Precious Netcom Pvt. Ltd. (PNPL) ISP Experience

I have been on PNPL for over two months now ever since my LCO moved me over from ANI Broadband and I just wanted to share my experience with them. I'm currently using PNPL as a backup for Tripleplay connection.

Installation/Pricing:

There was no separate installation because the same LCO provides both PNPL and ANI; so if you want my installation experience, you can check it out on my other thread ANI Broadband 100Mbit Plan experience | ANI Broadband

ANI had turned bad for me, with very low speeds and packet loss to international servers at peak times. Around mid-Feb , ANI went down completely for me and LCO wasn't able to fix it quickly (presumably because they didn't have SLA?), so they swapped me over to PNPL.

The funny thing is, before I got fiber installed at my home; the same LCO provided me with PNPL (1000/month for 100Mbit) and when I told him that international speeds were trash, he told me to switch to fiber and get ANI for 2000/month (100Mbit) . It worked quite well for me for around a year, until it too started screwing up.
Now, they want me to pay 2000/month for the same thing that I was paying 1000/month a year ago.

DNS Hijacking:

PNPL has DNS Hijacking just like most other small ISPs. This can be bypassed by using encrypted DNS (DoH or DoT); I'm currently using AdGuard Home for network wide encrypted CloudFlare/Google/OpenDNS.
If you host your own DNS Server or want to use a DNS Server without encryption this might be a problem for you.

No Public IP:

My LCO had told me that they will provide me static IP on PNPL for Rs. 500 Extra monthly but they never ended up giving me one (I didn't make any payment so it wasn't much of an issue). You'll get shitty CGNAT without any IPv6 instead. This isn't much of a problem for me as PNPL is only a backup ISP for me; but if want to use it as primary connection and you want public IP then PNPL isn't for you.

Speeds:

Like most ISPs, you will get full speeds to peered servers all the time, PNPL has been decent with non-peered speeds but the problem is it drops very low during weekends and peak hours.

Here are some speedtests at 2PM:

Servers: MNR Broadband (Delhi,peered), Singtel (SG), GTT.Net (London), Spectrum (NYC), AT&T (NYC).

It can drop really low during weekends (this test was done on 2nd Feb (Sunday) at 10PM:

Usually, it doesn't stoop this low (around 30-40Mbit on weekends).


Usenet speeds are 'fine' but its not reaching even close to full capacity (~12MB/s) with 60 connections and is quite spiky going between 7-10MB/s compared to flat 11-12MB/s on Tripleplay

Torrents are kinda hard to measure but I did try Ubuntu ISO, it was able to get beyond 100Mbit (around ~15MB/s) but the problem is it only got to this speed half way through the download (you can see the 7.7MB/s avg). It was initally quite slow at 4-5MB/s and this is a torrent with tons of seeders.

Also, good luck getting any upload on private trackers as PNPL doesn't have either IPv6 or any option for Public IP (paid or otherwise), so you are mostly closed off from the internet.

I also tried some test files such as Leaseweb files https://mirror.leaseweb.com/speedtest/10000mb.bin and DigitalOcean SG files SGP1 Speedtest | DigitalOcean .

With Leaseweb file on Firefox (no download manager) I was getting around ~3MB/s compared to ~9MB/s with Tripleplay (I let both download for 1 minute before checking).
With DigtialOcean SG file, I got ~16MB/s on PNPL and ~12MB/s on Tripleplay.

 

[opomiyulen]

@JB701 Can u confirm from ur lco that pnpl and nextia broadband both are same. U can check ur usage etc on pnpl like other isps?

 

[JB701]

Nextia sounds like a smaller provider (no ASN, probably a reseller). I will ask LCO though.

Nope it's not possible to check data usage on PNPL.

 

[opomiyulen]

@JB701 my lco has two local providers mylink and nextia. Mylink do have a asn but i am unable to find anything on nextia so was thinking whose reseller it is. My link only offer plans upto 100mbps while nextia do have plans upto 200mbps on fiber.

 

[JB701]

Getting amazing speeds on Steam with this.

 

[JB701]

 1. DESKTOP-MR5T1CK.mshome.net                                                0.0%    16    0.2   0.2   0.2   0.5   0.1
 2. router.localdomain                                                        0.0%    16    1.5   1.5   1.0   2.5   0.4
 3. 103.149.160.13                                                            0.0%    16    2.8   8.2   1.5  52.5  14.5
 4. (waiting for reply)
 5. 43.251.214.101                                                           33.3%    16    5.9   8.4   4.2  26.0   7.4
 6. 14.143.30.41.static-delhi.vsnl.net.in                                     0.0%    16    6.3  12.0   3.3  61.3  16.8
 7. 172.31.180.57                                                             0.0%    16   39.1  43.2  38.7  73.8   8.7
 8. ix-ae-4-2.tcore1.cxr-chennai.as6453.net                                   0.0%    16   48.1  44.5  38.7  73.2  10.2
 9. if-ae-13-2.tcore1.svw-singapore.as6453.net                                6.7%    16  171.7 168.5 159.6 203.7  14.3
10. if-ae-36-2.tcore1.tv2-tokyo.as6453.net                                    0.0%    15  157.3 157.1 146.3 192.5  15.3
11. if-ae-2-2.tcore2.tv2-tokyo.as6453.net                                     0.0%    15  158.5 162.2 153.4 247.4  23.8
12. 180.87.181.187                                                            6.7%    15  171.4 215.5 155.5 355.5  48.6
13. one.one.one.one                                                           0.0%    15  153.0 153.9 152.6 156.9   1.1

tf is happening with CloudFlare DNS. Going through Chennai->SG->Tokyo anyone else having this problem outside of PNPL?

 

[opomiyulen]

So I did it on excitel and its same

Tracing route to one.one.one.one [1.1.1.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.0.1
  2     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  139.5.252.1
  3     2 ms     1 ms     1 ms  103.212.159.1
  4     2 ms     1 ms    46 ms  br1.core.excitel.in [103.56.229.1]
  5     2 ms     2 ms     2 ms  121.240.111.25.static-delhi.vsnl.net.in [121.240
.111.25]
  6    45 ms    36 ms    36 ms  172.31.180.57
  7     *       37 ms    37 ms  ix-ae-4-2.tcore1.cxr-chennai.as6453.net [180.87.
36.9]
  8     *      151 ms   151 ms  if-ae-13-2.tcore1.svw-singapore.as6453.net [180.
87.36.83]
  9   149 ms   149 ms   149 ms  if-ae-36-2.tcore1.tv2-tokyo.as6453.net [120.29.2
17.12]
 10   147 ms   147 ms   148 ms  if-ae-2-2.tcore2.tv2-tokyo.as6453.net [180.87.18
0.2]
 11   202 ms   327 ms   191 ms  180.87.181.187
 12   148 ms   148 ms   148 ms  one.one.one.one [1.1.1.1]

Trace complete.

 

---

[JB701]

Since I will likely be leaving PNPL soon I decided to abuse the shit out of the network.

 

[ishanjain28]

I just want to share my experience here.

I got their service about 2 weeks back, First week was actually quite decent. I was getting advertised speeds to almost every destination and even on a single TCP thread. This week, It got a bit worse. I also had some other questions so I sent them an email. I strictly only did this because I was curious.

Hi,

My name is Ishan Jain and I recently took a Precious Netcom connection in [REDACTED]. My User ID is, [REDACTED]. Initial, 1 week was actually pretty good but now I am seeing some changes and I will appreciate it if you can answer my questions.


1. Does PNPL apply speed limits on per thread/connection basis? In the first week, I could easily reach full advertised 100mbps speed using just one connection but now it absolutely does not go beyond ~40mbps.

1a. Single threaded speed tests to, http://speedtest-blr1.digitalocean.com/1gb.test were reaching 100mbps but now it does not go beyond 40mbps.
1b. I also perform speedtests using iperf3 to Linode Mumbai, DigitalOcean BLR, Linode Singapore, AWS Mumbai and it does not go beyond 40mbps to any of these destinations on a single connection BUT I can reach 100mbps speeds using 3(or more) connections.


So my question is, Has PNPL started enforcing per connection/thread speed limits? See attached screenshot of a quick speedtest performed on a single thread and then multiple threads.

ANSWER: First of all, They just assumed I had done speed test on WiFi and asked which Router I was using. I said it was a Omada AP and they had no clue what it was. Then, They proceeded to tell me that I have broadband service and broadband means anywhere between 512kbps to 100mbps. This person was quite defensive and didn't even let me speak. At the end when I clarified I was speed testing on a machine connected using Ethernet and that speeds using multiple connections could saturate the connection where as a single connection could not. They didn't reply anything to this and I just asked them to move on to the next question.

2. What contention ratio do you target for a location? What is the contention ratio for my location, [REDACTED]?
There is a really good chance that the few hundred customers who are currently on BSNL will migrate to PNPL as they learn about this service and the contention ratio will increase considerably resulting in significantly worse experience.

At what point do you upgrade your equipment to serve the increased load?

ANSWER: They said, They mention sort of a "global"/country wide contention ratio and it's not dependent on a location. This is probably an error on my part. I used to think that they may have to upgrade the OLT or other infra in the middle when they more customers here but I guess that's not how it works?

3. Can I buy two PNPL connections on a single ID? I will prefer to have more bandwidth and I have two options.

3a. Is there any remote possibility of upgrading my current 100mbps connection to a 200mbps connection(or maybe even 300mbps connection)? Goes without saying but I am happy to pay the increased cost.

3b. If previous option is not possible, Can I take 2 PNPL connections on a single ID? I'll figure out ECMP/PCC setup to load balance them on my own.

ANSWER: They can not increase the speed of existing plans to 200-300mbps but I can get multiple connections using a single government issued ID. So, I will probably be doing this instead and give up/pause my BSNL connection.

4. If I understand correctly, IPv6 is not yet supported. Is that on your roadmap? IPv6 will be amazing to have for several reasons and I will be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed to see IPv6 was not working.


ANSWER: Before I could ask this, The call disconnected. I called again on the same number but someone else picked up. First, They said I will have to pay extra for IPv6, Then they said, IPv6 is not available for residential customers and it is only for leased line. Then, They said it is available to which I responded It's not working for me(I had tested SLAAC/DHCPv6 and it was not working) and this time they said it's not available at my location and I'll have to wait 6 months.

5. Currently, The PNPL connections here are not segregated into separate VLANs. So, Every single time someone tries to connect, I see their PADI packets in my router's logs. Some of these ONTs are poor quality Chinese ONTs which send out malformed(i.e. packets that do not strictly follow the RFC) and this causes somewhat minor problems with my ONT. For now, I have worked around this by adding those weird ONTs to my ONT's MAC block list but I'll strongly prefer that each connection be in it's own VLAN.

ANSWER: Some more context on this issue. The LCO here uses relatively cheap/poor quality ONTs which broadcast poorly formed PADI packets. This causes my ONT to glitch and the ONT's interface becomes inaccessible. BSNL and I'd presume other ISPs segregate their customers into separate VLANs. So, You will not see PPP traffic of other customers. I was requesting them to implement this but instead the person completely misunderstood the problem and flipped out. He said, They design/build delivery systems as needed and all my demands can only be fulfilled on a leased connection and that I should get a leased connection. I honestly am quite confused. Does my message sound like a demand? And both of these people were incredibly INCREDIBLY defensive like I was going to sue PNPL over something and they were out here trying to defend it with their life. I am honestly a bit scared after that call, who honestly acts like that? I had also created a thread for this on Mikrotik's forum. Network becomes inaccessible without changing anything in the router! - MikroTik and my current solution to this has been to add MAC address of fellow customers to my ONT's block list.

6. Is there any chance of getting a public IPv4 address? I don't strictly need a Static IPv4 address but I do want a public address.

ANSWER: There is none. The second person immediately disconnected the call after the last question.

At the end, I want to express my gratitude for bringing this service here. Even with some of it's minor flaws, This is strictly and quite significantly better than the BSNL Fiber connection I am used to. Thank you very much for that.

Regards
Ishan Jain

Overall, I just regret sending that email and I am sure this'll somehow be communicated to the LCO who'll be calling me tomorrow to ask me about why I sent this email or to "understand" the problems I have with PNPL.

Secondly, Seeing their reply to the minor speed problem I raised in #1, I am a bit curious as to how they'll react when it eventually chokes because they have too many customers here. I would not be happy to hear the "broadband is anywhere between 512kbps to 100mbps" reply at that point.

 

[ishanjain28]

Sharing some more details.

1. They also reset PPPoE session every 24 hours, just like BSNL.
2. They have already had ~15+ hours of downtime in the last 1.5 weeks mostly during non-office hours but still quite annoying.

 

[ishanjain28]

As anticipated, Someone from PNPL called the LCO and must have said something. The LCO felt bad about it and suspended my connection.

When I called LCO, He told me to get direct leased line from someone else because my complaints affect his business. All the speed complaints are forwarded to him and he can't do anything to fix the speed problems. I just said sorry to him and asked him to resume the connection because I obviously don't have any other ISP right now. :/