God this forum is full of "Which isp is best?" Which one is it? Netvigator vs Icable vs HGC?
We supply network equipment to lots of these ISPs and get know how they work.
Judging which one is best is based on what your criteria is:
- Availability
- Customer Service
- Recovery rate
- Raw Throughput
- Routing reach.
- Latency/responsiveness.
- Price
- Consistency
- Level of non revenue services
So coming out and asking which ISP is best for video conferencing is a dumb question to ask.
My view on the big ISPs rate very badly in:
Availability: They go down all the bloody time.
Customer Service: Waiiiii.... yau meh bondo lei? "Pleash waich" (CLICK), they hung up.
Recovery Rate: When they go down, their networks are so big that trying to report a problem is impossible to pin point, plus the customer service is so big that getting to the person that knows what needs fixing and how is impossible.
Consistentcy: Some days they are fast, some days they are so slow they are unusable.
Routing Reach: They can't see big chunks of the internet. Even intra HK, they fail to see other ISPs through HKIX.
Non revenue services: Services that are not the Internet access suck, Eg. their email services.
So what is going for them?
- Price: HK people will sign up for the best and then wonder why there is no one that understand what you are talking about. PLEASE STOP BEING NAIVE!
- Throughputs. They have got fat networks, very fast switches and can give you great throughputs. But if you are on a part that is congested, you are screwed. No one will fix it or upgrade or do anything about it until it is scheduled for upgrade or what ever.
Some of you maybe thinking "oh it works fine for me", but that is because you only using your circuit maybe 4 hours per day. Then one day when it goes down at home, you think its rubbish and for your HK$168 you should be getting a lot more.
There are other ISPs
http://www.hkix.net/hkix/connected.html in HK. But the big ones have such marketing machines which has drowned the other existance of other players in the market.
Then we also have the total lie that smaller ISPs that use PCCW circuits are reselling their bandwidth. This lie is something that the press has picked up and pushed for year after year. In fact many ISPs you can get will use a PCCW modem to connect you to their network. Only at ATM or PPPoE level you are going on the PCCW network... which PCCW does manage relatively well...for the IP access you are better of using another provider.
For our Internet Email services I've learned 10 years ago not to use a single ISP so our servers are dual homed. We use Diyixian and Netfront. Diyixian in 5 years has had an unplanned outage twice, their network reach (BGP routing) is amazing is the best in town. If you are hosting servers or providing services, you should be using them.
Netfront is value for money (far more expensive than the big boys), but their customer service is amazing. The first guy you speak to knows what he is talking about and under 1 minute you are off the phone.
Netvigator vs Icable vs HGC... you are comparing poor with poor with poor service.... but yeah its a great price. So just accept you are part of the herd.
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