How do you rate Xtra's adsl2 broadband plans?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › How do you rate Xtra's adsl2 broadband plans?

richgamer

224 posts

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#24526 26-Jul-2008 15:53

How do you rate xtra's adsl2 broadband plans?

you can only get the pro,pro advanced, and ultra plans with adsl2. you cannot get the $59.95 and lower plans with adsl2.

read:

https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/1,10627,205728-204466,00.html

the cheapest adsl2 plan costs $79.95 and has a 15gb cap. but there is excess data charges of 2 cents per megabyte.

no xtra adsl2 plan has the option to purchase additional data blocks or have your speed lowered to dialup once your cap is reached.

Bung

6488 posts

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#151607 26-Jul-2008 16:15

The web page is poorly written. All plans are ADSL2+ compatible or how else would they be delivered? Some plans won't deliver full performance because of the rate capped upload. GO Express is shown as compatible $59ish before discount.

They do have another page talking about a 4Mbps download rate limit on rate capped upload, I hope that is just the OS limitation if it applies.

manhinli

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#151632 26-Jul-2008 17:28

Bung: The web page is poorly written. All plans are ADSL2+ compatible or how else would they be delivered? Some plans won't deliver full performance because of the rate capped upload. GO Express is shown as compatible $59ish before discount.

They do have another page talking about a 4Mbps download rate limit on rate capped upload, I hope that is just the OS limitation if it applies.

About ADSL2+ compatibility, I have also talked about it before - it's incredibly bad wording.

About the 128k upload speed restricting total download bandwidth, it's true, and not a OS specific thing - you will have a max download speed of around 4.5mbps.

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rygrass

134 posts

Master Geek

#151936 27-Jul-2008 23:02

Most of its is BS ? i mean so they are saying that i now have a capped speed of 4 megs ? instead of the 7.6 megs..

Kinda sucks really you now have to now pay for ADSL2+ well if you want the extra speeds you have to pay.

As i don't have ADSL2+ in my exchange i guess it doesn't effect me...well at the moment it won't.

rygrass

134 posts

Master Geek

#156060 11-Aug-2008 21:37

Ok after Xtra has said i can't get 7.6 Megs on my line because i have a 128k upload but what i don't get is how i can download at over 700kbs a sec

http://img216.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=46653_speed_123_480lo.JPG

[URL=http://img216.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=46653_speed_123_480lo.JPG][IMG]http://img216.imagevenue.com/loc480/th_46653_speed_123_480lo.JPG[/IMG][/URL]

As it might be the download manager that gives me the higher speeds because it can surrport multi thread downloads ( or the site has it )

I am puzzled a bit here or is Xtra lieing here?

Dam picture

Bung

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#156062 11-Aug-2008 21:44

Your screen shot was too small for me to read. Was the file you were downloading something that could have been compressed in transfer and expanded as it reached you? That would give a false impression of speed.

rygrass

134 posts

Master Geek

#156076 11-Aug-2008 21:53

Well its not just my Download manager and it wasn't giving me a false impression Seems werid that now they say i cannot get speeds over 4 megs but i clearly can

manhinli

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#156081 11-Aug-2008 21:58

May factors may result of this - which is why many don't say 4.5mbps/128kbps.

One of them that I can think of now is that your computer may have been modified to "enhance" download speeds. Other factors may come into play as well, but I think the receiving and transmitting of packets really should restrict true bandwidth to around 4.5mbps.

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Bung

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#156084 11-Aug-2008 22:03

Unless you are downloading something that can't be compressed eg an iso image you can't use final file size and time taken to calculate download speed.

Xtra are just repeating a consevative version of the TCP download speed limitation if you can't send acknowledgments fast enough because you have a limited upload bandwidth. I have heard that Linux and later versions of Windows like Vista are better than XP