Thanks orcon

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

plas

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#30972 27-Feb-2009 17:24

I posted in another topic about not being able to login to AOC from 8.30pm to 11pm every night and this started about 3 weeks ago. In the end i decided to log a ticket last week and my last call with orcon was on Monday.

Well after waiting for 4 days with no reply, I spend 15 mins on hold only to be asked the same info again by the same guy.
Had to explain i had already supplied that info so he spends another min reading the notes. Then he tells theres nothing wrong with my dsl, even though im getting pings of 597 to London and speeds drop to 90kb/sec in the evening. My line is normal and they wont be looking into the issue any further.

GG orcon it was great while it lasted im closing my account over the next couple of weeks.

Ilmarin

94 posts

Master Geek

#198458 27-Feb-2009 23:23

I would ignore any ping result you get from the speedtest.net flash app... it's clearly flawed, and you should only trust the 'ping' command (or some other reliable non-flash network trace/ping utility). You'll probably find your real ping to London is more like 280-300 ms.

Dealing effectively with support personnel for issues like this is something of an art. If you let them think you're just another Joe Average customer who thinks there's something wrong with his line, they're just going to go through the motions and make no more of an effort to assist you than they would with the hundreds of people who do have either PEBKAC (problem exists between keyboard and chair) problems or run of the mill line faults... and as far as I'm aware, those make up the majority of support calls. I'm not necessarily saying you did let them think that, but in my experience they're inclined to go that way if you give them the slightest look in. In any case, tier 1 support probably don't care about speed complaints that aren't line related, given that most of them don't have a vested technical interest in or knowledge of that area, and such complaints are (at least I assume) rare compared with other support issues.

I don't really know how to get through to Orcon on issues like this. It's the issue they like to pretend doesn't exist, and hope that it goes away, because the only way to fix it is for them to spend more money on bandwidth provisioning. Nine months ago we got the whole "we didn't anticipate the growth in bandwidth demand" spiel, after the problem had already been causing pain for weeks. This time around it doesn't feel like they've learnt anything. They've failed to communicate, and they've failed to acknowledge and address the problem. Yes, it's not yet quite as bad as it was nine months ago, but that's all the more reason to act now... and Orcon will need to act, because the problem can only and will get worse until they provision more bandwidth. If they build up a reputation for letting performance dip below the red line before they bump it back into the green, they're going to lose a lot of existing subscribers and lose a lot of potential subscribers to competitors.

plas

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#198548 28-Feb-2009 17:55

Out of interest i paired my 3G cell up to my desktop and did a bit of testing.
Funny enough when i cant connect with my orcon dsl connection it runs fine over vodafones 3G network.

Everythings normal my ass, final nail i think since i havnt been able to play AOC all afternoon on dsl, yet its fine over my cell :/

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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Geekzone

Lifetime subscriber

#198555 28-Feb-2009 19:27

You can't really compare Orcon DSL,with Vodafone 3G. these are completely different technologies (DSL vs. WCDMA), different medium (wired vs. wireless) and different companies (Orcon vs. Vodafone) over their own networks...

plas

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#198562 28-Feb-2009 20:37

freitasm: You can't really compare Orcon DSL,with Vodafone 3G. these are completely different technologies (DSL vs. WCDMA), different medium (wired vs. wireless) and different companies (Orcon vs. Vodafone) over their own networks...

Maybe i should have worded that a bit better. What i cant connect to is the AOC servers via orcon, I decided to try vodafone because it helps to eliminate my PC and the AOC servers from the picture. Which it did.

So now I have tried a different adsl router/network cable/unplugged the 1 phone in the house/ different ISP using different tech/ re installed OS/ different NIC/ turned the wireless off so flatmates cant use the net, it doesnt leave very many options left.
Its also a very time related issue (roughly 9pm-11pm) that other players in chch/NZ/Aussie dont experience with other ISPs.

So it could be an issue with my line, but looking at these stats I wouldnt have thought so.

Downstream Rate:	15372 kbps
Upstream Rate:	699 kbps
Downstream Margin:	12 db
Upstream Margin:	12 db
Downstream Line Attenuation:	17 db
Upstream Line Attenuation:	3.5 db
Downstream Transmit Power:	12 db
Upstream Transmit Power:	22 db

I could be completely wrong but to me it looks like an issue within Orcon and TBH the part that annoyed me the most was the support. To be told that everything is normal when it clearly isnt and that the matter wasnt going any further.
It worked fine 3 weeks ago, then suddenly it stops working between a pretty specific time yet no one else in my guild has any issues and I can connect to the server using another ISP, thats not normal to me.

The true test will be next week when im moved over to my new provider.

Ragnor

8223 posts

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#198568 28-Feb-2009 21:55

Basically you need to change to an ISP that doesn't oversell their international bandwidth, also it's best to avoid any of the ISP's using cheap asianetcom international bandwidth as the routing is often terrible and will cause problems for gaming on US servers (eg: World of warcraft or AoC).

This elminates all the crap (for gaming) ISP's like xnet, slingshot, orcon, vodafone and pretty much leaves Telstra, Telecom, Inspire, Maxnet, Actrix, Snap (maybe) and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head.

Athlonite

1828 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#198879 3-Mar-2009 04:39

can you give us the ip address of the server your trying to connect to and maybe we as an orcon colective can do some ping and traceroutes for you to see if it's just you or all orcon users and we can paste the results back here for you to use

plas

455 posts

Ultimate Geek

#202159 19-Mar-2009 13:32

Athlonite: can you give us the ip address of the server your trying to connect to and maybe we as an orcon colective can do some ping and traceroutes for you to see if it's just you or all orcon users and we can paste the results back here for you to use

Dont worry about it, switched to another ISP and the issue instantly vanished :)

Sharesies

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magu

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BitSignal

Lifetime subscriber

#202181 19-Mar-2009 14:49

I'll play devil's advocate here and tell a short story about their support personnel.

Recently my phone line started showing a lot of noise to a point where it would be impossible to hear anyone on a conversation. And then it simply stopped giving me any dial-tone. The internet (I've got ADSL2) started slowing down, and I couldn't figure why.

Called Orcon on a Sunday, 4pm in the afternoon. Short queue time (as expected) and a nice chap answered. I told him all I've noticed about the line, my sync speeds on the modem and why I was expecting it to be better than it was at the moment. We started doing the usual tests (ping, traceroute) and found that even local traffic was slow.

Long story short, a tree branch fell on one of the phone line cables and the technician had to come to our house and do some gardening (and reconnecting).

The cool part of this is that the next Sunday, at 4pm, I get a call from the same chap asking me if it was all good and that he did some tests on my line again and found it to be as expected now, so he thought he'd check with me if that's the case.

Every provider has their good and bad moments, but can't say I wasn't impressed by Orcon following up on a support ticket on SUNDAY.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." - Doc Emmet Brown

Ragnor

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#202275 19-Mar-2009 21:32

Yeah in the original posters problem there is pretty much nothing the customer service staff can do, if their international bandwidth is being oversold there's just too much contention for good gaming pings.

phlegmboy

59 posts

Master Geek

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#203281 25-Mar-2009 15:57

The only time I have experienced issues with my gaming through Orcon was when there was a misconfig on a server in the US which caused problems between me and the servers I used in London. In fact it was affecting a number of ISPs, including Clear and Vodafone. Luckily the MMOG game I play can be played over a 32k dialup due to being properly designed so I wasn't entirely up pooh creek.

Even with torrents running in the background I can still take play on mass battles with over 1000 players on the battlefield at the same time and get great performance on TS.

I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long.