Observations & Questions

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Yutani

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#247973 5-Mar-2019 18:58

Hi GZ,

Newly arrived Ozzies here to settle permanently. I just discovered GZ this week.

Observations

We grabbed prepaid Skinny sims online before we even arrived & find them remarkably good value.

In the rush to get our gigabit fibre installed we opted for the first name we knew - Skinny.

Oopsies! CGNAT & dynamic WAN IP, my bad! Didn't read the fine print.

We waited months for this fibre connection. Skinny was prompt & courteous, as was UFF.

All the delay came down to waiting for the power company to send out their crew to extend our fibre down the street one only span between power poles so the it could then be run into the house as an 'aerial' install (power pole to house).

Its installed & working now. Huwawei ONT & Router supplied.

Some quick & dirty test of the speed of gigabit internet through Skinny (Spark) :

Layer 3 (?) throughput 500/500 (Ookla)

Layer 2 (?) throughput 950/500 (Linetest.nz)

Since we use our internet for offsite backups of media, Backblaze, Wasabi etc I have been using their own throughput tests also to check how fast we can upload into their servers.

Pretty dissapointed. Once we leave the Skinny (Spark) core network overseas throughput declines drastically. The only half decent destination seems to be Eastern seaboard OZ.

USA & SEA far behind with Europe pretty much unusable.

For residential off site backup Alibaba cloud in Melbourne/Sydney seems the only affordable decent perfoming destination for 4-6Tb of media over Skinny (Spark) network.

For off site servers Dediserve melboune?

Enquiring about Voyager hosting..

Questions

After some days of searching & reading posts here trying to settle on which RSP to port to from Skinny Broadband.

Before I get the generic 'thats the nature of the internet' responses... Can anyone recommend the better RSP for Static WAN IP, peering & international connectivity?

Looking strongly at Voyager (honorable mention to 2degrees, Orcon). Voyager seems a little pricey until you factor in static IP is only a one off, then looks very competitive for a 'premium' RSP.

Really appreciate any concrete advice.

Cheers

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#2191516 5-Mar-2019 19:16

Welcome to New Zealand.

I'd vote 2degrees but I have no experience with Voyager or Orcon though.

Skinny/Spark/Bigpipe don't have an open peering policy so it may have problems with transit, although I wouldn't say it would affect international traffic that much. Having said that, I know 2degrees has installed and activated more international capacity just last week.

gaddman

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#2191652 5-Mar-2019 21:02

Yutani:

Since we use our internet for offsite backups of media, Backblaze, Wasabi etc I have been using their own throughput tests also to check how fast we can upload into their servers.

...

Can anyone recommend the better RSP for Static WAN IP, peering & international connectivity?

A bit odd you're only showing 500/500 to Ookla - did you try a few?

Anyway, you've got some fairly specific requirements there, so it might be worth also comparing traceroutes to destinations you know you'll be using. Someone else may consider good international connectivity is getting low ping to their usual gaming servers, which could follow a very different path. From what I can tell, Backblaze is using Cloudflare CDN so most NZ ISPs would have a good link to their Auckland location, while Wasabi is using an Ookla based test on their infrastructure somewhere on East Coast US.

Vodafone UFB in Auckland for instance:

$ mtr -rwbc5 speedtest.wasabisys.com
Start: 2019-03-05T20:59:34+1300
HOST: xxx Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- ultrahub.hub (192.168.1.1) 0.0% 5 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.7 0.1
2.|-- 118-92-15-254.dsl.dyn.ihug.co.nz (118.92.15.254) 0.0% 5 19.9 13.9 5.9 19.9 5.9
3.|-- as9500.akl-ix.nz (43.243.21.64) 0.0% 5 2.1 2.1 1.9 2.2 0.1
4.|-- 10ge0-48.core1.akl1.he.net (184.105.213.230) 0.0% 5 159.9 159.8 159.7 159.9 0.1
5.|-- 10ge2-3.core1.syd1.he.net (184.105.213.229) 0.0% 5 159.9 159.7 159.4 159.9 0.2
6.|-- 10ge3-5.core1.sjc1.he.net (184.105.222.85) 0.0% 5 160.2 162.1 159.7 170.8 4.8
7.|-- 10ge14-4.core1.pao1.he.net (72.52.92.113) 0.0% 5 160.9 160.3 160.0 160.9 0.3
8.|-- 100ge6-2.core1.ash1.he.net (184.105.222.42) 0.0% 5 207.6 207.6 207.4 207.8 0.1
9.|-- 209.51.163.66 0.0% 5 221.3 221.1 220.8 221.3 0.2
10.|-- 38.27.106.20 0.0% 5 210.8 210.6 210.4 210.8 0.2

mtr -rwbc5 www.backblaze.com.cdn.cloudflare.net
Start: 2019-03-05T20:59:56+1300
HOST: xxx Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1.|-- ultrahub.hub (192.168.1.1) 0.0% 5 0.7 0.7 0.6 0.8 0.1
2.|-- 118-92-15-254.dsl.dyn.ihug.co.nz (118.92.15.254) 0.0% 5 13.8 8.9 2.1 18.9 7.3
3.|-- 203.97.78.54 0.0% 5 1.8 2.1 1.8 2.7 0.3
4.|-- 203.97.78.53 0.0% 5 1.7 2.0 1.7 2.4 0.3
5.|-- 198.41.236.253 0.0% 5 2.8 2.4 2.1 2.8 0.3
6.|-- 104.20.244.63 0.0% 5 2.3 2.3 2.2 2.5 0.1

xpd

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#2191663 5-Mar-2019 21:08

+1 for Voyager - been with them for quite a while now (VDSL) and had no issues, and the staff are prompt and actually know what theyre doing when issues are raised ;)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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hio77

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Lizard Networks

#2191706 5-Mar-2019 22:00

Uh. Skinny hasn't been cgnat since it moved onto the spark network rather than running its own core.

Linetests.net is simply vocusgroups speedtest servers customurl.

What this tells me is. For some reason your getting a weirdly low test to one server. But outside of the spark network your getting full gbit.

I run multiple providers at home, my spark line hands down out preforms the other 3 competing lines. Especially in single threaded workloads.

My main download path in EU regularly peaks out.

Worth being aware skinny is the low cost no frills option. Static is avaliable on both big pipe and spark.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

Talkiet

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#2191745 5-Mar-2019 22:15

It's not surprising that you are getting lower speeds to the other side of the world. That's the way TCP works. (and shapers, and wred queues etc)

Frietasm is correct, we don't have an open peering policy and as a result, a miniscule amount of traffic can come in from Australia instead of being served locally. However the extra 25-30ms for that has a very low impact.

What we do have however is stacks of international BW and more CDN capacity than anyone else. It's fair to say 99%+ of all traffic performs at least as well as any other RSP - and I know much of it is better than most.

Our Static IP is priced as it is - I am a tech and have no say over that sort of thing. I will say after years of having a static myself I gave it up a few months ago and it hasn't affected my life at all. You can get it for a one off cost on Bigpipe though I still think... (and BP doesn't use CGnat either anymore)

For international speedtests, there are a staggering number of servers badly setup or just plain not well connected around the world. Try this specific Speedtest.net server for a US test - https://webnx.speedtest.net/

I just tested to it using a router I KNOW is bad (gives way worse performance than the supplied 659b) and got 260Mbps (I'm on Spark FibreMax in Chch)

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.