The Great New Zealand Internet Slow-Down

Comments

# Ben Young said:

Interesting, I went away for Labour weekend came back Monday and had the same thing happen all week. Based in Ponsonby on Vodafone. Be keen to hear a response from the ISPs. -Ben

03 November 09 at 11:42 AM

# Barry Hannah said:

I experience the same nightly drop off (manifest mostly with impaired youtube performance). I can usually get great ADSL1 speed - around 7MB down. Between 6pm and 9pm it slows markedly - down to well under 2MB. My ISP is World Exchange. A friend who works there lets me know when they have just bought more international bandwidth, and I see a corresponding increase in speed, but it gets absorbed in a manner of weeks.

03 November 09 at 11:45 AM

# NakedGeek said:

One thing of interest in last nights figures is that your result was from Olympia WA whereas everyone elses was from Seattle WA. This could explain the difference between your result being half that of the others from the same ISP. Would also be interesting to poll who is on straight ADSL vs ADSL2+ and compare each local connection speed at the same time.

03 November 09 at 1:23 PM

# nparker said:

Yeah I made a mistake and clicked the wrong server. That said straight afterwards I did try on Seattle WA and got very similar results.

I think everyone was ADSL2+ except for the two Wellington Telstra users who were on Saturn fibre I think.

03 November 09 at 1:59 PM

# Morgan said:

Perhaps the congestion isn't with international, but with the circuits from suburban exchanges back to their provider.

This used to be called the VPC, though I don't know if it still is, and ISPs that have since been consumed by larger providers had trouble getting Telecom to provision something good. As I recall they were only ever able to get some fraction of the pipes they were buying.

I actually did a test to Olympia WA last night when I noticed that some of use were testing with different providers, it gave me much the same result as the Seattle test, perhaps a little slower in the mid-4Mb/s range, but certainly not anything like the .27 you were seeing.

Connection details:

Line mode: ADSL2+

Maximum line rate: 12860 kbps (downstream) / 1240 kbps (upstream)

Noise margin: 5.4 dB (downstream) / 12.6 dB (upstream)

Line attenuation: 31 dB (downstream) / 15.5 dB (upstream)

Output power: 20.4 dBm (downstream) / 12.6 dBm (upstream)

I'm using the Orcon provided homehub, and believe I'm on the Airedale St exchange which is ~1200m away according to google maps.

03 November 09 at 3:17 PM

# Stefan Olson said:

Nigel,

I just ran it on my ADSL1 line - at 2:07pm on Inspire.net.nz I'm getting 4.32Mbs Down. (The line is actually ADSL2+ to the street box, which is about 50 m away, but not ADSL2+ from the box to inspire)

I'll try and test around 8pm over the next couple of days.

...Stefan

03 November 09 at 5:09 PM

# Ben said:

I think perhaps Morgan's suggestion of exchange congestion might be correct. Airdale St is probably hooked right up to the Auckland peering point? That means Orcon gets massive data speeds?

Whereas on all other auckland exchanges they're using whatever gammy backhaul Telecom wholesale provides?  

03 November 09 at 6:28 PM

# Mark D said:

I've been having severe problems with TelstraClear (cable) for a few weeks. It's particularly with international traffic, but not just in the evenings. I regularly have to VPN to my work, and go out through my work ISP (Xtreme) or use my 3G vodafone card to get any work done. It's really only the last few weeks and it's not a problem all the time (but more often than not at the moment).

04 November 09 at 10:18 PM

# Steven Quick said:

If it's contention on the backhaul link from your exchange to your ISP you would probably see a poor result from the Auckland speedtest server and lame speeds on downloads from local sources in peak time too, is that what you're seeing?

If you changed to Orcon+ you'll be on Orcon equipment in the exchange and Orcon backhaul (non + plans use Telecom wholesale equipment and backhaul).  On Snap you would have been on Telecom wholesale equipment and backhaul.

Orcon does has a pretty bad reputation for peak time performance as you can see from Geekzone and Gameplanet threads.  I suspect their international bandwidth to customer ratio is quite oversold.

Telstra and Telecom are the largest ISP's they have the scale to have a huge amount of international bandwidth. this tends to smooth out the peak time usage problems the smaller ISP's have.

05 November 09 at 2:04 AM

# nparker said:

In response to Steven Quick. My local connection during peak times is pretty constant.

I am on Orcon+ so I am using Orcon equipment in the exchange and Orcon backhaul.

That said of the last couple of nights things have been better and my international connection on Orcon has remained over 2MBps during peak times.

05 November 09 at 11:15 AM

# Craig said:

Just my 2c.

Testing to a single international server from multiple NZ locations wont necessarily show where the bottleneck is.

You're probably better off running a batterey of tests to the various NZ, Sydney, Hawaii, Seattle, LA locations (given they're the hops on the Southern Cross cable) and then futher afield.

This should point out where the bottle necks start.

If you're still seeing slow speeds to NZ locations, that suggests exchange or national back-haul.  If you see slow speeds to Sydney and/or Hawaii, that suggests SC exchanges or the cables themselves, first hop.  If you see slow to Seattle/LA, then it's second hop on the SC.

Finer checking can be done with tracert (or traceroute) though it's really only going to pick up on latency issues and not pure "speed" (bandwidth), but might help.

As for ADSL vs ADSL2+, I suspect most people are still on ADSL, and it's only going to affect the potential top speed to the nearest exchange or road-side-box.

Chaning ISP doesn't always make much difference either, unless you go with the big boys who have their own equipment at the exchange. The rest are just renting connections/equipment and bandwidth from the big boys...

Finally, there's transparent proxies and traffic filtering/shaping.  Each ISP has their on policy on these and they may not even make the info public, so it's just another thing you can't control and can effect your Internet speed.

Note: I don't work for a telco or ISP, this is just my interpretation of what goes on...

Later'ish

Craig

09 November 09 at 3:25 PM

# Vhen said:

Today I have been having issues myself.

With my speed down to roughly 0.17 Mb/s..

With my normal speed normally at 3-4 Mb/s.

This is connecting to an NZ Server.

10 November 09 at 9:53 PM