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.

 

[Jonas]

I agree with all that’s said in the thread. My LCO has switched to this for over a month now. It’s an unreliable service to say the least.

 

[igloo]

@ishanjain28 Get everyone in your society to register for jio broadband on their site. It would make jio come to your area sooner.
Airtel doesn't work that way else would have asked you to do same with them.
I am get 300mbps with excitel(same at mercy of LCO) vs 50mbps in Airtel in same price. Still using Airtel just to avoid these LCO.

You should have checked your ONT optical power 2 weeks back & compared with current value. I think when you first had connection there were less no of connection and same fiber was spliced endlessly to give away new connections. What I hate about these LCOs is they don't put any limit on no of connection given via single OLT or even fiber. So unless some major problem happens it gonna continue. Using sub-standard OLT is another reason.
The isp partnering with them is on another level. No clarity on whose gonna attend complain, no policies, no proper training of support, no complain sl, No roadmap on ipv6, static ip, voice , higher speed plans. Well they too are at mercy of exclusive LCO.

 

[Jonas]

Using a download manager the speeds improve or else I am not getting more than 50 Mbps.

 

[ishanjain28]

Get everyone in your society to register for jio broadband on their site. It would make jio come to your area sooner.

Most people here are happy with just LTE. LCO has only really been able to get 2-300 connections in the last 1.5 years BSNL Fiber has been here. (Airtel OTOH, was asking for a minimum of 1000 connections before they'll consider setting up shop here).

I have signed up multiple times on Jio's website but I don't believe they'll come here in the next 1-2 years.

You should have checked your ONT optical power 2 weeks back & compared with current value.

Until maybe December of last year, ONT power was at -19dBM, Then it jumped to -24dBM and now it's at around -24.5 - -25dBM. There has not been any significant difference in 1 week. And I can actually saturate PNPL with 3 TCP connections but it doesn't happen on a single TCP connection.

Also, Another update on this.
While I have no idea how PNPL's billing system is setup, I think LCO had no idea what he was doing and instead of "suspending" the connection he "terminated" it. He said he'll get it back up today but so far he has not been able to do that. I talked to PNPL and they said no plan is active on my User ID. (They did not mention anything about a suspension)

 

[Sushubh]

if my lco dumps excitel and switches to this, i am going to be very angry.

 

[Jonas]

Sent screenshots of the low speeds, and the LCO guys showed up at my door an hour ago.

I tried telling them that Precious Netcom is known for terrible service, but they were quite confident that once they install ONU tomorrow, I won't complain.

 

[ishanjain28]

@Samuel please message later if that fixes the problem..

The LCO in my case finally resumed the service(He asked me to submit an application which said, Any speed complaints have to go through him instead of PNPL directly) but now they have put me on 10mbps plan.

Single thread, multi-threaded downloads to ANY destination absolutely do not exceed 10-11mbps.

 

[MadAxe]

@Samuel They're shifting you to Fiber from copper?

 

[Jonas]

Yeah.

And for some reason, on ethernet I am getting 91 Mbps and on WiFi speeds are limited to 50-60 Mbps (5 Ghz).

 

[Jonas]

..on a 100 Mbps plan. My plan will be changed on the 14th of this month.

Speeds are better on WiFi for some reason.