I just wanted to quickly write a post of my experience after changing from Vodafone VDSL to Stuff Fibre.

Firstly, it was disappointing that Vodafone do not support gigabit UFB yet other than their "Fibre X" product which is delivered over the Hybrid Fibre Coax Network around Wellington. I live on the western hills of Lower Hutt so this is unavailable. 

In terms of sign up process it was interesting to note during ISP selection how many providers, including Vodafone have a slow update process in terms of fibre UFB availability from Chorus. Chorus report immediately when their products are available at your address and only a handful of service providers have this information within the next few days. This is only important to impatient people like myself that want to get the fibre transition process underway as soon as possible. Stuff Fibre were one of the providers that have the information immediately available so signup was possible as soon as Chorus clicked the available button for my address. Out of interest fibre was recorded as "available" with Vodafone 4 weeks after, in-fact I was already connected to Stuff Fibre when Vodafone realised it was available. 

Now in terms of commercials for Stuff Fibre it's an interesting model which appeals to me:

* $89.50 Per Month for 200mb/s down and up

* $25 Per Month Extra for the speed upgrade Gig Down / 500mbps Up.

* No Contract Term

* No Installation Fee

* Free Router (Which you have to give back when you disconnect)

So I was wondering where the hooks are, I've been connected for a few months now and it appears there are none!

What about Technical Details?

Well - the way the network is designed is interesting to say the least, but there are big benefits for consumers like us. Firstly through a bit of discovery using BGP looking glasses around NZ and the internet + Traceroute it appears that the service is backed and provided by CallPlus. CallPlus have peering arrangements with many providers it would appear, Vodafone, Wellington Internet Exchange however the most important would appear to be Orcon which seems to provide considerable backhaul. Orcon is then backed by Vocus which most people here would know are very well connected so in terms of latency, connectivity and reachability hop lengths are very short, latency is low and speed is very fast.

On my first comment that the network is designed in an interesting way, I say this because each customer appears to be within it's own VLAN from Chorus and within a /30 address block. While this is great for the consumer in the sense that I get the same Public IP address every time, it also means that CallPlus are burning 4 IP addresses per customer for each service which is a bit crazy. (network, gateway, customer, broadcast). Given that Stuff-Fibre give you the router (which I don't use) I would have thought they could select a device that supports /31 subnets of only two addresses for point to point connections. You would think that we aren't running out of IP addresses given that it appears CallPlus burn 4 Public IP addresses on every residential customer.

Stuff-Fibre do not deploy CGNAT you receive your single PUBLIC address within the /30 Subnet via DHCP on VLAN 10 just like most other services delivered over Chorus Network. Better yet, because of the network design (it appears a VLAN per customer) it's highly likely that that IP will remain the same for you all the time. (I've never had it change since installation).

Wellington Traffic appears to be mostly handed of in Wellington, along with other regions which smaller service providers can't always do. (They sometimes backhaul everything to one or two locations then go from there)

With my place of work being connected directly to Vocus I've found connectivity to be extremely fast line speed, while international connectivity has also been up in the 500-600mbps arena also.

So all in all, i'm impressed with price with no terms and no installation costs and the service provided. I've used chat a few times and found the person at the end to be technical and able to answer my questions.

The service doesn't currently appear to have IPv6 offered on the VLAN, it would be an easy change for them considering the current architecture hopefully that is in the pipeline.

Oh and regarding the bad? I've got nothing really to say.

Thanks for Reading!