[TelstraClear] 100Mbps service from TelstraClear

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TelstraClear

#381081 17-Sep-2010 09:45

Ultra-Fast Broadband has been much talked about with it being seen as a creator of jobs, as driver of business efficiencies and delivering entertainment into our homes.

It is for these reasons that the Government has been such a high profile supporter of ultra-fast broadband though its UFB initiative.

Now as the ultra-fast speeds begin to become a reality there are some interesting questions being raised like:

'What does having ultra-fast broadband mean?'

'What to do with faster Broadband?'

'What will I be prepared to pay for it?' and 'What does a home of the future look like in an ultra-fast broadband world?'

Check out our site Warpspeed.co.nz

What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

Linuxluver

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#381108 17-Sep-2010 10:35

mattbush: When I had crazy fast internet at work it was great for within NZ, but as soon as you browsed international I was throttled to about the same as I could get from home.

lets hope this new undersea cable gets up and running fast to offer some competition.

True. The access at home doesn't matter much if the choker is the int'l link.

Even locally, I'm in Auckland I can't use the 700KB video streaming from TVNZ or TV3 OnDemand. I have to drop back to 300KB.

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freitasm

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#381109 17-Sep-2010 10:36

You might find the TVNZ and TV3 servers are either hosted overseas or not peering, unless the situation has changed.

graemeh

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#381112 17-Sep-2010 10:38

TelstraClear: What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

My thought is "will TelstraClear have the supporting infrastructure in place to actually deliver 100Mbps throughput right to my home".

I expect the answer is NO. As an ex cable modem customer I know that they never in the past actually delivered the quoted speed, although it came close at times. The service was also always unreliable and their customer service team was often overwhelmed and resulted in long periods on hold.

It would be nice to hear that this has changed but based on feedback here at Geekzone somehow I doubt it.

freitasm

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#381113 17-Sep-2010 10:42

graemeh:
TelstraClear: What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

My thought is "will TelstraClear have the supporting infrastructure in place to actually deliver 100Mbps throughput right to my home".

I expect the answer is NO. As an ex cable modem customer I know that they never in the past actually delivered the quoted speed, although it came close at times. The service was also always unreliable and their customer service team was often overwhelmed and resulted in long periods on hold.

It would be nice to hear that this has changed but based on feedback here at Geekzone somehow I doubt it.

Interesting view. I have never been a fan of TelstraClear's customer services, but the cable modem service in itself has always been very reliable for us. In terms of speed, for our use here there's no comparison with DSL offerings.

Having said that, the last time I had to contact the TelstraClear customer services, the lady on the phone told me she would call me back with an answer to my request to change to the 25Mbps service, and in less than 24 hours I had her calling back and the service correctly provisioned. That experience pretty much redeemed the very few times I had to contact them - probably I can count in one hand how many times I had to contact TelstraClear over 10+ years.

JonC

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#381115 17-Sep-2010 10:43

freitasm: You might find the TVNZ and TV3 servers are either hosted overseas or not peering, unless the situation has changed.

I agree that it's not entirely up to the ISP what speeds their customers get, but not everyone knows this. Eventually the average internet user will figure out that the high speeds advertised don't correlate with their experience on-line. Then they'll be thinking, what's the point of paying for this 100Mbps connection when peering issues or the content provider can't deliver.

freitasm

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#381117 17-Sep-2010 10:43

Back on topic of the 100Mbps service, another important bit of information is that their new cable modem comes with a gigabit interface. Seeing we here already have a Cisco gigabit router, a couple of gigabit switches then it should be all set.

Also remember when using WiFi you should aim to 801.11 N from now on.

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

lchiu7

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#381153 17-Sep-2010 11:26

freitasm: You might find the TVNZ and TV3 servers are either hosted overseas or not peering, unless the situation has changed.

Our Citylink account manager told me that they mirror TVNZ in San Francisco for those connecting with ISP's that don't peer at the APE or WIX. I guess that is what you're experiencing.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

itxtme

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#381174 17-Sep-2010 11:55

freitasm:
graemeh:
TelstraClear: What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

My thought is "will TelstraClear have the supporting infrastructure in place to actually deliver 100Mbps throughput right to my home".

I expect the answer is NO. As an ex cable modem customer I know that they never in the past actually delivered the quoted speed, although it came close at times. The service was also always unreliable and their customer service team was often overwhelmed and resulted in long periods on hold.

It would be nice to hear that this has changed but based on feedback here at Geekzone somehow I doubt it.

Interesting view. I have never been a fan of TelstraClear's customer services, but the cable modem service in itself has always been very reliable for us. In terms of speed, for our use here there's no comparison with DSL offerings.

Having said that, the last time I had to contact the TelstraClear customer services, the lady on the phone told me she would call me back with an answer to my request to change to the 25Mbps service, and in less than 24 hours I had her calling back and the service correctly provisioned. That experience pretty much redeemed the very few times I had to contact them - probably I can count in one hand how many times I had to contact TelstraClear over 10+ years.

Totally agree, getting hold of them is a pain, but I very rarely have to and the cable service has been solid for me since day one. Personally I think it is criminal to be on DSL if you are cable capable!

graemeh

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#381278 17-Sep-2010 14:19

itxtme:
freitasm:
graemeh:
TelstraClear: What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

My thought is "will TelstraClear have the supporting infrastructure in place to actually deliver 100Mbps throughput right to my home".

I expect the answer is NO. As an ex cable modem customer I know that they never in the past actually delivered the quoted speed, although it came close at times. The service was also always unreliable and their customer service team was often overwhelmed and resulted in long periods on hold.

It would be nice to hear that this has changed but based on feedback here at Geekzone somehow I doubt it.

Interesting view. I have never been a fan of TelstraClear's customer services, but the cable modem service in itself has always been very reliable for us. In terms of speed, for our use here there's no comparison with DSL offerings.

Having said that, the last time I had to contact the TelstraClear customer services, the lady on the phone told me she would call me back with an answer to my request to change to the 25Mbps service, and in less than 24 hours I had her calling back and the service correctly provisioned. That experience pretty much redeemed the very few times I had to contact them - probably I can count in one hand how many times I had to contact TelstraClear over 10+ years.

Totally agree, getting hold of them is a pain, but I very rarely have to and the cable service has been solid for me since day one. Personally I think it is criminal to be on DSL if you are cable capable!

I disagree. There is too much focus on how people are connected and the "headline" speed they achieve. What we really need is a measure of usable speed.

When we were connected via cable we had two problems
1. Poor throughput (showing up as slow site loading, repeated buffering during youtube videos etc)
2. Cable network configuration issues "breaking" our gateway router. We had no problem with this when I had a home built linux firewall + router running on a PC, when I used a commercial gateway router (two different brands/models) they would both fail due to excessive ARP traffic coming from the cable network.

The main thing though was that our local access was very rarely the bottleneck in our connection. Now we've been moved onto a cabinet our ADSL flies and once Xnet had our profile changed to the correct one for our situation our connection has been rock solid.

If we were gamers the improved latency of a cable connection would probably be worthwhile but for most users I would argue that consistent throughput is the key measure. It need not even be overly high, just consistent.

ajw

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#381281 17-Sep-2010 14:30

TelstraClear: Ultra-Fast Broadband has been much talked about with it being seen as a creator of jobs, as driver of business efficiencies and delivering entertainment into our homes.

It is for these reasons that the Government has been such a high profile supporter of ultra-fast broadband though its UFB initiative.

Now as the ultra-fast speeds begin to become a reality there are some interesting questions being raised like:

'What does having ultra-fast broadband mean?'

'What to do with faster Broadband?'

'What will I be prepared to pay for it?' and 'What does a home of the future look like in an ultra-fast broadband world?'

Check out our site Warpspeed.co.nz

What are your thoughts?

Tim - TelstraClear

Tim what about the uplink speed. As a person that transfers a lot of big files the uplink speed is just as important as the downlink speed.

JonC

425 posts

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#381286 17-Sep-2010 14:36

graemeh:
I disagree. There is too much focus on how people are connected and the "headline" speed they achieve. What we really need is a measure of usable speed.

When we were connected via cable we had two problems
1. Poor throughput (showing up as slow site loading, repeated buffering during youtube videos etc)
2. Cable network configuration issues "breaking" our gateway router. We had no problem with this when I had a home built linux firewall + router running on a PC, when I used a commercial gateway router (two different brands/models) they would both fail due to excessive ARP traffic coming from the cable network.

The main thing though was that our local access was very rarely the bottleneck in our connection. Now we've been moved onto a cabinet our ADSL flies and once Xnet had our profile changed to the correct one for our situation our connection has been rock solid.

If we were gamers the improved latency of a cable connection would probably be worthwhile but for most users I would argue that consistent throughput is the key measure. It need not even be overly high, just consistent.

Your main issues (ARP flood & slow youtube) are well known and have been fixed as far as I know. There was a long period however when they were a major pain for a lot of users, and I'm guessing TCL lost quite a few customers because of that.

General slowness due to lack of NZ peering remains an issue.

I agree with what you said about measuring "usable speed". But it's difficult to measure as internet usage varies so much. One user (gamer) might crave low pings to the US, but another would be wanting high upload speeds. Then, how do you measure speeds to various parts of the internet? Is local speed more important than speed to the US? Europe? Tricky to measure, but would be nice to have.

graemeh

2078 posts

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#381291 17-Sep-2010 14:45

JonC:
graemeh:
I disagree. There is too much focus on how people are connected and the "headline" speed they achieve. What we really need is a measure of usable speed.

When we were connected via cable we had two problems
1. Poor throughput (showing up as slow site loading, repeated buffering during youtube videos etc)
2. Cable network configuration issues "breaking" our gateway router. We had no problem with this when I had a home built linux firewall + router running on a PC, when I used a commercial gateway router (two different brands/models) they would both fail due to excessive ARP traffic coming from the cable network.

The main thing though was that our local access was very rarely the bottleneck in our connection. Now we've been moved onto a cabinet our ADSL flies and once Xnet had our profile changed to the correct one for our situation our connection has been rock solid.

If we were gamers the improved latency of a cable connection would probably be worthwhile but for most users I would argue that consistent throughput is the key measure. It need not even be overly high, just consistent.

Your main issues (ARP flood & slow youtube) are well known and have been fixed as far as I know. There was a long period however when they were a major pain for a lot of users, and I'm guessing TCL lost quite a few customers because of that.

General slowness due to lack of NZ peering remains an issue.

I agree with what you said about measuring "usable speed". But it's difficult to measure as internet usage varies so much. One user (gamer) might crave low pings to the US, but another would be wanting high upload speeds. Then, how do you measure speeds to various parts of the internet? Is local speed more important than speed to the US? Europe? Tricky to measure, but would be nice to have.

Good to hear they finally fixed them. It took them long enough.

The only way I can think of to measure speeds sensibly would involve a page of speed readings to different parts of the internet. Not very user friendly and probably not very useful either.

I'd be happy with just a way of measuring consistency. That way you can connect to the service and know that the speed you get on day one will continue. If you're happy at that point you can continue to be happy, if you're not you can move on and try another ISP.

michaeln

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#381341 17-Sep-2010 16:12

graemeh: The only way I can think of to measure speeds sensibly would involve a page of speed readings to different parts of the internet. Not very user friendly and probably not very useful either.

I'd be happy with just a way of measuring consistency. That way you can connect to the service and know that the speed you get on day one will continue. If you're happy at that point you can continue to be happy, if you're not you can move on and try another ISP.

That's exactly what the Epitiro measures try to do. They fire off a series of requests to a number of different sites. All the same sites. All at the same time. From each ISP being monitored. From multiple cities.

The intent is to provide an objective comparison of ISP, and of city. As it happens, even that methodology is more difficult to execute than one might think.

That doesn't help though, if you get poor speed to your favourite site. It might be your ISP. It might be the site. It might be the city. It might be bit-rot in your PC. As far as you're concerned, speed used to be good and now it's not. It's OBVIOUS that it's your ISP's fault. Learning after the fact that your ISPs is objectively the fastest probably doesn't make you feel any better. If the speed improves afterwards, that's not so much comfort either. You wanted your gratification THEN! It's a tricky problem for the ISP.

graemeh

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#381342 17-Sep-2010 16:15

michaeln:
graemeh: The only way I can think of to measure speeds sensibly would involve a page of speed readings to different parts of the internet. Not very user friendly and probably not very useful either.

I'd be happy with just a way of measuring consistency. That way you can connect to the service and know that the speed you get on day one will continue. If you're happy at that point you can continue to be happy, if you're not you can move on and try another ISP.

That's exactly what the Epitiro measures try to do. They fire off a series of requests to a number of different sites. All the same sites. All at the same time. From each ISP being monitored. From multiple cities.

The intent is to provide an objective comparison of ISP, and of city. As it happens, even that methodology is more difficult to execute than one might think.

That doesn't help though, if you get poor speed to your favourite site. It might be your ISP. It might be the site. It might be the city. It might be bit-rot in your PC. As far as you're concerned, speed used to be good and now it's not. It's OBVIOUS that it's your ISP's fault. Learning after the fact that your ISPs is objectively the fastest probably doesn't make you feel any better. If the speed improves afterwards, that's not so much comfort either. You wanted your gratification THEN! It's a tricky problem for the ISP.

Don't forget, not only do I want EVERYTHING now but I want it at a budget price too.

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