Normally at this time of day it should be easy to hit 100/10

No issues this end of Wainui at this time of the day.

Will see how things are going later today when I get home though.

BigMal: You can get all your speed test history from the speed test website. I compiled 11 months of tests and included it with my TDR. My congestion issues were solved within a week.

i think yours may have been more a coincident than anything, as others have complained and they still have congestion.

So I hit up Vodafone on twitter. According to them "all of the cable upgrades that were in the wood works to happen have been completed.". That seems to fly in the face of claims that upgrades are scheduled this week. It would be really nice if you could talk to two different people at Vodafone and get the same answer.

In other news, 2degrees have just texted me to tell me my connection is a "port waiter". Crap. Does anyone what the wait times are like these days? 

ramboky:

So I hit up Vodafone on twitter. According to them "all of the cable upgrades that were in the wood works to happen have been completed.". That seems to fly in the face of claims that upgrades are scheduled this week. It would be really nice if you could talk to two different people at Vodafone and get the same answer.

In other news, 2degrees have just texted me to tell me my connection is a "port waiter". Crap. Does anyone what the wait times are like these days? 

Called VF for an update on my incident and the level 1 guy was very helpful and was willing to listen and realized that I knew what I was on about so was willing to play man in the middle for me with his T2 team.

Long story short, the reported issues has nothing to do with the issues being seen, at least for me, and sadly its actually related to my node (W40.1.2) sitting at 100% utilization. I asked him to go back and see the trend for the last few months since my node was apparently upgraded and it looks like its been more or less been sitting between 95 - 100% last month or so. It WAS ok after the upgrade which consisted of splitting the node into 2-3 different nodes instead and hence filled up and back to fully utilized. 

This then led into the "when will things get sorted' and I got given in the next 3 - 4 months but we cannot guarantee this. And now I am on hold talking to the billing team about getting compensated for this until its resolved.

I think I might have to suck it up and move back to VDSL at this rate. At least I was getting a constant 60mbps+ down most of the time as I am not willing to wait another year for my node to get "upgraded".

mdf: Seems to be more than one twitter exchange w VodaNZ about Wellington Cable Congestion. Allegedly all fixed now.

Contrary to what the Vodafone social media guys said, johnr (late of this parish) confirmed on twitter that more cable works/upgrades/confused slapdashery to the sound of the Benny Hill music are planned for Wellington.

Haha, yeah, all fixed.... Except for the congestion bit. Did John make mention of Wellington or Island Bay specifically? 

mdf: @ramboky - can you keep us posted as to the wait times (and eventual performance) for Island Bay VDSL. I may need to fall back to that option too.

Absolutely. I have little faith that the supposed work to WKH will happen any time soon so I'm working on the basis that VF cable is no longer a serious option. My goal over the next few weeks is to come up with a viable alternative. 

Nish: This then led into the "when will things get sorted' and I got given in the next 3 - 4 months but we cannot guarantee this. And now I am on hold talking to the billing team about getting compensated for this until its resolved.

And that is exactly why I've continually pushed for a real answer. 3-4 months from now with no guarantees is ridiculous, especially given we're already over a year into this mess. That could easily turn into 6 or 12 months if WKH is anything to go by. Customers deserve to know the truth instead of being continually strung along with false promises.

Nish: It sounds like the focus is now on the whole gigabit cable now. I ended up raising the concern around how they plan on offering a gigabit service when the nodes are loaded to the point where they are 100% utilized and users barely get 5mbps in the peak hour periods.

I'll see how things go and will plan on moving back to vdsl.

Because this is going to be such a fail.

Speed issues on VF cable network might be the least of our worries - major problem on WLG & CHCH cable networks. Can't ping to local (VF) gateway (or beyond obviously!).

Advice from tech support (after 20 minute wait, guessing they had a few calls queued), "*don't* reboot your cable modem"

(no hint of problem on VF website...)

And just as I post that, connection is restored (down for around 45 minutes)...

Our net was just down for a little while, now getting this on speedtest:

Will see how things look in the middle of peak

To be fair to VF (I know, who'd have thought..?) I've avoided any of the congestion issues affecting download speed, pretty constantly getting 100/10 and only dropping to mid-90's during evening "peak" (Wadestown, no idea which node), which even I'm not going to complain about :-) 

Not tempting fate was one of the reasons for staying out of this discussion, have I just jinxed myself?

However, I'm not convinced the issues are as simple as localized node overloading; despite seemingly good speeds, I'm often seeing buffering of audio streaming (no HD video stuff, just BBC 6 Music) - I know there has been separate discussion on intermittent poor performance on overseas sites/CDNs. Simply splitting nodes/increasing capacity in "firefighting" mode when problems get really bad might not be a reliable long-term fix.