So, I upgraded to fibre in August with Stuff, decided I was happy with their speeds, based on a few speedtests and looking at my ingame ping with League of Legends. In particular I liked my 150 ping to Tokyo as I sometimes have need for Japanese internet and that's always been pretty high with my DSL providers. I admit, I didn't document things properly as I figured what I was getting was pretty standard for fibre, and I thought if I have a good Tokyo ping and speed as well as League of Legends ping (server is in Chicago) then it should be completely fine for all my other needs.

I didn't like Stuff's billing system (infact, it looks like there's a law I can challenge them on over it, but I digress), so I switched to 2Degrees based on advice.

On 2Degrees I quickly noticed my speedtest ping to Tokyo and League of Legends had skyrocketed, while speeds were more rocky and unstable, so I was emailing support back and forth and while that went on, I noticed my speeds dropped from a shaky 10mbps average to a consistent 5mbps.

Fed up with 2Degrees support taking me for a ride, I did some speedtests and pingtests on my Orcon VDSL connection, as that contract hadn't expired yet, and found I was getting better ping in all the pingtests and traceroutes and my League of Legends Ping was down from 220 on 2Degrees to 190 on Orcon, while speedtests had around the same ping as 2degrees for allservers I tried.

I switched back to Stuff today and I noticed my Tokyo speedtest ping was back to how it was previously at 150ms, Californian ping on speedtest is about the same as orcon and 2degrees (my memory is fuzzy on what it was in August), League of Legends ping went up to 199 (my memory is a bit fuzzy on what I had in August, but I think it was in the high 100s so this sounds right). I also ping tested the specific servers I hope to use, which I didn't know how to do prior to switching to 2degrees and was surprised to find that it had a pretty high and unstable ping to the streaming server I want to use, while Orcon was significantly better.

I'm also experiencing the same 5mbps upload speed on speedtest, despite stuff telling me when I called before rejoining, I'd get the same service as before, and I definitely remember it being over 11mbps and much more stable than 2Degrees.

So I'm in a bit of a bind.

Pingwise, I benefit from the low Japan ping for Nintendo games which tend to yield more Japanese players in matchmaking. But I also want a better ping for the Californian Mixer server like Orcon VDSL has. The whole reason I upgraded to fibre was to get enough upload speed to stream, and my target viewerbase is in the US so using the Tokyo or AU servers (both of which I have reliable pings to) isn't very optimal for viewers who might not get a good connection to those servers.

So it seems I need to either stick with Stuff (and get them to look into whatever's nuked my upload speed) to have better ping for Japanese online games and ask viewers to put up with my streaming server being offshore, or get Orcon fibre for the Californian streaming server, and better US gaming ping.

I was pretty fine with 199ms in League of Legends. It's a game I hardly play except when invited by friends. But I did notice lots of lagspikes and I worry if that will also affect other games I might play with my US based friends, especially since my pingtest to the Californian mixer server was pretty volatile.

The speed going down issue sounds like it might be an issue on Chorus's end as it affected both 2Degrees and Stuff.

Could anyone give me a recommendation on what I should do? Is there a third isp that might give me a more satisfactory middle ground? Is there some technical mumbo jumbo I need to ask Stuff's technicians to fix?

Mixer pingtests with Stuff Fibre

Mixer pingtests with Orcon VDSL