My thoughts and review on 1and1 broadband / HNS Thane West
Long Story Short : After 4 years of using 1and1 i can safely say they have got a lot of new customers and dont care about existing subscribers, the connection quality has degraded and internet disconnects after every 2-3 minutes . So if you would like to suffer, go with 1and1 else switch to someone else.
Review Starts :
I have used Tikona in my area and had mixed experience with them , sometimes speed was good and consistent pings but other times high disconnections and connectivity issues . Customer care was also not quick to respond to issues , always said problem in tower and never fixed that problem i suppose .
So i decided to give 1and1 Broadband a try and I must say , it is a solid option if you are living in thane west .
They provide connection from HNS ( I selected HNS ) , 5net , Pacenet and indigital . I wanted to buy 5net but at that time i read some posts on this website saying pings were high and youtube problems , hub not working sometimes , caching problem etc . So i went for HNS .
The plan i am subscribed to is
Connection :
It was simple , after calling the contact number of 1and1 , they sent an engineer to our building who checked feasibility and said that they give connection even if there is only one person who needs the connection in the building . All they needed was documents with society NOC to install Fibre and switch on terrace .
Connection was done in next day and quickly activated after giving the check .
Plan : Annual 4999 INR 1Mbps Unlimited .
New Plan : Annual 6999 INR 2Mbps Unlimited ( Upgraded on 29/8/2014)
Now its time for some speed tests and ping tests 😀
Speed test
New plan 2Mbps 6999 INR annual
Please note that upload speed has been reduced now (less than 2mbps) . Very disappointed 🙁
Ping test at Singapore , los angels and Paris ( Best places to host game servers )
As you guys can see , pings are awesome and perfect for online gaming , i play global offensive on steam and get 60-70 ms on official steam servers at Singapore / Honk Kong
CSGO community server browser ( filter to include servers below 50 ms ping only )
BF3 server browser
Download speed test ( Old 1 MBps plan ) [ Downloading a random file from moddb ]
Download speed is consistent and great for 1Mbps . In torrent the download speed is mostly around 140-150 KBps .
2 Mbps plan speed ( Downloading random file from MODDB )
Download speed for torrent (2 Mbps plan ) :
Torrent download speed hovers around 290-300 KBps constantly . 1 YIFY movie per hour 😛
UPDATE
Torrent cache is back up and running
Caching services
HNS provides
Downloading titanfall beta from origin
Speed on steam
Customer care and downtimes
Internet goes down only due to Power failure issues , calling 1and1 office , they usually know what the problem is and are quick to resolve it .
Experiencing random downtime , like connection drops randomly , and upload speed has been reduced too . Big disappointment 🙁
HNS is no longer the best , go for spectranet or mach1 broadband if available in your area . And if you do get one of them then please write a review too .
Rating : 1/5 ( Poor )
PROS :
1] Very affordable
2] Reliable connection (Since monsoon this year 2015 I am experiencing random disconnections )
3] Good ping
4] Google peering
5] Akamai Content delivery network ( CDN )
6] You get more speed when downloading torrents lol
CONS :
1] No HUB
2] No Linux cache
3] Random disconnections
4] Upload speed has been reduced a little . Why ?
The cons stated above were once included in PROS as they were provided by HNS , but now they have been discontinued 🙁
UPDATE : 24/9/2016
This is my fourth year using HNS now . Facing constant random disconnections 🙁
It is time to dump them and switch to another ISP that provides a stable connection
Hahaha it got disconnected while updating this review too 😀
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