OK, so here's the deal. I swapped over to an Orcon Bronze+ plan (with an added 50GB) from an ihug/Vodafone Broadband 6 plan (that I've had for 2+ years). Switchover happened last Friday, and only ever since the switchover have I been experiencing this speed and DC issue which is really frustrating.

Time of the day that this happens = constant, throughout the entire day.

Here's a snapshot of the info we sent them as part of their pre-fault logging, in the first email correspondence we had with Orcon after going through the basic troubleshooting with their helpdesk.

The issue, as they said, seems to be throughput, or rather, the disparity between our throughput and synch rates.

Line speed ("Sync rate") - downstream/upstream: 18015/1020(Kbps)
Line attenuation: 20DB up
SNR / Noise ratio: 6DB (up)/16DB (down)
How many PCs in your network?: 3 (all 3 connected via Ethernet)
Do you have any firewall software or hardware?: No
Have you recently done a full adware/spyware/virus scan?: Yes

Results of speedtest at www.nzdsl.co.nz/speedtest ?: 906 down/ 701 up

At least 1 test to each of the following from www.speedtest.net:


- Christchurch, NZ = 0.78/0.6 29ms ping
- Sydney, AU = 0.90/0.70 39ms ping
- London, UK = 0.36/0.34 555ms ping
- San Francisco, CA = 0.31/0.53 174ms ping

Ping results to Orcon:

Ping statistics for 60.234.1.1:
    Packets: Sent = 10, Received = 10, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 8ms, Maximum = 17ms, Average = 9ms (went up to 12ms when pinging 500 bytes)

So, following this, more tests/troubleshooting was done since last Friday. Note that speedtests were done after each and every 'troubleshooting' approach was applied.

On my end:

Isolation test was done. No change.

Swapped to different plug points in the apartment, no change.

Swapped in a Netgear DG834G - my current modem/router is a Belkin F5D7634 - for testing, no change.

On Orcon's end

Turned interleaving off. No change.

'Updated port profile'. No change.

"Further changes to port profile". We were advised that our sync rate would now drop, but we'd get more throughput. Sure enough, our current stats are:

Line speed ("Sync rate") - downstream/upstream: 8064/1024(Kbps)
Line attenuation: 19DB
SNR / Noise ratio: 14DB (up)/15DB (down)

And



So, synch speed more than halved and speedtests show a whopping 2+mb download.


(Today) Tech confirms that there are no throughput issues at the exchange.
We're basically questioned again on whether we're connected via wireless and if we've done an isolation test.
Suggestion that we pay $10 for postage to try Orcon's Dynalink modem. We say we've already tried modem swapping and no change, but what the heck right? We'll pay, as long as Orcon agrees to refund us the $10 postage + whatever it costs to post the modem back to them IF we find out the modem isn't the cause of the issue.




I was getting 5-6mb solid on my Vodafone connection. Now I'm getting about half or 1/3 of that. Also, I may be wrong but I don't think we were on an ADSL2 connection with Voda as we never opted to switch it (unless they did it for us automatically - we signed up before LLU).

The lot of us in the apartment are quite heavy online gamers - right now, we can't go near them as even logging on is a problem with these connection speeds (the last time i tried i recorded 26 000+ ms lag).

Orcon, why are you doing this to me? I wanted faster speeds and more bandwith. You said that your customers loved you, so you didn't need to put us on contract. I believed you and now I'm thinking, the best thing you have is the fact that you have no contracts...

PS: If anyone has any ideas at all as to what I can do/test/troubleshoot that hasn't already been done, please let me know. It would be much appreciated and you will save part of my weekend!