Blog Post: Picking the best ISP

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michaelmurfy

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# 229084 7-Feb-2018 00:23

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I've been working on this for a while and thought it may help some people: https://murfy.nz/2018/02/picking-the-right-isp/

Let me know comments, or anything I've missed. I'm not the best at spelling or grammar so don't judge me too hard please!

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Circumspice
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# 1952735 7-Feb-2018 03:23

The blog post is great - provides a lot of reassurance for my current choice of ISP. For any product, it's enlightening to know how much the 'raw materials' cost - a red flag when this is greater than the product sales price.

xpd

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# 1952753 7-Feb-2018 07:52

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I know of a few people who have signed up to those power company offerings and are going "free tv, great pricing!" - my response ? Wait 12 months then let me know how its going price wise.

My biggest "rah" at people that I know choosing an ISP (or anything tech related really), is that they know I'm reasonably clued up on brands etc to watch for, yet they come see me AFTER the fact and I hate having to tell them they've signed up/purchased for an expensive option. :(

Personally, I went with Voyager for pricing, services and some good old faith in Seeby :D Vodafone could offer me the same services but pricing was through the roof and my experience with helpdesk etc was a nightmare ;)

XPD / Gavin / DemiseNZ

Server : i5-3470s @ 3.50GHz 16GB RAM Win 10 Pro Workstation : Ryzen 5 3600 / 16GB DDR4 / RX580 4GB Console : Xbox One

Now on BigPipe 100/100 and 2Talk Add me on Steam

Djmixerdomo

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# 1952762 7-Feb-2018 08:31

First of all, nice profile pic @michaelmurfy ;)

Anyway, I spent a long time deciding on whether to stick with Spark or go with another ISP for when I get fibre installed. In the end I chose to stay with Spark, the main factor was the free Netflix and Lightbox both of which are heavily used in this household.

PC: R7 3700x 4.3Ghz/32GB DDR4/GTX1070

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# 1952807 7-Feb-2018 09:59

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@michaelmurfy can I suggest that making a bigger distinction between WiFi and a connection delivered over wireless (cell or otherwise). So if you're talking about WiFi, say WiFi, not wireless - if non techie people read, they often get confused between the two.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't mean to sound so critical - it's a good post, just making a suggestion...

dfnt

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# 1952827 7-Feb-2018 10:43

Interesting, didn't realise you'd switched from Bigpipe to 2degrees

michaelmurfy

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# 1952836 7-Feb-2018 11:09

@RunningMan Yes you raise a good point. I'll re-word this :)

@nas Did the request to switch yesterday - will be interesting to see if there are any changes to network performance.

dfnt

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# 1952850 7-Feb-2018 11:36

michaelmurfy:

@RunningMan Yes you raise a good point. I'll re-word this :)

@nas Did the request to switch yesterday - will be interesting to see if there are any changes to network performance.

Yeah, I switched away from 2degs during the latter stages of the Snap -> 2degrees merger as international performance was suffering. The other reason was my wife works at Spark so get the staff discount.

Might look at switching back as I do miss the peering.

michaelmurfy

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# 1952933 7-Feb-2018 13:58

nas:

Yeah, I switched away from 2degs during the latter stages of the Snap -> 2degrees merger as international performance was suffering. The other reason was my wife works at Spark so get the staff discount.

Might look at switching back as I do miss the peering.

Same reason I switched and am now switching back. I think they've resolved the initial teething problems. Just looking forward to being with a provider that peers.

OmniouS

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# 1953623 8-Feb-2018 13:42

Good writeup! Here are a few more features to be considered as well:

- Direct connection vs CGNAT
- Static/Dynamic/Sticky IP - v4, v6, rDNS, allocation sizes
- Local caching e.g. Steam, YouTube

- ISP provided email and how it should be avoided

Some providers, e.g. BigPipe don't charge credit card processing fees which is great for people that put everything on the CC to get points/$$.

Cheers

Edit: I actually put in my order to switch from BigPipe to 2degrees yesterday at 10am. The connection cut over before 7am this morning which was much quicker than I was expecting. It's nice to see the 1ms response from home to work which is directly connected to WIX - I have a Dell R720 colo'd there :P

stinger

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# 1953635 8-Feb-2018 13:55

OmniouS:

Good writeup! Here are a few more features to be considered as well:

I'll add the InternetNZ ISP Review list as well https://internetnz.nz/ispreview

I'm with 2 degrees. There support while I change connections (fibre, move house to VDSL, and back to fibre) has been excellent.

michaelmurfy

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# 1953794 8-Feb-2018 18:54

Adding CGNAT is something I totally forgot about - I'll do that shortly. The InternetNZ ISP Review list is also a good addition.

As for the other things (IPv6, additional features) I wanted to try and make this as simple as possible without too much technical jargon but will work something out. Thanks for the suggestions!

Ford

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# 1959707 17-Feb-2018 20:13

The captcha doesn't work

1x3 = 3 but error

Here's my reply anyway:-

Quite a good article.

I like two degrees, because in the event of a cyber attack, I can ring them and get a static WAN IP changed immediately.
Myself I use vodafone. Only because they are a continuation of telstra and I haven't bothered to change.
Basically, a static WAN IP matters as to who to go with. I don't know if all ISP's offer that. Vodafone initially do Dynamic IPs with their fibre. It was a real battle getting it changed back to static. They wanted to charge me for it! That resolved some issues but still have brief disconnections from time to time. Stability of internet connection matters, as does upload speed for online backups and using accounting software online. CG-NAT never considered it but will look into it.
Customers I come across want decent customer support from an experienced NZ support tech who speaks english, and to not be on phone hold for ages. ISP email. Still use Snap internet even though my ISP is vodafone. Had virtually no spam in the 20 years I've had the same email address. After the free static IP one year period vodafone agreed to, I'll move to Two degrees.

nolanz

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# 1959712 17-Feb-2018 20:35

Using the link https://broadband.geekzone.co.nz/ relies on information about an address being current with Google Maps. Google Maps is so out of date that it still does not include the street I have lived on since August 2016, and we were not the first in the street. Not really a good look for an information resource which relies on another information source which is way out of date.

Pumpedd

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# 1959740 17-Feb-2018 21:58

Perhaps a section on internet speed.

I know a lot of people who are insistent on getting 1GB, when 100/20 will be more than ample when there is only one person in the house. I am sure you could explain it better ;)

stinger

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# 1960090 18-Feb-2018 23:48

Pumpedd:

I know a lot of people who are insistent on getting 1GB, when 100/20 will be more than ample when there is only one person in the house. I am sure you could explain it better ;)

Here's why I get the gigabit connection, even though I'm a one person household. Like a responsible person, I back up my content offsite (in my case, backblaze). I do a full back up monthly, and incremental every two hours (automated of course). While the 100 Mb/s download is fine, the 20 Mb/s upload is not. And bragging to my friends back home (Brisbane) is done for the bonus points :P

Of course the average person doesn't do back ups, and then cries to the media when they've lost the precious photos of their whānau :(

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