Got RailTel/ Railwire installed right after lockdown happened back in Dec, 2020. As I needed to game in peace and have a better internet connectivity than Jio 4G and was sure that our household data consumption would increase, along with my online classes, initially took up the 100Mbps, 300GB plan for 1180 per month.
I don't really have screenshots or images for proof in every section but I will try to provide the same wherever possible.
I will be dividing the review into 3 sections resembling the Upstream providers at the time of that specific Review.
Vodafone
I got them when they were on Vodafone upstream, absolutely abysmal Ping times and speeds, barely playable for CS getting a pings anywhere from (110 - 160) to both Bombay and Chennai servers.
Google, Amazon, anything when compared to Jio 4G would be loading slower in comparison. Speedtests to even their own servers would suffer from packet loss and speed drops (although this most probably isn't vodafone's fault). It was really bad, kinda worse than BSNL.
Gaming was again a train wreck, having strict NAT and bad latency to every game server imaginable (nothing being under 100ms).
At this time, I was being routed through using their Kolkata NOC, getting 6ms to their Kolkata NOC.
But this didn't last long as around the same time (within a week of me getting the connection), they changed upstream providers.
Airtel
The absolute best experience I had with RailTel was when they had AirTel as their upstream provider.
Everything was just so smooth, fast and reliable. I click on a website and it would load no matter what, nothing was blocked.
Was still on the Kolkata NOC (6ms to their Kolkata Server), still had strict NAT but atleast Dedicated server games were having great pings.
Latency (Kolkata NOC)
The ping times improved significantly and were as following:-
Mumbai:- 30 - 40ms (Almost every server in Mumbai). These pings were a first for me and I was getting these pings to almost every server in Mumbai/Navi Mumbai. Every game server would yield the same results which were situated in Mumbai.
Kolkata:- 6 - 12ms to almost every provider, probably peered with AirTel, but this wasn't really of any use as Kolkata didn't serve much of a purpose in the usage of the connection.
Chennai:- 40 - 45ms
Singapore:- 65 - 70ms.
EUW:- 175 - 190ms
Russia:- 160ms
Speeds (Kolkata NOC)
Download and Upload speeds to Steam, Google and Netflix were double of the plan speed, and usually every other download source would either give the plan speeds or above plan speeds, and barely have any impact on the Loaded latency while fully saturating the connection, and having a packet loss of 1 - 2% while at it.
Gaming (Kolkata NOC):- Only games I used to play at this time was League of Legends on EUW server and CSGO on Indian servers, they would have the same pings as stated above.
Also would like to add that when other people were facing slow upload speed problem on Windows 10, I did not face any such problem, ever.
Now comes the best part when they changed their gateaway server to Hyderabad.
After a month or two all customers from our State were now being routed through Hyderabad instead of Kolkata(14ms being the best ping observed to their Hyderabad server at this time), and I'm glad they did this, this was the best period I had ever used their services.
Latency (Hyderabad NOC)
The Ping times improved even further and many things became even better and more responsive:-
Mumbai:- 30 - 35ms.
Kolkata:- 32 - 35ms(only to their server, just mentioned as I did above as well, but Kolkata doesn't really serve much purpose here)
Chennai:- 22 - 25ms (every server situated in Chennai would yield these ping times, Airtel, Jio, Tata, Local ISPs, game servers)
Singapore:- 50 - 55ms (same story here, would get these ping times to almost every servers situated there, be it a VPN server or a game server)
EUW:- 180 - 200ms (this did get a bit worse but it didn't really matter for me anymore).
Russia:- 140ms
Speeds (Hyderabad NOC)
Same story as Kolkata NOC, double the speeds to Steam, Google and Netflix, others downloading at either same speed as the plan or a bit above the advertised speeds, with the same negligible 1 - 2ms increase in Latency while downloading and saturating the connection, with same 1 - 2% packet loss.
Gaming (Hyderabad NOC)
NAT was changed to Moderate and was starting to get around 30 - 35ms ping to CSGO Bombay servers ,Valorant servers and BF4 servers, while having 22 - 26ms to CSGO Chennai Servers, alongwith getting 50 - 55ms to most Singapore based servers (For CSGO, Valorant, BF4, Garena LoL.)
As NAT was moderate now, finding games in Tekken 7 was a cakewalk, always matching with players and having 4 bars or above.
This was also the time when I got in torrenting (both public and private) and started data hoarding and archiving stuff, used to saturate the connection speed and most of the times getting 10 - 15 mbps more than advertised (you would not see this increase in speedtests but when actually downloading stuff it did give some boost, would even seed without having a public IP (reasonably well), there was no blocking of UDP or TCP ports as such observed in Excitel, but to kick it a step further I purchased a VPN with port forwarding, Mullvad to be specific, used a bit of TorGuard before them too alongwith ProtonVPN, but settled with Mullvad because of pricing and privacy.
Using their Singapore, Netherlands, Frankfurt, London servers would get great speeds both upload and download, but initially there was a time where the upload speeds did suck (was RailTel's fault). But it went pretty smoothly for the most part.
It's late 2021 and they are adding customers like crazy, saturating their uplinks and this is where Jio stepped in.
Jio
Not the worst but Latency mainly, to every server, be it local or international, even their gateaway (Probably not Jio's fault but it did go up when they switched providers) went up to some extent (with the exception of European servers which saw a reduction of 10 - 15ms).
Site blockings were common and the time it took to open a site was also increased noticeably, Packet losses started occuring in games and most of the games felt really unresponsive coming from sub 40ms latency (Valorant mainly, it really does feel different going from 32ms to 50ms, 50ms ain't bad really but Valorant does feel worse when you start to hit 50 - 60 territory and when you have experienced 30 - 35ms before.)
For the most part, it is just like using a Jio connection, except you can have your own ONU and Router.
Latency
Gateaway (Hyderabad):- 24ms (Used to be 14ms before).
Mumbai:- 55 - 70ms, with the exception of i3d.net which hosts Discord servers having anywhere around 45 - 60ms.
Chennai:- 33 - 36ms
Singapore:- 66 - 250ms, some servers just went poof with the ping times.
Netherlands:- 168 - 180ms
Cloudping Results
AWS
Source
DigitalOcean and IBM Cloud
Source
Linode and OVH Cloud
Source
Speeds
Currently using 50Mbps 3000GB Plan for 588.82 PM.
In general speeds are now around the plan speed or under it, no more double speeds to any service.
Tata Play Fiber Mumbai
Source
Tate Play Fiber Chennai
Source
31173 Services Amsterdam
Source
Singtel Singapore
Source
M1 limited Singapore
Source
Fast.com (Netflix)
Source
Railtel Hyderabad Gateaway
Source
Gaming
Gaming in general has gone really downhill, with CS getting around 50 - 70ms to both Bombay and Chennai servers, have to keep max dedicated ping around 70 so often I get matches in Singapore servers. Valorant hitting 50 - 60ms. Tekken 7 getting matched with opponents takes infinitely long, bars dropped to 3 if they were 4 before.
I don't game much anymore because of friends not willing to do the same, so not many results to be provided.
I don't really have screenshots or images for proof in every section but I will try to provide the same wherever possible.
I will be dividing the review into 3 sections resembling the Upstream providers at the time of that specific Review.
Vodafone
I got them when they were on Vodafone upstream, absolutely abysmal Ping times and speeds, barely playable for CS getting a pings anywhere from (110 - 160) to both Bombay and Chennai servers.
Google, Amazon, anything when compared to Jio 4G would be loading slower in comparison. Speedtests to even their own servers would suffer from packet loss and speed drops (although this most probably isn't vodafone's fault). It was really bad, kinda worse than BSNL.
Gaming was again a train wreck, having strict NAT and bad latency to every game server imaginable (nothing being under 100ms).
At this time, I was being routed through using their Kolkata NOC, getting 6ms to their Kolkata NOC.
But this didn't last long as around the same time (within a week of me getting the connection), they changed upstream providers.
Airtel
The absolute best experience I had with RailTel was when they had AirTel as their upstream provider.
Everything was just so smooth, fast and reliable. I click on a website and it would load no matter what, nothing was blocked.
Was still on the Kolkata NOC (6ms to their Kolkata Server), still had strict NAT but atleast Dedicated server games were having great pings.
Latency (Kolkata NOC)
The ping times improved significantly and were as following:-
Mumbai:- 30 - 40ms (Almost every server in Mumbai). These pings were a first for me and I was getting these pings to almost every server in Mumbai/Navi Mumbai. Every game server would yield the same results which were situated in Mumbai.
Kolkata:- 6 - 12ms to almost every provider, probably peered with AirTel, but this wasn't really of any use as Kolkata didn't serve much of a purpose in the usage of the connection.
Chennai:- 40 - 45ms
Singapore:- 65 - 70ms.
EUW:- 175 - 190ms
Russia:- 160ms
Speeds (Kolkata NOC)
Download and Upload speeds to Steam, Google and Netflix were double of the plan speed, and usually every other download source would either give the plan speeds or above plan speeds, and barely have any impact on the Loaded latency while fully saturating the connection, and having a packet loss of 1 - 2% while at it.
Gaming (Kolkata NOC):- Only games I used to play at this time was League of Legends on EUW server and CSGO on Indian servers, they would have the same pings as stated above.
Also would like to add that when other people were facing slow upload speed problem on Windows 10, I did not face any such problem, ever.
Now comes the best part when they changed their gateaway server to Hyderabad.
After a month or two all customers from our State were now being routed through Hyderabad instead of Kolkata(14ms being the best ping observed to their Hyderabad server at this time), and I'm glad they did this, this was the best period I had ever used their services.
Latency (Hyderabad NOC)
The Ping times improved even further and many things became even better and more responsive:-
Mumbai:- 30 - 35ms.
Kolkata:- 32 - 35ms(only to their server, just mentioned as I did above as well, but Kolkata doesn't really serve much purpose here)
Chennai:- 22 - 25ms (every server situated in Chennai would yield these ping times, Airtel, Jio, Tata, Local ISPs, game servers)
Singapore:- 50 - 55ms (same story here, would get these ping times to almost every servers situated there, be it a VPN server or a game server)
EUW:- 180 - 200ms (this did get a bit worse but it didn't really matter for me anymore).
Russia:- 140ms
Speeds (Hyderabad NOC)
Same story as Kolkata NOC, double the speeds to Steam, Google and Netflix, others downloading at either same speed as the plan or a bit above the advertised speeds, with the same negligible 1 - 2ms increase in Latency while downloading and saturating the connection, with same 1 - 2% packet loss.
Gaming (Hyderabad NOC)
NAT was changed to Moderate and was starting to get around 30 - 35ms ping to CSGO Bombay servers ,Valorant servers and BF4 servers, while having 22 - 26ms to CSGO Chennai Servers, alongwith getting 50 - 55ms to most Singapore based servers (For CSGO, Valorant, BF4, Garena LoL.)
As NAT was moderate now, finding games in Tekken 7 was a cakewalk, always matching with players and having 4 bars or above.
This was also the time when I got in torrenting (both public and private) and started data hoarding and archiving stuff, used to saturate the connection speed and most of the times getting 10 - 15 mbps more than advertised (you would not see this increase in speedtests but when actually downloading stuff it did give some boost, would even seed without having a public IP (reasonably well), there was no blocking of UDP or TCP ports as such observed in Excitel, but to kick it a step further I purchased a VPN with port forwarding, Mullvad to be specific, used a bit of TorGuard before them too alongwith ProtonVPN, but settled with Mullvad because of pricing and privacy.
Using their Singapore, Netherlands, Frankfurt, London servers would get great speeds both upload and download, but initially there was a time where the upload speeds did suck (was RailTel's fault). But it went pretty smoothly for the most part.
It's late 2021 and they are adding customers like crazy, saturating their uplinks and this is where Jio stepped in.
Jio
Not the worst but Latency mainly, to every server, be it local or international, even their gateaway (Probably not Jio's fault but it did go up when they switched providers) went up to some extent (with the exception of European servers which saw a reduction of 10 - 15ms).
Site blockings were common and the time it took to open a site was also increased noticeably, Packet losses started occuring in games and most of the games felt really unresponsive coming from sub 40ms latency (Valorant mainly, it really does feel different going from 32ms to 50ms, 50ms ain't bad really but Valorant does feel worse when you start to hit 50 - 60 territory and when you have experienced 30 - 35ms before.)
For the most part, it is just like using a Jio connection, except you can have your own ONU and Router.
Latency
Gateaway (Hyderabad):- 24ms (Used to be 14ms before).
Mumbai:- 55 - 70ms, with the exception of i3d.net which hosts Discord servers having anywhere around 45 - 60ms.
Chennai:- 33 - 36ms
Singapore:- 66 - 250ms, some servers just went poof with the ping times.
Netherlands:- 168 - 180ms
Cloudping Results
AWS
Source
DigitalOcean and IBM Cloud
Source
Linode and OVH Cloud
Source
Speeds
Currently using 50Mbps 3000GB Plan for 588.82 PM.
In general speeds are now around the plan speed or under it, no more double speeds to any service.
Tata Play Fiber Mumbai
Source
Tate Play Fiber Chennai
Source
31173 Services Amsterdam
Source
Singtel Singapore
Source
M1 limited Singapore
Source
Fast.com (Netflix)
Source
Railtel Hyderabad Gateaway
Source
Gaming
Gaming in general has gone really downhill, with CS getting around 50 - 70ms to both Bombay and Chennai servers, have to keep max dedicated ping around 70 so often I get matches in Singapore servers. Valorant hitting 50 - 60ms. Tekken 7 getting matched with opponents takes infinitely long, bars dropped to 3 if they were 4 before.
I don't game much anymore because of friends not willing to do the same, so not many results to be provided.
