Slingshot Fibre and Phonelines

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Slingshot Fibre and Phonelines

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#1337089 4-Jul-2015 21:13

hrafn:
DarkShadow: You can't use the phone ports on the ONT if you want to use Slingshot phone. If you want to use those ports then you'll have to choose another company, MyRepublic or Spark for example.

That's unfortunate, as it will restrict me to a very small number of available gigabit routers.

Why not simply spend $30 on a Gigabit switch?

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#1337091 4-Jul-2015 21:17

hrafn:No. The Slingshot offer is for a 100Mbps connection. The TP150 is a N150 WiFi router, which, in many real-life situations, provides WiFi throughput well under 100Mbps. So unless "joe blogs" really didn't want that 100Mbps, it is a substandard specification even for minimum use. Compare this with the Huawei HG659 offered by Vodafone and Spark, which offers at least N300 (and in some variants 802.11ac) and gigabit-by-wire.

A N300 device can't get anywhere near 100Mbps in the real world either.

The only way to get close to 100Mbps is to use 802.11ac - and the vast majority of devices people have don't yet support it.

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#1337094 4-Jul-2015 21:34

sbiddle: Why not simply spend $30 on a Gigabit switch?

Because the TP150-switch link would still create a 100Mbps bottleneck, so would not have much advantage over the TP150 on its own.

A N300 device can't get anywhere near 100Mbps in the real world either.

The only way to get close to 100Mbps is to use 802.11ac - and the vast majority of devices people have don't yet support it.

You're probably right, but N300 has a better chance of getting close to it than N150 would, and N300 adapters are fairly cheap and common these days, so there's no real reason not to support them from the router end.

At the moment, I'm more 'testing the envelope', to see what is feasible, and approximately how much it would cost. Given how difficult it is to find information, it's probably as well I decided to conduct this as an extended 'research project' well in advance of connection, rather than trying to make the decision in one night.

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#1337097 4-Jul-2015 21:43

hrafn:

DarkShadow:

The ASUS RT-N56U appears to lack a phone jack. The Huawei HG659 looks quite attractive (is there any significance to the (b)-variant, as most documentation/Trademe-listings don't mention it?). The downside is that, as its not publicly-sold, support information (detailed specs, firmware upgrades, etc) might be hard to find.

Sorry, I should say an ASUS router plus an ATA. The Cisco mentioned above is good.

Looks like you might want to look into paying Slingshot a few bucks to keep your email address, and switching to another ISP. There are fibre companies out there which are cheaper/faster anyway and ones that make it easy for you use whatever router you want.

hrafn

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#1337101 4-Jul-2015 21:55

DarkShadow: Looks like you might want to look into paying Slingshot a few bucks to keep your email address, and switching to another ISP. There are fibre companies out there which are cheaper/faster anyway and ones that make it easy for you use whatever router you want.

Do they allow that? It would certainly solve a number of problems.

Admittedly, until I fully realised the hassles involved in sticking with Slingshot, I probably wouldn't have seen it as a potentially-optimal solution.

richms

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#1337110 4-Jul-2015 22:07

sbiddle:
A N300 device can't get anywhere near 100Mbps in the real world either.

The only way to get close to 100Mbps is to use 802.11ac - and the vast majority of devices people have don't yet support it.

I have got 100 with 2 N300 routers bridged with clear line of sight and greenfield mode turned on. Never had that to a device.

Also why does it matter that the ISP supplied router has crap wifi? You can still get the speeds they sell thru the wired ports, and you would probably need to add your own wifi stuff since the ISP router will be stuffed in a cupboard in the garage in most houses so wont provide enough wifi signal to cover the house.

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#1337143 4-Jul-2015 22:36

hrafn:
sbiddle: Why not simply spend $30 on a Gigabit switch?

Because the TP150-switch link would still create a 100Mbps bottleneck, so would not have much advantage over the TP150 on its own..

There is no bottleneck because you only have a 100Mbps UFB connection (which can only do ~93Mbps anyway since the device only supports FE).

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#1337145 4-Jul-2015 22:40

richms: Also why does it matter that the ISP supplied router has crap wifi? You can still get the speeds they sell thru the wired ports, and you would probably need to add your own wifi stuff since the ISP router will be stuffed in a cupboard in the garage in most houses so wont provide enough wifi signal to cover the house.

The router will almost certainly be situated centrally, in the dining room (most convenient place for the phone outlet), so it makes no sense to buy and have installed two pieces of equipment, when one can do the job. The TP150 isn't exactly tiny, and add another full-sized router would take up quite a bit of shelf-space. Also it adds one more piece of equipment in the chain to go wrong.

In any case, at this point I'm looking at my options. Spending time on research, so that when I finally come to implementation, I have a reasonable hope that it will maximise usability and minimise cost and hassle.

Jase2985

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#1337147 4-Jul-2015 22:44

hrafn:
(i) Your original wording was "pretty much every ISP in NZ", not "% of connections". (ii) In trying to ascertain the requirements of an ISP it is irrelevant to me, as a potential new customer, whether they have 1,000,000 existing connections or 1. They are each simply yet another set of undocumented, idiosyncratic requirements.

Your nit picking for the sake of it.

hrafn: No. The Slingshot offer is for a 100Mbps connection. The TP150 is a N150 WiFi router, which, in many real-life situations, provides WiFi throughput well under 100Mbps. So unless "joe blogs" really didn't want that 100Mbps, it is a substandard specification even for minimum use. Compare this with the Huawei HG659 offered by Vodafone and Spark, which offers at least N300 (and in some variants 802.11ac) and gigabit-by-wire.

My uni has N150 access points which operate on 2.4 and 5Ghz. I can get 100mbps out of them on a speedtest. Your device or testing methodology is causing the bottleneck, or you have interferance going on. but lets not get into that. Most people know if you want speed on a network you use a ethernet cable or you spend the money, get an ac1200+ router and run on 5ghz. but then you would probably complain if you had a 1Gbit connection and couldn't achieve that over wifi so yea.

I currently get 230mbit over my wifi connection, im limited by my device, but i paid for a AC1300 router and as i slowly upgrade devices this speed will improve. it also means my connection is less congested due to the different bands and specs.

hrafn:
Even "joe blogs" will frequently find themselves in situation where some limitation of the home setup requires some extra headroom in the router to fully utilise the service.

Finally, an 'only meet the minimum specs' device is unacceptable when you are only willing to support that one device. You need to allow for at least some diversity in customer needs.

want headroom go buy your own device that allows that. its laughable that you would think joe blogs would "frequently find themselfs limited by the ISP's device. you will probably find its the minority.

you are not going to change the ISP's buisness model when it comes to supplied devices unless you want to add an extra $ cost per month to pay for it. you get it for FREE on a contract, you want a better device you pay for it, or they put the plan price up and you end up paying for it anyways.

So each wannabe-"advanced user" (setting what is a ridiculously low standard for that term) has to reinvent the wheel in determining what hoops they have to jump through in finding out what equipment that matches their needs will work with an ISP (other than Spark or some other, similarly enlightenedly-self-interested, ISP)? How dreadfully inefficient. For the time it took one potential customer (me) to research this for myself, they could have put up a FAQ explaining all this, and (i) avoid risk losing multiple customers who felt that their offered hardware was substandard (but did not know enough to, or could not be bothered, research it further) & (ii) reduce the number of time-consuming customer support queries about the hardware requirements for connection.

it is what it is, move on. complaining isnt going to help you.

:edited for formatting:

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#1337148 4-Jul-2015 22:45

sbiddle:
hrafn:
sbiddle: Why not simply spend $30 on a Gigabit switch?

Because the TP150-switch link would still create a 100Mbps bottleneck, so would not have much advantage over the TP150 on its own..

There is no bottleneck because you only have a 100Mbps UFB connection (which can only do ~93Mbps anyway since the device only supports FE).

It definitely creates a bottleneck with 100Mb/s ports.

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#1337151 4-Jul-2015 22:47

sbiddle: There is no bottleneck because you only have a 100Mbps UFB connection (which can only do ~93Mbps anyway since the device only supports FE).

Yes bottleneck, if you want to be able to both download and transfer files over the LAN at the same time. A LAN is a many-to-many network, not a one(internet)-to-many network. It's not uncommon for my internet connection to grind to a halt for a few minutes, while a file is transferred around the network -- I'd like to plan for avoiding that situation, if feasible. Or to put it plainer English, I'd like a network setup that can actually 'walk and chew gum at the same time.'

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#1337152 4-Jul-2015 22:50

you are expecting too much from the ISP supplied device.

sbiddle

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#1337154 4-Jul-2015 22:52

hrafn:
sbiddle: There is no bottleneck because you only have a 100Mbps UFB connection (which can only do ~93Mbps anyway since the device only supports FE).

Yes bottleneck, if you want to be able to both download and transfer files over the LAN at the same time. A LAN is a many-to-many network, not a one(internet)-to-many network. It's not uncommon for my internet connection to grind to a halt for a few minutes, while a file is transferred around the network -- I'd like to plan for avoiding that situation, if feasible. Or to put it plainer English, I'd like a network setup that can actually 'walk and chew gum at the same time.'

I don't think you quite understand how a switch works. Putting a Gigabit switch behind a FE router does not limit LAN transfers to 100Mbps. The only time traffic goes via the router is when traffic needs to be routed - which in the case of a basic UFB router will be when NAT translation occurs for internet traffic.

richms

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#1337156 4-Jul-2015 22:53

The issue is that you have to use that device to get supported voice service from them, and that the device is a POS spec wise. Whereas the telcos using the ONT ports you can get voice service even if your router is not plugged in, making it a better landline replacement than ISPs using their own gear for it.

Choose a cheap ISP, get cheap gear, and cheap voice service. You can change who you buy from if you want a landline that doesnt use a cheap router etc. If you dont like the gear supplied, move ISP.

Richard rich.ms

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#1337158 4-Jul-2015 22:55

hrafn:
sbiddle: There is no bottleneck because you only have a 100Mbps UFB connection (which can only do ~93Mbps anyway since the device only supports FE).

Yes bottleneck, if you want to be able to both download and transfer files over the LAN at the same time. A LAN is a many-to-many network, not a one(internet)-to-many network. It's not uncommon for my internet connection to grind to a halt for a few minutes, while a file is transferred around the network -- I'd like to plan for avoiding that situation, if feasible. Or to put it plainer English, I'd like a network setup that can actually 'walk and chew gum at the same time.'

Are you talking about it slowing down on the device/s you're moving files from/to, or about other devices on the network? If the former, then that just sounds like you're saturating the port bandwidth... in which case a better router isn't going to be any different to a gigabit switch attached to the tripleplay.

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