This is a short review of Nextra fiber to the home (ftth) broadband for anyone else wondering whether they should take the plunge.
I had earlier thought to wait for a week and then post but seeing how i had time on my hands and how stable and smooth everything is going I am doing it now, will post any negative developments here if they do occur.
Minimum speed offered is a fast 10mbps, i have subscribed to 10mbps 80GB FUP @ 1899 as going further up was mostly a waste for me with just 5 internet sharing devices, with most of the heavy lifting being done by the desktop.
An awesome difference from adsl is upload and download speeds are nearly the same..
Post FUP is a manageable 512kbps up and down...something i griped about a lot with airtel with its 256kbps.
A minor detail is that the fup data is calculated on a prorated basis-Even though i subscribed on the 30th, my billing cycle is 20/19 and the data in my balance was 53.xxGB and not 80 which was to be used till the 19th.
There would also probably be monthly fluctuation for the 30/31/28 days (unlike airtel with constant 80GB).
I was on airtel bb for the last 5 years with speeds progressing from 256kbps to 512 to 2mbps to the final 4mbps (when 8mbps suddenly became feasible for my area faced with competition from nextra) for the last month of its usage.
Airtel was much better than what i had been used to before, but with its own often deeply irritating flaws and crappy experiences. It will not be missed :tongue:.
Installation
Fiber had already been installed upto my house leading upto an ericsson modem which has outputs to a lot of stuff, the society intercom being one of them.
Installation was just a matter of connecting the ethernet cable to my own WiFi router, registering this router's MAC with nextra (something that needs to be done again if you change your router), and setting the internet connection mode to DHCP.
The tech exec was quick to show up and the connection was up and running within 18 hours of document collection.
You immediately receive a password for the nextraworld website on your registered mobile number.
Initial Issues
Websites sometimes would fail to load and show up as a blank page instead, a deeply irritating issue which will scare you to make any sort of financial transactions with the connection (even though i know there are safeguards in place).
The exec was helpful enough to troubleshoot and gave an assurance it will be fixed within the day. Posted about this on another thread.
The issue seemed to originate with nextra's banner ad injection on webpages sometimes. It was being used to show the customer promotional offers and other information for the connection. Something that I did not like one bit.
Called up the cust care, the operator was quick to understand my problem and did not deny the practice or give any mindless reason like malware. Assured that it would be forwarded to the backend and be deactivated.
Sure enough I received a call from the backend from a well spoken exec and he confirmed my request for disabling this 'feature' a final time and that was the last I saw any injections or that issue of websites not loading.
It has been smooth sailing ever since.
General usage
Pings
I am not an online gamer, I am content with single player mode Dirt 3 :tongue: so pings are not a very big issue for me.
They are better than airtel, unlike what i stated before in another thread when i hadn't tested so thoroughly.
Below are some comparative shots for a general idea-
Speeds
Speed is not very noticeable for lighter websites, though 1080p youtube now plays effortlessly and switches seamlessly to this mode and bitmeter reports full 10mbps when doing so. Something that is very important for me and that rarely happened with airtel.
A 1080p youtube screenshot with bitmeter graph.
Uploading is a similar story, Dropbox uploads are speedy as well using nearly all of the bandwidth.
Torrents from IPT yield full speed of 1.1 to 1.2MBps which i use a lot for tv shows (I don't abide by copyright laws for them :tongue🙂.
Stability
The connection is stable as ever but can only comment on this after some time.
I have the modem and router hooked up to an APC home UPS i had lying around uselessly to avoid a disconnect in the time it takes for the society gensets to kick in.
However, I have yet to see its results, the airtel connection would not drop with this setup, not so sure about fiber.
Despite the earlier hiccups nextra did live up to my expectations. Airtel was very cooperative for a change for registering my disconnection request, and it would be done so within the week. Adios airtel.
Bottom line: I can never go back to adsl again!
I had earlier thought to wait for a week and then post but seeing how i had time on my hands and how stable and smooth everything is going I am doing it now, will post any negative developments here if they do occur.
Minimum speed offered is a fast 10mbps, i have subscribed to 10mbps 80GB FUP @ 1899 as going further up was mostly a waste for me with just 5 internet sharing devices, with most of the heavy lifting being done by the desktop.
An awesome difference from adsl is upload and download speeds are nearly the same..
Post FUP is a manageable 512kbps up and down...something i griped about a lot with airtel with its 256kbps.
A minor detail is that the fup data is calculated on a prorated basis-Even though i subscribed on the 30th, my billing cycle is 20/19 and the data in my balance was 53.xxGB and not 80 which was to be used till the 19th.
There would also probably be monthly fluctuation for the 30/31/28 days (unlike airtel with constant 80GB).
I was on airtel bb for the last 5 years with speeds progressing from 256kbps to 512 to 2mbps to the final 4mbps (when 8mbps suddenly became feasible for my area faced with competition from nextra) for the last month of its usage.
Airtel was much better than what i had been used to before, but with its own often deeply irritating flaws and crappy experiences. It will not be missed :tongue:.
Installation
Fiber had already been installed upto my house leading upto an ericsson modem which has outputs to a lot of stuff, the society intercom being one of them.
Installation was just a matter of connecting the ethernet cable to my own WiFi router, registering this router's MAC with nextra (something that needs to be done again if you change your router), and setting the internet connection mode to DHCP.
The tech exec was quick to show up and the connection was up and running within 18 hours of document collection.
You immediately receive a password for the nextraworld website on your registered mobile number.
Initial Issues
Websites sometimes would fail to load and show up as a blank page instead, a deeply irritating issue which will scare you to make any sort of financial transactions with the connection (even though i know there are safeguards in place).
The exec was helpful enough to troubleshoot and gave an assurance it will be fixed within the day. Posted about this on another thread.
The issue seemed to originate with nextra's banner ad injection on webpages sometimes. It was being used to show the customer promotional offers and other information for the connection. Something that I did not like one bit.
Called up the cust care, the operator was quick to understand my problem and did not deny the practice or give any mindless reason like malware. Assured that it would be forwarded to the backend and be deactivated.
Sure enough I received a call from the backend from a well spoken exec and he confirmed my request for disabling this 'feature' a final time and that was the last I saw any injections or that issue of websites not loading.
It has been smooth sailing ever since.
General usage
Pings
I am not an online gamer, I am content with single player mode Dirt 3 :tongue: so pings are not a very big issue for me.
They are better than airtel, unlike what i stated before in another thread when i hadn't tested so thoroughly.
Below are some comparative shots for a general idea-
Speeds
Speed is not very noticeable for lighter websites, though 1080p youtube now plays effortlessly and switches seamlessly to this mode and bitmeter reports full 10mbps when doing so. Something that is very important for me and that rarely happened with airtel.
A 1080p youtube screenshot with bitmeter graph.
Uploading is a similar story, Dropbox uploads are speedy as well using nearly all of the bandwidth.
Torrents from IPT yield full speed of 1.1 to 1.2MBps which i use a lot for tv shows (I don't abide by copyright laws for them :tongue🙂.
Stability
The connection is stable as ever but can only comment on this after some time.
I have the modem and router hooked up to an APC home UPS i had lying around uselessly to avoid a disconnect in the time it takes for the society gensets to kick in.
However, I have yet to see its results, the airtel connection would not drop with this setup, not so sure about fiber.
Despite the earlier hiccups nextra did live up to my expectations. Airtel was very cooperative for a change for registering my disconnection request, and it would be done so within the week. Adios airtel.
Bottom line: I can never go back to adsl again!
