Xtra's "Go Large" Broadband plan is F#&ked

[KiwiTT]

If you have xtra broadband and you have moved to "Go Large", you are well and truely shafted.

see Press F1 (http://www.pressf1.co.nz/showthread.php?t=73949) and GP Forum (http://www.gpforums.co.nz/thread/340040/?s=) for details.

I have abandoned "Go Large" and upgraded to "Pro"

[d i c k i e s]

If you have xtra broadband and you have moved to "Go Large", you are well and truely shafted.

see Press F1 (http://www.pressf1.co.nz/showthread.php?t=73949) and GP Forum (http://www.gpforums.co.nz/thread/340040/?s=) for details.

I have abandoned "Go Large" and upgraded to "Pro"

i have the same issue! downloads have been really slow. im also on the Go Large plan. really sucks... want to change ISP. tossing and turning. i hear orcon is okay.

[KiwiTT]

Beware other ISPs "general user" plans will also be be effected.

[Kenneth]

Best ISP service I have had is with XNet (http://xnet.net.nz/)

My mother went with them as they already did her tolls. Anyway, I had to ring them up... Got someone on the phone directly and they were able to solve my problem promptly without asking dumb questions. They used the phone number (I ring from her house of course) I rang from to bring up the account so didn't even ask for mums account info.

If I need to change ISP, I'll be going to them. I am currently with Orcon and while not great, haven't had any problems with them.

[Rosco_NZ]

im on go-large, and downloading various stuff internationally off usenet at speeds between 200 and 500k/s torrents (peer 2 peer) are slow as sh*t, but they were never really good before go-large anyway. web-surfing is about the same maybe a bit quicker i find, though sometimes you get time-outs and have to hit refresh a bit more often. overall im pretty happy with the plan as its still a hell of a lot better than previously simply because im not gonna get throttled back to 64k which is painful. so absolutely no complaints here anything is better than being throttled.


it has nothing to do with the fact i work for telecom either :satan:

some effects of the go-large plan is slowing various international traffic down due to its "shaping" or "traffic management", this is ment to be only at peak times 4pm-12am and only targeting peer2peer applications such as torrents, kazza, limewire etc.

anyone on go-large is allocated a specific IP address from the go-large ip-address pool and ur traffic is inspected by an Alot box( deep packet inspection to determine what sort of traffic it is) which i think they are still ironing the bugs our of as it has been causing latency issues and shouldn't be.

also everyone in the ip address pool shares an international bandwidth pipe.
so if everyone on go large is going for it ur gonna have poor speed. there is only so much bandwidth to go round. national traffic should be as fast as possible though.

also with the 128k upstream speed you dont really get full speed down, as the upstream limits your downstream to about ~4.5mbits (the upstream gets saturated with acknowledgement packets) thats if your close enough to your exchange to get 4.5mbit sync in the first place.

so in general peer2peer will pretty much suck during peak times and probably all the time. but normal http web surfing etc should be fine, but your still sharing with everyone else so if you really can't stand it then changing plans would be the way to go.

the inital uptake of go-large is far greater than telecom had anticapated, they have already had to increase the size of the shared pipe, and i think they will have to again.

the next factor that affects ur speeds is the exchange you are on and how busy it is, for example if you are on johnsonville exchange (welly) im told thats the most crammed in country and ur pretty much screwed for speed.

then you have all your normal speed issues etc with attenuation, distance from exchange, cross-talk from your neighbours etc etc that exsisted before "unleashed" but were possibly made worse due to everyone being given full speed.

as for other isp's most will provide the same service, the only difference is there backhaul (the international pipe) providing you choose a UBS plan and not a wholesale (reselling telecom) plan. any problems between you and ur exchange will still exsist. im told but can't confirm that most isp's international pipe is less than xtra's, but thats coming from someone at telecom so take with a grain of salt.

[bradc]

as soon as I saw that plan I knew xtra would screw users...and I'm not surprised at all at what is happening.

We are with ihug and haven't had any problems. Orcon seem to be ok too. The xnet website slider thing is really cool, therefore I would recommend going with them too :)

[d i c k i e s]

hey rosco, wondering if u know where the exchange is for titahi bay - porirua

[bradc]

I don't think that blowing it up is going to help anything dickies :)

[d i c k i e s]

it might... they might put it closer to my house! hahaha. nah ive heard stories. but not sure whom to believe.

[Pete M]

Telstra Cable in Chch is good. I've seen up to 900KB/s. Leeching and seeding torrents, I can knock out our 80GB/month allowance in about 36 hours. Over-use rate is $2.95/block of 2GB. Speed is usually limited by overall network speed. Usually get 100-200KB/s. I now have over 1TB in storage. It's a good thing 320GB drives are less than $200. I've still got 4 SATA slots free too.

[bradc]

Pete - do you get anything from us at NFC? We'd be happy to sell you 250/320/400gb drives :)

[Pete M]

I get my drives from Grant Wilson at Tastech here in Chch. ATM the 320 seems to be the sweet spot for size/price. A 500GB is twice the price for only 1.5x the capacity. I've just picked up a WD 'black book' 250GB USB2 drive for backups and swapping downloads from Dove Electronics $180 inc. What's the url for your firm, I'll check them out.

[bradc]

it is simply www.nfc.co.nz, our 250's are $112 + gst and 320's are $151 + gst.

[Xeroid]

Hey, Brad, just checked out your site and you got something I'd be very interested in looking at, the NFC T2300 Media Centre.
We're fed up with bloody CD's and stuff all over the floor and want to get it all ripped onto a system to make it quick and easy.
I've got a big Denon 7:1 channel amp/tuner, lotsa huge Polk Audio speakers and 12" sub.
Does it take a TV tuner ? Want to use it to record programs occaisonally, VHS is dead.
Is this thing any good, I have yet to see a working system anywhere. Know anywhere I can see one in action.
Have money, will spend if I find the right beast.

[Springie]

I have stayed on Adventure plan because of the "fair use policy" on GO Large. However I am pissed. I have had Xtra since about 96, when they came out and get treated like crap everytime. When the speeds went from 2Mb to 3.5Mb, i stayed at around 2.2Mb. Ring up and fill out the "keep him busy form / connection speed diary thing". No reply.

UNLEASHED, am still on 2.2Mb WTF, it is crap. Its false advertisting as fair as i am concerned. I know its "as fast as connection allows / up to **Mb" but why say it will be fast when it won't. They should undersell it at 3mb say, and those getting over will be happy.

Anyway i rang up and i am suppose to be getting 3.7Mb but am not. So what happens? fill the form out again! WTF.

I would love to change, but the thing is your ulitmately dealing through telecom anywhere you go so we are screwed.

I can't wait till the day when we no longer need a home line to get internet. I will be disconnecting that ASAP.

[ShadyNZer]

hopefully vodafone come up with something choice now that they got ihug

[bradc]

Brent - we don't have one built up at the moment but most of the time we have a media centre pc setup and on demo at the front of the shop. I think one of the guys at work has one setup at his house I will check with him tomorrow and let you know.

They do come with TV Tuners and are fairly easy to use for recording tv, watching movies in both divx and dvd formats, etc etc.

[Pete M]

I just had a look at the site, some good prices there. Some really strange ones too, like the:
Samsung HDD HD400LJ 400GB/7200rpm SATA II 8MB 3.5 SATA Internal Hard Drive which is $5348+GST ! WTF?

WD Single 10000rpm 150GB 16MB Int SATA Raptor $434+GST eh? wot?

I think someone needs to check what prices are actually vaguely sensible.

I've bookmarked the page and will check back from time to time.

I'm on the lookout for a couple of the Legend DVD players, that do MPEG4 and DivX etc, I got a few for family and friends, but the importer has stopped getting them. Hmmm. They are excellent for downloaded films etc.

[marmel31]

hopefully vodafone come up with something choice now that they got ihug


They are, April 2007.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3854968a28,00.html

[bradc]

The samsung prices that are really expensive are actually 20 packs, and that is indeed the real price for the raptor. Remember they are 10000rpm server hard drives, not your normal 7200rpm desktop drive. The cost on that raptor is $430, so we aren't ripping anyone off :)

We have 3 of those Legend DVD/DIVX players in stock at the moment. I have one myself and they are fairly good when they are working...but they die every 6 months or so :)

[Xeroid]

Cheers Brad, be very interested to see one actually working after all the hype out there.

[bradc]

Come into the shop when you're free. If you know where the Dick Smith is in Newmarket it is really easy to find, it is just opposite them on Remuera Rd. I don't have one there right at the moment, but I will send you a PM when I have a media pc there.

[MunkyWrench]

hey bradc, it was you that built a carpc right?

mines working now, experimenting with different software, but the slotload dvd drive i bought on ebay turned up dud.

can you get hold of / do you haveslot load laptop dvd or dvd/cdrw drives?

[bradc]

Yes we do, we have a couple of slotload dvd-rw drives at the moment, I think for the drive itself they are about $240 incl gst or thereabouts. I will check it out today for you.

[d i c k i e s]

finally cracked just over 500kb/sec in the weekend. 512kb/sec for at least 1min then dropping to a comfortable 490kb/sec for the duration of that download.

plan is ok sometimes now? but i still want to change plan. telecom needs to fix thier sh!t now before they lose another customer!

[d i c k i e s]

other downloads at the moment are sitting around 300kb/sec. but yeah was capped this morning. went to download something and back to dial up speeds at times!