exportgoldman:
I did these speed tests last Friday night, from our work connection which sync's at 11MBits, first running the test to Los Angeles under our PPP XNET Work logon, then my PPP XNET Home logon, and the speeds seem vastly different, it appears that whatever fix XNET are doing to speed up international bandwidth is done on a per PPP user logon basis.

Khann: Speeds aren't mindblowing by any means, but they've definitely improved enough to be able to stream YouTube and other such services without too much hassle...

grant_k:

Will the introduction of the new Torrent plan be enough to raise Peak-Time International Speeds?

At this point I would have to say it appears not, more is the pity.

testing123: This plan was only released on monday, was it not?

testing123: i think unless your a geekzone or GPforums member you'd be lucky to have even heard of it. The only place Xnet have mentioned it is a tiny blurb on their homepage (aside from the 2 forums i've noticed).

testing123: i think there's a reasonably large group of people who are waiting to see what Slingshot is offering, then making their decision.

testing123: There has been a noticable difference already (earth-shattering or not), and thats just the select amount of "geeks and gamers" who've caught wind.

testing123: Fair enough if your patience has come to an end though, all the major ISP players have their drawbacks, will be interesting to see if there is a relatively unknown/darkhorse with something worthwhile up their sleeves flying under the radar.

grant_k: However, 250kbps still doesn't cut the mustard

Niel: Two tests does not give a reliable statistical confidence.  A rule of thumb is that 20 tests give you 95% confidence in the result.

Niel: It can be that when you tried last night there was work being done on your exchange, or someone's modem went crazy with lots of cross-talk to your line

Niel: Or the YouTube site was flooded, or international speed was slow in general for the whole country, or a butterfly was flapping it's wings in Denmark.

grant_k:

Khann: Speeds aren't mindblowing by any means, but they've definitely improved enough to be able to stream YouTube and other such services without too much hassle...

Well, I've finally got back to Auckland and tried to stream YouTube at around 11pm last night on my 2Mbps connection here.  Average download speed was 253kbps which is still nowhere near what it should be.  As a result, playback paused many times during the 2 minute clip instead of just playing as it would have at this time last year.

I tried the same thing again just now and the dark red line raced ahead with a 2 minute clip being fully buffered in just 30 seconds.  According to DU Meter the average download speed was 1.3Mbps.

Obviously we are still seeing a very significant slowdown during Peak Time which brings me back to a question I raised several pages earlier in this thread:

Will the introduction of the new Torrent plan be enough to raise Peak-Time International Speeds?

At this point I would have to say it appears not, more is the pity.

To rub salt further into the wound, yesterday I received the same e-mail from Xnet regarding a forced plan change as mentioned in this thread:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=65&TopicId=22498

I have been most impressed with the level of service offered by Xnet since joining in early 2005.  It is without parallel in my experience across many different ISPs.  But this Peak-Time International slowdown is a real drawback which together with the forced plan change is causing me to re-evaluate whether I want to remain an Xnet customer.

Alternatives currently are:

-  ORCON:  Ruled out because their International Speed during the evenings seems to be even worse than Xnet.

-  VODAFONE:  Is still essentially iHUG underneath all the fancy advertising.  Do I want to risk it?  Probably not.

-  SLINGSHOT:  A possibility, but very poor customer support when I used iTalk previously has put me off.  According to a recent blog on GZ, their forums are still full of spam.

-  XTRA:  Speeds seem to have dramatically improved in recent times but they don't offer any form of Naked DSL which is a drawback.

Hmmm, what other ISPs are there which offer Naked DSL with good Peak-Time International speeds?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Alternatives currently are:

-  ORCON:  Ruled out because their International Speed during the evenings seems to be even worse than Xnet.

-  VODAFONE:  Is still essentially iHUG underneath all the fancy advertising.  Do I want to risk it?  Probably not.

-  SLINGSHOT:  A possibility, but very poor customer support when I used iTalk previously has put me off.  According to a recent blog on GZ, their forums are still full of spam.

-  XTRA:  Speeds seem to have dramatically improved in recent times but they don't offer any form of Naked DSL which is a drawback.

Hmmm, what other ISPs are there which offer Naked DSL with good Peak-Time International speeds?

Any suggestions are welcome.