KEY POINTS:
I usually get two to four emails a week from Herald readers complaining about the performance of their broadband connection and as a recent Herald survey revealed, the frustration is widespread.
Much of the problem with access line speeds has to do with the degraded quality of the copper lines that make up Telecom's network and the lack of capacity available in some areas of the network, which becomes most apparent at peak usage times.
But broadband metering company Epitiro which is in the process of setting up what is likely to be the most comprehensive, independent broadband benchmarking service in the country, has identified another reason for poor broadband speeds -dodgy modems.
Epitiro has for the last seven weeks, been monitoring the broadband performance of five internet providers - Xtra, TelstraClear, Slingshot, Orcon and Ihug.
"One of our initial findings has been the extent to which modems will pick-up noise or interference on the line, and re-train at lower connection speeds as a result. We've seen speeds drop from over 7[megabits per second] to 56[kilobits per second] instantly," wrote Epitiro managing director Mike Cranna in an email update on the service.
"I strongly recommend to any ISPs - if they don't already - to encourage their customers to re-boot their modem on a regular basis, or to invest in a high quality device," he added.
Many of the 653,000 DSL broadband subscribers in the country received a free modem when they signed up with their ISP as a joining incentive. But many of these modems are entry-level, low-quality devices and could be to blame for numerous speed issues broadband customers are having.
"The possibility that there may be customers out there connected to 7[megabit per second] pipes, from which their modem is providing them a dial-up-level service, is disturbing," Cranna continued.
My Dynalink modem and Wi-Fi router hasn't been switched off in months and my broadband performance, after the Xtra Go Large fiasco of late last year, is performing well -about 4Mbps downstream, 156Kbps upstream. But as a rule, it's a good idea to reset modems regularly. Many of the cheap DSL modems will do that anyway when you power off your computer, but if your machine is always on, it pays to unplug the modem from time to time and reboot it. Cranna believes the problem is widespread and is concerned enough about it to delay the release of Epitiro's first major test results.
"As a result of these issues, we've decided to delay our first release of performance results, so as to exclude the data affected by this issue. We've been building a new dataset since July 20th with this issue resolved, so we hope to announce the first results near the end of August," he wrote. He's even considering whether connection speed data should be used to rank the performance of ISPs given the numerous factors, such as modem interference, that can impact line speeds. I think line speed is an essential measure, but how can its accuracy be assured? This will no doubt be a hotly contested issue as Epitiro's benchmarking gets under way.
The local tech blogosphere:
Computerworld , on the blogger who ran up a $7000 bill using his mobile data card while visiting Australia.
Aardvark on internetNZ's toned-down response to the controversial Banking Code of Practice.
