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Ratbag

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#9135 23-Aug-2006 10:07

Hello,
My name is Sean and I am currently in San Diego California, but in a few weeks I will be moving to Auckland. I'm a Desktop Support Tech and have been for a few years now and I gues I'll be doing it for awhile longer. I play PC games, just started playing WOW agian and what a time sucker that is. I also do Viking age re-enactment. So I'm looking for some SCA type geeks to meet up with.

I found Geekzone while searching for broadband reviews. And I have to say I am really spoiled with Broadband in the US. What is up with the bandwidth caps!?!? How is that going to affect my gaming!

Sean

freitasm

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#44545 23-Aug-2006 10:13

Welcome Sean... And drop us a line when you arrive in AKL.

The broadband here is not that bad - if you are with the right plan (hint: there's no cable service in AKL). But yes, lots to complain about.

Ratbag

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#44547 23-Aug-2006 10:35

Yes I will miss my cable modem.
So is there a service you would suggest?
When I first arrive I will be staying with my Father-in-law and would like to get DSL there for a month or 2 ( i'm cringing at the thought of having to use dialup) untill I find a place to rent. I was looking at the Orcon Surfer Medium plan or Or the Telecom Xtra Braodband Adventure Plan. I also plan on getting my own dslmodem/router. So I just need to find out prices on setup and contracts and all that mess.

Cheers!
Sean

NokiaRocks

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#44551 23-Aug-2006 12:06

if your father and law already has a phoneline set up then xtra usually do no connection fees and free broadband modem

juha

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#44552 23-Aug-2006 12:19

Ratbag:
Yes I will miss my cable modem.
So is there a service you would suggest?
When I first arrive I will be staying with my Father-in-law and would like to get DSL there for a month or 2 ( i'm cringing at the thought of having to use dialup) untill I find a place to rent. I was looking at the Orcon Surfer Medium plan or Or the Telecom Xtra Braodband Adventure Plan. I also plan on getting my own dslmodem/router. So I just need to find out prices on setup and contracts and all that mess.

Cheers!
Sean

Hi Sean,

There's unfortunately not heaps of choice in Auckland, even though it's the biggest city in NZ (1.4m now I think) and the commercial centre. We had an HFC network that Telecom decided to dump in favour of DSL, and missed out on another one, a $NZ2 billion one from TelstraClear, thanks to a very effective FUD campaign in the press and thicko technophobic Auckland mayors.

There are some localised Wireless services around, like Wired Country but in reality, you're probably looking at DSL. That comes in two flavours: one, direct from Telecom's retail ISP, Xtra; two, from any of Telecom's wholesale ISPs (like Orcon).

Telecom's retail DSL is delivered as a Layer 3 service to Xtra, whereas the wholesale ISPs get it as a Layer 2 Tunnelled Protocol (L2TP) one. In theory, this shouldn't make that much of a difference, but in practice the wholesale ISPs seem to run into performance issues that Xtra doesn't have, possibly because the service delivery is less convoluted. It's usually faster to get Xtra DSL installed too, rather than waiting for the wholesale ISPs orders with Telecom to go through.

Your safest bet for the moment is going with Xtra, probably. However, things should change next year, as there will be new regulation coming into place, and additional service options arriving. I've writtten about some of them like Orcon/Siemens' ADSL2+ plans in my blog.

As for the Viking Age reenactement, I think you're in luck. There are some crazies in Auckland who do just that, featuring some tall Scandies who really look the part. See:

http://www.aucklandmuseum.com/?t=885

The Auckland Norsemen don't have a website that I can see though...

HTH

Juha