EZ Com Internet.

[Denny]

So having just moved down here, to my knowledge the options are EZ Com and Metfone, or else go 3G/etc.  I work online making internet critical for me, so I decided to opt for EZ Com.  Figured with it's known reliability/etc it was worth the extra costs.  Man.... was I wrong.



It's worth way more than that.

My ping times to servers in the US are 20-30ms... which for those who don't know, is a huge factor in speed of anything but large downloads.  Large downloads care about throughput, aka bandwidth, while latency (ping times) impacts actual browsing or anything that has a lot of back and forth.

Example: when you click a link on this site to view a post, from that click to when you see the page is 99.99999% based on your latency.

Previous experience with ISPs in this country, have had pings ranging from 120ms on a really good day to 3000ms on a pretty shitty one.  Nothing really under 100... much less under 50.

Just thought I'd put a review of it out here, because having sampled them all I'm well beyond impressed.

(Also, never trust speedtest sites... ISPs cache the data stream from their servers so that you're not getting accurate results.  For latency just do a ping to a known server, and for bandwidth run a really really active torrent download and see how fast it goes.)

[casper]

Yes, with torrents we're getting over 6mb with Ezecom

[Gondal]

Thanks for that explanation Denny, I'd been trying to work out why my download speed is all over the place. I'm using Wimax with Online - basically coz Ezecom can't put a line to where I live and my wife worked with Online - and recently 'upgraded' to their Silver 'business' plan. Ping times avg 35ms so that's ok, and bandwidth is 1Mb, but whenever I go to download or stream Utube it's all over the place. And especially frustrating watching Utube stop n start. They won't admit it but I'm pretty sure there's an intermittent internet link problem. When the link is fine, so is the download speed and streaming, but last night - crap.

[Deacz9]

Thanks for that explanation Denny, I'd been trying to work out why my download speed is all over the place. I'm using Wimax with Online - basically coz Ezecom can't put a line to where I live and my wife worked with Online - and recently 'upgraded' to their Silver 'business' plan. Ping times avg 35ms so that's ok, and bandwidth is 1Mb, but whenever I go to download or stream Utube it's all over the place. And especially frustrating watching Utube stop n start. They won't admit it but I'm pretty sure there's an intermittent internet link problem. When the link is fine, so is the download speed and streaming, but last night - crap.

Yes getting the same with Online. Fast ping but inconsistant download speeds. But I share the connection with about 8 more rooms and if one of those downloading torrents in the day it makes it frustrating!
We're considering putting in an extra line just for 4 of us (users). Not sure which company to go with as regards reliability, value for money, consistent speed, customer service etc. Also considering getting a dongle but would have same questions as cable 

[Denny]

Part of the problem with those secondary companies is they oversell for their equipment specs.  One of the big bottlenecks in those cases can be simply connection volume.  They have a router that can handle say 200 connections simultaneously, then they feed 20 more routers into it with 20 connection on each of them.  Now you have 400 people fighting over 200 connections.  A ping is a short fast connection, so won't show those problems.

Combine that with such heavy use causing the equipment to overheat/etc and you get an endless series of "it's fixed!"/"it's broken!" and none of them able to figure out why... or knowing why and just thinking they can milk it for another 6 months before they have to upgrade.

I had Digi in PP, and that was common with them.  Every time they ran a promotional rate my service would start to fall apart for about a month of constant complaining, then suddenly be fine... until the next promotion.  Because they ran a cycle of: sell, measure need, upgrade to meet need only. 

Part of that is because the rates with those companies are so low... they have a smaller margin so can't afford to gamble on a new wall of routers and servers that may not actually pay off for 6 months to a year.  Just like a small time restaurant would rather run out of a food, then order more, than have a ton of stock sitting in the back costing them money.  The benefit of EZ Com is that they never really have to worry about unused "stock".  They provide to most of those other companies, so their customer base is essentially most of the internet users in the country with only varied degrees of profit margin based on if they're direct or secondary.

[Gondal]

Online is all over the place - had the right speed last night but Utube was still stop/start - ping time of 300ms   

[Denny]

Thanks for that explanation Denny, I'd been trying to work out why my download speed is all over the place. I'm using Wimax with Online - basically coz Ezecom can't put a line to where I live and my wife worked with Online - and recently 'upgraded' to their Silver 'business' plan. Ping times avg 35ms so that's ok, and bandwidth is 1Mb, but whenever I go to download or stream Utube it's all over the place. And especially frustrating watching Utube stop n start. They won't admit it but I'm pretty sure there's an intermittent internet link problem. When the link is fine, so is the download speed and streaming, but last night - crap.

Yes getting the same with Online. Fast ping but inconsistant download speeds. But I share the connection with about 8 more rooms and if one of those downloading torrents in the day it makes it frustrating!
We're considering putting in an extra line just for 4 of us (users).

just reread this... cheaper/easier to just put in a proper router (cisco) that will let you define quality of service settings.  then put your 4 users in the top priority list.  will throttle others down to perk you up.

[Gondal]

After a number of complaints Online has now put fibre to our house - about an 800m run from the node. Much better and consistent speed than Wimax - generally just over 1Mb down/up with pings of 7ms. Same cost as the Wimax - silver business plan $35/m - probably more than some but Online's service is pretty good, compared to most.