[TelstraClear] ADSL connection performance degradation to North America?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] ADSL connection performance degradation to North America?

spacedog

482 posts

Ultimate Geek

#105007 25-Jun-2012 11:03

Hi,

So I have been a loyal Telstraclear customer for 5+ years and have often extolled the virtues of the quality of the connection I get on my Telstraclear DSL.

However the last few weeks I feel like things are really taking a hit. First off, web page response time does seem to be getting worse.

Then there is the buffering issue of iSky that makes it utterly unwatchable. We discussed this a few months back on this thread and it has never been fixed:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=44&topicid=96243&page_no=1#572441

However, this week is truly the last straw. I subscribe to MLB.tv to watch baseball from the USA on my streaming media device (boxee). Up until two weeks ago my MLB.tv has been working just fine. I get my games streamed with no issues and no buffering, but then as of two weeks ago I am experience considerable issues with buffering.

When I watch the streams I can see see the speed, which normally hovers at .95mbs to 1.3mbps, drop down to .05mpbs to .33mbps. This breaks the watchability of MLB.tv and I'm pretty furious about it.

I have other friends in my neighborhood who have MLB.tv and have been watching the exact same games at the exact same time on the same device (they are on Orcon or on a corporate fibre connection at their office) and they have had no buffering issues whatsoever. So we have been able to rule out MLB.tv as the culprit. The problem is specific to my telstra connection.

I am located about 100m from my cabinet after the loops shortening at the end of the last year. My connection always synchs 20mbps/950kbps with an SNR of 12 and a line attenuation of 0db. I have master splitter installed and I use a Draytek ADSL modem (which are very solid modems). So as DSL connections go, this is about as sweet as it gets

I can run test downloads on torrents (i.e. like a linux distribution DVD) and the speed will ramp up to 17mbps so I know the connection can support the overall throughput on that scenario. But the streaming from an individual site/server like MLB.tv appears to be suffering as of the last few weeks.

Anyone have any ideas about this? The issue can be particularly bad in the evenings. Is telstraclear's international throughput to North America suffering from capacity issues? Has there been some sort of load-balancing/traffic shaping put into place recently?

Ragnor

8223 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#645780 25-Jun-2012 11:34

Telstraclear's DSL performance has been affected by for about 3 months now. It's clearly shown on the Truenet results.

There is an issue somewhere in their infrastructure (backhaul, handover, proxy cluster, core switching/routing probably), it doesn't seem to be affecting cable or business fibre (as much).

I wouldn't expect a quick fix, Telstraclear are not exactly known for doing anything promptly!

Remember how long it took them to get a google/youtube cache cluster when youtube performance was crap - 6 months wasn't it? I also remember it took them a similar similar time to fix routing popular Australian gaming server so it didn't go NZ > AU > HK > AU

My policies these days is more than a month of problems and out of contract and I'm gone.

DonGould

3892 posts

Uber Geek

#645796 25-Jun-2012 11:47

Ragnor: Telstraclear's DSL performance has been affected by for about 3 months now. It's clearly shown on the Truenet results.

There is an issue somewhere in their infrastructure (backhaul, handover, proxy cluster, core switching/routing probably), it doesn't seem to be affecting cable or business fibre (as much).

I wouldn't expect a quick fix, Telstraclear are not exactly known for doing anything promptly!

+1

There are now any number of posts here.

If the performance bothers you then start ringing around and looking for a deal from someone else.

I have no information that this problem is going to get tidied up any time soon, I'm aware of a number of issues.

The $75 price is great, but if you're unlucky enough to be in an effected area then moving is your quickest answer and will also lighten the load for others.

As for contract break, if you want out then just whack a message here asking for Gary to contact you to sort out what can be done. It does seem that TCL are accommodating with respect to just doing the right thing.

As for Ragnor's comment about the cable network... dude... clearly you're not on my BRAS this morning ;)

D

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