[TelstraClear] How Fast is Telstra Clear to the San Francisco or Los Angeles, USA?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] How Fast is Telstra Clear to the San Francisco or Los Angeles, USA?

bhv

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#12686 30-Mar-2007 22:55

On Wednesday I got Telstra Clear cable internet activated on the 10 mbit/s 40 gig plan. Since then I have seen consistent speeds of about

700 k both down and up to any city in the USA. Since this is less than 10% of the advertised speed I think something is wrong.

What has been your experience, do you ever experience rated speed (or anything close to it) to the USA?

After spending a bunch of time on the phone with customer (non-service) I am convinced that the Telstra Clear network speed here in Christchurch probably really IS the advertised 10 mbit/s, but beyond the garden city, all bets are off.

One other annoying problem with my setup is that an important business site I use does not display at all on my computer at home, but does display just fine from an internet cafe downtown. Maybe my slow speeds are due to some configuration problem with DNS or something similar. I'm using a MacBook with the CAT5 cable plugged directly in (because I couldn't get my Airport express wireless router working). Humm...

What think ye?

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#65666 31-Mar-2007 00:34

Goto speedtest.net and see what speeds you get to both local and US servers.

I would be happy with download speeds of 700k via http to the US

antoniosk

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#65685 31-Mar-2007 07:58

bhv: On Wednesday I got Telstra Clear cable internet activated on the 10 mbit/s 40 gig plan. Since then I have seen consistent speeds of about
700 k both down and up to any city in the USA. Since this is less than 10% of the advertised speed I think something is wrong.

What has been your experience, do you ever experience rated speed (or anything close to it) to the USA?

After spending a bunch of time on the phone with customer (non-service) I am convinced that the Telstra Clear network speed here in Christchurch probably really IS the advertised 10 mbit/s, but beyond the garden city, all bets are off.

One other annoying problem with my setup is that an important business site I use does not display at all on my computer at home, but does display just fine from an internet cafe downtown. Maybe my slow speeds are due to some configuration problem with DNS or something similar. I'm using a MacBook with the CAT5 cable plugged directly in (because I couldn't get my Airport express wireless router working). Humm...

What think ye?

All ISP's go through Southern Cross to LA. Speed depends on the server you're hitting - for example, I can usually download stuff from Microsoft at the full limit of my plan (4mbps, or about 550KB/s). That's because they have big pipes to the world.

Stuff from the UK rarely comes down faster than 2mbps for me.

For your website problem call tcl and tell them

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Antoniosk

juha

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#65686 31-Mar-2007 08:22

See if you can up the TCP send and receive windows on OS/X to boost performance. I don't know if there's a GUI tool for it, but if OS/X is anything like FreeBSD, open up a terminal and as root, look for a sysctl variable similar to:

net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072
net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 131072

($ sysctl -a | grep net.inet.tcp)

Above, I've got a 128Kbyte buffer for both (131,072 bytes), which seems to work fine for my 2MBit/s connection and latency of 170 to 230ms to the US, and often over 300ms to Europe. You can change the sysctl value with "sysctl net.inet.tcp.recvspace=131072" as root, but this won't stick after reboot. Again, not sure how OS/X does it, but there should be a file in /etc where you can add the bumped up default TCP buffer values.

FreeBSD should have auto-tuning buffers soon, so I expect OS/X will too.

Juha

bhv

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#65831 1-Apr-2007 12:51

It appears that Telstra Clear is metering the speeds that can be achieved outside of New Zealand.

The download speeds I achieve to the USA are consistently in the 700 to 800 K download range. Those speeds don't vary much

with either the time of day or the day of the week. They also don't vary much from one testing service to another. However speeds

achieved within New Zealand DO vary a lot with time of day and the day of the week.

If you think about the economics of Telstra Clear's business, they are having to buy international capacity to the USA from the Southern Cross

cable network which will be more expensive for them than transferring data via their own network within New Zealand.

Telstra Clear apparently solves this problem by allowing fast data transfer within New Zealand but metering the achievable speeds internationally

and hoping that the customers won't notice. Of course, latency will inherently be longer for longer trips down the fiber optic network, but speed of

data transfer really shouldn't change that much with distance as long as Telstra Clear is buyinging and allocating enough capacity from Southern Cross.

If the speeds I achieved to the USA were dependent on network traffic, they would vary from one time of day to another and from one

day of the week to another.

Are there any other plausible explainations other than metering?

bhv

johnr

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#65834 1-Apr-2007 13:23

bhv:
It appears that Telstra Clear is metering the speeds that can be achieved outside of New Zealand.

The download speeds I achieve to the USA are consistently in the 700 to 800 K download range. Those speeds don't vary much
with either the time of day or the day of the week. They also don't vary much from one testing service to another. However speeds
achieved within New Zealand DO vary a lot with time of day and the day of the week.

If you think about the economics of Telstra Clear's business, they are having to buy international capacity to the USA from the Southern Cross
cable network which will be more expensive for them than transferring data via their own network within New Zealand.

Telstra Clear apparently solves this problem by allowing fast data transfer within New Zealand but metering the achievable speeds internationally
and hoping that the customers won't notice. Of course, latency will inherently be longer for longer trips down the fiber optic network, but speed of
data transfer really shouldn't change that much with distance as long as Telstra Clear is buyinging and allocating enough capacity from Southern Cross.

If the speeds I achieved to the USA were dependent on network traffic, they would vary from one time of day to another and from one
day of the week to another.

Are there any other plausible explainations other than metering?

bhv

Im not sure what the issue is the net is working its not broken and traffic is moving

Be pleased to have access to cable many don't

inane

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#65836 1-Apr-2007 13:34

my speeds to la

thats via speedtest, to be honest, its rare to get actual full speed, this is due in part to the speed capping of various servers, and load balancing, and just traffic,

bhv

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#65839 1-Apr-2007 14:00

I selected my currently place to live after consulting Telstra Clear to learn their coverage area and carefully looking

around Christchurch for a place that had Telstra Clear and was a place I liked.

Now that I have moved in and gotten settled, it's very annoying to find that I am not achieving even 10% of the

advertised speed on the routes that are that are the most important to me. It also apparent that I AM achieving

10 mbps (or something resonably close to it) here in Christchurch.

This means that the usual problem of overloaded local circuits is not the problem in my case. My lack of speed problem is

apparently a backend problem and I am still suspicious of un-advertised back end metering.

I'm glad that someone is getting over 3K bps down. What plan are you on? I'm on the 10 mbps/40 gig of data plan.

bhv

Quic Broadband

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sbiddle

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#65840 1-Apr-2007 14:05

johnr:

Im not sure what the issue is the net is working its not broken and traffic is moving

Be pleased to have access to cable many don't

One other issue people need to remember (both TCL and Telecom knockers) is that you're talking about a broadbrand product targetted at residential and small business markets.

If you want a service that will give you 10Mbps per month guaranteed both domestic and NZ you're probably looking at somewhere close to $500 - 1000 per month. I think getting a cable service that delivers performance like it does for $100 per month is extremely good value.

inane

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#65841 1-Apr-2007 14:08

bhv: I selected my currently place to live after consulting Telstra Clear to learn their coverage area and carefully looking
around Christchurch for a place that had Telstra Clear and was a place I liked.

Now that I have moved in and gotten settled, it's very annoying to find that I am not achieving even 10% of the
advertised speed on the routes that are that are the most important to me. It also apparent that I AM achieving
10 mbps (or something resonably close to it) here in Christchurch.

This means that the usual problem of overloaded local circuits is not the problem in my case. My lack of speed problem is
apparently a backend problem and I am still suspicious of un-advertised back end metering.

I'm glad that someone is getting over 3K bps down. What plan are you on? I'm on the 10 mbps/40 gig of data plan.

bhv

that download speed was on my 10mbps / 40gig plan.

bhv

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#65846 1-Apr-2007 14:59

Hi Inane,

So we are on the same plan and you are getting a lot better speed to the USA than I am. That would weigh against the metering theory.

I am in the Richmond Suburb of Christchurch. May I ask what city and suburb you are in?

Do your local speeds seem to be the advertised 10 mbps? Mine do. Servers in Christchurch seem to be very fast.

Yes I know that the fine print of the deal says that I will get up to 10 mbps for the price they charge, but you ought to be able to get

something close to rated speeds at least some of the time. Indeed I am getting rated speeds for some New Zealand traffic.

It still seems likely that Telstra Clear is either not buying enough capacity from Southern Cross or not allocating it.

I wonder how a person could verify the presence or absence of metering? Data speeds that don't ever change seem to make one

think of metering.

bhv

inane

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#65873 1-Apr-2007 18:21

have you tried it on a different os?

bhv

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#65877 1-Apr-2007 18:49

Well sort of yes. I have Parallels Desktop and Windows XP Home Edition on my Mac Book too, and

that setup seems to produce almost identical download speeds.

I don't have a different PC readily available to try, but I will ask my neighbors if I can run a test on their PC's (if I can find some other Telstra

customers on my street).

In many cases, the performance I am getting is not remotely acceptable. For example, I was trying to shop for a book at http://www.amazon.com .

Pages were taking over a minute to load, and Amazon has great connections to the world.

BHV

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#65888 1-Apr-2007 21:31

bhv: "but speed of data transfer really shouldn't change that much with distance"

That seems to go against pretty much what any network techie will tell you (In fact, it's actually wrong). Here's some info. The problem is that most servers in the US aren't tuned for the long distance and the latency involved actually does have quite a large impact on the speeds you'll get. Here's a bit more info.

Speeds around NZ vary because ISP's here have smaller interconnecting pipes, they often have to buy domestic connections. These fill up during peak times. There are large connections to the US which are kept below capacity (usually), they don't "fill up" so performace stays the same.

Now, I don't claim to be an expert and you could right about your guessing that TClear has rate limiting on etc. But I think some of your reasoning for this is flawed.

Reread Juha's post. There's a tool that'll do the same for Windows here. Playing with Window size will probably get you some increases, but again keep in mind the other end (the US) probably haven't tuned their servers so you'll not get a great increase.

bhv

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#65893 1-Apr-2007 23:14

Oooh. Verry Verry Interesting. Thanks for the links too. I learned a lot.

Distance (due to intrinsic latency) matters because the way the network moves data is to say, "Here's the data" then it stops and says, "Did you get all that?" So it's the constant stopping and starting and re-checking of data for errors that makes the net extremely reliable.

It also means that if your latency goes up a lot, the size of the data block transferred also needs to go up and networks need to be re-tweaked to get decent perfomance.

From what I read it looks like a lot of speed improvements may be possible by adjusting RWIN.

Perhaps what I need to do is to find a die hard network guy, pay a fee and get these settings tweaked in my computer.

Humm.....

freitasm

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#65897 1-Apr-2007 23:24

May I ask everyone to step back a minute and clarify some stuff...

To bhv. How are you measuring this speed? And most importantly, is it 700 KB/s or 700 Kb/s? Yes, because 700 KB (Kilobytes per second) is really good and almost the top speed. This is much different from Kb (kilobits). Eight times different actually.

When you download files most browsers will show speeds in KB/s. When you do speed tests they will show in Kb/s.

Also, note that 10 Mbps (megabits per second) is the nominal line speed, and it should be like this if you connect to your gateway, or another node in the same subnet. But there's no way to guarantee 10 Mbps to any other host outside these conditions. If you do a traceroute from your cable modem to the destination server you are trying to reach you will see many hops, and each with different times. What if there's a server with some problems, but outside TCL's network? Would you blame TCL?

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