Cool Ideas Fibre ISP - Feedback

[ghostR]

Thanks for the heads-up. I am strongly considering using them once our fibre is up, and I've heard only good things so far, but I knew it was too good to be true. It's good to have an opinion from the other side of the coin before I make my decision.

Hmm, Interesting comment this. Tbh I wouldn't take one complaint on here out of the many compliments on the thread too seriously, especially when the complaint is regarding a dodgy EU nntp provider and not getting full speed, and if you look at other things such as how open CISP is, publishing their live network graphs on their website and being open if/when there is an issue instead of trying to hide it or pretend there isn't an issue like some other ISPs do.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Quick question. What router does cool idea supply when signing up for a100/100 line? I hope it support gigabit port

Yes it's gigabit. They supplied me with a TP-Link AC750 (http://www.tp-link.co.za/products/details/cat-9_Archer-C2.html), actually they sent me two by accident and had to send one back

 

[ghostR]

Yes it's gigabit. They supplied me with a TP-Link AC750 (http://www.tp-link.co.za/products/details/cat-9_Archer-C2.html), actually they sent me two by accident and had to send one back

Are you on 200mbps? For below 200mbps I'm sure they send out the TP-Link WR840N

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

Are you on 200mbps? For below 200mbps I'm sure they send out the TP-Link WR840N

Ye, I ordered the 200/200. I honestly don't know then.

 

[matthieup]

If it's a TP-Link WR840N I'll just send it back. It's gonna slow everything down

 

[Tinuva]

True, but as with everything there has to be a balance.
At some point, even on the best network, you will need support.

I completely agree. It is not that there is no support with CISP, its just that if that is the reason for leaving CISP I just have to shake my head...

 

[shreez]

Hmm, Interesting comment this. Tbh I wouldn't take one complaint on here out of the many compliments on the thread too seriously, especially when the complaint is regarding a dodgy EU nntp provider and not getting full speed, and if you look at other things such as how open CISP is, publishing their live network graphs on their website and being open if/when there is an issue instead of trying to hide it or pretend there isn't an issue like some other ISPs do.

It's not a dodgy provider, it's News Demon, and I have peaked at just over 11MB/s.

I'm not knocking CISPs network, however I was frustrated that I brought this up to support and it was not looked at.

 

[Tinuva]

It's not a dodgy provider, it's News Demon, and I have peaked at just over 11MB/s.

I'm not knocking CISPs network, however I was frustrated that I brought this up to support and it was not looked at.

I think you should combine 2 providers who can each achieve 100Mbps each and see if you can max your 200Mbps line.

Also your query is testing new waters, the 200Mbps lines are new and actually wanting to max them out is even something that was not easy to do with a single person when I worked at another ISP in my previous life.

Expecting quick support on this query is a bit unreasonable. It is going to take time to try and pin point why you not maxing your 200Mbps line. Definitely a first world problem.

 

[shreez]

I think you should combine 2 providers who can each achieve 100Mbps each and see if you can max your 200Mbps line.

Also your query is testing new waters, the 200Mbps lines are new and actually wanting to max them out is even something that was not easy to do with a single person when I worked at another ISP in my previous life.

Expecting quick support on this query is a bit unreasonable. It is going to take time to try and pin point why you not maxing your 200Mbps line. Definitely a first world problem.

Correction there bud, it's a 100Mb/s line, not 200Mb/s.

Also, I'm an ex network engineer so I know that these things take time; I am also fully aware of international transit and peering to 3rd parties which cannot be guaranteed.
My problem is that the first line guy ignored my information/responses on the ticket and did nothing for two weeks.
It is another matter entirely to expect instant resolution - that is not what I am asking for.

I would also not put something down to a "first world problem" if I taken the service and I am trying to make the most out of it.
There are a few bandwidth hungry tasks I need to complete now and then and I would prefer that my service performs when I need it to.

 

[savage]

It's not a dodgy provider, it's News Demon, and I have peaked at just over 11MB/s.

I'm not knocking CISPs network, however I was frustrated that I brought this up to support and it was not looked at.

You are approaching the type of speeds where latency will DRASTICALLY affect your download speeds. Because of the latencies, it takes longer to acknowledge TCP packets, and thus, it slows your connections down. It does unfortunately start to affect download speeds when TCP-ACK packets take long to arrive. The STREAMing extensions of NNTP (which speeds up Usenet drastically) is only supported between server to server peering, not between server to client connections.

That being said, even software, PCs, network devices, etc. for users in the EU, using EU based servers, needs to be severely tweaked to go faster. It's the way that the protocol works that essentially slows it down. Even for EU users with sub 10ms latency to the NNTP servers, getting more that ~100Mbps takes a lot of effort.

What you download (new / cached content vs. old content) will affect your speeds. New / Cached content is frequently put on fast SSD storage, whilst older content is placed on cheap, old SATA-3 drives. The one can obviously handle a lot more random IO than the other, and thus speeds can either increase or decrease based on where the content is coming from.

Frequently, when articles aren't found, providers will delay the not found error in order to stop the client from hammering the server. Again, there's a delay and it will slow your overall downloads down (even more so when there's a lot of articles not found).

Lastly, not directed at you of course. I take offence to the comment of "dodgy" networks. We are fairly small in the NNTP industry, and I can assure you there's nothing dodgy about the networks or infrastructure. We being a small player, sit with multiple 10G circuits, multiple racks full of servers (literally), and multiple public/private peering arrangements. At any given time, we push about 14Gbps+ in traffic... There's nothing dodgy, and nothing small, about usenet. Literally having racks and racks full of nothing but hard drives, isn't cheap...

If you can set your SAB logs to full debug (no confidential info is logged) and send me the log after you downloaded something I would more than likely be able to tell you what and why things are slow (if it's a SAB or server issue, at least). I would also suggest you try a different client (say Grabit) to just test and compare speeds, and if you do use SAB, that you upgrade to the latest versions. SAB has done enormous amounts of work in recent versions to optimize and speed up the decoders - there are drastic improvements in recent versions.

 

[ajan]

Jees, its only nntp. It's already 9/10 they in the ground, adapt with modern methods.

 

[shreez]

You are approaching the type of speeds where latency will DRASTICALLY affect your download speeds. Because of the latencies, it takes longer to acknowledge TCP packets, and thus, it slows your connections down. It does unfortunately start to affect download speeds when TCP-ACK packets take long to arrive. The STREAMing extensions of NNTP (which speeds up Usenet drastically) is only supported between server to server peering, not between server to client connections.

That being said, even software, PCs, network devices, etc. for users in the EU, using EU based servers, needs to be severely tweaked to go faster. It's the way that the protocol works that essentially slows it down. Even for EU users with sub 10ms latency to the NNTP servers, getting more that ~100Mbps takes a lot of effort.

What you download (new / cached content vs. old content) will affect your speeds. New / Cached content is frequently put on fast SSD storage, whilst older content is placed on cheap, old SATA-3 drives. The one can obviously handle a lot more random IO than the other, and thus speeds can either increase or decrease based on where the content is coming from.

Frequently, when articles aren't found, providers will delay the not found error in order to stop the client from hammering the server. Again, there's a delay and it will slow your overall downloads down (even more so when there's a lot of articles not found).

Lastly, not directed at you of course. I take offence to the comment of "dodgy" networks. We are fairly small in the NNTP industry, and I can assure you there's nothing dodgy about the networks or infrastructure. We being a small player, sit with multiple 10G circuits, multiple racks full of servers (literally), and multiple public/private peering arrangements. At any given time, we push about 14Gbps+ in traffic... There's nothing dodgy, and nothing small, about usenet. Literally having racks and racks full of nothing but hard drives, isn't cheap...

If you can set your SAB logs to full debug (no confidential info is logged) and send me the log after you downloaded something I would more than likely be able to tell you what and why things are slow (if it's a SAB or server issue, at least). I would also suggest you try a different client (say Grabit) to just test and compare speeds, and if you do use SAB, that you upgrade to the latest versions. SAB has done enormous amounts of work in recent versions to optimize and speed up the decoders - there are drastic improvements in recent versions.

Hi Chris,

Thank you for the incredibly informative response.
There are obviously many issues which I have not considered which you have mentioned.

With regard to your service, do you offer trial accounts? I'd love to try you guys out!
Thanks, I will setup SAB to log on debug next time I initiate a download and send it through to you.
I've only ever used SAB and I've been very happy with it. On ADSL (I know, it's a much smaller scale) I was able to get a constant 1MB/s so I kind of expected a similar kind of ratio to download speed (around 10MB/s).

 

[shreez]

Jees, its only nntp. It's already 9/10 they in the ground, adapt with modern methods.

I doubt you've ever tried NNTP.
Yes, it is old technology but it is far from dead.

Tell me, does your Torrent provider offer you 256bit AES encryption while you download?
It is a far safer and more efficient way to download. While it is not perfect, you do not have to rely on others to constantly seed it.

 

[savage]

With regard to your service, do you offer trial accounts? I'd love to try you guys out!

All new accounts comes with the first 4GB free... You can just sign up as per normal through the web site if you're interested.

 

[sand_man]

I doubt you've ever tried NNTP.
Yes, it is old technology but it is far from dead.

Tell me, does your Torrent provider offer you 256bit AES encryption while you download?
It is a far safer and more efficient way to download. While it is not perfect, you do not have to rely on others to constantly seed it.

I doubt torrenting is considered a modern method either.

Streaming seems to be the way of doing it in the 21st century. Netflix, Hulu, Showmax, Kodi/Covenant etc depending on content being consumed of course..

 

[requiem]

You are approaching the type of speeds where latency will DRASTICALLY affect your download speeds. Because of the latencies, it takes longer to acknowledge TCP packets, and thus, it slows your connections down. It does unfortunately start to affect download speeds when TCP-ACK packets take long to arrive. The STREAMing extensions of NNTP (which speeds up Usenet drastically) is only supported between server to server peering, not between server to client connections.

That being said, even software, PCs, network devices, etc. for users in the EU, using EU based servers, needs to be severely tweaked to go faster. It's the way that the protocol works that essentially slows it down. Even for EU users with sub 10ms latency to the NNTP servers, getting more that ~100Mbps takes a lot of effort.

What you download (new / cached content vs. old content) will affect your speeds. New / Cached content is frequently put on fast SSD storage, whilst older content is placed on cheap, old SATA-3 drives. The one can obviously handle a lot more random IO than the other, and thus speeds can either increase or decrease based on where the content is coming from.

Frequently, when articles aren't found, providers will delay the not found error in order to stop the client from hammering the server. Again, there's a delay and it will slow your overall downloads down (even more so when there's a lot of articles not found).

Lastly, not directed at you of course. I take offence to the comment of "dodgy" networks. We are fairly small in the NNTP industry, and I can assure you there's nothing dodgy about the networks or infrastructure. We being a small player, sit with multiple 10G circuits, multiple racks full of servers (literally), and multiple public/private peering arrangements. At any given time, we push about 14Gbps+ in traffic... There's nothing dodgy, and nothing small, about usenet. Literally having racks and racks full of nothing but hard drives, isn't cheap...

If you can set your SAB logs to full debug (no confidential info is logged) and send me the log after you downloaded something I would more than likely be able to tell you what and why things are slow (if it's a SAB or server issue, at least). I would also suggest you try a different client (say Grabit) to just test and compare speeds, and if you do use SAB, that you upgrade to the latest versions. SAB has done enormous amounts of work in recent versions to optimize and speed up the decoders - there are drastic improvements in recent versions.

Absolutely not true.

I get >100MBps easily on my server in Europe. (1Gbps connection)

 

[Ho3n3r]

Hmm, Interesting comment this. Tbh I wouldn't take one complaint on here out of the many compliments on the thread too seriously, especially when the complaint is regarding a dodgy EU nntp provider and not getting full speed, and if you look at other things such as how open CISP is, publishing their live network graphs on their website and being open if/when there is an issue instead of trying to hide it or pretend there isn't an issue like some other ISPs do.

Nah. If you network works fine 99% of the time, but the one time it breaks and you need support, it takes almost a month to even give feedback, it annoys the hell out of me. It's the exact reason I moved away from AH on ADSL. Support and network performance need to be equal. No use your network works well, but your support is a couple of mongs.

 

[shreez]

Nah. If you network works fine 99% of the time, but the one time it breaks and you need support, it takes almost a month to even give feedback, it annoys the hell out of me. It's the exact reason I moved away from AH on ADSL. Support and network performance need to be equal. No use your network works well, but your support is a couple of mongs.

Thank you.
I'm not trying to drag anyone down here (PBCool has been assisting me via PMs).

My point is that I should not have to login to the forum to get support.
I've followed the process and there is a ticket open. I should not have to chase up on this myself.
Ghost you seem to be living in some form of Uptopian world.

If I had access I'd try and fix it myself. The reality is that I don't, so I need support.

 

[DERoestorf]

Nah. If you network works fine 99% of the time, but the one time it breaks and you need support, it takes almost a month to even give feedback, it annoys the hell out of me. It's the exact reason I moved away from AH on ADSL. Support and network performance need to be equal. No use your network works well, but your support is a couple of mongs.

The issue that Shreez brought up is an uncommon issue, with a lot more complexity to it than any standard user would ever log.

For the standard user, and the breaks you speak of, their response time for me has been brilliant.

Even with my fibre line issue I currently have with VUMA, they are going out of their way to help me.

For me, their service is excellent, and any issues I have had, has generally been sorted out in a matter of hours, not days.

 

[shreez]

All new accounts comes with the first 4GB free... You can just sign up as per normal through the web site if you're interested.

thanks