[chbot] Recommendations for fibre in CHCH

[Helmut Walle]

Hi Mark,

"low-cost, high performance [... decent] customer support" - pick any two...

I've got MyRepublic 200/100 fibre unlimited for $75 / month and haven't seen any effectively
cheaper services here. The fibre installer installed as surveyed, but it was only 10m or so
along the fence, then buried for about 1m from the fence to the house - easy job. But they
should commit to doing it either at no extra cost, or tell you that you will have to pay, before
the installer turns up. Best to confirm in advance, though...

Trouble so far: I am getting VoiP telephony from a 3rd party. Somehow it always lost audio one
way every 14-15 minutes, and depending on when the call started it could happen anytime from
connecting to 14-15 minutes in, but when reconnecting immediately it lasted for 14-15 minutes
until it next happened. I was suspecting that maybe some aspect of CGNAT was upsetting the SIP
stuff, which admittedly is a bit of a hack... But MyRepublic were initially finger-pointing at
3rd party. I ran some experiments with 3rd party over other TCP/IP networks, and none of the
alternatives showed that same problem at all. After some more technical discussion with their
support team they upgraded the firmware on the Technicolor router that they had supplied when I
got the fibre install, and that fixed it. So that was a bit of a mission. Now why am I not
simply taking VoiP from the fibre ISP? Well, I call quite a few people who still only have
copper phone lines in Europe, and the calling rates from MyRepublic for my use are a rip-off...

But the fibre performance really is the 200/100 - it really lets you see pretty clearly where
the bottlenecks in trunk connections are, or if a server can't handle the speed. For example, I
had to sync a 6 GB file to OneDrive for work today, and that uploaded at slightly over the 100
Mbaud for most of the time and was done very quickly (to a MS server physically close to us),
but when I was downloading content from my private OneDrive account over the past several days,
I never got significantly over 20 Mbps per concurrent file download (so several files at the
same time went at about 20 Mbps each), and that may well have been from an overseas MS server.

YMMV...

And you already mentioned that you will be avoiding fixed wireless at all costs...

Kind regards,

Helmut.

-- 
+------------------------+
| Helmut Walle           |
| Helmut.Walle at gmail.com |
| +64-21-446 137         |
+------------------------+

On 04/03/2021 21:45, Mark Atherton wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> Probably time to drop copper :) We are very close to out local kerb-side box, and even ADSL2+
> has served us very well so far.
> 
> Any reconsiderations for a low-cost, high performance Internet-fibre supplier ?
> 
> Expect descent customer support, unlimited high rate (I have seen 800Mb+ offered), probably
> bundled with existing landline). 30Mb fibre is no better than we currently have, and isn't worth
> the trouble.
> 
> Spark have been pestering me to move to wireless, that got me very excited (in a bad way).
> 
> Two issues:
> 
> - We need a specific fibre run. I have heard horror stories where contractors come out to do a
> survey, then the installer does the job the way he feels fit, rather than the way the survey-guy
> agreed to.
> 
> - Maintain dial-tone in event of power loss. Assume a small UPS is available; but it does
> obviously required the kerb-side box remains powered (assuming it does an active remux from the
> Central Office).
> 
> Good experiences, and bad experiences please.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
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