The truth about advertised fibre speeds

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › The truth about advertised fibre speeds

toaster

62 posts

Master Geek

#132299 16-Oct-2013 14:28

Can someone from Orcon please clarify what the advertised fibre speeds (i.e. 30mbps DL/10mbps UL) actually represent?

I have been on Orcon unlimited fibre 30/10mbps plan for half a year now, but I've ever only experienced full speeds in the first month of service (it was more like 28/9mbps, but close enough).

Last 5 months though I can only get that kind of speeds on Orcon's local speedtest, while overseas speedtests vary with generally very low speeds in the range 0-6mbps. Here's an example speedtest I took during lunch today:

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3036017548 (1.4mbps on a line that should be 30mbps)

Reseting fibre box, router or computer does nothing to improve the speeds. It applies to all types of traffic it seems.
What do I have to do to to get 30mbps on a single international connection like in the first month?

I have had my tickets looked at by you guys before, but you never actually did anything. The speeds in the last few days have been so limited that I now find them unacceptable.

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Geekzone

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#916036 16-Oct-2013 14:28

Hello... Our robot found some keywords in your post, so here is an automated reply with some important things to note regarding broadband speeds.

If you are posting regarding DSL speeds please check that

- you have reset your modem and router

- your PC (or other PCs in your LAN) is not downloading large files when you are testing

- you are not being throttled by your ISP due to going over the monthly cap

- your tests are always done on an ethernet connection to the router - do not use wireless for testing

- you read this topic and follow the instructions there.

Make sure you provide information for other users to help you. If you have not already done it, please EDIT your post and add this now:

- Your ISP and plan

- Type of connection (ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL)

- Your modem DSL stats (do not worry about posting Speedtest, we need sync rate, attenuation and noise margin)

- Your general location (or street)

- If you are rural or urban

- If you know your connection is to an exchange, cabinet or conklin

- If your connection is to a ULL or wholesale service

- If you have done an isolation test as per the link above

Most of the problems with speed are likely to be related to internal wiring issues. Read this discussion to find out more about this. Your ISP is not intentionally slowing you down today (unless you are on a managed plan). Also if this is the school holidays it's likely you will notice slower than usual speed due to more users online.

A master splitter is required for VDSL2 and in most cases will improve speeds on DSL connections. Regular disconnections can be a monitored alarm or a set top box trying to connect. If there's an alarm connected to your line even if you don't have an alarm contract it may still try to connect so it's worth checking.

I recommend you read these two blog posts:

- Is your premises phone wiring impacting your broadband performance? (very technical)

- Are you receiving a substandard ULL ADSL2+ connection from your ISP?

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

johnr

19282 posts

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Inactive user

#916055 16-Oct-2013 14:39

Why are you comparing international speeds to national?

toaster

62 posts

Master Geek

#916061 16-Oct-2013 14:45

johnr: Why are you coming international speeds to national?

I'm not. I'm asking if the definition of advertised speeds has changed recently, as I used to be able to download at 29mbps, and now I'm getting 1.4mbps.

National bandwidth is of no interest to me, it would represent about 0.001% of my internet needs.

FireEngine

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#916062 16-Oct-2013 14:45

The fibre speed is (as any other connection tail speed), is simply the speed into the Orcon network, not out to any site on the wider internet. Happy to look into this as clearly something may be amiss if you aren't getting the speeds you used to into the Orcon network, pm me your account details and I'll have the team look into it.

Regards FireEngine

Sounddude

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2degrees

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#916064 16-Oct-2013 14:49

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3036017548 (1.4mbps on a line that should be 30mbps)

What speedtest server is that? Looks like middle of internet no where with a ping close to 300ms.

What are your speedtests like to the West Coast of USA? (San Jose, LA etc)

vexxxboy

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#916067 16-Oct-2013 14:50

wrong thread sorry

Common sense is not as common as you think.

Inphinity

2780 posts

Uber Geek

#916073 16-Oct-2013 14:53

As with just about any data product (I'm excluding products with a specific international CIR here, for example), the advertised speed is the connection speed you may expect from your premises to the ISPs network. From there, it is going to depend on a lot of factors along the way - your ISPs outbound capacity to where ever your destination is, and the capacity of any upstream providers along the way, as well as congestion at a given time.

Let's look at three simplified examples.

1)
You have a 30/10 connection. Your ISP has a total of 100 customers with a 30/10 connection. For simplicity sake, lets say this is their entire customer base. Your ISP has 2Gbps (2000Mbps) of international capacity. Uh-oh, that means if everyone is trying to connect to international destinatinsn at once, not everyone can get full-speed, even if there are no other bottlenecks along the way! But *most* of the time, not everyone will be doing that. This would be congestion at your ISP, in effect.

2)
Again, you are one of 100 customers with your ISP, all on 30/10 connections. Your ISP has now got 3Gbps of international bandwidth, though, so everyone can go full-speed concurrently, yay! But the server you're connecting to only has 100Mbps capacity, and there are 50 other people all trying to connect to it. You're unlikely to get your 30Mbps speed, even though your ISP is no longer a bottleneck. But your ISP has no control over this remote server, or their capacity. Congestion at the far end.

3)
Same scenario as above, 100 customers, 30/10, 3Gbps bandwidth. But this time, the issue is that your connection is going through an upstream provider in, say, California, who has 3Gbps of capacity as well, but has 100 customers all with 100Mbps connections, all using it. Even though the server you're trying to get to has 100Mbps capacity, and noone using it, you're going to be limited by this intermediate hop that's congested. Bottleneck!

So, it really depends. I must say, personally, if speeds across the board to international locations are poor (rather than to specific locations or services), it may be a lack of international capacity from your ISP (though I understood Orcon had addressed this recently, so I'd be surprised if it's the problem), or more likely from one of their upstream providers. Perhaps there's some poor routing choices going on (Routing traffic Auckland -> Sydney -> Perth -> Hong Kong -> California, for example - and which I saw recently -, seems a bit long-winded).

I've just done a test to the Speedtest.net server in Alkmaar, as per your link, and only getting 2Mbps down and 0.4Mbps up. On a 30Mbps connection also (but not with Orcon). I get 3.3/7.8 on our 100/100 connection.

But try Sydney or California. They'll be miles better.

toaster:
National bandwidth is of no interest to me, it would represent about 0.001% of my internet needs.

If guaranteed international speeds are your requirement, I'd have to say you may want to look a a business-grade connection with international CIR to some key locations. $$$.

Quic Broadband

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Talkiet

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#916075 16-Oct-2013 14:54

The international speed of an ISP has _nothing_ to do with whether you have an ADSL, VDSL or Fibre connection. They are independent from each other. An ISP could have heaps of International Bandwidth and choose only to offer dialup, or they could heavily contend their international pipe and offer only 100Mbit fibre.

If you can get good speeds (and 29/8 is pretty close to optimal) to local speedtest servers, then the LFC fibre service is working fine, and the handover to the RSP(ISP) is fine as well. Depending on where the speedtest server is, it's also possible that national transit is also ok.

If you are wanting guaranteed performance to overseas sites, there are products that will give you an SLA for international bandwidth but they will only go as far as the upstream provider - NO-ONE will guarantee you an end to end performance metric beyond the network they themselves own and control, or have their own SLAs with.

And I can almost guarantee you that you get WAYYYYYYYYY more than 0.001% of your traffic from national sources.

Do you use youtube? Download any microsoft updates? anything from apple? It's also likely that a lot of your traffic is nationally proxied as well - all those will benefit from a higher speed access.

A 300kmh ferrari doesn't go everywhere at 300kmh, and it's unreasonable to expect it to.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

toaster

62 posts

Master Geek

#916086 16-Oct-2013 14:58

Sounddude:

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3036017548 (1.4mbps on a line that should be 30mbps)

What speedtest server is that? Looks like middle of internet no where with a ping close to 300ms.

What are your speedtests like to the West Coast of USA? (San Jose, LA etc)

It's in the Netherlands, the world's centre of telecommunication connections.

LA servers are the same low speed, even Australia. I only get 20mbps+ within NZ.

toaster

62 posts

Master Geek

#916090 16-Oct-2013 15:02

Inphinity: As with just about any data product (I'm excluding products with a specific international CIR here, for example), the advertised speed is the connection speed you may expect from your premises to the ISPs network. From there, it is going to depend on a lot of factors along the way - your ISPs outbound capacity to where ever your destination is, and the capacity of any upstream providers along the way, as well as congestion at a given time.

Let's look at three simplified examples.

1)
You have a 30/10 connection. Your ISP has a total of 100 customers with a 30/10 connection. For simplicity sake, lets say this is their entire customer base. Your ISP has 2Gbps (2000Mbps) of international capacity. Uh-oh, that means if everyone is trying to connect to international destinatinsn at once, not everyone can get full-speed, even if there are no other bottlenecks along the way! But *most* of the time, not everyone will be doing that. This would be congestion at your ISP, in effect.

2)
Again, you are one of 100 customers with your ISP, all on 30/10 connections. Your ISP has now got 3Gbps of international bandwidth, though, so everyone can go full-speed concurrently, yay! But the server you're connecting to only has 100Mbps capacity, and there are 50 other people all trying to connect to it. You're unlikely to get your 30Mbps speed, even though your ISP is no longer a bottleneck. But your ISP has no control over this remote server, or their capacity. Congestion at the far end.

3)
Same scenario as above, 100 customers, 30/10, 3Gbps bandwidth. But this time, the issue is that your connection is going through an upstream provider in, say, California, who has 3Gbps of capacity as well, but has 100 customers all with 100Mbps connections, all using it. Even though the server you're trying to get to has 100Mbps capacity, and noone using it, you're going to be limited by this intermediate hop that's congested. Bottleneck!

So, it really depends. I must say, personally, if speeds across the board to international locations are poor (rather than to specific locations or services), it may be a lack of international capacity from your ISP (though I understood Orcon had addressed this recently, so I'd be surprised if it's the problem), or more likely from one of their upstream providers. Perhaps there's some poor routing choices going on (Routing traffic Auckland -> Sydney -> Perth -> Hong Kong -> California, for example - and which I saw recently -, seems a bit long-winded).

I've just done a test to the Speedtest.net server in Alkmaar, as per your link, and only getting 2Mbps down and 0.4Mbps up. On a 30Mbps connection also (but not with Orcon). I get 3.3/7.8 on our 100/100 connection.

But try Sydney or California. They'll be miles better.

toaster:
National bandwidth is of no interest to me, it would represent about 0.001% of my internet needs.

If guaranteed international speeds are your requirement, I'd have to say you may want to look a a business-grade connection with international CIR to some key locations. $$$.

Brilliant answer, thanks for explaining.

So I have to assume I had full speeds in the first month because Orcon hasn't yet oversold the connection.

Do you think upgrading to 100Mbps would increase overall speeds, or would they use same capacities for 100mbps users as well?

johnr

19282 posts

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#916092 16-Oct-2013 15:03

toaster:
Sounddude:

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/3036017548 (1.4mbps on a line that should be 30mbps)

What speedtest server is that? Looks like middle of internet no where with a ping close to 300ms.

What are your speedtests like to the West Coast of USA? (San Jose, LA etc)

It's in the Netherlands, the world's centre of telecommunication connections.

LA servers are the same low speed, even Australia. I only get 20mbps+ within NZ.

You are paying for consumer grade internet! If you want better then pay for it, Get a internet connection will SLA

Sounddude

I fix stuff!
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#916094 16-Oct-2013 15:05

toaster:

It's in the Netherlands, the world's centre of telecommunication connections.

LA servers are the same low speed, even Australia. I only get 20mbps+ within NZ.

Depends on your definition of center. Most people see USA as the center.

You should be able to get 20mbit+ from Aussie easily.

I would discuss with the helpdesk around packet loss problems, as a small amount of packet loss (like on Wifi etc) could result in OK national speeds and slow international. This is due to the way TCP retransmissions work.

Looking at your Usage (1TB+) I would recommend making sure when you do these speedtests that nothing else is running (bittorrent etc). As these will cause overseas speedtests to look low.

Sounddude

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#916096 16-Oct-2013 15:06

johnr:

You are paying for consumer grade internet! If you want better then pay for it, Get a internet connection will SLA

Thanks John, but we like to see our product performing better than what he is experiencing.

toaster

62 posts

Master Geek

#916098 16-Oct-2013 15:08

Sounddude:
johnr:

You are paying for consumer grade internet! If you want better then pay for it, Get a internet connection will SLA

Thanks John, but we like to see our product performing better than what he is experiencing.

Exactly. Especially when it worked flawlessly at 30/10 on a single ftp connection to Europe for entire month at the start of service in May.

Inphinity

2780 posts

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#916101 16-Oct-2013 15:10

toaster:
Brilliant answer, thanks for explaining.

So I have to assume I had full speeds in the first month because Orcon hasn't yet oversold the connection.

Do you think upgrading to 100Mbps would increase overall speeds, or would they use same capacities for 100mbps users as well?

I must say, I doubt Orcon are *that* over subscribed that you are only getting 1- 2 Mbps to most international locations. I doubt upgrading to 100Mbps would make a difference, as it's unlikely to be your connection that's the bottleneck.

For interest's sake, can you try the Dreamhost speedtest.net server in LA and Internode in Sydney? I'd be interested to see the results of those ones. Also, could try this speed test.

Also, are you testing over wifi or ethernet? If wifi, try with an ethernet cable.

johnr:
You are paying for consumer grade internet! If you want better then pay for it, Get a internet connection will SLA

No offence, John, but "Pay more so we can tell you it's not our fault, it's our upstream provider" doesn't sound like a good solution.

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