I apologise if this post is a little lengthy and detailed, but I'm hoping that if I provide enough detail, I might be able to get some advice I can use.

Back in December 2007, I posted here  about how my router was showing excellent connections to the exchange, but with Orcon I was getting international performance that didn't seem to come anywhere close to achieving the speeds I should be capable of, and which seemed slower than a lot of other Orcon customers were getting.

My router showed the following when I connected to Orcon.

Data Rate
Stream Type	Actual Data Rate
Up Stream	963 (Kbps.)
Down Stream	17849 (Kbps.

When I did the speed test located here  I was receiving 8.4 Mbps, which would seem in line with the figures from my router. I am told that this test is a little less reliable than the regular one, however I'm totally blind and use screen reading software, and it doesn't like the extensive Flash used in the regular speed test. I think it serves as a reasonable guide though.

Downloads from international sites, particularly from the US where I have to bring in about 100 MB of software builds every day, were only coming in at about 200 KBP/sec.

Downloads from some sites were a lot faster. Local sites like the Radio new Zealand podcast site were good, and when I downloaded an MS office Service Pack, I was getting over 1000 KB/sec.

From this, I concluded that I wasn't getting the best bang for my buck, and that my exchange seemed in good shape. After I initiated that thread in late 2007, my downloads from Orcon deteriorated further. The thread on Orcon International Performance however shoed me that others had been getting better download speeds than I ever had, despite what looks like an unusually solid connection.

I did try another router when with Orcon, and this made no difference.

Armed with all this, I felt sure that a change of ISP would help. It's actually made it worse.

I had my Vodafone connection enabled yesterday. We're on Broadband Ultimate which is max/max.

Interestingly, here's what my router now reports.

Data Rate
Stream Type	Actual Data Rate
Up Stream	944 (Kbps.)
Down Stream	7547 (Kbps.

Now it's academic at this point really, but it's interesting that with Orcon the router was reporting 17849 KBP/s, but now I'm getting 7547. I am surmising that this is because Orcon was giving me ADSL 2 whereas Vodafone is not?

But the big deal is the real world speed test. Using the same one as referenced previously, I'm now getting an average of 95 KB/sec. The fastest I've got is 103, the slowest is in the 80s. This speed doesn't vary markedly depending on the time of day. The speeds are pretty consistent whether it's 3 PM, 8 PM or 3 AM. So something is seriously amiss.

Downloads from my server at work are now at only 30-40 Kbp/sec. So are downloads from sites like CNN. Youtube videos are buffering, and I'm getting a lot of buffering when connected to a Slingbox that I have in the US.

Clearly others are not having anything like this with Vodafone, in fact for the most part reports of speed have been quite positive here, which is one of the reasons why I switched. So I'm not at all pointing the finger at them, just hoping that I don't get caught in the middle between Vodafone and telecom when it comes to getting this sorted.


I put in a trouble ticket with Vodafone yesterday afternoon, and they told me to call in 24 hours to check progress. I was a little surprised that they didn't ask me to send traceroutes and other data to them by e-mail, but perhaps the discrepancy between what I'm connecting at and what I'm downloading at was enough for them to go on.

I must say everyone at Vodafone I've spoken with have been very courteous and professional, and I have fingers crossed that they will see this through to a resolution for me. But I wonder if anyone has any thoughts on why this is happening?

The Stats Page of my router is showing no data errors, nothing that would indicate the connection is subject to noise or anything like that, although I accept it's possible. Our house was wired professionally for ADSL, because we have a burglar alarm.

If we have a congestion problem here on our exchange, which is Linwood, does the fact that I am connecting at ADSL speeds instead of ADSL 2 speeds have an impact, even though I never came close to achieving decent speeds?

If I may turn rant mode on briefly, I'm trying to do the kind of thing that the Government used to be fond of talking about when they were on their knowledge wave bandwagon. I'm working for a US company, moving reasonably large chunks of data on a regular basis as we fine tune software builds for our PC and Windows Mobile products, producing audio in my studio which needs to be sent back to Florida at a high bit rate...and these continuing problems make it pretty frustrating. John Key's fibre looks attractive from here.

I sincerely appreciate any thoughts people have on this. I'd also be keen to hear other users' experience of how good Vodafone has been about resolving similar problems if you've had them.

And of course, if anyone is lurking here from Vodafone that can help me, God bless you and I'll buy you a bottle of bubbles!

Thanks for reading and any assistance.