Bandwidth to outside NZ

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Bandwidth to outside NZ

sandy888

5 posts

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#98992 10-Mar-2012 10:12

I am a newbie to NZ broadband. I signed up with ORCON attracted by the local caching of STEAM and iSKY however I have been shocked by how useless the service is when accessing sites outside NZ. Streaming Youtube or SONY TV is a waste of time. Downloading or syncing iTunes only works early in the morning. Tonight OOKLA to
Auckland shows, Ping 33ms, Down 11.8 and up 0.7.

All very good and shows that the modem and network is working fine. If I change the remote site to

Sydney Ping 60ms Down 0.44Mbps and up improves to 0.79

Change to

London ping 97.7 Down 0.29 up 0.0,33

I ran the same tests on my son in law's Vodafone Broadband and while he had lower bandwidth in Auckland than we do 5.7 download it did not degrade by more than 20% on the Sydney and London hops.

Orcon FAQ says they throttle the international stream and I see that there have been debates on the forum at least back to 2008.

The service we are receiving is not acceptable and we will be leaving ORCON as soon as possible. They are very proud of their internal bandwidth and while a slight degradation on international is OK given our geography and investment in links, throttling to this level is a game stopper.

If I am missing something obvious please comment however I plan to be on the phone to ORCON tomorrow to terminate the agreement.

Kind Regards
Sandy

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#593115 10-Mar-2012 10:47

Sandy, I think you will be disappointed by the international bandwidth no matter which ISP you choose. I regularly download BBC programmes using iPlayer and with just one download happening, the highest speed I see is typically 400 - 500kBps. If I download two programmes at once, the total bandwidth consumed is close to 1Mbps. As you can see, the total bandwidth of your connection is available, it's just that you cannot access it via only one stream. This is why some people use Bit Torrents as they have many simultaneous downloads taking place.

YouTube is similarly affected as it is just one stream. Unless you want to view live TV it doesn't matter too much. This is the beauty of iPlayer which lets you download, rather than insisting on a live stream. I find it a much better approach for most programmes I want to watch.

sbiddle

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#593120 10-Mar-2012 11:01

Orcon have a Google cache so data comes from internally in their network. If you're experiencing poor YouTube performance it's got nothing to do with international bandwidth. The first thing to check with YouTube performance
is to ensure you're using Orcon's DNS servers.

As for speeds to international sites these will vary signirficantly depending on the international transit, the connectivity of those sites to backhaul, and limitations of the TCP stack.

grant_k

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#593147 10-Mar-2012 11:40

sbiddle: Orcon have a Google cache so data comes from internally in their network. If you're experiencing poor YouTube performance it's got nothing to do with international bandwidth.

Correct me if I'm wrong Steve, but doesn't the cache only kick in if somebody else has already viewed the particular YouTube clip that you are trying to download?

I wouldn't have thought it possible for Orcon's cache to store the entire library of YouTube content.

NonprayingMantis

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#593187 10-Mar-2012 13:01

grant_k:
sbiddle: Orcon have a Google cache so data comes from internally in their network. If you're experiencing poor YouTube performance it's got nothing to do with international bandwidth.

Correct me if I'm wrong Steve, but doesn't the cache only kick in if somebody else has already viewed the particular YouTube clip that you are trying to download?

I wouldn't have thought it possible for Orcon's cache to store the entire library of YouTube content.

I beleive that is true, but for the vast majority of clips it will be the case that somebody will have watched it in NZ already.

OP: Pretty sure Sony TV content is also hosted in NZ. It works just fine on my Telecom connection. streaming HD without a hitch, even at peak times.
OF course, the content on Sony's servce itself is basically garbage, so you aren't missing much ;)

sandy888

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#593242 10-Mar-2012 15:51

You are right I think NonPrayingMantis. I am on a mates Vodafone broadband, same laptop settings and all and the Top Gear download has moved from 37HRS down to 15 minutes. Quite acceptable. I have just added a 720p video on you tube and all good. Thanks for the heads up on Telecom looks like we will be with them.

Bye bye Orcon

Sandy

Ragnor

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#593255 10-Mar-2012 16:32

Doesn't sound normal, might be a problem with your modem or line at your place.

Have you tried contacting their helpdesk to go through standard troubleshooting, it's a chore but it may turn up a problem that's affecting your service.

Zeon

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#593260 10-Mar-2012 16:45

sandy888: You are right I think NonPrayingMantis. I am on a mates Vodafone broadband, same laptop settings and all and the Top Gear download has moved from 37HRS down to 15 minutes. Quite acceptable. I have just added a 720p video on you tube and all good. Thanks for the heads up on Telecom looks like we will be with them.

Bye bye Orcon

Sandy

Before you throw your toys out of the cot have you tried calling them and raising a fault which by the sounds of what you are experiencing is the issue?

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sbiddle

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#593261 10-Mar-2012 16:45

grant_k:
sbiddle: Orcon have a Google cache so data comes from internally in their network. If you're experiencing poor YouTube performance it's got nothing to do with international bandwidth.

Correct me if I'm wrong Steve, but doesn't the cache only kick in if somebody else has already viewed the particular YouTube clip that you are trying to download?

I wouldn't have thought it possible for Orcon's cache to store the entire library of YouTube content.

Yes, but the Google box also requires that the ISP provide a significant amount of dedicated international bandwidth just for the box itself, this typically means a new video that isn't cached should still have very good performance.

sandy888

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#593275 10-Mar-2012 17:26

Hi Zeon
Toys and pram thrown ages ago. Life too short to spend any more time waiting for a reply to email or getting through on hold. Believe me I have done the holding and diagnosing bit.

My assumption is that if I get more than 12MBs to an NZ server then my modem and line is fine. The link from Orcon to the rest of the world seems to be the useless bit.

S

grant_k

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#593325 10-Mar-2012 19:28

sandy888: You are right I think NonPrayingMantis. I am on a mates Vodafone broadband, same laptop settings and all and the Top Gear download has moved from 37HRS down to 15 minutes. Quite acceptable. I have just added a 720p video on you tube and all good. Thanks for the heads up on Telecom looks like we will be with them.

WOW! It takes me 3 hours to download a Top Gear episode, so maybe I should be looking for a new ISP too. However, Telecom isn't an option for me, given that I'm on wireless :(

lucky015

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#593357 10-Mar-2012 21:04

sandy888: I am a newbie to NZ broadband. I signed up with ORCON attracted by the local caching of STEAM and iSKY however I have been shocked by how useless the service is when accessing sites outside NZ. Streaming Youtube or SONY TV is a waste of time. Downloading or syncing iTunes only works early in the morning. Tonight OOKLA to
Auckland shows, Ping 33ms, Down 11.8 and up 0.7.

All very good and shows that the modem and network is working fine. If I change the remote site to

Sydney Ping 60ms Down 0.44Mbps and up improves to 0.79

Change to

London ping 97.7 Down 0.29 up 0.0,33

I ran the same tests on my son in law's Vodafone Broadband and while he had lower bandwidth in Auckland than we do 5.7 download it did not degrade by more than 20% on the Sydney and London hops.

Orcon FAQ says they throttle the international stream and I see that there have been debates on the forum at least back to 2008.

The service we are receiving is not acceptable and we will be leaving ORCON as soon as possible. They are very proud of their internal bandwidth and while a slight degradation on international is OK given our geography and investment in links, throttling to this level is a game stopper.

If I am missing something obvious please comment however I plan to be on the phone to ORCON tomorrow to terminate the agreement.

Kind Regards
Sandy

I am with Vodafone myself and like your Son in Law get drops for international connections closer to 20% of local.

While it is possible that this is intentional on Orcon's part it is just as likely to be an issue with your connection.

Orcon may be able to fix this but if you truly feel like they have been more trouble than you are willing to accept I'm sure any other ISP would be willing to sign you up, Beware you may be charged a Termination fee to cancel your contract if you have one, However you could possibly persuade them to drop the connection due to the problems you have been having with your connection.

Changing to a different ISP may fix your problem however there is a chance that it will not depending on the actual cause of the problem, However any ISP should be able to look into the cause of the problem.

If you do decide to change ISP I would recommend Vodafone myself.

Zeon

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#593398 10-Mar-2012 23:14

I'm pretty sure Orcon have spare international bandwidth, I still seem to be able to get 500mbps DDoS attacks against servers at their datacenter - maybe that is what's causing your slow connections lol?

In any case if support is important to you I'd suggest you may want to work with a smaller ISP like Unleash where you ring up and actually talk to a network engineer.

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Talkiet

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#593410 10-Mar-2012 23:58

sandy888: Hi Zeon

Toys and pram thrown ages ago. Life too short to spend any more time waiting for a reply to email or getting through on hold. Believe me I have done the holding and diagnosing bit.

My assumption is that if I get more than 12MBs to an NZ server then my modem and line is fine. The link from Orcon to the rest of the world seems to be the useless bit.
S

It would be worth understanding that regardless of the amount if money an ISP has, they can't get bits from the other side of the world much faster than each other. While caching certainly helps (and expect to see more clever caching and local content delivery from all sensible ISPs), if traffic really has to come from the UK, 300+ms of latency does terrible things to TCP throughput and NO ISP can fix that.

That said, there are also ISPs that do have international connectivity issues .

Your basic assumption that getting 12mb/sec to an NZ server means your modem and line are fine is of course pretty valid - just beware that there are a LOT of factors that can influence international performance, and not all of those factors are under control by the ISP.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

insane

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#593417 11-Mar-2012 01:52

I'll throw something in here, if you are getting even slight packet loss you may still get respectable speeds locally but terrible speeds internationally, so even good national speeds may not tell the whole story.

I had just this problem a few weeks back after fiddling with some wireless networking settings, took a while to narrow the problem down given my good national results.

cgreenwood

201 posts

Master Geek

#593423 11-Mar-2012 07:59

Would live to know if you get a resolution to this without changing ISP's. I have the EXACT same problem with Orcon, great national speeds, appalling international speeds.

Worthy of note is that this has not always been the case, I have not been with Orcon long and when I first got set up speeds were better than I had been getting with my previous broadband provider (Vodafone). The inference being that Orcon have chnaged something, perhaps they are throttling the international traffic?

When I can face it, I will go throught the help desk to try to solve this but I have not got my hopes up.

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