RAW DATA: December 2014 Urban Broadband Report - Vodafone Tops International Speed Test

(TrueNet is contracted to the Commerce Commission to monitor broadband performance. It uses a network of probes attached to 400 volunteers' internet connections to rate ISPs — Editor.)

ISPs are increasingly raising their performance across many of the regular TrueNet test measurements.   The exceptions include, ADSL & VDSL File Download speeds from the USA (Dallas) where Vodafone is well ahead of the rest, and the range of Latency results in this report.

The Quarterly Latency report shows Vodafone and Spark are best in Fibre, Snap and Vodafone in VDSL; while in ADSL the smaller ISPs of Flip, Bigpipe and Snap are all best by a large margin.  Domain Name Server reponse times (DNS) continue to be dominated by Snap, first in every region.

Australian ISPs have consistently poor performances in the webpage download categories, as well as in latency tests, even from sites in Australia.

Index

• Webpage Download Time
• International Download Speed
• NZ Download Speed
• Upload Speed
• Quarterly feature - DNS & Latency

Summary of Performance Measures

The following table is provided for summary only.

In the summary of performance measures below, Snap Fibre was the quickest ISP to download both New Zealand, and Australian live webpages (1.8sec. for NZ, and 0.7sec. for Australia).

Spark Fibre, and Vodafone Fibre had the lowest latency (29ms).

Snap achieved the best Domain Name Server (DNS) response times by region with a very low 8ms.

Webpage Download Time

Slow webpage downloads can be one of the most frustrating experiences when using the Internet.
TrueNet uses a selection of Live NZ and Australian internet Webpages to measure performance, measuring the full time taken to download all the files on the page.

NZ Live Webpages

As expected the faster technologies take considerably less time to download all of our sample NZ live webpages, with the slowest ADSL over 8 seconds, and the quickest Fibre less than 2 seconds.

In Chart 1, the overall winner in time taken to download Live NZ Webpages was Snap 100Mb/s Fibre, with Flip ADSL the slowest NZ ISP.  

Slingshot and Bigpipe lead the ADSL performance with almost identical results yet again. These two have dominated NZ webpage performance for many months.

Competitive pressure or chance? Flip ADSL was second best last month, and like Orcon ADSL has only reduced performance by a small margin of about 10%, but other ISPs including Snap, Spark, and Vodafone ADSL all improved performance by the same amount to pull ahead.

Vodafone, Snap & Bigpipe VDSL all showed superior speed again, with Vodafone and Snap dominating the best performance for some time, although they have now been matched by Bigpipe.

Australian Live Webpages

Time taken to download live Australian webpages follows the New Zealand trend with the quicker technologies proving to be considerably faster than the older ADSL.
Fibre 100Mb/s downloaded in less than 1 second, while ADSL took close to 3 seconds to download the five Australian live webpages.
In Chart 2, Snap 100Mb/s Fibre was quickest with a download speed of a scorching 0.7 seconds.
Spark ADSL was the slowest NZ ISP downloading in 2.7 seconds, surprisingly similar to the Australian ISPs TPG & iiNetwhich both seem to have problems downloading sites in their own country.
The biggest change in downloading Australian websites came from BigPipe VDSL which moved from 4th place in November to 1st place in December, knocking Vodafone VDSL from its top position.

Speed (File Download Performance)

For TrueNet's speed tests, each panelist's probe regularly downloads a 1MB file from Auckland, Wellington, Dallas and Sydney.
For national tests, the best Auckland or Wellington download speed result is used from each test run to compute a median hourly speed.  International tests represent the median hourly speed of each probe to Dallas & Sydney.

International File Download Speed

TrueNet has servers in Sydney and Dallas to measure performance from our international neighbours.
This test provides a comparison that can be used to understand the performance of each ISP when downloading a sample file from servers in similar locations.  We ensure the file is not held in New Zealand (cached) so that the test is international in nature. The speed test results selected are taken at  9PM, in the evening busy period.

Fibre & Cable

In Chart 3, the 100Mb/s Fibre results with speeds of around 60Mb/s are significantly faster than the slower Fibre and Cable technologies. Snap 100Mb/s Fibre has improved significantly since last month to be 1st equal with Orcon 100Mb/s Fibre.   

For the first time, all 30Mb/s fibre suppliers are achieving very close to 30Mb/s from our Sydney Server.

ADSL & VDSL

ADSL and VDSL International speed results are given in Chart 4.  We provide this chart as a percentage of the NZ speed because international performance is largely dependent on the speed of the connection, which in turn depends on the distance to the exchange, a factor the ISPs cannot influence.

Vodafone ADSL as well as VDSL are easily the best for file downloads from the USA leaving most other ISPs in their wake.  

• Peak hour ADSL speed averaged 80% of the off-peak speed where, although Slingshot reached 60%, many other ISPs achieved only 20%.  
• For VDSL, Vodafone averaged 60%, well above Slingshot second at 35%.
• Spark was third in both.

NZ File Download Speed

Comparing performance by time-of-day is important as it shows the service degradation when everyone is using the internet during the peak hours of 8pm to 10pm.  TrueNet uses the best of each pair of Auckland and Wellington downloads to calculate the median results by hour. 

High Speed (Fibre - Cable - VDSL) Comparison

Fibre advertised speeds are limited by the supply from some LFC's that provide 100Mb/s wholesale, which can only ever reach about 95Mb/s retail.  Some LFCs are now offering connections at 106Mb/s wholesale to overcome this limitation.

The number of fibre service product plans continues to increase with Vodafone adding a Cable 50Mb/s plan.  Download speeds now include 15Mb/s, 30Mb/s, 50Mb/s, 100Mb/s, 130Mb/s and 200Mb/s. 

In Chart 5, Vodafone Cable 130Mb/s is well ahead of other high speed plans, and is showing less time of day variation than in November. In contrast, Vodafone Fibre 100Mb/s is well under its advertised speed, failing to reach 50Mb/s when downloads are conducted from our servers.

Snap remains well ahead of Orcon for delivering consistent 100Mb/s fibre.  All 30Mb/s fibre plans are achieving close to the advertised speeds with very little difference between competing providers.

DSL Performance by Time of Day (ToD)

VDSL and ADSL testing is also based on the best of Auckland and Wellington downloads, as described above. DSL speed is strongly related to the length of the copper line between the user's modem, and the cabinet or Exchange.

VDSL File Download Speed

ADSL File Download Speed

In Chart 7, Flip ADSL is ranked 1st again, measuring a near perfect 99% of advertised speed. Bigpipe & Spark ADSL follow close behind with 98%.
Vodafone ADSL seems to have sorted out its big time of day variation achieving a respectable 96% of advertised speed, up from 92% in November.

The two Australian ISPs, TPG - a new addition to TrueNet’s performance publications, and iiNet both measured 95% of advertised speed.

Slingshot ADSL trailed in last spot for a second month running with a very deep dip in performance around 9pm in the evening.

Upload Speed Performance

Upload speed is important when sending files and content to the internet.  Upload speed impacts the time taken to upload a photo or synchronise data with the cloud.
TrueNet's upload test sends a 1MB file to our server in Wellington, and records the results using a similar method to the download tests, but measured from our Wellington server only.  We test Australian connections to Sydney.

By Technology

Upload Speed by ISP

Snap's 50Mb/s service has exceeded the advertised speed again this month, while  Orcon's average has dropped to below 40 Mb/s.
Amongst the 10Mb/s Upload services, the results are again almost identical.

Quarterly Feature - DNS & Latency

Latency

Latency is the time it takes for a packet of data to be returned by a remote server to a Volunteer's probe.
Latency can impact many internet activities.  Very poor Latency will make browsing the internet difficult if page requests fail due to timeouts.
High Latency can make gaming impossible, adding to reaction time, meaning that if someone else has lower Latency they may see a game change, and react well before a slower connection is able to show the change (ie you can be shot, and killed in a game before your computer shows the shooter).
TrueNet now publishes Latency tests to 6 locations - Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne, Dallas and the UK.

NZ Latency

In Chart 10, Vodafone Fibre takes the lead for New Zealand Latency performance with a speedy 29ms, closely followed by Spark Fibre.
Snap VDSL leads all other VDSL suppliers, while BigPipe has the lowest Latency for ADSL.
Slingshot ADSL has the highest Latency amongst New Zealand ISPs, with the two Australian ISPs, TPG and IINet, both exceeding 120ms. 

Chart 10: New Zealand Latency - by ISP and Technology

Australian Latency

Latency is measured to both Sydney and Melbourne, Vodafone Fibre achieves the lowest Latency overall.

Snap is best for VDSL providers, while BigPipe has the lowest Latency for ADSL.
Surprisingly, TPG has the poorest performance in spite of being domiciled in Australia.

US & UK Latency

Distance to the test locations in the US and UK has a profound effect on Latency performance with most ISPs exceeding 300ms to the U.S.  The worst latency results were again shown by the Australian ISPs, however Vodafone Cable while good for Australia, is worst for the U.S.  

Vodafone Fibre and VDSL, Spark Fibre, Snap VDSL, and Bigpipe ADSL are  consistently the best.

Domain Name Server (DNS) Response Time

Quick DNS Response Times improve the internet browsing experience of users. Very slow DNS responses can cause timeouts, making the internet almost unusable.

TrueNet measures the time taken to receive a response from all DNS servers that an ISP informs us they use (usually two). We record the best result overall for each hourly test as indicated in the charts below.

Following on from the last quarterly report, in Chart 13, Snap is consistently the best ISP for DNS response times from all regions.
Orcon had its best performance in Waikato/Bay of Plenty.
Snap had its best result in Canterbury.
Vodafone also had its best result in Canterbury.
Spark had its best result in Auckland, second only to Snap.
Slingshot’s best result was in Auckland, but they are the slowest to provide DNS in all southern regions.

Chart 14: Repeating last quarter, Fibre has the lowest DNS response time of the technologies tested, with Cable a close second. Both technologies are still well ahead of  ADSL/VDSL in our results.
Auckland had the best DNS response times of all the regions.