Singtel vs Starhub - net and TV

[RimBlock]

I have the 300Mb/s connection on fibre and chose it due to the International up / download speeds being the top tier on offer at the time. Bundled with the MioTV package, compared to what we already had, it also worked out cheaper.

I generally get 3MB/s international and have seen it top around 7MB/s at times.

The rotating IP address is a PITA but is not impossible to work around.

I used to have 3 telephone lines (2 for MioTV and one for Internet) as I have a DNS / DHCP server on my lan that caused the MioTV boxes to fail to make a connection to the Singtel servers.

I have since found a very simple solution so I can now have my Windows Server doing the DHCP / DNS duties for my lan without affecting my MioTV and without having to play with VLans. I just ended up with a second router and have my lan on a separate subnet to the Singtel router with the MioTV boxes on the Singtel subnet.

No playing with the Singtel router settings so Singtel won't get confused if they have to come and troubleshoot an issue and it all works very well.

RB

[zzm9980]

I have the 300Mb/s connection on fibre and chose it due to the International up / download speeds being the top tier on offer at the time. Bundled with the MioTV package, compared to what we already had, it also worked out cheaper.

I generally get 3MB/s international and have seen it top around 7MB/s at times.

The rotating IP address is a PITA but is not impossible to work around.

I used to have 3 telephone lines (2 for MioTV and one for Internet) as I have a DNS / DHCP server on my lan that caused the MioTV boxes to fail to make a connection to the Singtel servers.

I have since found a very simple solution so I can now have my Windows Server doing the DHCP / DNS duties for my lan without affecting my MioTV and without having to play with VLans. I just ended up with a second router and have my lan on a separate subnet to the Singtel router with the MioTV boxes on the Singtel subnet.

No playing with the Singtel router settings so Singtel won't get confused if they have to come and troubleshoot an issue and it all works very well.

RB

Yes, I learned the hard way that if you use MIO's phone service you need to use the router's DHCP server. I would just modify the DHCP server pool on their router to only have 1 spare IP. The phone port always took the lease. Then I use my own DHCP server for everything else. This avoids the trouble you may have had with double NAT by using two routers.

Of course, I just ditched them finally and went with MyRepublic for fiber. Static IP for $50 one time fee, and I can easily use my own router. International bandwidth is no where near the 100/50 of the line, but they even tell you as much.

[RimBlock]

I don't recall the Mio phone not working for us but it was a while ago.

The problem is the MioTV set top boxes. They would grab an IP from my DHCP server rather than from the router which caused them to be on a different subnet to the MioTV server so no streaming.

Trying to get info on what happens during the MioTV bootup sequence was like a nightmare when speaking to the 'engineers' sent round. Finally we had the separate lines for the two MioTV STBs we were using. Helped a bit with bandwidth as well.

Now on fibre and the second subnet I have seen no issues. I have not tried remote access as I have very little need for it but all my apps seem to work fine. I may try remote access at some point but the Hadoop build is taking a lot of my time at the moment.

I am also wary of touching the Singtel router configuration wise as when one Singtel guy came round to trubleshoot the MioTV he more or less told me that because I have a custom setup (one Singtel router port was plugged in to a 24 port HP Procurve) they cannot provide support. I can imagine how hard they would expunge themselves from existance, with just a gentle pop followed by a soft G, if they saw the router settings were not default (or use it as an excuse not to provide support).

RB