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Living with Mangee - Who let the brakes off the internet?

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4th Nov, 2007

00:00:00 - Who let the brakes off the internet?

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Actrix have recently been offering what they call "FreeTime" between 18:00 and 20:00 each day for their CyberJet Broadband customers. Unlimited, if but for a moment. I don't usually keep a close eye on my ISPs newsletter - especially since the plain text version that get through to my phone via sms has the first 160 characters wasted... so didn't realise, and was wondering what 'freetime' meant on the traffic graphs I scrape into a Dashboard widget.
I did notice, however, that somehow the iMac was using close to 1 gig a day on their 350 Mb/day plan. Usually I use about 500 Mb/day on that plan (spending about 8 hours a night at reduced 64Kbps speed before the 2am reset), and the maths didn't work in my head. The iMac seemed to discover the net was suddenly all good, and suck it down in quantity (though still at our telecom oxidised copper limited max line speed of 1.1 Mbps, rather than the 2Mbps we pay for)

After a day or two of this I noticed the 6pm-8pm suddenly getting much slower. I see that the rest of the internet has realised what unleashed means...

Quoting Actrix's Network Status page...

Date: Wed 31 October 2007
As some customers have noticed, due to the overwhelming popularity of the new CyberJet FreeTime service - there have been some performance issues between 6pm and 8pm.

Our technical team have been working with our providers to implement additional capacity to cope with the unprecedented demand.

Actrix is pleased to advise this upgrade is now complete - the increased capacity should give all customers the full benefit of the CyberJet FreeTime experience.

Actrix apologises for any inconvenience caused while this upgrade was made.


Good way to stress test a network, and much like FX.net.nz's Unlimited@Night, and Telecoms GoLarge it's good to see residential ISPs offering customers a taste of unlimited internet, even if It is a subtle plug for their ~$500 unlimited plan. (soon to be ~$600/mo), and they soon realise NZ communities are crying out for truly unlimited, boundless connectivity.

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Comments:

From:[info]38195
Date:3rd November, 2007 (UTC)
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Totally off topic, but who are you?
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From:[info]mangee
Date:3rd November, 2007 (UTC)

Me? just some random internet floaty thing.

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I'm trying to remember. Just me, mangee. Uhm, will go have a look at my browser history to see how I ended up at your blog, and added you. BRB.
[User Picture]
From:[info]mangee
Date:3rd November, 2007 (UTC)

Re: Me? just some random internet floaty thing.

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Aha! my little post tracking bots detect you'd lived in Upper Hutt, and were thinking of heading back here. I was at that moment think about organising an ex-pat Wellingtonian Christmas Party, and came across your blog, so added it for further reference, 'cause you seemed to be breathing at least. I tend to subscribe the scolbleism that not everyone on your friend list has to be a long lost soul buddy.. so feel free to add me back ;)
How I became 'friends' with 38195

From:[info]dykotez
Date:3rd November, 2007 (UTC)
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Heh, I wouldn't include Xtra Go Large in there - at least not if my connection to it is anything to go by. I think I could get actually get faster speeds on a 56k modem.
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From:[info]mangee
Date:4th November, 2007 (UTC)

It's more about the lack of limit rather than the speed.

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The point is though, do you use that 56K 24/7? If so you'd be going through 15+ gig a month. On GoLarge, depsite the horrific speeds, a managed to use up to 2 gig a day for many months, and it's that kinda of 'unlimited' connection I prefer. The speed is nice when you're in a hurry - but download mansgers, podcasts and rss feeds can do the downloading when you're not waiting..

For $8/mo you can get a dial-up connection (assuming you've got a phone anyway), and get 15+ gig a month through it. You'd need to pay about $50+/mo to get that kind of per GB pricing on 'broadband', and if you hit the cap at 10 gig, and suffer the rest of the month... your internet becomes more of a slow torture than 'broadband'

1Mbps is about all I can get through my ADSL connection at 4.2 km from exchange. Peak speed today has been 115 K/s, currently ticking over at 15 K/s. Even at that speed it only takes a day or so to chew through the typical 10 gig monthly limit on your average 'broadband' account. So yeah, I like it when an ISP says unlimited.

I start considering internet when traffic is $2/Gb or less, and I haven't yet looked to hard at bandwidth - not many isps offer it - but $100/Mbps/mo sounds about it, and currently I'm resigned to paying $50+ for 20 hours of 1 Mbps.
From:[info]dykotez
Date:5th November, 2007 (UTC)

Re: It's more about the lack of limit rather than the speed.

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That's a fair point, although the problem is it's not constant. I use it more for browsing the internet than anything else like any hardcore downloading, so I would rather it be speedy with a cap than consistenly slow, but with no set cap.

It's not a 'bad' connection per se, but the only real part of broadband that I can really say about it is that it's always (usually :P) on... but if I really minded it I would switch of course. I just haven't been bothered enough by it to do so yet.

What really grates is that Youtube is really slow - friends on dialup can watch videos before mines even buffered the first few seconds.

Ah well, what can you do? heh.
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From:[info]mangee
Date:6th November, 2007 (UTC)

YouTube = slow.

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Aye. YouTube isn't the best connections at times. I recall 3+ MBps connectivity to it at last location (30m from exchange)

I was realy hoping the nz.youtube.com would be actually local - less ping rtt and better connectivity, even peering. we'll see.