Telecom Big Time plan trouble thread

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4297 posts

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# 323819 27-Apr-2010 18:48

DravidDavid:
k1wi:
aimsy007: What do 'we' do.

Set up a bittorrent site for Telecom users only that tracks legitimate downloads. It seems bittorrent speeds aren't managed domestically, so we should set up a bandwidth pool. :)

I am interested in this....

I don't know why Telecom dosn't just set up a 256K/256K unlimited connection that is unshaped. You certainly couldn't pull 2B per month, thats for sure.

Talkiet said that a 1mb up and down connection that is unshaped would cost over 350 dollars. I find this does not compute since Telecom have pretty much just done this and if I wanted too I could get a Full Speed unlimited ADSL 2+ connection from Actrix for 450.

256K is all I need for ventrilo and gaming. I don't care about filesharing. Although it is nice to be able to rip something down in seconds rather than minutes at 3AM without having to think twice about Data allowence.

That is pretty much the only perk keeping me on the plan.

Note: 6:20PM and had a full speed connection. I reset the router and it went dog again. I must experiment! Next time I think I will take note of my IP maybe?

Hi David... First up, that Actrix Plan is allegedly normally $596, but is discounted to $496/month (and has been for ages)...

Secondly, I can't give any info about wholesale bandwidth prices, but I can draw examples from other publicly available sources where dedicated bandwidth is provided. Where dedicated BW is provided, you can (usually) be sure that the pricing is reasonably reflective of costs...

I followed the service providers link off citylink's page and had a look to see which providers gave online public pricing for various bandwidth options... I only found a couple of providers prepared to put up genuine unlimited pricing plans.

1) Xtreme Networks... http://www.xtreme.net.nz/connections/dedicated.php

1Mbit/s - $500/month
2Mbit/s - $1000/month (etc)

Note these prices only include guaranteed bandwidth internally to Xtreme Networks servers etc. If you want them to reserve international bandwidth for you, then DOUBLE the figures... ie.

1Mbit/s - $1000/month
2Mbit/s - $2000/month etc

Note these are ONLY the bandwidth fees - access fees are in addition.

2) Nzwireless.co.nz - http://www.nzwireless.co.nz/Site/OurServices/default.aspx

128kbps - $150/month
256kbps - $200/month
512kbps - $350/month
1024kbps - $650/month

These prices seem to include the access component as well

So if any provider is offering even 1mbit for less than several hundred dollars per month (let's not get caught up in the exact number) then they are almost certainly significantly oversubscribing the service.

Cheers - N

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

System

521 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 323829 27-Apr-2010 19:08

k1wi:
aimsy007: What do 'we' do.

Set up a bittorrent site for Telecom users only that tracks legitimate downloads. It seems bittorrent speeds aren't managed domestically, so we should set up a bandwidth pool. :)

How would you do this? I know nothing about torrent trackers

PC: 3.3ghz Core i5-2500, 8gb DDR3, ATI Radeon 5850, 27" QHD IPS Monitor

Mobile Phone: iPhone 5 32gb Graphite.

Sheagae

191 posts

Master Geek

# 323859 27-Apr-2010 20:29

shiroshadows: You forget. Its Telecom and they tend to not care bout their customers

Quoted for the truth - or at least this is how it seems a lot of the time.

DravidDavid

1892 posts

Uber Geek

# 323867 27-Apr-2010 20:45

Talkiet:
DravidDavid:
k1wi:
aimsy007: What do 'we' do.

Set up a bittorrent site for Telecom users only that tracks legitimate downloads. It seems bittorrent speeds aren't managed domestically, so we should set up a bandwidth pool. :)

I am interested in this....

I don't know why Telecom dosn't just set up a 256K/256K unlimited connection that is unshaped. You certainly couldn't pull 2B per month, thats for sure.

Talkiet said that a 1mb up and down connection that is unshaped would cost over 350 dollars. I find this does not compute since Telecom have pretty much just done this and if I wanted too I could get a Full Speed unlimited ADSL 2+ connection from Actrix for 450.

256K is all I need for ventrilo and gaming. I don't care about filesharing. Although it is nice to be able to rip something down in seconds rather than minutes at 3AM without having to think twice about Data allowence.

That is pretty much the only perk keeping me on the plan.

Note: 6:20PM and had a full speed connection. I reset the router and it went dog again. I must experiment! Next time I think I will take note of my IP maybe?

Hi David... First up, that Actrix Plan is allegedly normally $596, but is discounted to $496/month (and has been for ages)...

Secondly, I can't give any info about wholesale bandwidth prices, but I can draw examples from other publicly available sources where dedicated bandwidth is provided. Where dedicated BW is provided, you can (usually) be sure that the pricing is reasonably reflective of costs...

I followed the service providers link off citylink's page and had a look to see which providers gave online public pricing for various bandwidth options... I only found a couple of providers prepared to put up genuine unlimited pricing plans.

1) Xtreme Networks... http://www.xtreme.net.nz/connections/dedicated.php

1Mbit/s - $500/month
2Mbit/s - $1000/month (etc)

Note these prices only include guaranteed bandwidth internally to Xtreme Networks servers etc. If you want them to reserve international bandwidth for you, then DOUBLE the figures... ie.

1Mbit/s - $1000/month
2Mbit/s - $2000/month etc

Note these are ONLY the bandwidth fees - access fees are in addition.

2) Nzwireless.co.nz - http://www.nzwireless.co.nz/Site/OurServices/default.aspx

128kbps - $150/month
256kbps - $200/month
512kbps - $350/month
1024kbps - $650/month

These prices seem to include the access component as well

So if any provider is offering even 1mbit for less than several hundred dollars per month (let's not get caught up in the exact number) then they are almost certainly significantly oversubscribing the service.

Cheers - N

Thanks for the info. But for the record, when I enquired about Actrix's unlimited plan they offered it to me for 450...So I naturally assumed that was the price. But we were long time customers with everything going through them.

It boggles my mind that it is so damned expensive to get such a plan. After all the years broadband has been around, why has the price not come down?

And if we are getting an unlimited 8Mb/s connection for 60 dollars, able to pull down so much data and almost certainly capped at 1mb/s through HTTP anyway....Arn't Telecom essentially offering an unlimited 1Mb connection worth 600 odd' dollars with the bonus you get your full speed connection on peer to peer systems 24/7 (or so it seems)

I would have thought it would make more sense to put a cap on each connection with the bonus that it is unlimited. That way people wouldn't be able to get around it like people have been. I know the average user dosn't pull 100GB per month, but then again those who don't won't be a bother since they hardly use their connection.

Putting us in a pool were some people smuggle in extra hoses to syphon more water into their own pool undetected rather than giving everyone a dedicated hose at the entrance to use, still dosn't compute with me. Surely it would benifit Telecom in more ways than one if everyone was just capped streight up without the need for expensive fancy software and hardware to manage 10s of thousands of customers with some abusing the system making it a mission.

But I am no expert at networking. Thanks for your information, it has shocked me.

This country needs competition badly.

Sometimes what you don't get is a blessing in disguise!

asylum

19 posts

Geek

# 323874 27-Apr-2010 20:55

It is a traffic managed 1megabit connection, one megabit is a maximum. If you are getting full speed p2p then i expect you are a rare exception.

shiroshadows

165 posts

Master Geek

# 323875 27-Apr-2010 20:56

The broadband is just overpriced in NZ
And because the ISP companies arn't very competitive
The prices will stay high for a very long time
or come down at a veyr slow rate

k1wi

474 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 323879 27-Apr-2010 21:07

System:
k1wi:
aimsy007: What do 'we' do.

Set up a bittorrent site for Telecom users only that tracks legitimate downloads. It seems bittorrent speeds aren't managed domestically, so we should set up a bandwidth pool. :)

How would you do this? I know nothing about torrent trackers

You'd grab one of the opensource tracker software thats out there (there are lots) and set it up so that only telecom IP addresses can join to it.

The main problem with it is there is pretty much bugger all that you can share on it that doesn't have some sort of copyright on it. I'd imagine even things as innocent as skype installers would have some restrictions on them.

tdgeek

18719 posts

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Trusted

# 323905 27-Apr-2010 21:36

The broadband is just overpriced in NZ
And because the ISP companies arn't very competitive
The prices will stay high for a very long time
or come down at a veyr slow rate

Here is some food for thought.

Imagine the cost if we can forego the Southern Cross cable. After all it cost hundreds of millions to build, a small number of hundred or so to upgrade, many millions to maintain annually. The core costs have to be borne by two teeny countries, OZ and NZ. That is the reason for the higher cost.

Take the US, first time I was there LA had full speed unlimted for $19-95. They dont have or need a SX cable, or the cost, the vast majority of their internet is already there. Same for Europe. To compare for NZ if we almost always only went to the internet at local sites, it will almoat all be national traffic. Practically no cost there, hence you can have it cheap and everyone is happy.

Yes, there is a trans-Atlantic cable, but its always been there (figuratively). And its short, and the cost is supported by the North Americans and Europeans, That is 528,720,588 + 830.4 million, lets say 1.4 bllion or 1400 million compared with OZ/NZ at a total of 27 million. A cost analysis per unit is easy to see then.

Tske Korea and China, huge populations where the internet access is in cities, the rest of the country is not first world, thats easy to give near to 100% coverage.

It is far more complex off course, there are other countries and other undersea networks, they all cooperate with transmission, but all I wnat to say is while I do work at telecom, the above is precis of why it is costly in NZ and Australia

Off topic Mauricio, but it was raised in this thread as a cause or implied cause of Big Time. Otherwise I hope that this is of some interest and insight.

DravidDavid

1892 posts

Uber Geek

# 323906 27-Apr-2010 21:37

I have a question for Talkiet or Doozy...

Since there is a peering a agreement with Telecom and FX Networks, would it be possible to start caching TVNZ On-Demand?

And why does the ad on any video load flawlessly but only one of the videos out of the 20 I tried work? Does Telecom plan to cache TVNZ on demand in future?

EDIT: Thanks for that tdgeek! :)

Sometimes what you don't get is a blessing in disguise!

shiroshadows

165 posts

Master Geek

# 323925 27-Apr-2010 22:18

tdgeek: The broadband is just overpriced in NZ
And because the ISP companies arn't very competitive
The prices will stay high for a very long time
or come down at a veyr slow rate

Here is some food for thought.

Imagine the cost if we can forego the Southern Cross cable. After all it cost hundreds of millions to build, a small number of hundred or so to upgrade, many millions to maintain annually. The core costs have to be borne by two teeny countries, OZ and NZ. That is the reason for the higher cost.

Take the US, first time I was there LA had full speed unlimted for $19-95. They dont have or need a SX cable, or the cost, the vast majority of their internet is already there. Same for Europe. To compare for NZ if we almost always only went to the internet at local sites, it will almoat all be national traffic. Practically no cost there, hence you can have it cheap and everyone is happy.

Yes, there is a trans-Atlantic cable, but its always been there (figuratively). And its short, and the cost is supported by the North Americans and Europeans, That is 528,720,588 + 830.4 million, lets say 1.4 bllion or 1400 million compared with OZ/NZ at a total of 27 million. A cost analysis per unit is easy to see then.

Tske Korea and China, huge populations where the internet access is in cities, the rest of the country is not first world, thats easy to give near to 100% coverage.

It is far more complex off course, there are other countries and other undersea networks, they all cooperate with transmission, but all I wnat to say is while I do work at telecom, the above is precis of why it is costly in NZ and Australia

Off topic Mauricio, but it was raised in this thread as a cause or implied cause of Big Time. Otherwise I hope that this is of some interest and insight.

Yeah I understand it costs alot for the setting up; however, I don't think it'd cost Telecom or any other ISP much to give a little extra speed.

And well I don't want to start attacking people
But the last few days I've had my complaints bout speed from my Dad
He is very computer-iliterate and is happy with extremely slow and 2nd rate computers and internet speeds
So I know something is crap when he starts complaining.

So could someone from Telecom please point out whats going on the speeds and whether or not the speeds will get better before I start abusing your customer support with rude words

jhickmott

19 posts

Geek

# 323927 27-Apr-2010 22:34

Thank you Dean (Doozy) for your presense on geekzone regarding the Big Time issue and answering some of our queries. Although the issue has yet to be resolved, any public communication or information from telecom & yourself is appreciated and better than none at all.

-----------------------

From my experience and after reading comments from others, the primary issue with the Big Time plan is that for the past 2+ weeks the majority of international HTTP traffic has been capped (throttled) 24/7 at approx 100kb/s.

By the record size of the thread and other discussion online it is safe to assume this Big Time issue is widespread and affects the majority of users (if not all). Other than techniques used to bypass the throttling I've haven't heard from anyone not experiencing this issue.

1. This isn't traffic shaping or management, this is an artificial cap and contradicts Telecom's Big Time advertising.

2. Telecom has only partially confirmed that some users might be experiencing issues with the Big Time plan.

Telecom spokeswoman Emma-Kate Greer says recent traffic management software upgrades might have affected Big Time's performance.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3570623/Crawling-Big-Time-annoys-Telecom-customers

3. Telecom's helpdesk and customer service assitance has been weak, congested and provides limited options. I don't feel the frontline staff are entirely blame as they are reliant on internal information being provided to them. The current customer options so far are:

- Log a report with Telecom and await a response.

- Or switch to another telecom broadband plan (It is questionable whether this is in violation with the Fair Trading Act - Bait & Switch advertising).

Customers unhappy with Big Time can switch plans free of charge.

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3570623/Crawling-Big-Time-annoys-Telecom-customers

4. Customers have been provided will little details on this issue which is unexpectable:

- Telecom hasn't directly confirmed that international HTTP traffic is throttled to 100kb/s and in Dean's (Doozy's) recent post he declined to comment.

nzpossum: Tell us Doozy. Are we capped at 100KB/ s or is this temporary. This is all people want to know.

Given the amount of threads and such around people trying to get around shaping, much like how we wouldn't publish how a spam filter works, I really don't think it would be wise for me to give any details on the configuration of the traffic shaping policy

- Users on Big Time shouldn't be able to get around the shaping, it defeats the purpose of having the plan. A spam filter is used to protect the security of its users and prevent external malicious behaviour while traffic shaping is used to fairly distribute traffic between users. I feel Dean's (Doozy's) logic is similar to comparing apples with oranges.

- Telecom needs to be more open about what internet activity is likely to be affected on a regular basis so that customers can chose the correct broadband plan for their needs. Telecom's website currently provides some information regarding this though at the moment it's irrelevant and incorrect.

Example: When the network is busy (generally inside the hours of 9am and 2am) you may notice reduced speeds, in particular you are likely to see reduced speeds in relation to file sharing traffic and online gaming.

- Telecom hasn't released any official details on the issue and customers currently have no idea when to expect a resolution.

This demonstrates complete irrogance from Telecom's management as regardless of what type of business you are, if you are having problems providing a good or service to customers you are obligated (legally and common courtesy) to communicate details on the issue/s and what's happening to solve it.

James.

Ragnor

8035 posts

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# 323954 28-Apr-2010 00:38

tdgeek:

Imagine the cost if we can forego the Southern Cross cable. After all it cost hundreds of millions to build, a small number of hundred or so to upgrade, many millions to maintain annually. The core costs have to be borne by two teeny countries, OZ and NZ. That is the reason for the higher cost.

The SXC has cost ~1.5 billion USD in construction and upgrades.
The SXC was completed in 2001 and had fully repaid all bank debt by 2005.
SX is 50% owned by Telecom.
SX has undoutably generated a large amount of profit for it's owners (given the lack of alternatives).

However, this is from SX's own website:

So really high adsl port cost and national backhaul are as much if not more of a factor in high NZ broadband prices than SX international bandwidth costs thesedays (and we know who is responsible for those).

Things have definately improved recent years with increased regulation (LLU, operation seperation) but there is still a long way to go (real national peering, removal of all vertical intergration benefits between retail and wholesale etc).

Ragnor

8035 posts

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# 323958 28-Apr-2010 00:56

doozy:

Given the amount of threads and such around people trying to get around shaping, much like how we wouldn't publish how a spam filter works, I really don't think it would be wise for me to give any details on the configuration of the traffic shaping policy

How many spam filters work is actually fairly well documented.

It's sad to see Telecom stuck in the dark ages practising security through obscurity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

It's also sad to see that:

When some people found they could get around the rapidshare/megaupload/etc limits by resolving the host names to ip addresses...

Telecom's response was:
- 100 KB/s rate shape on all (non whitelisted) international http tranfers.

This then led to people figuring out they could use a whitelisted http referrer.

It's a classic case of treating the symptons not the cause leading to more symptons, why not just deal with the problem users downloading terabytes?

shiroshadows

165 posts

Master Geek

# 323982 28-Apr-2010 07:42

Ragnor:
doozy:

Given the amount of threads and such around people trying to get around shaping, much like how we wouldn't publish how a spam filter works, I really don't think it would be wise for me to give any details on the configuration of the traffic shaping policy

How many spam filters work is actually fairly well documented.

It's sad to see Telecom stuck in the dark ages practising security through obscurity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity

It's also sad to see that:

When some people found they could get around the rapidshare/megaupload/etc limits by resolving the host names to ip addresses...

Telecom's response was:
- 100 KB/s rate shape on all (non whitelisted) international http tranfers.

This then led to people figuring out they could use a whitelisted http referrer.

It's a classic case of treating the symptons not the cause leading to more symptons, why not just deal with the problem users downloading terabytes?

That solution is too easy for Telecom to come up with

crazed

484 posts

Ultimate Geek

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# 323986 28-Apr-2010 07:50

Here is a couple of questions I would like answered which may infact be related to internet access in NZ.

What is the actual cost of the SX cable to maintain, per year? Is that cost directly or indirectly requiring NZ tier 1 providers such as Telecom, etc to keep NZ Bandwidth prices artificially high to pay for the upkeep/upgrade of the cable?

If residential/commercial Bandwidth prices are directly related to the cost of accessing, using, maintaining the SX cable, then why isn't Local NZ based traffic reduced heavily in price?

Wouldn't it be be beneficial to NZ, to drop the price of NZ local traffic and cap international traffic? Alot of NZ ISP's charge the exact same price for international traffic as they do for national(nz) traffic.

CraZeD,
Your friendly Southern Geeky Fellow :P

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