[TelstraClear] TelstraClear ADSL speed probs (4-5-2012)

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] TelstraClear ADSL speed probs (4-5-2012)

DjShadow

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#101617 4-May-2012 19:59

Arrived at the old's place in Matamata this evening, jumped online and thought it was unusually slow for Telstraclear.

Done some speedtests but getting some interesting results:

TelstraClear's Auckland server:
Download Speed: 11739 kbps (1467.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 899 kbps (112.4 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 59 ms
Fri May 04 2012 19:47:27 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Worldxchange's speedtest server:

Vodafone's speedtest server:

Optus - Sydney:

Router is a supplied netcomm router, do have one of those Belkin Surf routers which I'll try next.

House wiring is no prob, only a few years old and done with Cat 5 cable by the looks

Router stats:

Line ModeADSL2+ Line StateShow Time Line Power StateL0 Line Up Time00:00:16:21 Line CodingTrellis On Line Up Count2 StatisticsDownstreamUpstreamLine Rate10975 Kbps1085 KbpsAttainable Line Rate13420 Kbps1080 KbpsNoise Margin12.8 dB8.0 dBLine Attenuation32.0 dB17.4 dBOutput Power0.0 dBm12.8 dBm

I did a reset on the router (pulling the mains) and it wasn't able to authenticate for 15 mins roughly half an hour ago, gave TelstraClear helpdesk a call and they indicated no network probs from a remote line test but did suggest doing an isolation test (will do this tomorrow if no better). Given I can get fast speeds from telstraclear's own server and vodafone I don't believe the problem is this end.

Anyone else having probs?

johnr

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#619808 4-May-2012 20:49

If you can get good speeds off two servers then the issue is not on your side

DjShadow

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#619810 4-May-2012 20:54

Didn't think there is a problem this end, last time I was out here had no probs what so ever with it, but the helpdesk dude pretty much wouldn't believe me there is a problem

DoomlordVekk

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#619816 4-May-2012 21:07

At the risk of appearing slight puzzled, why do people insist on using speed test servers that are way to hell and gone off their own ISP's network?
There are 3 perfectly good speed test servers available in TelstraClear-land.

Do people doubt their veracity? Do people think they lie or have been rigged to give false readings?

From some fairly hard hitting use over the last month and a bit, I can reasonably tell you that short of some strange proxy server behavior (ie, if you use your own proxy), they are true to their reading. They have had to be reconfigured for the higher speeds we're testing against them but this is all Ookla recommended/reference configuration.

Obviously, things can slow down a bit from them if lots of people are using them (Auckland does seem to be suffering this wee malady more and more often but the Christchurch and Wellington servers will always give you a better indication of your ability to source data on the TCL network than another ISP's speed test server.

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The views expressed here are my own and are not reflective of other organisms or organisations.

DoomlordVekk

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#619863 4-May-2012 22:16

Hmm, DJ, owe you an apology. I can now see the TCL speed test results, right at the top. Very sorry for having a 'boy look' at your original post.

DonGould

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#619865 4-May-2012 22:24

DoomlordVekk: At the risk of appearing slight puzzled, why do people insist on using speed test servers that are way to hell and gone off their own ISP's network?

Off net tests tell you about provider peering, edge router loads and provider load.

If I'm getting good figures from the Telstra speed test servers then I know that there's no problem with everything in the Telstra network up to the edge.

If I'm getting different results to different ISPs then I can speculate all sorts of different things.

If, for example, I'm getting very slow response from a local web site that normally runs fast, then it could be that it's hosted with a provider who has a congested peering link back to Telstra.

Speed tests to the Culverden server show a 65ms ping for me. It's closer to me than Wellington and is now sitting on 1Gbit FX fibre, so it should give me a 100mbit result and no more than ~15ms ping.

I wonder if all the recent plan upgrades that many of the providers have been doing have now over loaded the back haul links and edge routers between providers?

Last month Telecom in creased data allowance for 10gb customers by 300%. Is it possible that some of those customers are not starting to actually use that capacity and sending/receiving much bigger amounts of data with family and friends?

What impact is the 100mbit soft launch having on other providers now? I know my email has got much quicker as a result, so I'm spending less time waiting and more time doing more. We over doubled our data and I suspect with the speed jump by 400% that we'll be chewing though more data faster.

All these extra packets are adding load to the routers.

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mercutio

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#620030 5-May-2012 11:35

DonGould:
DoomlordVekk: At the risk of appearing slight puzzled, why do people insist on using speed test servers that are way to hell and gone off their own ISP's network?

Off net tests tell you about provider peering, edge router loads and provider load.

If I'm getting good figures from the Telstra speed test servers then I know that there's no problem with everything in the Telstra network up to the edge.

If I'm getting different results to different ISPs then I can speculate all sorts of different things.

If, for example, I'm getting very slow response from a local web site that normally runs fast, then it could be that it's hosted with a provider who has a congested peering link back to Telstra.

If a web site is slow it's actually often more to do with being database backed / dynamic etc and on underpowered or overloaded server. You can get a two to three times performance difference with close web sites being on slow or fast servers. Things like PHP opcode accelerators and memcached can make a significant difference to page generation times too.

Speed tests to the Culverden server show a 65ms ping for me. It's closer to me than Wellington and is now sitting on 1Gbit FX fibre, so it should give me a 100mbit result and no more than ~15ms ping.

I wonder if you realise that most web sites won't do anything like 100 megabit speeds.

Take geekzone forums for an easy example - from an ethernet connection it loads in:

curl --compressed -v http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp > /dev/null 0.01s user 0.01s system 5% cpu 0.372 total

from a dsl connection it's doing

curl --compressed -v http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp > /dev/null 0.00s user 0.01s system 1% cpu 0.454 total

So there's about 80 msec overhead on top for DSL... but there's way more overhead for the actual page generation...

I wonder if all the recent plan upgrades that many of the providers have been doing have now over loaded the back haul links and edge routers between providers?

Last month Telecom in creased data allowance for 10gb customers by 300%. Is it possible that some of those customers are not starting to actually use that capacity and sending/receiving much bigger amounts of data with family and friends?

Australia certainly had problems with cap increases. So it is possible.

What impact is the 100mbit soft launch having on other providers now? I know my email has got much quicker as a result, so I'm spending less time waiting and more time doing more. We over doubled our data and I suspect with the speed jump by 400% that we'll be chewing though more data faster.

All these extra packets are adding load to the routers.

I'm not sure why your email would get quicker. I've found that providers like gmail are already pretty quick - although not instant to receive/send emails. For me if I send an email go inbox, go drafts, go inbox I'll have the email on the second inbox check normally.

Sure - it'd be nice to have it on the first check. But email delivery is generally quicker than it used to be 10 years ago.

DjShadow

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#620180 5-May-2012 17:41

This morning the speeds were good, did speed tests off both Xnet and vodafone with similar results, now 24hrs later the speed results are almost identical to last night.

So pretty much it seems Telstraclear is suffering peak time congestion problems

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mercutio

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#620290 5-May-2012 22:32

DjShadow: This morning the speeds were good, did speed tests off both Xnet and vodafone with similar results, now 24hrs later the speed results are almost identical to last night.

So pretty much it seems Telstraclear is suffering peak time congestion problems

truenet probes suggest such.

https://www.truenet.co.nz/articles/truenets-march-report-isp-broadband-speed

DonGould

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#620691 6-May-2012 21:37

mercutio:
DjShadow: This morning the speeds were good, did speed tests off both Xnet and vodafone with similar results, now 24hrs later the speed results are almost identical to last night.

So pretty much it seems Telstraclear is suffering peak time congestion problems

truenet probes suggest such.

https://www.truenet.co.nz/articles/truenets-march-report-isp-broadband-speed

New TV ads say '10's of thousands of...'.

I wonder if there should be regulation around BB promotions that providers must show and deliver a plan that ensures that their existing customers are not impacted when they do promos.

It seems to me that since the days of 'Go Large' we've seen this stuff time and time again. The marketing department get all excited and performance just falls in a heap for some users.

Wonder if UFB will fix this sort of thing with the ability to just light up a different provider in seconds?

Wonder if ComCom will get teeth to just let people out of contacts if performance drops off, and then you just sign up with someone who's loosing customers and has spare network capacity?

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mercutio

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#620706 6-May-2012 22:18

DonGould:
mercutio:
DjShadow: This morning the speeds were good, did speed tests off both Xnet and vodafone with similar results, now 24hrs later the speed results are almost identical to last night.

So pretty much it seems Telstraclear is suffering peak time congestion problems

truenet probes suggest such.

https://www.truenet.co.nz/articles/truenets-march-report-isp-broadband-speed

New TV ads say '10's of thousands of...'.

I haven't had TV reception for around 6 months. It'd be nice if Freeview was available for free over the internet. 10's of thousands of probes?

I wonder if there should be regulation around BB promotions that providers must show and deliver a plan that ensures that their existing customers are not impacted when they do promos.

Like Telstraclear's unmetered weekend? Maybe they should take away public holidays too, as it makes the roads more dangerous. It's nice in theory, but part of the problem is that people make
use of what they don't normally have. If every weekend was unmetered it wouldn't be as bad.

It seems to me that since the days of 'Go Large' we've seen this stuff time and time again. The marketing department get all excited and performance just falls in a heap for some users.

Did Telecom's Go Large plan effect other internet users significantly? I'm not aware of such.

Wonder if UFB will fix this sort of thing with the ability to just light up a different provider in seconds?

Is it really that easy? I don't really like the idea of being tied to one provider, but I think with the way UFB is being setup you are kind of tied to a contract with a single provider who then make use of the
existing infrastructure - if instead you paid a holding company for the UFB line - and then you got a plan on top of it, or more than one plan I think it would be a lot nicer.

Wonder if ComCom will get teeth to just let people out of contacts if performance drops off, and then you just sign up with someone who's loosing customers and has spare network capacity?

This whole thing about always having limited capacity is crazy - Maxnet are the only ones I know of providing actual data. And they're going over 60% utilisation in an averaged out graph.

I imagine Slingshot and other cheaper isp's are close to 80 to 90% peak utilisation.

And keep in mind reading that that Maxnet are using multiple international providers including Telstraclear who are known to overcommit their international bandwidth to wholesale customers as was brought to light in the unmetered weekend for residential users effecting commercial users. So some of their links could congest more than others - and could congest in spite of them using less than their allocated bandwidth. As well as this they've said they're at least rate limiting unmetered residential users - so as utilisation gets higher not everyone will be impacted to the same degree.

Generally speaking network bandwidth deteriates moderately above 60% utilisation. And significantly above 85% utilisation, although faster links with slower users is less damaging. It's easy to test the difference on an ADSL circuit though.