[WXC/VFX] Question on speed with WorldxChange

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xdzgor

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#56645 19-Jan-2010 22:48

Hi

what sort of download/upload speeds are people getting with Xnet? When I try their speed test tool I get about 1900kbps/780kbps. Is this good?

I expected that "full speed/full speed" would be over ten megabits per second. Was this unrealistic?

/Peter

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#291351 20-Jan-2010 05:40

So many factors line quality how far from the exchange are you have you read other threads

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sbiddle

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#291364 20-Jan-2010 07:50

What plan are you on? What tyoe of modem do you have? What are your router stats including sync rate and signal strength?

There are a huge number of factors that can affect your speed.

xdzgor

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#291384 20-Jan-2010 09:34

Hi

yes, I have now seen there are other threads about this issue. The general conclusion seems to be "live with what you got, there's nothing you can do". Probably a pragmatic view, but I still think 1.9Mbs is too low.

I have no idea what the "theoretical maximum" with adsl is - but I lived in Europe last year, and with adsl it was no problem getting 6Mbps, and I was on cable where I had 12Mbps (at, I might add, a cheaper price than my xnet plan in NZ). As far as I remember with the cable company I was with, I could have chosen plans up to about 20Mbps.

So what would be the best I could get with adsl, if the telephone wires were nice and new, the connections all perfect, and the exchange close by? And would I get a faster connection switching from Xnet to Telecom for example?

Thanks,
Peter

maverick

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#291385 20-Jan-2010 09:37

As the others have said what you need to do is see the stats from your router, these will tell us what roughly you should be getting.

Speed is relative to distance due to attenuation the line stats from the router give us that basic info

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kyhwana2

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#291387 20-Jan-2010 09:41

If you post the stats from your DSL modem, that would be more of a help, since what speed you get depends firstly on what your modem is syncing at :)

xdzgor

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#291391 20-Jan-2010 09:47

I forgot to mention, I have a WAG310G modem. The "status/dsl" page shows the following (not that it means much to me):

Modulation Type: ADSL_2plus (configured as MultiMode)
Status: Up
Provider:
Downstream Rate: 15881 Kbps
Upstream Rate: 1004 Kbps
Downstream Noise Margin: 12.1 dB
Upstream Noise Margin: 12.1 dB
Downstream Attenuation: 16.0 dB
Upstream Attenuation: 7.4 dB
Downstream Power: 12.8 dBmV
Upstream Power: 0.0 dBmV
Total Bytes Sent: 537 Bytes
Total Bytes Received: 0 Bytes

I can see the "downstream rate" is stated as 15881 Kbps - which is not what Xnet's online speedtest tells me, and not what I experience either...

/Peter

maverick

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#291395 20-Jan-2010 09:59

Those stats look very good, I am running the exact same box on the same connection I have slightly worse stats with my Downstream rate at 13492Kbps.

Same test gives me 11671kbps down 802kbps up.

Are you connected via wireless or ethernet cable to the router ?

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kyhwana2

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#291471 20-Jan-2010 13:01

As maverick said, the sync stats are good.. What time of day did you try the test?
Try the WXC speedtest again at say 8am, 5pm, 10pm and see what you get.
Could be that the backhaul from the exchange/cabinet your own was being hammered when you tried the test..

xdzgor

23 posts

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#291481 20-Jan-2010 13:22

OK - thanks. Indeed, the speed I can attain seems to fluctuate quite a lot during the day. Late in the evening it was well under 2Mbps. Earlier this morning I was getting over 10Mbps (incredibly good), and now I'm getting about 6Mbps.

johnr

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#291488 20-Jan-2010 13:32

xdzgor: OK - thanks. Indeed, the speed I can attain seems to fluctuate quite a lot during the day. Late in the evening it was well under 2Mbps. Earlier this morning I was getting over 10Mbps (incredibly good), and now I'm getting about 6Mbps.

Its called congestion

My Bike can do 300k but not when the motorways are packed with traffic

Ragnor

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#291493 20-Jan-2010 13:38

If you want to visualise the steps in the chain it goes roughly like this:

Your Modem > Copper Phone Line > Cabinet/Exchange > Backhaul > ISP Handover Point > ISP's Network > Speed Test Server

So it's likely to be either...
a) congestion on the backhaul from the exchange or cabinet
or b) congestion at Xnet's handover point
or c) congestion in Xnet's network

Their ADSL service is provided over Telecom Wholesale equipement in the exchange/cabinet and Telecom wholesale backhaul so if it's a) you or xnet can't really do anything other than wait for Telecom to upgrade the backhaul capacity for that exchange.

I wouldn't be entirely suprised to find it's b) or c) although being cynical Xnet helpdesk will no doubt say it's a)

Do you know your neighbours? Are they on other ISP's, do they get a similar results?

Can you try other local speedtests like these?

http://zeus.jetstream.co.nz/
http://speedtest.slingshot.co.nz/
http://www.nzdsl.co.nz/

At the end of the day residential adsl is a best effort shared network service, there is no SLA (service level agreement) and no gauranteed minimum level of performance.

Some ISP's have higher congestion/contention than others and some exchanges have higher contention and congestion than others.

xdzgor

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#291527 20-Jan-2010 14:41

johnr:
Its called congestion

My Bike can do 300k but not when the motorways are packed with traffic

Quite. And to be honest, Xnet never did say "you'll get XX Mbps". Situation was a little different in Denmark, where I lived up until last year. There you paid for a "12Mbps/2Mbps" line (or whatever), and that's basically what you got. Aside from discussions regarding how one should calculate such data rates.

In addition to that - NO DATA CAP or extra payment per GB! I was surprised to find that in NZ, but I guess that's due to NZ being a few relatively small islands far away in the Pacific.

Niel

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#291658 20-Jan-2010 22:15

There are many, many cities overseas with more people than the population of NZ. Many things here are expensive due to economy of scale. Even in South Africa you get the speed you pay for (although it is only about 2 or 3 years ago they launched 4Mbps...).

By the way, in SA you pay R0.50 which is less than NZ$0.10 for a GSM SIM card with some air time and a demo CD of an upcoming musician. A bit off topic, but an illustration of economy of scale even in a country with 40% unemployment and no benefit.

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Ragnor

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#291925 21-Jan-2010 14:47

Population density per square km is an interesting factor...

New Zealand: 15
South Africa: 40
Denmark: 128
South Korea: 486

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density

Niel

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#292010 21-Jan-2010 19:36

Completely off topic: Keep in mind in SA we had a 4700 hectare farm which could take only 1000 sheep due to the extreme dry climate in that part of the country. Cape Town is one city with more than double the population of NZ.

Regarding speed, now at 7:30 I'm getting around 2Mbps which is not too bad. During the day I can get around 6Mbps or 7Mbps. Sync speed is around 9Mbps. I am a bit over 3km from the exchange. Not super speeds, but it is not bad either. Three years ago I was doing barely 33kbps on dial-up.

EDIT: No one knows the population size of SA.

You can never have enough Volvos!

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