Considering buying Spectra. Need some advice

Yes, BitTorrent is probably the only protocol they throttle, besides not many people download from Usenet these days.
Although, BitTorrent shouldn't be a problem if you got a SeedBox/VPN.

Also, a little worthy side note - from the looks of it I believe they block incoming ports, no dice after messing with the port-forwarding settings on my router, my plans of setting up a dedicated Plex Server went kaput :confused: maybe someone else has more knowledge regarding this, I'm not doing the port-forwarding right ?

P.S : I'll post here if I come across any hitches :) It's been only 11 days since I got the connection, consumed over 1TB :p
 
@Absinthe - Unfortunately, they use NAT (Carrier-grade NAT - Wikipedia), so whatever you do on your end won't work. It's similar to what your router does, shares the IP address provided by the ISP to multiple clients behind your router through NAT. Spectra (and most other providers these days) do the same thing on a larger scale and shares a pool of public IP addresses to a larger number of customers using NAT as IPv4 addresses are limited.

For port forwarding to work in this scenario, the ISP would also need to forward the ports from the public IP address to your private IP address given my Spectra, which may not be really feasible. Long story short, you cannot access your devices from the public internet in the conventional way.
 
Thank you guys for all the information. I have been thinking of shifting soon and was considering moving to a location that has Spectra, but I want bittorrent and open ports so it looks like I will have to reconsider.

Have any of you asked them about IPV6 deployment? One way to get around blocked ports on IPV4 carrier grade NAT is to tunnel over IPV6 and that may be an option in the future.
 
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I am also thinking of re-shifting to a location where a good quality of internet connection available, from my past experience I have seen that in Bangalore ACT is everywhere especially in small buildings where Spectra was not available. Airtel was also available widely. Every home I came across had either ACT or Airtel or in some places You Broadband banners in the gates. Also when I was there last time I used ACT through my PG's WIFI network. The problem was I faced many downtimes a week, maybe it was because of their fault AP Server in the PG. But one thing is when the connection is ok, the speed is consistent. It was almost until 2016 June, when I left Bangalore.

Now as I am looking back to move back again to the city in few months I have to consider a place where good internet connection available. My requirements are: 100 Mbps+, Monthly minimum bandwidth needed: 1.5 TB

Any information would be highly appreciated.
 
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So far in Bangalore I've used Hathway (in two different areas), Act and Spectra.

Hathway
Uptime was pretty ok, occasional downtimes due to cable cuts etc, however the performance really sucked in both the areas where I used Hathway. Speeds were never consistent, and performance was sluggish, video streaming buffered most of the time. I would NOT go for Hathway again.

Act
Never had any major issues, the connection and installation experience was quick and good. Speeds were consistent always, quick and response always. No issues with video streaming. Uptime was pretty great too, if I remember correctly over the 7 months or so that I was on Act, there were downtimes due to cable cut about 3-4 times, and all except one was fixed the same day after registering a complaint with their App. The other was a major fibre cut somewhere due to the rain/wind and it took 24 hours to be resolved (opened ticket at around 1 PM, but was fixed only the next day around noon).

Act mostly terminates the fibre at a common location in the area and then from there runs ethernet to your house. I am guessing they'd have a 8/12 port gigabit switch which shares a 1 Gigabit fibre link, so depending on the usage of the other customers sharing the same switch, you may experience issues. Again this is purely my hypothesis.

Also, the service seems to vary area to area, from what I gather from some of the posts in this forum.

Spectra
I've shared my installation and other experience in this thread. Its been only 10 days or so since I got the connection, so far everything has been great. Its unmetered, so you don't have to worry about usage thresholds which I like very much, not that I keep downloading until it bleeds. The fact that you don't need to think whether doing something would cause you to go over the limit is very satisfying.

Connectivity wise, its been good so far. Couple of days back there was some routing issue where some of the sites weren't opening and was timing out, but was fixed before I could even open a ticket (maybe 30 min). Customer care is centralised and its in Delhi or Gurugram or something.

Also, I might be among the first few customers in the area (as they launched service very recently) so not sure if there would be any degradation once more customers are added. Have to wait and see.
 
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@varkey How is ACT doing compared to spectra? How is the latency to international server, p2p, downtime. Also how much time it took you to get the ACT connection. I have also seen that Spectra is now only offering unlimited bandwidth only for 6 month+ contract.
 
^ ACT is pretty good (atleast in my area), consistent performance, pretty good uptime, I mean I had no issues with ACT at all. Yes, there were downtimes due to fibre cut etc but have been restored pretty quick. Latency wise (international Singapore etc) I think ACT is better compared to Spectra.

ACT connection I think was installed on the 2nd day, but then in my area they didn't have to pull the fibre or anything, their ethernet distribution point was at the right next building, so all they had to do was pull the ethernet cable from the switch to my house.
 
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