Scotty1986:

 

Vodafone, seriously, whats up!? Why do I only get close to advertised speeds using ONE particular Speedtest server, and the server I was told to use for "Accurate" speed tests? Any other server, I get less than half of what i pay for, when I test out of Wellington, even more. Why does it feel like the pipe to the ACSData server is clean and empty to get me the best results, then real world servers and services are slow and sluggish? The upload speeds are also very inconsistent, and even on the optimized server I get far less what I pay for. Real world speeds on thing's like Steam, Origin and torrents and normally no better than when I was on 100/10 Mb/s. At time they are pretty good, but then they plummet. what does happen when I get a good speed while downloading, it ramps up nicely, I smile, then I watch it fall down, often to a crawl of KB/s, I change download servers, same thing. Why does Speedtest default to Auckland severs when I am in Wellington? Why does the distance to servers say 50 miles sometime's to Auckland servers and 300 miles to Wellington? Vodafone, what gives?

 

 

 

 

OK, the core of the reason why you have one NZ Speed-test that gives "optimized" results then a whole bunch of other NZ ones that do can be explained very simply. This explanation also covers why other more open service providers do not suffer such poor results with NZ speed-test servers -

1. Speed-test servers use bandwidth that is provided free by volunteer's

2. Volunteers usually provide this bandwidth so they have a direct big fat pipe between their customers and the speed-test server so that their customers can effectively measure the last mile and have it look good

3. Vodafone refuses to peer their network at the common peering exchanges in New Zealand (they used to peer, they de-peered to try and force all smaller ISP's (apart from Telecom) to buy a so called "domestic" service from them or Telecom). This means that traffic to/from an ISP other than themselves or Spark needs to transit a paid "domestic" link (or go via Australia) and these are normally significantly smaller and more constrained than traffic transiting the open peering links

4. The it starts fast, then slows down for the rest of the test that you see on the slower speed-tests is likely the rate shaping on the donating ISP's "domestic" link

5. I assume the one that works well connects to someone that has a commercial agreement that gives them a large "domestic" link to Vodafone in Wellington.

The situation above is well documented but largely forgotten about now days. All ISP's other than Spark/Vodafone are still effectively forced to buy a so called "domestic" link from one of the gang of two or have the traffic to/from their customers to Spark/Vodafone go via Australia or the USA. TelstraClear de-peered many years ago and then Telecom followed suit. There was no technical reason for this, just pure commercial greed and as long as its all gone quiet then nothing will change going forward.