ihug vs Telecom broadband

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Zeph

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#14443 3-Jul-2007 23:19

Hi guys, I'm a new member.

I'll introduce myself first. I live in CHCH and enjoy playing games on my PC, 360 and Wii. I've also been getting really into the DS recently thanks to the new Pokemon game (a guilty pleasure) Its been a while since I've been on a geek forum so I might take a while for me to warm up, so to speak.

I have been with ihug since October last year and have had no issues with them, fine speeds for downloading and playing WoW (my other guilty pleasure). My flatmates and I never considered changing ISPs until my flatmate got a job with Telecom, and they have excellent concessions for their employees, so we decided to swap over to them and we got the Pro Advanced plan (30GB) as theres 4 of us in the house who are all heavy internet users. Ever since then we have noticed differences in download speeds, and more disturbing for me, my WoW latency. Considering all we had to do was change our login and password on our modem I don't understand how our speed could change so noticeably considering both plans had max up/down speeds. My WoW latency has effectively doubled which gives the game a 2 second delay which is unacceptable for me, and our downloading speeds have barely been a third of what they used to be. Is it just something that Telecom does that ihug didnt or has it just been a bad 2 weeks for broadband which happened to start on the same date we changed ISPs? Its at the point were if we weren't getting such a discount we would just go crawling back to ihug.

Sorry to ramble, its just troubling as a WoWaholic to have such terrible latency. And yes I have heard of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Niel

3267 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#76837 4-Jul-2007 07:09

Somewhere on the web is a diagram of how ISP servers interconnect. ISPs do different things, e.g. with Slingshot you sit behing a proxy server which causes other problems.

I can not give a comparison of ISPs, but from a technical point can recommend www.xnet.co.nz which has real techincal staff and very fast to respond. Just check out their forum on GeekZone. With them I get latency of 50ms, I am told it goes down to about 5ms if interleaving is turned off (which they will do for free if you ask, same with static IP). You do not pay for traffic on their local network, which means it costs you nothing to download/send large e-mails. They also host a gaming server, so if you use that server then you do not pay for traffic to/from it (I think it is called recoil). You also pay only for the data you use at 0.01c per MB. So instead of paying per GB, they only charge for what you actually use. And when you have a problem with your connection, they log into the exchange and tell you what they see is happening instead of some ISPs that wait 2 weeks before sending an e-mail saying "we had a technical problem which should now be fixed".

I think that for your requirements, XNet is ideal.

You can never have enough Volvos!

billgates

4705 posts

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Trusted

#77048 5-Jul-2007 16:22

switch back to ihug....

in case you didnt know, ihug will be releasing new broadband plans within coming weeks as well and you will get 3 months free broadband access with free modem free connection. you know they were perfect in the past and worked well so join ihug. i am with them and by far the best ISP when it comes to DSL....

Do whatever you want to do man.

Fraktul

836 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#77083 5-Jul-2007 20:10

Niel: Somewhere on the web is a diagram of how ISP servers interconnect.

http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html

Not 100% upto date.

Asmodean

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#77945 13-Jul-2007 00:51

Ihug gets my vote... was on telecom for 2 months and got bad service and capped when i reached 10 gig every time, (before 'Go Large') Ihug never caps me.. wicked support and im never down!

Evinta

118 posts

Master Geek

#77952 13-Jul-2007 01:29

My WoW latency has effectively doubled which gives the game a 2 second delay which is unacceptable for me

Sorry to ramble, its just troubling as a WoWaholic to have such terrible latency. And yes I have heard of looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Same here. Im not playing WoW at the moment due to income >_< but when i did the latency was always yellow or sometimes red and when its red well... you know.

So i know how you feel and i think you should swap back. I thought everyone was in the same boat with speed wise but i guess i am very wrong....

nakedmolerat

4629 posts

Uber Geek

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Lifetime subscriber

#77953 13-Jul-2007 01:30

since u in chch, i suggest telstra cable. the fastest internet in NZ. the lowest latency for online game. big upload (ie 2mb) and u can get standalone broadband plan without tv/phone ie only broadband connection. i always get very close to the promised speed. for upload i always get around 1900++kbit and around 4.2mbit for download (theoritically i should get 2mbit for upload and 4mbit for download). isnt that awesome???? all current adsl plan suppose to give u theoritically 8mbit for download?? but u will not even come close to 4mbit in my experience.

i tried telecom, my warcraft latency is 90ms-180ms (in dunedin city) around 2-3 sec delay
but when i use telstra cable, latency is around 30-50ms. no delay! yeehaaaa
friend uses ihug in chch, they live in the middle of the city. latency around 95ms - 140ms

gud luck, tell me what u choose.

Shturm

8 posts

Wannabe Geek

#79252 23-Jul-2007 09:43

I just signed with xnet after being with IHUG since 2002. IHUG had to go. They really went downhill fast.

The final straw was when I found my connection got very slow this month and after checking all my gear was okay I logged into my IHUG account and found they reckoned I'd used 138% of my 10 GB on-peak allowance in less than a week and chucked me back down to 64 KB/s.

Digging further I found they'd logged me as downloading *10.8 GB* of data in one day! The best rate I've ever got out of my so-called 3.5 Mb connection is around 1.5 Mb (burst) so how I managed to d/l 10.8 GB in one day I'll never know.

Hell, I'm not even a torrent user. The most I've ever d/led in one day was around 1.8 Gb and that was for Ubuntu, Debian and OpenBSD. Normally my daily usage is around 200-400 MB and that's because of my wife watching Japanese Internet TV.

But first IHUG claimed it was correct even when I suggested they do the math. Finally they relented and admitted the possibility of a billing error. Then they didn't correct it. When I called repeatedly they put me back on hold for 10 more minutes then "accidentally" cut me off.

If I want to be treated like *profanity removed* by clueless scriptreaders I'll sign up with Xtra, thanks.

It's kind of sad because IHUG weren't half bad at one point years ago. I was on the all-you-can-eat 256K plan and that was quite good. Then they ripped us off and forced us to go to their crapola new plans. And then the on-peak/off-peak usage scheme which was a total scam. ("Off-peak" from 2 AM - 10 AM? Gimme a *profanity removed* break!)

Ah well, xnet here we are!

(Moderator edit (Brian) - Removed profanity from post, please do not use profanity (using *'s to evade swear filter still counts as profanity))

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

thegeekboy

97 posts

Master Geek

#79357 23-Jul-2007 23:30

I'm not a big internet user myself -I use Woosh in Auckland, but I've got a good connection - I don't have a Telecom landline at all so that suits me just fine.

I'm looking forward to seeing what local loop unbunding does to competition among the ISPs (and naked DSL) - but it amazes me that Telecom are pretty sucky at what they should be the best at.

Because it's "their football" (and they're taking it home), surely they should be doing an outstanding job and really blow the competiton away.

What would it take for Telecom to become the #1 choice of ISP in the country? (A lot better PR as well, I know...) But still.

Why aren't they THAT good?

Niel

3267 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#79369 24-Jul-2007 07:56

Not sure if they want to be the #1 retail provider. Perhaps it is mostly just an add-on, surely their future lies with wholesale customers. I think it is purely a PR and legislation thing, so they load the price with as much as they can get away with. But that is just my 10c.

You can never have enough Volvos!