What do you think of slingshot broadband?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › What do you think of slingshot broadband?

andrewcnz

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#58598 15-Mar-2010 20:20

Currently I have Snap Naked DSL and a Xnet Voip phone. We had been having some issues with the Voip and my partner got pissed off with this and had a Telecom normal phone line installed(without consulting me).
So I am now looking at new options(don't really want to be on Telecom and no longer need Naked DSL).
Have just got some new mobiles from slingshot and am quite happy with them.
So was looking to move all services to slingshot(ph/tolls/BB) rang them and the deal seemed good.

My question is slingshot BB good?(would be going on the 25gb FS/FS deal).
Seems they have a cache system does it work well?
I am only on standard ADSL (but have an excellent connection) and we won't be getting a new cabinet till mid 2011, would slingshot unbundle us before then, we are in Welcome Bay Tauranga.

Comment's please!

richms

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#308084 17-Mar-2010 00:01

Cache is the only way to get good speeds on torrents, so that means hitting up the pirate bay for content and all the unmoderated junk that comes with it.

Forget trying to maintain a good ratio on a private tracker on free offpeak times, its so slow that you barely get the tracker connections working, let alone any peer ones.

Richard rich.ms

Ragnor

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#308526 17-Mar-2010 22:46

This is how I'd sum it up.

Pro's
- Good caching solution (Oversi) for downloads, p2p and media streaming
- Peers with APE/WIX fast national traffic
- Sensible data block options
- Data banking
- Fairly responsive on their own forums, twitter and facebook
- Good gaming pings/performance.

Con's
- Help desk outsourced overseas
- Offpeak non cached international downloads are slow due to everyone leeching like a mofo.
- Potentially non cached international downloads peak time are slow due to high contention (not really sure how bad this is)?

Note: I'm not a Slingshot customer this is my opinion based on friends and family who are using Slingshot.

nziced

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#308536 17-Mar-2010 23:05

Ragnor: This is how I'd sum it up.

Pro's
- Good caching solution (Oversi) for downloads, p2p and media streaming
- Peers with APE/WIX fast national traffic
- Sensible data block options
- Data banking
- Fairly responsive on their own forums, twitter and facebook
- Good gaming pings/performance.

Con's
- Help desk outsourced overseas
- Offpeak non cached international downloads are slow due to everyone leeching like a mofo.
- Potentially non cached international downloads peak time are slow due to high contention (not really sure how bad this is)?

Note: I'm not a Slingshot customer this is my opinion based on friends and family who are using Slingshot.

Help desk isn't top notch, but not as bad as Telecom's 3 hours on the phone to the same Dave Dobbyn song. Also it's a callcentre in the Auckland office.

Non cached international downloads, well it depends on where your sources come from. Major sites like Rapidshare and the sorts will be shaped due to the massive congestion caused by leechers setting there downloads to go full bore at offpeak times.

Also, the only negative thing I would find with Slingshot is they don't support VDSL yet. It is coming soon however.

nziced

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#308538 17-Mar-2010 23:08

richms: Cache is the only way to get good speeds on torrents, so that means hitting up the pirate bay for content and all the unmoderated junk that comes with it.

Forget trying to maintain a good ratio on a private tracker on free offpeak times, its so slow that you barely get the tracker connections working, let alone any peer ones.

Your a funny guy, you use Slingshot, hate them on their forums, always complain but you state nonsense facts. Your torrents, while probably illegal as you are using TPB, are not soruced very well if you are getting "slow speeds". You are probably also referring to tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce:80 which, is SHUTDOWN. That's why you arent connecting.

End of the day it comes down to finding good sources, obviously your new zealand tracker isnt one that i belong to, with line speeds due to great peers.

richms

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#308566 18-Mar-2010 00:09

nziced:

Your a funny guy, you use Slingshot, hate them on their forums, always complain but you state nonsense facts. Your torrents, while probably illegal as you are using TPB, are not soruced very well if you are getting "slow speeds". You are probably also referring to tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce:80 which, is SHUTDOWN. That's why you arent connecting.

End of the day it comes down to finding good sources, obviously your new zealand tracker isnt one that i belong to, with line speeds due to great peers.

New Zealand tracker? What are you talking about? The second paragraph makes no sense at all.

THe torrents on thepiratebay are public ones, they allow DHT and peer exchange which is how you get the cache showing as a peer. On private trackers you only get real peers who have the approprate key on their announce url, no peer exchange etc.

During the day I get up to my line speed on the private torrents both ways, as I would expect. In the free offpeak connections are erratic, the tracker updates dont happen (its blocked by the http agent in the request, using a local proxy to change it to something else works) pieces frequently dont complete so its a lot of overhead that counts against my ratio, and seeding doesnt happen for the same reasons.

So I either have to pay for the data used, or pay a share of a seedbox and then get it from that via HTTP which sortof works ok in the free offpeak times.

If there are 10 seeds on a torrent, with most of them being well seedboxes I dont see how you can say that its an availability issue. If I switch over to the flatmates worldexchange connection I start to get 100+kB/sec off the same peers, back on the slingshot free off peak, nothing.

I only use slingshot because they are the least crap of what is pretty much a market of crap offerings.

Richard rich.ms

PhantomSS

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#308620 18-Mar-2010 09:04

richms:
nziced:

Your a funny guy, you use Slingshot, hate them on their forums, always complain but you state nonsense facts. Your torrents, while probably illegal as you are using TPB, are not soruced very well if you are getting "slow speeds". You are probably also referring to tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce:80 which, is SHUTDOWN. That's why you arent connecting.

End of the day it comes down to finding good sources, obviously your new zealand tracker isnt one that i belong to, with line speeds due to great peers.

New Zealand tracker? What are you talking about? The second paragraph makes no sense at all.

THe torrents on thepiratebay are public ones, they allow DHT and peer exchange which is how you get the cache showing as a peer. On private trackers you only get real peers who have the approprate key on their announce url, no peer exchange etc.

During the day I get up to my line speed on the private torrents both ways, as I would expect. In the free offpeak connections are erratic, the tracker updates dont happen (its blocked by the http agent in the request, using a local proxy to change it to something else works) pieces frequently dont complete so its a lot of overhead that counts against my ratio, and seeding doesnt happen for the same reasons.

So I either have to pay for the data used, or pay a share of a seedbox and then get it from that via HTTP which sortof works ok in the free offpeak times.

If there are 10 seeds on a torrent, with most of them being well seedboxes I dont see how you can say that its an availability issue. If I switch over to the flatmates worldexchange connection I start to get 100+kB/sec off the same peers, back on the slingshot free off peak, nothing.

I only use slingshot because they are the least crap of what is pretty much a market of crap offerings.

you musn't be using the same Slingshot as I. I never have problems offpeak, I download torrents from 2am till 8am and average about 700 kb/s. Not half of my full line speed but it does get close, depending on the tracker.

Sounds like your just using public trackers Richms, maybe you should learn about private trackers. Your private tracker doesnt sound very appealing if you get "nothing"

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vexxxboy

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#308642 18-Mar-2010 10:13

i was with slingshot for a year or so and only left them because they started to shape traffic at peak times , i like to use the internet when i want to not when the isp lets me, i moved to snap where it dosen't matter what time of the day it is, the internet works at a good speed. the help desk was also rubbish waits of 40 minutes were normal but that was 18 months ago, it all depends what you want to do, if you want to download, stream videos, torrent at peak times then slingshot is not the best choice.

Common sense is not as common as you think.

PhantomSS

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#308647 18-Mar-2010 10:34

vexxxboy: i was with slingshot for a year or so and only left them because they started to shape traffic at peak times , i like to use the internet when i want to not when the isp lets me, i moved to snap where it dosen't matter what time of the day it is, the internet works at a good speed. the help desk was also rubbish waits of 40 minutes were normal but that was 18 months ago, it all depends what you want to do, if you want to download, stream videos, torrent at peak times then slingshot is not the best choice.

Stream videos? I know the ONLY ISP that has a better average using youtube's speed graphs that averages a better speed. And it's only by .12 mb

Snap may be one of the few ISP that don't shape traffic, but are they consistent with their speeds, is there data cheap? Do you get charged extra if you go over your cap? Would be nice to see what data plan you were on, how much you were paying etc at the time you switched over versus what you moved to on snap.

From what I have heard about Snap and Xnet from a vast number of people who most of whom I have made the switch, is that they offer Fast speeds, only to be let down by extreme pricing, not many services offered by them and such crazy sync rates, either REALLY good or REALLY bad.

vexxxboy

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#308669 18-Mar-2010 11:02

PhantomSS:
vexxxboy: i was with slingshot for a year or so and only left them because they started to shape traffic at peak times , i like to use the internet when i want to not when the isp lets me, i moved to snap where it dosen't matter what time of the day it is, the internet works at a good speed. the help desk was also rubbish waits of 40 minutes were normal but that was 18 months ago, it all depends what you want to do, if you want to download, stream videos, torrent at peak times then slingshot is not the best choice.

Stream videos? I know the ONLY ISP that has a better average using youtube's speed graphs that averages a better speed. And it's only by .12 mb

Snap may be one of the few ISP that don't shape traffic, but are they consistent with their speeds, is there data cheap? Do you get charged extra if you go over your cap? Would be nice to see what data plan you were on, how much you were paying etc at the time you switched over versus what you moved to on snap.

From what I have heard about Snap and Xnet from a vast number of people who most of whom I have made the switch, is that they offer Fast speeds, only to be let down by extreme pricing, not many services offered by them and such crazy sync rates, either REALLY good or REALLY bad.

im just going on my experience, when i left slingshot, watching you tube at peak times was impossible,( is that speed on you tube between 6.00 pm and 10.pm) any torrents 30kb was normal at peak time and downloads were slow at peak times, At Snap speeds are constant 24 hours a day and i pay $89.00 for 60 gig, which is more than i was paying at SS and thinking of going to $129 for 100 gig which isn't dear for a premium service with no shaping and to compare Snap to xnet is way off , just look at the forums, Xnet is hammered , while Snap hardly ever

Common sense is not as common as you think.

Detruire

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#308819 18-Mar-2010 16:09

Sync rates are not affected by the ISP (unless they're offering an unbundled service to someone who would otherwise be on a cabinet)

rm *

andrewcnz

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#311746 26-Mar-2010 21:04

andrewcnz: Currently I have Snap Naked DSL and a Xnet Voip phone. We had been having some issues with the Voip and my partner got pissed off with this and had a Telecom normal phone line installed(without consulting me).
So I am now looking at new options(don't really want to be on Telecom and no longer need Naked DSL).
Have just got some new mobiles from slingshot and am quite happy with them.
So was looking to move all services to slingshot(ph/tolls/BB) rang them and the deal seemed good.

My question is slingshot BB good?(would be going on the 25gb FS/FS deal).
Seems they have a cache system does it work well?
I am only on standard ADSL (but have an excellent connection) and we won't be getting a new cabinet till mid 2011, would slingshot unbundle us before then, we are in Welcome Bay Tauranga.

Comment's please!

Thanks for opinions guys. Guess what no spare ports at exchange and cabinet is a year away. Now have naked dsl on one pair and a phone line on the other that I can't get BB put onto! Keep my hair short so it's harder to pull out!

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raytaylor

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#311812 27-Mar-2010 10:23

If you disconnected your naked broadband, that would free up one port at the exchange. you would need to talk to your isp about finding out if they can guarantee your new connection would go to this newly created free port.

I would imagine that the isp can put a request for a change address or change the pair for the broadband that would do this

Ray Taylor

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kyhwana2

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#311838 27-Mar-2010 12:19

PhantomSS:From what I have heard about Snap and Xnet from a vast number of people who most of whom I have made the switch, is that they offer Fast speeds, only to be let down by extreme pricing, not many services offered by them and such crazy sync rates, either REALLY good or REALLY bad.

(For me at least) xnet has one of the best pricing plans and no other ISPs seem to offer it.
(ie, pay per the MB you use, $1.02 per GB and no "data cap" plans. You can set your own cap and they will then throttle you to 64/64k when you hit that. Which you can then change during the month)

xnet off peak speeds are great. At ~1pm I can pull my full line rate, which is 1.6MB/s, from overseas sites.

richms

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#311880 27-Mar-2010 15:28

raytaylor: If you disconnected your naked broadband, that would free up one port at the exchange. you would need to talk to your isp about finding out if they can guarantee your new connection would go to this newly created free port.

I would imagine that the isp can put a request for a change address or change the pair for the broadband that would do this

I would not risk it, as if the port goes elsewhere you ened up with no internet.

Just wait, now that most people have internet, port churn is quite high so it wont take too long.

Richard rich.ms

andrewcnz

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#311901 27-Mar-2010 16:57

richms:
raytaylor: If you disconnected your naked broadband, that would free up one port at the exchange. you would need to talk to your isp about finding out if they can guarantee your new connection would go to this newly created free port.

I would imagine that the isp can put a request for a change address or change the pair for the broadband that would do this

I would not risk it, as if the port goes elsewhere you ened up with no internet.

Just wait, now that most people have internet, port churn is quite high so it wont take too long.

Yeah there is no way in hell I am gonna risk loosing my connection. Will go on the waiting list till there is a spare port. Andrew