Orcon international performance

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

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551 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#133772 28-May-2008 10:54

I personally have no issue with Orcon's new data plans and am actually getting more data for marginally more money.

What I do have a big issue with, and why I am awaiting my connection with a new ISP, is that I can't do my job as well with Orcon's continuing difficulties.

Skype calls have become a lottery, downloading daily builds of software we produce in the US is painfully slow.

And the real insult is, the Status Page continues to insist there are no known issues. I'm sorry but that's dishonesty, pure and simple.

Jonathan

pyronical

150 posts

Master Geek

#133781 28-May-2008 11:14

jmosen:
I personally have no issue with Orcon's new data plans and am actually getting more data for marginally more money.

What I do have a big issue with, and why I am awaiting my connection with a new ISP, is that I can't do my job as well with Orcon's continuing difficulties.

Skype calls have become a lottery, downloading daily builds of software we produce in the US is painfully slow.

And the real insult is, the Status Page continues to insist there are no known issues. I'm sorry but that's dishonesty, pure and simple.

AGREED! Data plans are fine, better if anything. Fix the damn network and stop claiming that everything is ok before we call the commerce commission.

bazzer

3438 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#133787 28-May-2008 11:19

takarada: http://www.orcon.net.nz/orconathome/
The largest I could see for those outside the Orcon@Home+ area is 20GB.
It does not say anything about base plan allowance or overage charging.

100GB is the most I can afford. I am a returnee from overseas and I miss having no data cap but I realize its not possible in NZ as the charges for the southern cross cable are too high.

You can add a 100GB bundle to any of their plans for $60 (it's in the details). I'm not sure if that's cheap or not as I'd never use that amount. Still, if you were on their Platinum plan with 100GB extra, it'd cost $200 (I think it's an extra $10 for FS/FS) for 120GB of FS/FS including a phone with unlimited calling nationally and to a single international destination. is that better than what you were on?

wownerf

25 posts

Geek

#133799 28-May-2008 11:42

Hi, just my 2c. I have been observing this forum for a while. FYI I am on Orcon's Max/128k plan. Been with them for 4-5 years and while great for a long time, Orcon has recently turned into a mixed bag.

If I am doing anything inside peak time (from my perspective between 4pm - 1am) I run into some distinct issues.
MLB.tv (Live Major League Baseball broadcasts) and their gamecast software with embedded videos (think youtube for baseball) is so slow - i.e. a 60 sec video now takes something like 3-4 minutes to fully buffer prior to me watching it. It used to start and play almost immediately as the speed was fine.

Another annoying point is downloading podcasts, some of them are unbearably slow - in particular the Lost podcast which comes from an ABC server (Last nights one took 26 minutes to download an 11Mb file !!!). Some of them are lightning fast, that’s the thing I just can’t understand. I get some local USA radio station's podcast (xxsportsradio) in seconds (6-7mb files)

Recently websites have fallen off the grid, last nights was tripadvisor.com (browser timed out - working again this morning), CBS's Survivor website (and their flash based behind the scenes videos) wouldn’t load. Both times I asked my brother (who is with telecom) to check them and he said they were fine. Youtube is perpetually slow, at the point where you need to let it buffer for 60-80% of the video prior to playing it.

Outside of the peak time, most of the time (not always) all is well.

I’m locked into Orcon for another year or so (we got their sign up deal for phone and internet (20Gb) at like $80 which is a nice price) but when my wife is starting to get annoyed about how slow the internet is, you know that something is not right. (note: my wife, while lovely, spends her time looking at youtube and playing online card games such as Hearts - not exactly high bandwidth stuff).

I really support Duncan coming into the forum and posting here and I don’t want this to stop, he has always been approachable and has even responded in detail to a couple of emails I have sent him directly a couple of years ago (rare in this industry), but I am getting pretty sick and tired of the length in time to fix this issue. Hopefully this gets sorted out soon and Orcon continues to be a good option as an ISP.

Sorry for the ramble,

w

EDIT: Just read jmosen's post up above, one thing is for sure, Orcon's status page is a joke. Its been said before but really this needs to get fixed ASAP, and he is right about being honest about the issues you are having. Orcon's customer base appears to be an above-average knowledge group, while I cant speak for all, I dont like being told everything is fine when its not. Conversely, I undertstand that problems occur and you need time to fix them, thats what the status page should provide information for me to assured that you are aware of an issue and fixing it.

takarada

18 posts

Geek

#133815 28-May-2008 12:29

bazzer:
takarada: http://www.orcon.net.nz/orconathome/
The largest I could see for those outside the Orcon@Home+ area is 20GB.
It does not say anything about base plan allowance or overage charging.

100GB is the most I can afford. I am a returnee from overseas and I miss having no data cap but I realize its not possible in NZ as the charges for the southern cross cable are too high.

You can add a 100GB bundle to any of their plans for $60 (it's in the details). I'm not sure if that's cheap or not as I'd never use that amount. Still, if you were on their Platinum plan with 100GB extra, it'd cost $200 (I think it's an extra $10 for FS/FS) for 120GB of FS/FS including a phone with unlimited calling nationally and to a single international destination. is that better than what you were on?

OK, I didn't realize that I had to enter my phone number to see the details.
It is better.

Zub

147 posts

Master Geek

#133816 28-May-2008 12:30

mattosaur4: To get this thread back on track and avoid it just becoming an Orcon rant this seem to be the current issues that need resolving

** Voice services like Ventrillo & TeamSpeak have been unusable for about the last 6 weeks.
(Due to latency, traffic shaping / filtering, or some other issue)

** Similar problems with lag / latency and Skype have been posted.

** People are experiencing "slower than they used to be" speeds with Torrents.
(A lot of factors are involved in Torrent downlods)

** International speeds are becoming slower during the 6-12pm time period
(If there is enough bandwidth as per previous posts, what's causing it?)

Matt

I agree with mattosaur4 regarding this sprawling thread ;)
In fact, followers of the first 2 bullet points (latency concerns) will have noticed that I secretly moved that discussion into it's own thread at http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=82&TopicId=22398. More testing required, so if that is an issue for you and you haven't contributed yet, then come on over.

IMO each highly focussed topic should have it's own highly focussed thread. And each thread should be treated like a laboratory, where claims are verified with empirical data. I think this will make it easier for Orcon to allocate a tech to each one and use the data to bring about resolutions.
Here's a nice tool the Bittorrent guys might want to use to test the veracity of limited throttling during peak hours. Could be a good way to kick off your dedicated thread :)

http://broadband.mpi-sws.mpg.de/transparency/bttest.php (from Max Planc institute, a fairly respectable source).

mattosaur4

40 posts

Geek

#134601 31-May-2008 14:07

Hi Duncan / Thomas

Has anything been discovered on the Ventrilo / TeamSpeak front? As it's still working for about 20 seconds, starts to lag, lag, broken speech lag, long silence, disconnects and repeats.

Matt

Quic Broadband

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Randomahoa

24 posts

Geek

#134650 31-May-2008 18:33

My god the internet has slowed to a crawl in recent weeks, it is really unbearable....I have had enough I am going to Australia..

takarada

18 posts

Geek

#134655 31-May-2008 19:06

People have listed the slowness of youtube as an example of performance problems with orcon but it is not valid.

Running liveleak and youtube side by side liveleak has no problems but youtube pauses every few seconds

Randomahoa

24 posts

Geek

#134665 31-May-2008 19:45

It is true google and youtube are really slow, liveleak is great

russki

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#134667 31-May-2008 20:13

I've just switched from xtra to Orcon, mainly to get faster internet from adsl2+.

It seems to me Orcon is struggling to keep up with the demand of people switching (http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/griffins-tech-blog/2008/4/15/unbundling-teething-problems/?c_id=5)

Their sign up process has been shocking.
I requested that we keep our old number - didn't happen and "can't change it now".
I requested that the service start in 2 weeks, it got enabled in the next couple of days and they stuck the couple of extra weeks on the bill.
Their phone message says sign up online and get a $10 credit on your first bill" - signed up online, no credit.
My download has decreased from around 5 MBps with xtra to between 3 and 4 Mbps. Have a ticket open, will keep you posted

If you're thinking of switching, I'd say hold off till they catch up with their infrastructure.

Cheers
Russki

wonderferret

139 posts

Master Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#134678 31-May-2008 20:56

Well I am not going to be signing up for their ADSL2 plans any time soon. Trying to check out a band on Youtube I'm off too see to night to shoot. Approx 3 seconds of media for each 10 seconds of download. Admittedly thats better than a couple of weeks ago but still pretty crap considering 2 months ago there was never a problem.
The search goes on for a good NZ ISP.

russki

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#134692 31-May-2008 23:38

Trying to download HDTV samples from Microsoft's site I get a whopping 2, yes 2 KBps

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

takarada

18 posts

Geek

#134695 1-Jun-2008 00:14

russki: Trying to download HDTV samples from Microsoft's site I get a whopping 2, yes 2 KBps

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

I'm downloading dot net 2008 express from microsoft and getting 864KBytes/sec on orcon

...
spoke too soon, slowed down to 3KBytes/sec

However, my movie from megaupload is getting 50Kbytes/sec

CraigC

41 posts

Geek

#134794 1-Jun-2008 18:35

russki: Trying to download HDTV samples from Microsoft's site I get a whopping 2, yes 2 KBps

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

Getting 1000KB/s at the moment downloading one of the vids, which isnt to bad since it is peak time and orcon has a shortage of international bandwidth.

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