for the people saying 'be happy with go large you pay for what you get' etc

Forums › New Zealand Broadband › for the people saying 'be happy with go large you pay for what you get' etc

moshpit77

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#10965 22-Dec-2006 11:07

Yes, another Go Large thread but here goes...

I have seen a lot of people here replying to the Go Large complainants with stuff like 'you pay for what you are getting' and 'i know the speeds are low but you are still downloading huge amounts of data'

Can I say that, with the speeds I and other customers have been getting, there is no way in this earthly world anybody could be downloading huge amounts of data every month. Here are some screencaps of speed tests I did recently on international speeds, which I also sent to Xtra.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/richie_moshpit/speed1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/richie_moshpit/speed2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v294/richie_moshpit/speed3.jpg

The first one is to London, the second to New York and the third to Auckland. The Auckland one is fine, but the other two show speeds of around 80kbps. Now anybody who wants to tell me that this is 'broadband' needs their heads checked. This is not an isolated incident, these are consistent to the speeds I and other users are getting all the time. I know Go Large has limitations, but nowhere in the terms and conditions does it say that international speeds are constantly going to be more like dialup speed than broadband speed.

I sent a rather long email to Xtra about this, and they did reply a week later saying that they have had 'feedback' from 'a small amount' of Xtra customers about international speeds and were 'looking into it'. I would say for 'feedback' read 'complaints' and for 'a few' read 'a large amount', going on what I see on this and other forums.

Finally, the moderators here always seem to counteract complaints about Go Large with the old 'you pay for what you are getting' and 'you are still downloading huge amounts of data' lines, and it may be no coincidence that Xtra sponsor a lot of advertising on this site. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but it strikes me as suspicious.

Just as a footnote, I spent some time trying to get an Irish radio station with a 40k stream to work during the week and after a lot of trouble connected up trusty old dialup, tried again, and lo and behold it worked. And you call this broadband?

[Moderator edit (MF): hyperlinked images]

freitasm

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#56154 22-Dec-2006 11:13

moshpit77: Finally, the moderators here always seem to counteract complaints about Go Large with the old 'you pay for what you are getting' and 'you are still downloading huge amounts of data' lines, and it may be no coincidence that Xtra sponsor a lot of advertising on this site. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but it strikes me as suspicious.

Advertising on this site has nothing to do with what we write. Advertising is provided by an agency and based purely on the fact that Geekzone is the #1 Technology website in New Zealand.

I personally don't know anyone on Xtra and this has nothing to do with my thinking on this issue. As I said before, if people want non-managed connection, the best alternative is to change to a plan with this provision, otherwise they will be subject to Xtra's T&C's.

I don't agree with "limited unlimited" broadband, and I think this cripples the whole infrastructure, which is currently overloaded by what looks like lack of planning and investment from the incumbent of the moment. But there are plans, and plans...

moshpit77

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#56158 22-Dec-2006 11:44

Thanks for clearing up the advertising issue, just struck my sceptic mind as suspicious!

On top of the 'limited unlimited' thing, Xtras 'speeds as fast as your line allows' line should really stipulate that this applies only to NZ hosted sites. My line obviously allows speeds of over 2mb but my international speeds are cosistently below 100k

grant_k

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#56161 22-Dec-2006 11:56

moshpit77: ...I spent some time trying to get an Irish radio station with a 40k stream to work during the week and after a lot of trouble connected up trusty old dialup, tried again, and lo and behold it worked. And you call this broadband?

Well done! You have removed any doubt (as if there was any) of how pathetic the international speed of Go Large is (at least so far as your connection goes). If it can't cope with a 40k stream, that truly is pathetic and does not even come close to broadband. Other Go Large users have reported that they cannot watch YouTube videos without lots of pauses. This is very annoying to say the least.

To see if it was a wider network issue I watched quite a few YouTube videos yesterday via our XNET 2Mbps/128kbps connection. All of them played perfectly, so there is the answer, it is definitely a "Go Large issue".

On another thread someone else is complaining that the moderators and other posters (me included) keep missing the point by saying they should just switch plans or ISPs rather than complaining about Go Large.

Call it "missing the point" if you will, but we are just trying to offer some helpful advice so you can enjoy your broadband connection as it was meant to be.

I have a close friend with monthly usage around 100GB who has changed to the Woosh "Unlimited" plan and he is very happy with it. The plan is called "Orbit Flat Rate" and details are here:

http://www.woosh.com/ContentClient/DSL/DSLPricing.aspx

Price is EXACTLY the same as Telecom's Go Large plan i.e. $49.95 so what do you have to lose by changing to it?

Feedback from various users of Orbit Flat Rate is here: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=41&TopicId=10556

Amoeba had this to say: "Download speeds are around 2.5 - 3 mbits/sec and P2P works fine with speeds on popular torrents around 100 KB/s. I'm happy.".

Others have different speeds to report but nobody has complained which is a very different story than those who use Go Large.

Rather than wasting your time complaining to XTRA, why not vote with your feet and change to another ISP who offers a plan such as the example above?

It won't cost any more and you should get a much better service. After all, if you go to a Fruit and Vegetable shop, buy some bags of stuff and when you get home, find out that the quality is bad, you don't go back there again do you? And most probably, you will tell your friends not to go there either.

We on GZ are your friends (even though you might not believe it right now). We don't want to see other geeks getting ripped off by any telco who promises a good plan and delivers a crock. It all goes according to the old saying:

A HAPPY CUSTOMER WILL TELL ONE OTHER PERSON ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE.
but...
AN UNHAPPY CUSTOMER WILL TELL TEN OTHER PEOPLE.

I hope this post will save you and others from wasting your time complaining to somebody who most probably won't listen.

juha

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#56173 22-Dec-2006 14:09

moshpit77: Thanks for clearing up the advertising issue, just struck my sceptic mind as suspicious!

If Mauricio was as "advertising oriented" as you suggest, he would not have taken me onboard Geekzone :)

As for slow international speeds, that's been an issue for a while now, across the board for most ISPs. This week there was a problem on Telecom's Global-Gateway (its international transit arm) with a router malfunctioning. Here's the official word on the issue from Telecom's Sarah Berry, media relations executive:

We did have some further intermittent issues again early this morning on and off between 6am and 8am. These were resolved again by resetting the router. We are monitoring the situation closely but all is running well again now.

The quote is from an email yesterday afternoon.

I'm not still convinced the issue has been resolved as this is how part of a traceroute to Google from Inspire Net looks like:

                                                                    Packets               Pings
Host                                                    Loss%     Snt       Last   Avg Best Wrst StDev
4. vlan-935.tkbr4.global-gateway.net.nz      0.0%   100      37.8 42.1 36.4 73.3   7.7
5. lag1-30.tkbr8.global-gateway.net.nz      84.8%   100   15034 15064 14928 15283 112.4
6. so-0-2-0.akbr3.global-gateway.net.nz     0.0%   100     122.6 42.5 36.6 125.2 13.0
7. p2-0.sjbr1.global-gateway.net.nz            0.0%   100      216.3 219.6 214.2 244.4   6.3

"lag1" is very likely deprioritising ICMP, hence the big packet loss percentage and 15 second round trip time. However, it would only need to do so normally, if it's overloaded.

Juha

grant_k

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#56184 22-Dec-2006 14:53

juha: As for slow international speeds, that's been an issue for a while now, across the board for most ISPs.

Yes, but there's plain ordinary SLOW (like most of the time) and TOTALLY DISMAL (like Moshpit77 has experienced).

I mean, not being able to handle 40kbps is just hopeless, nowhere near broadband. That's why I did the test yesterday with YouTube. Videos were loading for me at around 660kbps which is certainly acceptable for an international connection even if it doesn't break any records.

It would be interesting to get some speed figures from Go Large users who try to load YouTube videos. I use DU Meter to provide this information, but no doubt there are other options.

juha

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#56185 22-Dec-2006 14:57

Be good if Telecom were to say something about this actually. And, I don't mean stuff like "the government made us slow down your broadband" as some Geekzoners appear to have been told.

Juha

weblordpepe

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#56514 29-Dec-2006 03:08

One thing is for sure - there is a huge overwelming blob of evidence to suggest that these 'go large' problems arent caused by the customer's connection to the phone exchange - eg distance, attenuation & stuff.

It really does smell like a routing /traffic fiddling issue.

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barf

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#56542 29-Dec-2006 14:30

AFAIK all or most Go Large data is going through an Allot Netenforcer - an expensive piece of [expletive] designed to slow down your P2P and bittorrent. They call it "traffic management".

Since this system is designed to restrict usage of your connection it's unsurprising people are complaining about poor performance.

[Moderator edit (MF): removed expletive]

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powderedtoastman

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#57422 9-Jan-2007 23:53

barf: AFAIK all or most Go Large data is going through an Allot Netenforcer - an expensive piece of [expletive] designed to slow down your P2P and bittorrent. They call it "traffic management".

Since this system is designed to restrict usage of your connection it's unsurprising people are complaining about poor performance.

Do you work for Telecom or another ISP by any chance barf?

bradstewart

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#57424 10-Jan-2007 01:09

Yet another person questioning if somebody works for the ISP. If you read the post correctly you would note barf was criticising....

freitasm

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#57426 10-Jan-2007 05:12

powderedtoastman: Do you work for Telecom or another ISP by any chance barf?

Barf was criticising the system used and telling that clearly people have reasons to complain.

By the wa, there's a discussion about disclosure going on. So let's see if you like this.... powderetoastman, who do you work for?

Last time I checked the only website you should disclose your employer was LinkedIn, so there's no reason to Barf or anyone else to answer this question.

powderedtoastman

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#57568 11-Jan-2007 11:58

Whoa fellas, settle down. You'll tire yourselves out jumping to all those conclusions. I don' care whether barf was criticizing Telecom's system or announcing it as his new personal god. I am not trying to rob poor barf of his civil liberties, merely asking (not at gunpoint) out of interest, given that the information he is in possession of might be considered by Telecom to be of a less-than-public nature. So I am curious as to how he might come across such information. But no, barf, you do not need to answer that question, or any other question for that matter. You're your own boss!

barf

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#57603 11-Jan-2007 14:51

I think you touched a nerve there downunder, many people have professional careers and would rather not disclose their affiliations to the public, and this forum is very public. But to answer your question I don't work for any telco, although there's a pretty small chance your packets have been through one of my firewalls.

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exportgoldman

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#57634 11-Jan-2007 16:06

powderedtoastman: Whoa fellas, settle down. You'll tire yourselves out jumping to all those conclusions. I don' care whether barf was criticizing Telecom's system or announcing it as his new personal god. I am not trying to rob poor barf of his civil liberties, merely asking (not at gunpoint) out of interest, given that the information he is in possession of might be considered by Telecom to be of a less-than-public nature. So I am curious as to how he might come across such information. But no, barf, you do not need to answer that question, or any other question for that matter. You're your own boss!

I thought this would be semi-public knowledge, but Allot and Telecom NZ don't mention this anywhere on the net that this is the product used for shaping.

The closest you get is the SEC filing for Allot which in page 57 states Telecom NZ (New Zealand) is a customer...

http://www.irconnect.com/mc/irc/secfilings.mc?cmd=disp&id=4775511&type=CONVPDF

[Moderator edit (bradstewart): Hyperlinked]

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powderedtoastman

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#57687 12-Jan-2007 01:18

Thanks for the reply barf. I can understand not wanting to make company affiliations public, and I'm all for it.

Believe it or not, I was only asking because I wanted to know if maybe Telecom had released that info (and maybe I just missed it). I have no idea about any discussions on disclosure which may be going on, or whether people routinely ask these kinds of questions on the forum, nor do I care.

It's a bit irritating when people feel compelled to "enlighten" others based on their own incorrect assumptions. It's kind of ironic as well, considering that I've previously posted about the crappiness of Go Large and argued (just as barf has stated) that people do have cause to complain.

exportgoldman, good find. I guess any ISP would probably prefer to keep the details of any such traffic limiting system a secret. I think that in theory, a person could probably foil any such system without knowing any of the details of its operation beforehand. It could be more effort than it's really worth though, and only a real geek would even try...