[TelstraClear] TCL upgrades - is 10meg actually 10meg?

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nic.wise

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#10283 14-Nov-2006 11:23

Hi folks

I've just got off the phone to TCL. I ordered a 4meg/20GB -> 10meg/40GB plan upgrade on thrusday, and according to them, it's all loaded correctly.

Except, I can't get more than 490K/s (K-bytes) out of the connection. I've tried nzdsl.co.nz, speedtest.net et al (both read about 4500/2100 - no higher ever than 4700), and if I download a whole load of stuff at the same time (from downloads.microsoft.com, which is a local AKAMI mirror at.... TCL!, as well as from apple, file.inspire.net.nz and others), it STILL tops out at 450-490K/s

Oh, and yes, I've had the cable modem unplugged for up to 5 mins :)

Anyone else out there with the 10meg plan seeing this? I have a friend who signed up for the 4meg plan, but he's only getting 2, even in the middle of the day (he's dialing TCL now :) ) Has TCL taken a book out of Telecom's book? IF they offered 4meg/40GB, I'd be jumping on that one, but as I'm paying for 10meg, I'd kinda expect atleast sustained transfers, from local servers, of atleast 7-800K/s

Can someone (Mauricio?) run the speedtest.net test from a 10meg known-good connection?

Ta

Nic

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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#52287 14-Nov-2006 13:50

I switched from the 4M>10M plan and while they told me it was changed, the increase of speed only happened at midnight

Speeds from speedtest.net:
D: 8758 kb/s U: 1402 kb/s

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#52289 14-Nov-2006 14:00

On a good day speedtest.net reports 7.5Mbps down and 800Kbps up.

My best download time was a couple of weeks ago, downloading some stuff and I got over 1MB/s (megabyte, not megabit). A 50MB file downloaded in less than a minute.

A few weeks ago Nic Randolph asked me to download Microsoft Orcas CTP, which comes in 6 separate files (700MB each). I started two downloads in each of three PCs here and in less than a couple of hours I had the 4GB ready to use.

So, YMMV, but check again.

nic.wise

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#52294 14-Nov-2006 14:58

Thanks guys. They told me "midnight" too, but that was, um, 4 days ago now.

ta for the speedtest results. Thats about the numbers I'd expect. There is a techo coming out on saturday to have a look at it..... I'm getting about 1/2 of both of your incoming speed.... :( (around 4000, you get around 8700)

Cheers :)

Just tried it again,and I got 4119 and 1901 on speedtest.net to auckland. Not good enough.....

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

sbiddle

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#52295 14-Nov-2006 15:33

You should be getting somewhere round the 8Mbps range maximum on a good day. Remember that TCP overhead automatically takes around 15% off so that automatically introduced an actual max speed of around 8.5Mbps. If you've got a router doing QoS than take more off yet again.

The problem with the interweb is that the pipes can be clogged and TCL's international capacity does appear to be a bit more congested that what it has been in the past so national traffic isn't too bad at present but international can be a bit problematic in the evenings when the kiddies are at home thrashing the P2P stuff!

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#52299 14-Nov-2006 16:06

sbiddle: You should be getting somewhere round the 8Mbps range maximum on a good day. Remember that TCP overhead automatically takes around 15% off so that automatically introduced an actual max speed of around 8.5Mbps. If you've got a router doing QoS than take more off yet again.

The problem with the interweb is that the pipes can be clogged and TCL's international capacity does appear to be a bit more congested that what it has been in the past so national traffic isn't too bad at present but international can be a bit problematic in the evenings when the kiddies are at home thrashing the P2P stuff!

yeah. All the tests I'm doing are from local servers (files.inspire.net.nz and downloads.microsoft.com, which is a TCL-hosted AKAMI mirror - a whole _4_ router hops away!), and at 7am in the morning, usually.

I'm quite "happy" to get 2meg during the night, assuming I'm atleast getting what I paid for at other times (I mostly use my home net connection when I'm at work - go figure, but remote desktop, running Exchange etc.....)

Strange thing is, when I look at the stats on the router (or in windows, if I remove the router from the equation): if I start a DL, it peaks at about 9 meg (900K/s) for about 3 seconds, then drops back to 450-500K/s and stays there.

Router graphs here:

http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/stuff/speed-capture1.png

http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/stuff/speed-capture2.png

Anyone seen this kinda thing? The downloads (5 of them) were coming from downloads.microsoft (3) and files.inspire.net.nz (2)

[Moderator edit (JF): URLs Hyperlinked]

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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#52300 14-Nov-2006 16:15

There are a lot of possible network issues that could be causing this as signal levels are very important. A tech will easily be able to check these and if they are low it could be well be what is causing the varying speeds.

nic.wise

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#52301 14-Nov-2006 16:32

sbiddle:
There are a lot of possible network issues that could be causing thisas signal levels are very important. A tech will easily be able to check these and if they are low it could be well be what is causing the varying speeds.

Cool - thanks. There's a techo coming out on saturday, so we'll see what (s)he comes up with :)

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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bigqueez

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#52714 16-Nov-2006 21:00

I had a similar issue with my 10MB connection. Turns out they had the speeds provisioned incorrectly in their system. I now normally get around 8Mbps down and close to 2Mbps up

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#52942 18-Nov-2006 16:02

OK, so the techo's been here (nice bloke, too :) ), but it's still stuck on 4/2. There is someone else in my area getting the same (degraded speeds), so it's assumed to be "the network", and the TCL people (as opposed to the contracts they get to do house calls) need to fix it.

:)

So, the saga continues. If they did a 4/2 @ 40GB plan, I'd just stick to that and be happy.....

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

cjmchch

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#53098 21-Nov-2006 01:32

Last year when I had their service and was running the 10mbit plan they did an upgrade of thier cisco routers at their exchange end. The guy who swapped the routers used the tables from the old routers in the new ones. It took them 4 weeks to isolate the problem as being the router tables. The max I could get once they upgraded their routers was about 4 meg. It then went back to maxing out at about 8 meg. Damn I miss that service. Stuck with adsl (Another Damn Slow Line)now. As they say; location location location.

Keep at them and they'll get it sorted.

nic.wise

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#53108 21-Nov-2006 08:54

cjmchch: Last year when I had their service and was running the 10mbit plan they did an upgrade of thier cisco routers at their exchange end. The guy who swapped the routers used the tables from the old routers in the new ones. It took them 4 weeks to isolate the problem as being the router tables. The max I could get once they upgraded their routers was about 4 meg. It then went back to maxing out at about 8 meg.Damn I miss that service. Stuck with adsl (Another Damn Slow Line)now. As they say; location location location.

Keep at them and they'll get it sorted.

Well, in the end - as TCL can't actually provide the service, and I'm not paying for an option I dont get - I went back to the 4/2/20 plan.

It was escelated to "network", but I'm told that network never tells anyone if they fix something, and I wasn't going to sit there getting 60% of what I'm paying for, in the HOPE that they fix it.

Another case of "fantastic technical service, as long as you dont need to talk to someone on the phone"

Oh, and to top it off: I got a call from someone last night in customer service (I guess) saying "oh, the reason why you didn't get the speed it 'cos your requests to drop to 4/2 was actioned early"

If he had of checked the record, he might have noticed that it was REQUESTED on the same day it was ACTIONED.

I'd ring up and talk to them, but I dont have yet another half hour to waste on hold.

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

chiefie

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#53158 21-Nov-2006 21:32

Hmm this worries me a bit too as I requested the upgrade from HighSpeed 20GB to LightSpeed 40GB. However my speed is slower than my 4Mbits, it feels like 2Mbits and after testing with speedtest.net with Auckland hub. It repetitively report back at around 1700kb/s to 1900kb/s, surely doesn't feel very 10Mbits.

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freitasm

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#53159 21-Nov-2006 21:39

It varies drastically depending on time of the day. Sometimes I get 7 Mbps sometimes I get 700 Kbps, and I am on a 10 Mbps. I think the whole Internet in New Zealand is sufferting from this "unleashed", although I had the impression TelstraClear had their own backbone...

nic.wise

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#53160 21-Nov-2006 21:51

chiefie: Hmm this worries me a bit too as I requested the upgrade from HighSpeed 20GB to LightSpeed 40GB. However my speed is slower than my 4Mbits, it feels like 2Mbits and after testing with speedtest.net with Auckland hub. It repetitively report back at around 1700kb/s to 1900kb/s, surely doesn't feel very 10Mbits.

you dont happen to be in Brooklyn area? The techo who came around said he'd just been to someone's place around where I am (Brooklyn/Vogeltown), who was getting around 1.7meg off a 4meg connection. He thought it was the receiver at the other end of the cable, but thats a "network" problem, so it's TCL fixing it, not their contractors....

I've gone back to 4meg. I need to use 30GB anyway before I "break even"..... and I usually use 28-32, so....

Nic Wise - fastchicken.co.nz

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#53163 21-Nov-2006 22:12

I'm down in Christchurch. If any Christchurch resident on here live near Suva Street, and have 10Mbps (Lightspeed plans) could you please post your speed or share some experience please.

Just before my request for upgrade, I did speed test and clearly it is in 4Mbps plan as it went up to 3800kb/s. However exactly 24 hours later, my speed is actually slower (2Mbps) than my previous 4Mbps plan, when I am actually on 10Mbps.

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