Coming Home - Which ISP?

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richsadams

26 posts

Geek

# 1810650 3-Jul-2017 06:03

quickymart:

You'd be far better just to get a router here - no chance of it melting due to the different voltages too plus they would be covered by an NZ warranty; imagine what a pain it would be if you had to send your router overseas just to get fixed.

UPDATE: You are correct, The Apple warranty is valid only in the country of original sale (exception is that EU is considered one country for warranty purposes). I received some dodgy info elsewhere, apologies.

All but one of our products (Time Capsule) is out of warranty in any case, so it's not a big issue, but I wanted to correct my error as I'm unable to edit my earlier post.

Cheers!

allio

615 posts

Ultimate Geek

# 1810814 3-Jul-2017 11:47

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I suggest you save a few bucks, keep your Apple gear and sign up to an ISP that doesn't use VLAN-tagging (only one I'm aware of is Bigpipe, which fortunately happens to a frontrunner on price/quality grounds as well). There's no issue in practice with the different wireless bands, and almost all devices let you change them anyway. In fact I'm running my R7000 with the country code set to the US as the transmit power is superior. No knocks at my door yet.

Remember that if you move to a house in a UFB area that isn't already hooked up to fibre (you can check if it is on this site), it may not be as straightforward as you think to get connected - particularly if you're renting. Plenty of horror stories of connections taking a year or longer due to consent issues. Might pay to be prepared to use VDSL in the meantime just in case.

michaelmurfy

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# 1810832 3-Jul-2017 12:11

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Just another thing if you're going to use your Airport as a router it'll only route up-to around 400Mbit - it isn't suitable for Gigabit plans.

If you're only looking at going on 100/20Mbit or 200/20Mbit you'll be fine but for Gigabit you'll need a new router.

MikeB4

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# 1810836 3-Jul-2017 12:16

michaelmurfy:

Just another thing if you're going to use your Airport as a router it'll only route up-to around 400Mbit - it isn't suitable for Gigabit plans.

If you're only looking at going on 100/20Mbit or 200/20Mbit you'll be fine but for Gigabit you'll need a new router.

Well I'll be, I did not know that. Good information there Sir

Mike
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RunningMan

5597 posts

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# 1810844 3-Jul-2017 12:31

allio:[snip]There's no issue in practice with the different wireless bands, and almost all devices let you change them anyway. In fact I'm running my R7000 with the country code set to the US as the transmit power is superior. No knocks at my door yet.

Apple devices don't let you change region - each device is set for a particular locale at the factory, and you can choose from a subset of countries within that region - i.e. NZ one will have the Asia Pacific locale, and you can select NZ, Aus and a few others, but not US. You won't be able to choose NZ as a location for a US model. The telltale is to check the model number - a US model number will end in LL/A, a model for the NZ market will end in X/A.

As for deliberately running increased xmit power, regardless of if you've had a door knock, it's not a particularly neighbourly thing to do. WiFi operates in a shared spectrum, and the idea of specified maximum power is so that everyone in a given area gets a fair go. WiFi in some urban areas is at the point of being unusable because of the sheer number of APs in a small geographical location. Increasing the EIRP to shout louder than the surrounding ones increases this problem - a better solution is generally to decrease the power, and have more APs. Anyway, gone enough OT for now!

richsadams

26 posts

Geek

# 1811112 3-Jul-2017 17:08

allio:

I suggest you save a few bucks, keep your Apple gear and sign up to an ISP that doesn't use VLAN-tagging (only one I'm aware of is Bigpipe, which fortunately happens to a frontrunner on price/quality grounds as well). There's no issue in practice with the different wireless bands, and almost all devices let you change them anyway. In fact I'm running my R7000 with the country code set to the US as the transmit power is superior. No knocks at my door yet.

Remember that if you move to a house in a UFB area that isn't already hooked up to fibre (you can check if it is on this site), it may not be as straightforward as you think to get connected - particularly if you're renting. Plenty of horror stories of connections taking a year or longer due to consent issues. Might pay to be prepared to use VDSL in the meantime just in case.

Good info for sure...thanks! Bagpipe is hovering around the top of our list now.

I also confirmed via Apple Discussion Groups and an old mate in AU that our Airport Extreme and Time Capsule won't present any problems with respect to channel interference, etc. and will work fine in NZ. Phew!

Understood about the UFB challenges. I'm sure we'd do fine with VDSL for a time.

Cheers!

KiwiSurfer

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# 1811114 3-Jul-2017 17:10

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richsadams:

UPDATE: You are correct, The Apple warranty is valid only in the country of original sale (exception is that EU is considered one country for warranty purposes). I received some dodgy info elsewhere, apologies.

Does that apply to AppleCare though? I'm pretty sure that is International but happy to stand corrected on that as well. Unless there's no AppleCare for routers...

richsadams

26 posts

Geek

# 1811127 3-Jul-2017 17:24

michaelmurfy:

Just another thing if you're going to use your Airport as a router it'll only route up-to around 400Mbit - it isn't suitable for Gigabit plans.

If you're only looking at going on 100/20Mbit or 200/20Mbit you'll be fine but for Gigabit you'll need a new router.

We'll probably stick with a 200Mbs down plan to start and see how it goes. But if we did up our game, according to a few sites, including this one, the Airport Extreme averages around 575-600 Mbps of total simultaneous throughput via WAN/LAN in bridge mode (which is how I set it up when we had fibre previously).

May end up with a new router anyway and just keep the Time Capsule for Time Machine backups if needed...but we'll see how it goes.

Cheers.

richsadams

26 posts

Geek

# 1811141 3-Jul-2017 17:40

KiwiSurfer:

richsadams:

UPDATE: You are correct, The Apple warranty is valid only in the country of original sale (exception is that EU is considered one country for warranty purposes). I received some dodgy info elsewhere, apologies.

Does that apply to AppleCare though? I'm pretty sure that is International but happy to stand corrected on that as well. Unless there's no AppleCare for routers...

I believe you are correct, that AppleCare will cover your kit no matter where you happen to end up.

Although they don't offer AppleCare for Airport Extremes or Time Capsules, if you purchase one along with a Mac they will cover it as a "peripheral". In fact I had an Apple Cinema Display that I purchased used years ago and the logic board failed. The Genius Bar went ahead and replaced the board at no charge based on my iMac's AppleCare at the time. Not many of our products have needed attention, but it's that kind of support that I continue to get and appreciate from them.

Another reason I tend to want to keep what we have is that this newest Time Capsule replaced one that was going on 7 years old. I have a newer iMac, but my wife's iMac is an Early 2008 model. I swapped out the HDD for an SSD a couple of years ago and it's still going strong.

Cheers!

kotuku4

290 posts

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# 1813549 6-Jul-2017 08:35

If Nelson/Tasman it may depend on the address what services and providers(ISPs) are available. If out of town you may not have fibre, and may have 4g mobile internet option and may not depending on coverage.

I'm in Blenheim and have fibre but can't get Bigpipe or Voyager. Used MyRepublic but they had very slow download speeds at peak times, switched to Spark and it's very solid and reliable, I pay $89/m for naked 100/20, Lightbox included. I only sign up for 12 months.

My Family use Skinny for mobile, I'm on $16/m prepay roll over combo.

richsadams

26 posts

Geek

# 1813551 6-Jul-2017 08:44

kotuku4:

If Nelson/Tasman it may depend on the address what services and providers(ISPs) are available. If out of town you may not have fibre, and may have 4g mobile internet option and may not depending on coverage.

I'm in Blenheim and have fibre but can't get Bigpipe or Voyager. Used MyRepublic but they had very slow download speeds at peak times, switched to Spark and it's very solid and reliable, I pay $89/m for naked 100/20, Lightbox included. I only sign up for 12 months.

My Family use Skinny for mobile, I'm on $16/m prepay roll over combo.

All good stuff!

Cheers for that mate!

DarkShadow

1612 posts

Uber Geek

# 1813565 6-Jul-2017 09:26

kotuku4:

I'm in Blenheim and have fibre but can't get Bigpipe

You can now. :)

kotuku4

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# 1813850 6-Jul-2017 14:18

OK when I can change I will try Bigpipe and save $10 month. Thanks.

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