ISP backhaul

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tonysutorius

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#151345 22-Aug-2014 09:05

Gidday all,

Having accidentally become a nearly-literal poster boy for UFB...

http://youtu.be/N-PvaIfIF08

...my small business is now out of our first (rather painfully expensive) first 12 month contract with Orcon, and they want us to sign for another 12, now with an unlimited data cap. This sounds pretty good in theory, but I'm sadly now old and cynical enough to immediately think how pointless this would be if the ISP's backhaul is wet string.

What is known about the backhaul capacities of the various UFB ISPs? What's the best way of gauging their actual, rather than spec-sheet, performance?

Cheers all,

Tony

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#1113279 22-Aug-2014 09:11

Use our monthly reports

nitrotech

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#1113281 22-Aug-2014 09:14

There are limited options for business unlimited plans, vodafone, callplus, trustpower all offer unlimited for business.

Find trustpower OK.

To Sydney

To LA

sbiddle

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#1113287 22-Aug-2014 09:20

There is no way to know what an ISPs backhaul is (and I assume you're meaning backhaul capacity within NZ, not upstream)

UFB also differs from xDSL in that tail services aren't officered, so an ISP has to have either their own backhaul or buy capacity from somebody else to get data back to their network.

Your options for unlimited business UFB are also limited.

michaelmurfy

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#1113307 22-Aug-2014 09:44

There is Solarix and Vibe too, they might be able to work out a deal, both business ISP's and both focused on speed.

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deadlyllama

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#1113374 22-Aug-2014 11:07

tonysutorius: Gidday all,

Having accidentally become a nearly-literal poster boy for UFB...

http://youtu.be/N-PvaIfIF08

...my small business is now out of our first (rather painfully expensive) first 12 month contract with Orcon, and they want us to sign for another 12, now with an unlimited data cap. This sounds pretty good in theory, but I'm sadly now old and cynical enough to immediately think how pointless this would be if the ISP's backhaul is wet string.

What is known about the backhaul capacities of the various UFB ISPs? What's the best way of gauging their actual, rather than spec-sheet, performance?

Cheers all,

Tony

Ha, similar thing happened to me, they put me on the front page of the local paper :-)

Backhaul/etc changes over time. If your ISP looks OK on truenet then it should be fine. Orcon's (residential) "100Mbps" never did above 85Mbps for me before I cheaped out and switched to 30Mbps. And I'll look at what's available when my 12 months expires.

I suggest just asking the salesperson about what performance you can expect during the business day. And what reliability is built into their network. Orcon in Whanganui was knocked out for half a day, a few months ago, due to a fibre cut which suggests they or their supplier don't have redundant backhaul here.

jnimmo

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#1113385 22-Aug-2014 11:19

This is something I'm trying to do some research on too; finding a UFB provider for a business in Greymouth who have redundant backhaul. Would love to have a comparison table somewhere but I suspect ISPs will try and keep this pretty close to their chest.

i.e. CallPlus have a great business UFB package with SIP trunking etc which would be ideal, however unless I can get confirmation for them that they have diverse links to their gear in Greymouth I will look elsewhere.
Their map online suggests only one path. http://callplus.co.nz/OurCoverage.aspx
Snap on the other hand show a link into Greymouth both northbound and eastbound http://business.snap.net.nz

Of course there is a much higher chance of things falling down elsewhere in the link than the ISP backhaul, but weather/disaster events or diggers do take them out from time to time

tonysutorius

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#1113456 22-Aug-2014 14:27

Thanks everyone for your comments.

To stretch my question a bit, which ISPs have the best reputation (or if we know, the best reality!) for performance generally beyond my actual UFB connection?

I run a 24/7 business in the suburbs of Porirua city... is any thought/known to have less chance of gumming up at 4pm each weekday? Best allocated international bandwidth per connection? Other key real-world performance metrics?

Thanks guys, really appreciate your expertise.

Tony

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Flickky

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#1113469 22-Aug-2014 14:44

michaelmurfy: There is Solarix and Vibe too, they might be able to work out a deal, both business ISP's and both focused on speed.

This.

I've used Vibe in the past and their backhaul had no issues; moved from Vibe to another ISP at the beginning of this year and their backhaul seemed pretty fast back then. Additionally their support team have been really responsive and actually helpful on the off chance you need it :)

jnimmo

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#1113470 22-Aug-2014 14:45

I don't think so really, we all have our own opinions about who the best providers are. If you aren't happy with your 4pm performance but national Speedtests are still running fine at the time then you should let them know.
If you do look for someone new, try and look past the unmetered bandwidth thing (unless you are doing actually a heap of data), some ISPs provide free upload, some provide unmetered national, some provide unmetered CDN/Akamai etc. Business ISPs/business plans will usually have a better contention ratio. If you're connecting to cloud services like Azure or Amazon, then some ISPs can offer more dedicated connections to them too although of course it would come at a cost.
If I didn't have dedicated Snap fibre at work I'd probably be using DTS.

MichaelNZ

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#1115198 25-Aug-2014 14:44

tonysutorius:
What is known about the backhaul capacities of the various UFB ISPs? What's the best way of gauging their actual, rather than spec-sheet, performance?

This question falls into the "none of your business" category and if you knew the answer, the information would be of no use to you. The ISP's connection(s) are irrelevant. It's how much available bandwidth there is between your computer and the server at the other end.

Flickky:
michaelmurfy: There is Solarix and Vibe too, they might be able to work out a deal, both business ISP's and both focused on speed.

This.

I've used Vibe in the past and their backhaul had no issues; moved from Vibe to another ISP at the beginning of this year and their backhaul seemed pretty fast back then. Additionally their support team have been really responsive and actually helpful on the off chance you need it :)

I used Vibe for awhile and they started off fast and got slower and slower. They kept charging premium above-market prices (and that was after claiming they were giving me a discount).

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timmmay

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#1115216 25-Aug-2014 15:00

Truenet report.

MichaelNZ

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#1115220 25-Aug-2014 15:03

timmmay: Truenet report.

The problem with these sorts of resports is they are weighted in favor of larger ISP's with urban customers, who experience better DSL speeds.

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Zeon

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#1115237 25-Aug-2014 15:07

Go for a business ISP as mentioned. We used Unleashed (now Solarix) and they are very consistent.

Speedtest 2019-10-14

BigPipeNZ

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#1115252 25-Aug-2014 15:23

MichaelNZ:
timmmay: Truenet report.

The problem with these sorts of resports is they are weighted in favor of larger ISP's with urban customers, who experience better DSL speeds.

pretty impressive that we are number one then, since we are not a large ISP compared to the others on that list

And since we don't have LLU infrastructure, we don't discriminate between rural and urban either.

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MichaelNZ

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#1115258 25-Aug-2014 15:39

BigPipeNZ:
And since we don't have LLU infrastructure, we don't discriminate between rural and urban either.

It has nothing to do with LLU. It is the nature of xDSL. Urban areas have shorter average cable runs.

WFH Linux Systems and Networks Engineer in the Internet industry | Specialising in Mikrotik | APNIC member | Open to job offers

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