Hello everyone,
I have been on ANI Broadband since around June 2019 and I would like to share my experience with them.
Context: My LCO offers three seperate ISP Plans, Precious Netcomm, ANI and more recently they started offering DEN. I was on their Precious Netcomm plans from around February to May , I switched from Excitel because they had very high downtimes, bad speeds to non-peered servers and packet loss; I had a great experience with Precious Netcomm , they had very low downtimes, low to no packet loss and decent speeds to non-peered servers, speeds were still not that good to international servers. I called up my LCO and asked them if they had any better plans because I got sub par speeds to international servers and they told me to switch to their FTTH plans which run on a different backbone (ANI) with good international speeds.
Installation:
LCO men came 3 days before my Precious Netcomm ethernet plan expired and installed the fiber and the Gigabit ONT (I specifically asked for one without WiFi). They charged Rs. 1000 for installation. The ONU they installed was a Syrotech EPON 1000-R. Here are the pictures. Here are the pictures of the Fiber Termination Box along with ONU.
They did a good job with installation, no complaints here, the ONU Power and stuff is within limits (can't provide screenshot because its in bridge mode).
Plans:
I'm currently on ANI 100Mbps plan for Rs. 2500 a month (Rs. 2000 for Internet and Rs. 500 for the Public static IP). Its much more expensive compared to other local providers such as Excitel, Comway , DEN or Precious Netcomm so I had much higher expectations.
They don't have FUP on their plans, I download around 1-2TB a month and they don't throttle me a bit.
They also offer Telephone over Fiber services for Rs. 500 extra a month or if you prepay 6 months but I didn't opt for that feature so I can't say much about it.
Public Static IP:
ANI is the only ISP in my neighborhood (other than MTNL) that has offered me a public static IP (though at an additonal cost of Rs. 500 a month). They provide public IP using One to One Static NAT which means I have to type in a local IP in 10.0.0.0/8 subnet and my actual public IP will mirror that local IP. This means I can open whatever ports I want and setup whatever services I want on my network and have it exposed to the public internet and access it from anywhere. I love this feature and I missed it a lot when I switched from MTNL (who provide public static IP) to Excitel. This feature alone makes it much harder to switch to an ISP that doesn't offer Public IP.
Speedtest Results:
Here are the speedtest results:
The speeds never seem burst above 100Mbit even though these tests were done connected to a PC by Gigabit Ethernet. Though I have seen some public torrents burst to around 20MB/sec.
Fast.com for some reasons shows 170-200Mbit download speeds. I think this is because fast pulls data from both transit (Airtel) and peered servers.
Upload speeds on Speedtest are a bit messy with ANI. I can't figure out the exact reason.
I'm perfectly satisfied with the service
Routing/Latency/Packet Loss:
I don't play much multiplayer games but I don't see much lag on EU Minecraft Servers or GTA Online. If you want me to traceroute any specific server message me or comment down below. Here are some common traceroutes:
Google DNS:
DigitalOcean SG:
CloudFlare DNS:
Here is a reverse traceroute to my IP from a Leaseweb server:
ANI uses Airtel Backbone for transit.
Routing to CloudFlare is messed up since a few months. Earlier, traceroutes to 1.1.1.1 go through Airtel and latency was <6ms. But after Cloudflare joined Mumbai IX , traffic started going through there because of which latency increased a lot. CF powered pages also take slightly longer to load.
Reliablity:
ANI has been one of the most reliable ISPs from my experience. It had around no major downtimes (more than 2 hours). Most of the link downs were small and lasted only maximum 15 minutes or so. This is excellent compared to Excitel which often had huge downtimes lasting more than 4 hours.
It also had no general packet loss but I did have an issue with Cloudflare and Cloudflare powered sites having occasionally high packet loss and latency spikes.
There was also some minor problems with some US Servers having 300ms latency compared to <250ms on my old ISP, though this was most likely an Airtel backbone issue.
Throttling:
I haven't found any throttling on Ani. Usually when files start downloading speeds burst to around 20MB/s before going back down to normal 12MB/s after a few seconds.
I haven't noticed any throttling on torrents either. Any decent public torrent maxes out my connection. Another plus is that because I have a static IP, I can open a port specifically for my torrent client so that I'm completely connect able on private trackers.
DNS Hijacking:
Another plus, I didn't think of when I was initially writing this is that Ani doesn't force their own DNS on their users, which means I'm able to use whatever DNS Service I want unlike ISPs like Excitel who will hijack your DNS to theirs even if you change it on your router or OS (Unless you use encrypted DNS).
Censorship:
Adult and piracy related sites are blocked on ANI with unencrypted HTTP just like pretty much any other ISP but some ISPs like JIO and Den go through another level and block sites even when using Https. This isn't the case with ANI or most of lesser known providers like Excitel or Comway.
Support:
I have never had to contact ANI directly when I have any issue. If my internet goes down I just message the LCO on WhatsApp and they fix it very quickly. LCO has always helped me out promptly . I also make monthly bill payments to the LCO by UPI or Paytm rather than through ANI Website.
Conclusion:
ANI is definitely the best among the ISPs I have tried such as Excitel, Comway, MTNL, DEN (Coax) and Precious Netcomm.
Pros:
1. Good international download speeds
2. Very good reliability with minimal downtime and packet loss
3. Good experience with support
4. Public Static IP (though at extra cost)
5. No DNS Hijacking
6. No https site blocking
Cons:
1. Latency and speed issues with CloudFlare hosted sites
2. Iffy upload speeds ( I haven't tried uploading any big files outside of peered sites like Google but speedtest results always show much slower uploads compared to downloads)
3 . Significantly more expensive compared to ISPs such as Excitel, DEN etc.
Meh:
1. I wish ANI had IPv6 support but at that point I would be asking for too much
Thanks.
I have been on ANI Broadband since around June 2019 and I would like to share my experience with them.
Context: My LCO offers three seperate ISP Plans, Precious Netcomm, ANI and more recently they started offering DEN. I was on their Precious Netcomm plans from around February to May , I switched from Excitel because they had very high downtimes, bad speeds to non-peered servers and packet loss; I had a great experience with Precious Netcomm , they had very low downtimes, low to no packet loss and decent speeds to non-peered servers, speeds were still not that good to international servers. I called up my LCO and asked them if they had any better plans because I got sub par speeds to international servers and they told me to switch to their FTTH plans which run on a different backbone (ANI) with good international speeds.
Installation:
LCO men came 3 days before my Precious Netcomm ethernet plan expired and installed the fiber and the Gigabit ONT (I specifically asked for one without WiFi). They charged Rs. 1000 for installation. The ONU they installed was a Syrotech EPON 1000-R. Here are the pictures. Here are the pictures of the Fiber Termination Box along with ONU.
They did a good job with installation, no complaints here, the ONU Power and stuff is within limits (can't provide screenshot because its in bridge mode).
Plans:
I'm currently on ANI 100Mbps plan for Rs. 2500 a month (Rs. 2000 for Internet and Rs. 500 for the Public static IP). Its much more expensive compared to other local providers such as Excitel, Comway , DEN or Precious Netcomm so I had much higher expectations.
They don't have FUP on their plans, I download around 1-2TB a month and they don't throttle me a bit.
They also offer Telephone over Fiber services for Rs. 500 extra a month or if you prepay 6 months but I didn't opt for that feature so I can't say much about it.
Public Static IP:
ANI is the only ISP in my neighborhood (other than MTNL) that has offered me a public static IP (though at an additonal cost of Rs. 500 a month). They provide public IP using One to One Static NAT which means I have to type in a local IP in 10.0.0.0/8 subnet and my actual public IP will mirror that local IP. This means I can open whatever ports I want and setup whatever services I want on my network and have it exposed to the public internet and access it from anywhere. I love this feature and I missed it a lot when I switched from MTNL (who provide public static IP) to Excitel. This feature alone makes it much harder to switch to an ISP that doesn't offer Public IP.
Speedtest Results:
Here are the speedtest results:
The speeds never seem burst above 100Mbit even though these tests were done connected to a PC by Gigabit Ethernet. Though I have seen some public torrents burst to around 20MB/sec.
Fast.com for some reasons shows 170-200Mbit download speeds. I think this is because fast pulls data from both transit (Airtel) and peered servers.
Upload speeds on Speedtest are a bit messy with ANI. I can't figure out the exact reason.
I'm perfectly satisfied with the service
Routing/Latency/Packet Loss:
I don't play much multiplayer games but I don't see much lag on EU Minecraft Servers or GTA Online. If you want me to traceroute any specific server message me or comment down below. Here are some common traceroutes:
Google DNS:
DigitalOcean SG:
CloudFlare DNS:
Here is a reverse traceroute to my IP from a Leaseweb server:
ANI uses Airtel Backbone for transit.
Routing to CloudFlare is messed up since a few months. Earlier, traceroutes to 1.1.1.1 go through Airtel and latency was <6ms. But after Cloudflare joined Mumbai IX , traffic started going through there because of which latency increased a lot. CF powered pages also take slightly longer to load.
Reliablity:
ANI has been one of the most reliable ISPs from my experience. It had around no major downtimes (more than 2 hours). Most of the link downs were small and lasted only maximum 15 minutes or so. This is excellent compared to Excitel which often had huge downtimes lasting more than 4 hours.
It also had no general packet loss but I did have an issue with Cloudflare and Cloudflare powered sites having occasionally high packet loss and latency spikes.
There was also some minor problems with some US Servers having 300ms latency compared to <250ms on my old ISP, though this was most likely an Airtel backbone issue.
Throttling:
I haven't found any throttling on Ani. Usually when files start downloading speeds burst to around 20MB/s before going back down to normal 12MB/s after a few seconds.
I haven't noticed any throttling on torrents either. Any decent public torrent maxes out my connection. Another plus is that because I have a static IP, I can open a port specifically for my torrent client so that I'm completely connect able on private trackers.
DNS Hijacking:
Another plus, I didn't think of when I was initially writing this is that Ani doesn't force their own DNS on their users, which means I'm able to use whatever DNS Service I want unlike ISPs like Excitel who will hijack your DNS to theirs even if you change it on your router or OS (Unless you use encrypted DNS).
Censorship:
Adult and piracy related sites are blocked on ANI with unencrypted HTTP just like pretty much any other ISP but some ISPs like JIO and Den go through another level and block sites even when using Https. This isn't the case with ANI or most of lesser known providers like Excitel or Comway.
Support:
I have never had to contact ANI directly when I have any issue. If my internet goes down I just message the LCO on WhatsApp and they fix it very quickly. LCO has always helped me out promptly . I also make monthly bill payments to the LCO by UPI or Paytm rather than through ANI Website.
Conclusion:
ANI is definitely the best among the ISPs I have tried such as Excitel, Comway, MTNL, DEN (Coax) and Precious Netcomm.
Pros:
1. Good international download speeds
2. Very good reliability with minimal downtime and packet loss
3. Good experience with support
4. Public Static IP (though at extra cost)
5. No DNS Hijacking
6. No https site blocking
Cons:
1. Latency and speed issues with CloudFlare hosted sites
2. Iffy upload speeds ( I haven't tried uploading any big files outside of peered sites like Google but speedtest results always show much slower uploads compared to downloads)
3 . Significantly more expensive compared to ISPs such as Excitel, DEN etc.
Meh:
1. I wish ANI had IPv6 support but at that point I would be asking for too much
Thanks.
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