Fibertel vs Arnet

[MCSE]

I have had Speedy for a few years.

I wish the other service providers (Multicanal or Edesur) gave half as good a service!

Just to clarify: Speedy is only available as a DSL service when a Telefonica landline is present. Speedy is the DSL service for Telefonica, as Arnet is the DSL service for Telecom.

It's not possible to install a Telefonica landline in Barrio Norte, Palermo, Belgrano, since that's Telecom territory. I don;t know their exact distribution but I know that in San Telmo is only possible to install Telefonica, consequently, Speedy and Arnet is not available.

[Aqualung]

I have Speedy Duo 3mbps which accuses 3.5 or 3.8 most of the time. This includes limitless local phone calls and I have a special pack that for 11 pesos allows me 40 minutes a month to the US.

I have had Speedy for a few years (since it came out) and only once was I left without connection for 3 days. The technician came twice and finally they discovered the problem in the local central station. I was given a discount for the three days. Another time lightening struck the central and I was without connection for a day (I was also given a discount for this)

I wish the other service providers (Multicanal or Edesur) gave half as good a service!

[BadMan]

I have used Arnet in the past and Fibertel recently.

Arnet's customer service sucks ass. Fibertel is slightly better.

Fibertel's internet connection and speed is just as good if not better that Arnet's IMHO. And I haven't " not " had internet the entire time since I signed up. So far Fibertel has met all expectations.

But then again, I don't employ a slingbox, so I wouldn't know about that.

I don't think there is a " best " and " worst ". I think it is mostly hit and miss. Their service is comparable overall. What makes the difference is customer service and tech support, when something does go wrong. My experience with Arnet was quite lackluster in this regard.

I was happy with Arnet for over 2 years until I had a problem, and then it took their tech support team more than a week to fix the problem and only after repeated calls from my part. So everything is usually roses until you have a problem. But this seems to be the case with everything in Argentina.

Regards,

BM.

[Rock Harders]

Monger,

About a month ago, I had one of my employees call fibertel to inquire about getting a dedicated T1 type line installed at my business. Apparently, they have a separate division that deals with dedicated lines, and you tell them the bandwidth you want, with prices in USD starting around $400 per month. However, my employee explained to the Fibertel representative why we wanted the additional dedicated bandwidth (for streaming video) and also explained to the representative that we knew they were limiting the video packets being received. Coincidence of not, the very next day, we began getting consistant 1200 KBS video streams (1.2 MBS) 24 hours a day. This combined with the 5 MBS upload speed I have in NJ from a fiberoptic line makes for a picture that is 95% as good as the satellite.

Suerte,

Rock Harders

[Rainot]

Arnet is definitely better than Fibertel, and in my opinion the best ISP for the home user nowadays. I've had Arnet for over 6 years, and the only problems I've had were disconnections, but like once a year for a few hours. No biggie.

[Thomaso276]

I have had Arnet DSL, 5 megs, for about one month. I consistently receive about 400 kbs for my slingbox (max would be 512) and the service goes down for about 3 seconds on occasion (meaning I have to restart the slingbox - no big deal) but has never been out for hours. Overall I am VERY happy with it.

Fibertel continues to have slow and inconsistent speeds and yesterday was off for over an hour. I have cut back from 3 meg to 2 meg service and will probably drop to 1 in the future to save more money (for personal reasons I want the DSL dedicated to my TV options and fibertel for another computer in the house that can be used for more mundane internet needs.

Recommendation: Arnet

[Easy Go]

I ran across a couple or articles that people might find interesting. The first is mostly about why the sky is not falling as far as backbone Internet capacity. But what I found most interesting was the cost of interconnect in Latin America. It's only one data point, but interconnect is 7x more expensive in Sao Paulo than San Francisco and I bet it's even higher in BA. But it's still pretty cheap at 1Gbps for $70K / month in SP but that still might be above the budget for at least a few of us.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...bandwidth.html

The second is about the mechanism of pricing and carrying interconnect. If you have an interest in the details, it's a good place to start.

http://arstechnica.com/guides/other/...nd-transit.ars

My file sync program (MS Foldershare) stopped working so I switched to an FTP-based solution and my throughput is up to 200KBps so either 1) there was a network problem that got fixed, 2) Foldershare is having a problem that effected throughput, or 3) Foldershare sucks on high latency networks. Since two out of the three possibilities involve Foldershare, I think I'll just find a replacement.

[Thomaso276]

"but the way back is congested due to Argies using P2P to download movies, MP3's etc."

That I think is the big problem. Local boards say there is a filter to slow down these feed.

[Easy Go]

That's all true but since I don't expect to even try to motivate Fibertel to do jack shit about anything I might find, I'm not going to do anything more in-depth than a few pings and tracerts for my own (perhaps misguided) amusement.

Throughput still sucks at 3am.

If I lived here, I'd definitely be looking at alternatives.

[Seaman]

I did a tracert back to my home server and things went south as soon as the packets passed though the gateway (GW-62. Fibertel. Com. Ar) between Fibertel and the upstream Internet provider (Global Crossing) Lots and lots of timeouts at that point. So either Global Crossing has congestion problems on that link or there's a technical problem causing packet loss. Once it crossed the link to TenGigabitEthernet3-4. Ar3. Ez1. Gblx. Net, everything was fine.

If you want to measure packet loss you have to test end-to-end. Routers give a very low priority to ping requests so it looks like they are failing, while they are just busy doing the thing they need to do! If the router would drop packets then you would see that also with a ping through the router to the other end. But you indicate yourself that the pings to the other end were fine, so that means the router is not dropping packets, it is just ignoring ping requests. You normally see that with routers which are running over 50% of their capacity. Some routers are configured not to respond to ping requests.

A traceroute will tell some things to the experienced person, but will not tell that much to a regular user. If you have a linux / unix box to your disposal install MTR on the box and use that to trace. Then you can see how many links are actually in use between different routers and that way you can see what the capacity is of that particular link. Also a reverse traceroute can tell you a lot about the link. It is very well possible that a packet from your laptop / pc / whatever to the other end follows a different route than the packet from the other end to your laptop / pc / whatever. Sometimes it is not the upstream but the downstream.

In Argentina's case where the outside world bandwidth is limited you will see that the packet from you to the US is getting there fine, but the way back is congested due to Argies using P2P to download movies, MP3's etc.

[Easy Go]

I arrived this morning and started using a Fibertel connection. It was fine in the morning but started slowing in the afternoon until it got to the "barely usable" level at about 7pm. It has recovered a bit by now (8:15pm) but still at about 15% of the peak. Getting 10kBs download at the moment.

I did a tracert back to my home server and things went south as soon as the packets passed though the gateway (GW-62. Fibertel. Com. Ar) between Fibertel and the upstream Internet provider (Global Crossing) Lots and lots of timeouts at that point. So either Global Crossing has congestion problems on that link or there's a technical problem causing packet loss. Once it crossed the link to TenGigabitEthernet3-4. Ar3. Ez1. Gblx. Net, everything was fine.

Open a command line and do a tracert to your slingbox. Compare the routes taken when connected to Fibertel vs Arnet and see if anything jumps out as a strange. If it is an international issue, you'll see it in the first few hops.

[Thomaso276]

Got the Arnet modem 2 days after the phone call. Got the 5 meg service. Set it up only for my laptop / tv / slingbox setup. Consistent 350-400 kbps for the slingbox feed. Gives me a very good picture, not digital but very watchable for all shows, including sports.

Fiebertel continued starting out in the morning at 380 and then losing speed about every 2 hours. Right now, 730pm slingbox feed on fibertel is 110. Just watchable for news, tv programs, no sports. Below 100 it is almost unwatchable.

I will probably keep both for awhile to monitor their service.

[El Queso]

FiberTel to Miami
10/3/2008 8:54 PM GMT 845 kb / s 77 kb / s 330 ms Miami, FL ~ 4350 mi.

To Americana, Brasil
10/3/2008 9:02 PM GMT 1542 kb / s 257 kb / s 65 ms Americana ~ 1100 mi.

To Caxias do Sol Brasil
10/3/2008 9:01 PM GMT 466 kb / s 152 kb / s 725 ms Caxias do Sul ~ 550 mi.

To Santiago
10/3/2008 9:00 PM GMT 3011 kb / s 254 kb / s 90 ms Santiago ~ 700 mi.

It depends on where you want to go, it looks like. My Miami numbers are way down too, though not as low as Jackson's. Santiago is still up pretty high, though not all the way.

[El Queso]

Looks like you're getting about 9% of what you should be getting.

[Jackson]

I was intending to post a another CableVision speed test, but as usual, my CableVision connection just stopped working in the middle of the day, in this case it was still down 2 hours later.

For those of you new to the thread, this happens with my Cablevision connection several times a week.

Anyway, I switched to my Telecom / Arnet 5 Meg DSL with the following results:

10/3/2008 8:21 PM GMT 450 kb / s 183 kb / s 448 ms Miami, FL.
10/3/2008 8:20 PM GMT 486 kb / s 182 kb / s 446 ms Miami, FL.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't look anywhere near 5 meg.

Thanks,

Jackson