB isn't perfect either, there has been some peak time jitter on Enable's UFB affecting multiple ISPs in the past week or so.

michaelmurfy

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#1723404 21-Feb-2017 00:58

If UFB is available then I highly recommend going with an ISP that gives you UFB over Vodafone Cable based on what has been reported on here. UFB is a far better product.

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#1723415 21-Feb-2017 05:55

michaelmurfy:

If UFB is available then I highly recommend going with an ISP that gives you UFB over Vodafone Cable based on what has been reported on here. UFB is a far better product.

+1 As above.

Forget VF cable and move to fibre - I would if I could. (I'm on "FibreX" 200 in Wellington)

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Stix

81 posts

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#1724024 21-Feb-2017 19:37

I have just switched to FibreX 200/20 here in South Chch, got to say I am not too impressed so far.

Do not like the cheapie Huawei HG659 supplied by VF, poor WIFI performance etc. Trying to get my own router going with VLAN 10 settings but tricky on my TP link DD-WRT firmware.

Right now I would prefer to be back on my old 100/10 with Motorola Docsis modem/bridge, static IP and my router. It was more responsive and faster web page loads!

Pity we do not have fibre in my street as I would be there....!

Cheers

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#1724068 21-Feb-2017 19:48

Stix:

<snip>

Right now I would prefer to be back on my old 100/10 with Motorola Docsis modem/bridge, static IP and my router. It was more responsive and faster web page loads!

<snip>

Snap!

This mirrors my own experience.

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citrofia

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Wannabe Geek

#1724195 21-Feb-2017 23:21

Stix:

Hi

I have just switched to FibreX 200/20 here in South Chch, got to say I am not too impressed so far.

Do not like the cheapie Huawei HG659 supplied by VF, poor WIFI performance etc. Trying to get my own router going with VLAN 10 settings but tricky on my TP link DD-WRT firmware.

Right now I would prefer to be back on my old 100/10 with Motorola Docsis modem/bridge, static IP and my router. It was more responsive and faster web page loads!

Pity we do not have fibre in my street as I would be there....!

Cheers

200 looks good on paper but I can do without 24 months of regret.

I've found the 50/10 to be pretty bulletproof and was hoping with the eastside being low density these days that 200 would be a similar proposition.

There seems to be more going on here than just congestion. Time to join the queue for fibre.

Thanks all for the help.

yitz

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Uber Geek

#1724196 21-Feb-2017 23:32

I thought the old plan was 50/2?

citrofia

10 posts

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#1724207 22-Feb-2017 00:30

yitz: I thought the old plan was 50/2?

ahhh, you are in fact correct. My Bad.

heapsort

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#1724220 22-Feb-2017 06:09

I was on 50/2 cable in Chch until recently, with the end of the last 12 month contract approaching. We were going to stay on cable for various reasons (getting TV through cable, a family member is not yet fully dragged off an ISP-supplied email address, and cable reliability has been great for us) and we wanted somewhat faster upload, but without a hardware change if possible. Decided 100/10 instead of FibreX would be best if we could get it for a reasonable price.

First call through, ended up with sales. Their job description appeared to be strictly reading the website content to callers with no deviation from script. No luck.

Next call a few days later, asked for retention team. Much better experience. Got a bit of a discount, and now we are on 100/10 keeping the VF-supplied Cicso modem and our own router. No tech visit, no fuss. Maybe 200/20 FibreX would have still been a bit cheaper, but I preferred to stay with the proven reliability of our existing setup and we'd never notice the speed difference.

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#1724259 22-Feb-2017 09:29

I'm on FibreX Max, over in Upper Riccarton area (Christchurch) and the product is working great.

The supplied HG659 is definite very consumer grade for family with small connected devices and would be just "sufficient" for moderate use - which doesn't work for our house. Switched/upgraded from Naked Cable 100/10, and replaced the supplied router with Mikrotik hEX (RB750Gr3), configured it to use the existing 3x Apple AirPort Extremes/Express and the connectivity is so great.

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#1725519 24-Feb-2017 09:17

Out today:

TrueNet January 2017 Urban Broadband Report

"Vodafone Fibre, Cable and VDSL results show a broad roll-off in performance during waking hours for live webpage download speeds from NZ. This indicates potential congestion from NZ and Australia because average webpage speeds drop during the middle of the day with the most severe drop during the evening busy hours of 8-9pm. Conversely, Vodafone is consistently best at downloading US websites."

EXTRACTS:

Chart 1b: Fibre & Cable - Webpage Average Speed of Selected NZ Pages by ToD

Chart 2a: Fibre & Cable - Webpage Average Speed of Selected US Pages by ToD

Chart 8: Australian File Peak Speed for High Speed Connections (2MB file size only) by ToD

[In all three charts, cable is slowest - this matches the performance of my own (Wellington, FibreX 200/20 Mbps) connection]

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#1725819 24-Feb-2017 18:46

Island Bay "FibreX" HFC 200/20

Another outage 6:00 pm to 6:35pm.

Not fixed by a cold reboot.

My VF source tells me that nodes WKH3 and WKH4 were both down.

Note today's TrueNet report, as in my previous post.

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Mutly

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#1725935 24-Feb-2017 21:10

I just had FibreX 200/20 installed this afternoon. So far not very impressed. When it's going it great, but I've had two outages so far already. Neither were fixed by device reboots.

Feels like dejavu from a year or so ago with my previous cable issues. I don't want to deal with this crap again (especially from the fallout form a highly connected family). If the outages continue I'll be requesting my old model and 130 pipe back. My fault for not doing some due diligence I guess.

I can't brain today. I have the dumb.

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