Think this might be important to see first.
I'll keep this as in-depth as possible and if there is something I am missing or you would like to see, do comment below.
First Question, how are they providing service in this section?
It seems they have put the installation and cabling part to a third-party 'contractor' who has nothing to do with the ISP itself. It also seems most local ISP here use the same contractor, as I was dumbfounded to see my old I-ON fiber installation guy. He explained what is happening.
While there will be an OLT close to the general area of your connection, all main handling is done in Andheri, Mumbai.
Installation Experience?
I registered for the connection on 7 June, evening and they said they'll get it set up by the next morning. But, the installation people came in the evening at 6 PM, played around with the cable a bit, and then left saying they'll get it done tomorrow by 12 PM due to a terrace access issue on another bldg, which was such BS.
The next day, there was no word, and after following up with them, they started work at 4 PM, they spliced the cable and got all the initials done except the ONU, and then left.
By 6 o clock, another group of people came claiming they are the ones from excitel and will set up the ONU. By talking to them for a bit, it was obvious they were technically very illiterate and I just asked them to set up the basic WAN and I'll handle the rest.
So, what is it hardware-wise?
The model is - 'OP-XONT 71110AC-G' a Standard AC1200 dual 2 GIGA PORT with EXCITEL custom firmware having an additional 'www.excitel.com' SSID broadcasting, which was possible to be disabled.
There's not much to config in the device itself, hence I just made the required adjustments and moved on to testing.
Internet Overview.
It's a standard CG-NAT-based connection over PPPoE with no IPV6. 100% of the international routes are through TATA AS4755 with an avg of ~3ms to the nearest transit center.
And for domestic routes and such routes like the nearest Internet Exchange or even google.com is through excitel's internal route which has an overhead of 18ms.
There also seem to be some routes through HonestyNetSolutions, eg 9.9.9.9.
The connection at the moment seems decent enough but in long term, the real sustainability would be revealed.
Test-bench.
Testing was done on a fairly modern high-performance desktop, over a 70m long CAT6 ethernet, with Giga-Link Speeds. All background tasks and other devices are removed to give fair chance to the ISP.
I did not bother hiding the IP addresses, because it does not matter in this case.
Speedtest...Speedtest.....SPEEDTESTS!!
You be the judge. Multi-Connections.
Domestic
International (Europe)
International (Tokyo)
International (US)
Single-Connections.
Domestic
International (Europe)
International (Tokyo)
International (US)
It's possible due to low customers, there is better than normal single connection performance and this will definitely depreciate with time.
Faaaaasst.com (aka. Netflix)
Netflix oca being used ->
Some Traceroutes. (Since it's all Tata-based I won't add a lot, but if there is something you would like to see do comment below.)
Speed.cloudflare.com
Ultra.cc - (seedbox)
Routes through CDN77 and HE did not work!
HTTP (single-connection)
HTTP (multi-connection)
FTP (single-file) (via WinSCP)
SFTP (single-file) (via WinSCP)
Torrent Testing
existing completed torrent did seed normally.
(need help with this, for further testing)
Nope, I got lucky, it's not working.
It's official. TORRENTS DON'T WORK ON EXCITEL.
Website-Blocking?
It's a hit or miss, ie the usual DPI-based blocking hence you are better off using GoodbyeDPI.
The same goes for trackers.
OONI-Probe
Steam-Downloads (Steam Cache was reset before download)
Steam puts me on DELHI servers, it also seems that most IP lookup tools think that I'm from Delhi.
I manually, reset it to Mumbai.
Game-1. (popular-game [prone to be cached])
Game-2. (rare-game)
The server is being used.
GameTesting? Let me know what game should I try and how to test it since I don't play any multi-player games.
If you'd like me to test any game client, do let me know. ie. battle.net, epic, ubisoft, etc.
Verdict:
While the speeds are there, this is not what I would call quality. Excitel has asked for a 2000INR deposit for the ONU and a trail INR 590 for the first 3 months. aka 300Mbps.
Excitel also seems to have an SLA of 1 day for a 4h+ disconnection.
All in all, it will cost me INR 942.82 pm to sustain a 300Mbps connection and 824.82 for 200Mbps.
While some might argue that paying for more months in advance will sweeten the deal, due to my previous debacle with LCO ISPs, I'm honestly a bit traumatized to do so.
Airtel costs me ~1,178.82INR with a 2% discount, allowing me to sit around INR1155. and 1090.32 for paying 6 months, which honestly isn't worth it.
I will test the waters for these 3 months and will make my final decision, which will be posted in the thread.
Any downtime, errors, or issues will also be posted here.
Thanks for reading through.
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