Fibre ISP reliability/new provider recommendations

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davidcole

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#237669 12-Jun-2018 13:45

Is there something that shows uptime for the various ISP (UFB)? to look at reliability.

I'm currently on Spark, have been since I got UFB about 2 years ago. No contract, on 100/20 plan. Slowly considering moving. We do use lightbox, but not much (just handmaids tale), I don't use their Spotify Discount, nor netflix discount (I think I can get that by re-signing a 1 year contract?) - no landline. So I pay $104 a month. I don't need a router/consumer wireless as I use a Ubiquiti USG + APs

Honestly I've had about 1 or maybe 2 outages in this time, that were not power related (and by power I mean widespread)

Just looking at options. If I could go up to gigabit for the same money, I'd be happy, free sign up stuff would also be great

But I don't mind 100/20 I don't think I've ever topped it.

Any recommendations?

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#2034417 12-Jun-2018 13:57

My only recommendation is to go with a RSP that uses PPPOE. Spark is 1 such provider.

As every now and then, there are complaints from people with RSPs that use DHCP, that are having problems with the internet sometimes not working. Where such problems sound suspiciously like DHCP renewal failure.

l43a2

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#2034418 12-Jun-2018 13:58

Slingshot has gbit for $99 (comes with no free signup stuff) which is pretty aggressive pricing.

MurrayM

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#2034437 12-Jun-2018 14:31

Aredwood: My only recommendation is to go with a RSP that uses PPPOE. Spark is 1 such provider.

As every now and then, there are complaints from people with RSPs that use DHCP, that are having problems with the internet sometimes not working. Where such problems sound suspiciously like DHCP renewal failure.

Do you know what Vodafone uses?

I've recently had fibre layed to my property and now Chorus are asking if we want it connected to the house. I'm currently using Vodafone VDSL and switching to their fibre (not their FibreX!) and ditching the landline would save me $30 a month, so I'm seriously thinking of doing it.

Kraven

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#2034477 12-Jun-2018 14:48

MurrayM:

Do you know what Vodafone uses?

Vodafone use DHCP on VDSL & UFB now, at least on all the new connections I have done recently.

MurrayM

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#2034781 13-Jun-2018 08:52

Kraven:

MurrayM:

Do you know what Vodafone uses?

Vodafone use DHCP on VDSL & UFB now, at least on all the new connections I have done recently.

So that means that if I get my fibre through Vodafone that I might experience the problem that @Aredwood described? Is it a simple matter of just rebooting the router to get things working again?

Aredwood

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#2034817 13-Jun-2018 09:12

Just reboot the router. But that is partly why I don't like DHCP. As those threads where people complain about having to reboot the router every few days, I think that some of them are actually DHCP problems instead of router problems.

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MurrayM

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#2034824 13-Jun-2018 09:22

Aredwood: Just reboot the router. But that is partly why I don't like DHCP. As those threads where people complain about having to reboot the router every few days, I think that some of them are actually DHCP problems instead of router problems.

Thanks, at least I'm now aware of the problem if it pops up for me.

Sounddude

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#2034861 13-Jun-2018 10:13

Aredwood: Just reboot the router. But that is partly why I don't like DHCP. As those threads where people complain about having to reboot the router every few days, I think that some of them are actually DHCP problems instead of router problems.

Slingshot/Orcon supports both PPPoE and DHCP. We run our leases times quite low to avoid any DHCP issues.

Aredwood

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#2034876 13-Jun-2018 10:38

@Sounddude Ask a mod to get the UFB ISP VLAN tagging thread updated. As it currently days that Orcon only supports DHCP. And Slingshot only supports PPPOE.

https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=174969

MurrayM

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#2035895 13-Jun-2018 11:14

I see that Vodafone has VLAN tagging. Is this a good thing or a bad thing and why would I care?

BMarquis

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Chorus

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#2035900 13-Jun-2018 11:21

Aredwood: Just reboot the router. But that is partly why I don't like DHCP. As those threads where people complain about having to reboot the router every few days, I think that some of them are actually DHCP problems instead of router problems.

That's a bit rough without any evidence.
I'm pro DHCP. There is ZERO reason to choose an RSP based on using PPP rather than DHCP.

With PPPoE you can have LCP issues, which causes PPP to reconnect and you could just as easily have PPP issues as you could DHCP issues.

Sorry, but I cannot understand your reasoning here.

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#2035931 13-Jun-2018 12:52

MurrayM:

I see that Vodafone has VLAN tagging. Is this a good thing or a bad thing and why would I care?

You don't care if you use the supplied router.

You might care if you want to use your own router. Certain models don't support VLAN tagging (eg Apple Airport), but most do.

jnimmo

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#2035940 13-Jun-2018 13:00

VLAN tagging is generally a good thing however not sure you could argue that really has any impact on reliability.

I don't think you'll find an RSP more reliable than Spark, having said that I'm sure there are others that come sufficiently close.

ISP reliability was one of the things I would have loved to see Truenet report on, and have been occasionally tossing around ideas for some sort of Geekzone community uptime monitoring tool which could show any outages in realtime, but have yet to do anything about it!

MurrayM

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#2036335 14-Jun-2018 08:42

DarkShadow:

MurrayM:

I see that Vodafone has VLAN tagging. Is this a good thing or a bad thing and why would I care?

You don't care if you use the supplied router.

You might care if you want to use your own router. Certain models don't support VLAN tagging (eg Apple Airport), but most do.

Great, that shouldn't be a problem for me then as I usually use the ISP supplied router.

I rang Vodafone to ask them to move me to fibre and they said they'd send me a new Ultra Hub router. I told them that they sent me one at the end of last year but they insisted that they send me a new one. Maybe the new one will be pre-set for fibre rather than VDSL? I dunno...

phrozenpenguin

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#2036339 14-Jun-2018 09:12

Aredwood: My only recommendation is to go with a RSP that uses PPPOE. Spark is 1 such provider.

As every now and then, there are complaints from people with RSPs that use DHCP, that are having problems with the internet sometimes not working. Where such problems sound suspiciously like DHCP renewal failure.

This is a pretty broad generalisation and in my experience not grounded in any kind of fact. I would personally prefer to be on DHCP/IPoE (and have been, rock solid, for over a year until Bigpipe just removed the capability).

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