Hallelujah! Unleashed at last

Having effectively proven that neither it nor any other item of my own hardware was to blame for my internet disconnection problems, I returned the replacement D-Link DSL-G604T wireless ADSL router Xtra sent me. It was, however, still possible that the router was incompatible with some of Telecom’s own hardware, even though it was not solely the cause of the disconnections.

On Thursday 7 December Telecom replaced the card after all (or changed the port at the exchange — I’m not exactly sure which, due to conflicting information from Downer Engineering and Telecom Advanced’s technicians). No one bothered to call and warn me on the morning they made whatever change it was. So instead of my customary five-minutes of connection, interspersed with two minutes of disconnection, I had nothing all morning; could not send or receive email, generally had no idea what was going on. I called the Xtra help desk and, following completion of the job, in a classic bit of reactive customer service, a Downer engineer called to tell me what had been done.

Nevertheless, as far as I’m aware, we haven’t suffered a single disconnection since. A couple of websites have been briefly inaccessible, but not as a result of an ADSL dropout.

On the morning of Monday 11 December, Telecom began another 48-hour test to monitor the stability of my line following the change. The latest test was due to finish around noon today. Mark Thomas (Xtra Broadband help desk team-leader) says the preliminary results are “good” and that he will email me some details on the completion of the test.

I’ve been testing my own broadband download and upload speeds using a variety of online modules for the last month or so. Unfortunately, I don’t have any comparison speeds prior to the ‘unleashing’, but on 6 November I was on a measly 936kbps local download and 132kbps upload, running this speed test module. On this test on 6 November I scored 1039kbps download and 135kbps upload, with a latency of 103ms.

By 20 November, I was at just 386kbps download and 128kbps upload here (depending on which overseas server I chose); 968kbps and 128kbps here; and 806kbps and 136kbps here (ping: 90ms).

However, by today, 19 December, our speeds are as follows:

• speedtest.net: 2086kbps download; 136kbps upload; 81ms latency
• NZDSL: 1822kbps download; 131 upload
• Speakeasy.net: 488kbps download; 128kbps upload (using the Seattle, WA server); 477kbps download; 129kbps upload (using the LA, CA server)

I’m now reasonably happy that Telecom has fixed our ADSL disconnection problem. But I’d like to hear from them exactly what the problem was — and why it took them so long to get to the bottom of it when a) so many NZ internet users seem to be having very similar problems and b) it appears to have had its roots at Telecom’s exchange all along.