Tuesday 19 March 2013

The Verdict: 2 Months in and Xplornet Does Indeed Trump Hotlink Wireless Service

Here we are two months later after posting this:

We signed up for the 10Gbit plan and have been more than happy with the service.

One thing that is readily apparent for us, or will become so for those making the transition, is that Windows 8 is bandwidth hungry.

Wherever there are two or more Win8 profiles hooked into a Microsoft ID any changes made on one, depending on the services, will be replicated to the others.

Well, I download a lot of music on my Windows Phone 8 device and thus that gets replicated to all Win8 machines I sign into with my Microsoft ID or domain account that has that ID integrated.

Our network at home that Xplornet services is our primary video, television (we do not subscribe to cable/satellite), movie, and entertainment via Zune/Xbox Music Pass and Netflix.

Other than the occasional stutter on the standard definition movies we have streamed in via Zune/Music Pass (which look _way_ better than Netflix) we don’t see much.

The shaping becomes apparent when downloading content like updates, large PDFs, and other files. We can get several downloads going at around 125KB/Second despite our connection being 10Gbit. One would expect one download, like Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 would come down at 800KB to 900KB per second. Nope.

We can however have several downloads going at the 125KB/Second rate.

So, we leave the large downloads for our office connection. :)

In the end our decision to change our ISP provider from Hotlink has been a very positive one. The step up in the monthly fee has been more than worth the ability to have five to eight stable RDP sessions to our client sites at any one time.

Plus Internet streaming content comes down at a reasonable rate with very little interruption.

Our recommendation: Choose Xplornet WiMax if there is an option between Hotlink and Xplornet.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

Chef de partie in the SMBKitchen
Find out more at
www.thirdtier.net/enterprise-solutions-for-small-business/

Windows Live Writer

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