Telecom BIG TIME - YES or NO and why?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Telecom BIG TIME - YES or NO and why?

Noiseless

55 posts

Master Geek

#41714 21-Sep-2009 22:26

Telecom BIG TIME

A bunch of questions about it as I've given up trying to find the answers myself.
That includes ringing telecom to ask questions...
Was kinda like talking to the dial tone, pointless, a stupid idea and it couldn't understand me.

So i'll ask you..

Is it really worth it?

How good/bad are the speeds up/down?
and could someone in REALY simple words explain the whole caching? =D
I think i kinda get it? O.o

If it's bad what other options are there?

Would you recomend adventurer over big time?

THANKS

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1539 posts

Uber Geek

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#257463 21-Sep-2009 22:33

Is it really worth it? Yes

How good/bad are the speeds up/down?,

they vary on what you are doing, e.g during peak time Torrents are slow and large non cached downloads are. during off peak time, I can pull 1.2mb/s on a private torrent. (Adsl2) and pull over 100gb a month with ease.

and could someone in REALY simple words explain the whole caching?

Basically it does what your browser does, the first time someone visits a site e.g bbc.co.uk the user downloads it from the bbc server and telecom cache it (aka downloads the page to a server ) then every other person from their on will download it from the telecom server making it faster to view as it is local traffic instead of intl traffic.

does that make sense haha?

Noiseless

55 posts

Master Geek

#257465 21-Sep-2009 22:59

WOW =D

Haha that explained a lot, cheers!

so just trying to make my brain click

...On the telecome site it says

"When the network is busy (generally inside the hours of 9am and 2am) you may noticed reduced speeds"

How reduced is reduced? I presume there isnt a fixed answer but even a rough idea?

garvani

1873 posts

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#257490 22-Sep-2009 08:55

SCROAT:
"When the network is busy (generally inside the hours of 9am and 2am) you may noticed reduced speeds"
How reduced is reduced? I presume there isnt a fixed answer but even a rough idea?

Well my torrent speeds are castrated during that time, as in coming down around 15k. Youtube etc is very fast however, can stream three HD youtube vids at the same time with ease (no buffering), other sites are fine too, all depends on if the cache has the content or not.

nate

6473 posts

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Lifetime subscriber

#257540 22-Sep-2009 12:21

I've just recently swapped to Big Time from Snap, and it's great. Good speeds, even during peak times, and it's nice not having to worry about going over a data cap.

BlueRose

13 posts

Geek

#257567 22-Sep-2009 13:47

Im on it, and its great for downloading volumes of data. My flatmate complains about the speed for gaming when its been throttled back - but when its a choice of all my TV programs from the US or his gaming speed - he can get a second line and separate account or something similar :)

Noiseless

55 posts

Master Geek

#257623 22-Sep-2009 18:44

Hey thanks all for the feedback

Sounds like it might be what we're looking for

If anyone that games online could comment on their point of view it'd be great

thanks heaps

Ragnor

8219 posts

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#257631 22-Sep-2009 19:49

Gaming:

Gaming on US and Australian servers at peak time after work and on Sunday early evening has been variable. It was bad for certain ip ranges for awhile, then it was fine... perfect last week playing on Australian Left 4 Dead servers for me.

They made some changes this week and the ping to AU servers seems quite high right now at 7.50pm

Local servers are fine.

Downloading:

Torrents in peak time are capped at around 80KB/s for me, they go my max line rate of 300-400KB/s after 2am though.

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ajobbins

5052 posts

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#257638 22-Sep-2009 19:58

Having major issues on Big Time tonight. Uncached YouTube videos are unwatchable, TVNZ On Demand is unwatchable.

I'm trying to download a 44mb file (Logitech SqueezeCentre) over HTTP and it's going at 14k and estimates another 45 mins! On my old plan this would be downloaded in not more than a minute or two.

I've also found out since joining that Port 25 opt out doesn't work on Big Time.

I've also noticed alot of packet loss on my VoIP lines since the change too.

Twitter: ajobbins

MikeSands

26 posts

Geek

#257783 23-Sep-2009 12:38

I found that the evening speeds was too variable - sometimes it was fine, sometimes terrible. It was never quite as fast as the capped plans during peak periods.

Moved back to the capped plan + consistent speeds last week.

farcus

1554 posts

Uber Geek

#257784 23-Sep-2009 12:49

One thing I have noticed with Big Time is that while torrents are heavily shaped during peak times - I can still get reasonable speeds on an obfuscated Emule connection.
The emule connection is still shaped to an extent as it does not come down as fast as off peak but speeds are considerably quicker than torrents during peak times.

acsonline

181 posts

Master Geek

#257803 23-Sep-2009 13:19

Hi, has anyone had any issues with VOIP (SIP based) phone calls during peak times?

ajobbins

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#257806 23-Sep-2009 13:50

acsonline: Hi, has anyone had any issues with VOIP (SIP based) phone calls during peak times?

Yes. Have noticed some packet loss on a few occasions.

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adresdendoll

62 posts

Master Geek

#257813 23-Sep-2009 14:12

After getting the DNS sorted out with Telecom, Ive found it to be pretty good. Its nice to know that if my partner or flatmate goes on a bandwidth binge, that the im not going to get stung with overage charges. On a side note, one way that I found to get around the traffic shaping is to use an SSL Usenet connection. I am able to max out the line at 1.2MBs

tunafish

93 posts

Master Geek

#257874 23-Sep-2009 16:30

Big time is not worth it if you live a normal life work durring the day, home at night, because the performance sucks. Youtube is ok if the content is in cache, but just works on hidef, if it is a non hidef youtube and new just watch the circle spin. As for streaming from within NZ like the vids on NZherald, they also suck.
As for downloads you can wait to the cows come home. But Bigtime would be good if you wanted to do mega downloads and had access to a server outside NZ, and then connect to it with a VPN or SSL, then you can really get some data volumes down, as the traffic shappers will never see you.

paradoxsm

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#257891 23-Sep-2009 18:08

You tube is a weird one, It always buffers when playing back, my default is MP4 Format 18 but when I download the video it has cached by that time so it downloads rather quickly and the FLV low quality version I backload to my hard drive also speeds down as it must have cached both.

My torrent (not plural, I have only tried one tiny fragment of one test "Tv show" with the most seeders as I could see on the site known as "arrrr, shiver me timbers not-quite-so-legal download bay" manage, properly port-forwarded) speeds are lucky to hit 10Kbps, downloads do seem to vary, probably due to caching.

We are the last few streets in the area to be still plumbed to the old exchange, 4 KM away through very poor lines due to our cabinet being installed shortly which should make the broadband fly.

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