Airtel Xstream Fiber Experience (Direct Cities)

M

MadAxe

Adept
Airtel is considered to be the best Internet Service Provider(ISP) by many in our country. It is quite popular among gamers. Also has excellent routing and good customer support.
I would really appreciate members sharing their Airtel Xstream Fiber experience by answering some questions mentioned below:

1. Which city are you from?

2. How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
How long have you been using it?
Are you satisfied?

3. What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Any cons of using Airtel?
What made you switch to Airtel?
If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?

4. Which ONT cum router has been provided to you? Any specific issues you're facing with it?

5. You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.

6. Also have the latency issues been solved for direct cities?
LCO cities like Patna are still having latency issues.

Note: The main purpose of this thread is helping out people take an informed decision while choosing their Internet Service Provider(ISP). The info gathered would not be used for any other purpose.
 
1.
Which city are you from?
Hyderabad.

2.
How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
Good.

How long have you been using it?
Two weeks.

Are you satisfied?
I am content.

3.
What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Fiber remains active during power outtages.
Responsive & transparent customer service.

Any cons of using Airtel?
Speed can vary greatly, I've seen it drop to 150Mbps and I'm on a 300Mbps plan.
More filtering and blocking than my previous ISP, even with custom DNS.
All plans have the same FUP limit of 3.3TB.

What made you switch to Airtel?
Previous ISP had no intention of maintaining connection during power outtages.

If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?
Not my first, was with Excel Media for 19 years.

4.
Which ONT cum router has been provided to you?
Huawei HG8145V5

Any specific issues you're facing with it?
Bridge WAN mode is no longer supported.

5.
You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.
Screen Shot 2021-05-29 at 3.23.20 AM.png


6.
Also have the latency issues been solved for direct cities?
I have not tested this.

- - -

Overall, it's been a nice experience. I feel like I'm living in the future. The last time I felt like this was with a 128Kbps connection in 2000. Installation was completed within 12 hours of requesting a new connection from their website even with a curfew & lockdown. They had to run the fiber cable three times because the first two runs weren't good. I'm planning on getting one or two more connections since the FUP limit is non-negotiable, unlike with my previous ISP. With Excel Media, I could just ask them to reset the FUP limit and pay the monthly bill on that day. People have suggested contacting Airtel to enable Bridge WAN mode, I'll give that a try sometime.
 
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rsaeon said:
1.
Which city are you from?
Hyderabad.

2.
How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
Good.

How long have you been using it?
Two weeks.

Are you satisfied?
I am content.

3.
What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Fiber remains activate during power outtages.
Responsive & transparent customer service.

Any cons of using Airtel?
Speed can vary greatly, I've seen it drop to 150Mbps and I'm on a 300Mbps plan.
More filtering and blocking than my previous ISP, even with custom DNS.
All plans have the same FUP limit of 3.3TB.

What made you switch to Airtel?
Previous ISP had no intention of maintaining connection during power outtages.

If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?
Not my first, was with Excel Media for 19 years.

4.
Which ONT cum router has been provided to you?
Huawei HG8145V5

Any specific issues you're facing with it?
Bridge WAN mode is no longer supported.

5.
You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.
View attachment 107035

6.
Also have the latency issues been solved for direct cities?
I have not tested this.

- - -

Overall, it's been a nice experience. I feel like I'm living in the future. The last time I felt like this was with a 128Kbps connection in 2000. Installation was completed within 12 hours of requesting a new connection from their website even with a curfew & lockdown. They had to run the fiber cable three times because the first two runs weren't good. I'm planning on getting one or two more connections since the FUP limit is non-negotiable, unlike with my previous ISP. With Excel Media, I could just ask them to reset the FUP limit and pay the monthly bill on that day. People have suggested contacting Airtel to enable Bridge WAN mode, I'll give that a try sometime.
Click to expand...
Bridge WAN mode is actually supported.
The call process was a bit painful as most CC agents are clueless about it - and I am not even 100% sure that they had to do anything on the backend since nothing really seemed to have changed on the Airtel router.
AT my end, I had to pull the connection to my router from port 4 of their router (other ports won't work).
The UID is visible on the airtel router page and the password is your account number.

Give it a shot before you call them .

FOr the OP - I was with a local cable ISP for the past 7-8 years.
Airtel so far has been far superior
 
indianexpress.com

Airtel Xstream Fiber launches ‘Secure Internet’ subscription for Rs 99: How to activate

Airtel is promising that the new service will help block high-risk websites and apps in real-time by leveraging its network security apparatus for the devices that remain connected to Airtel Xstream Fiber.
indianexpress.com indianexpress.com

Any one have any experience with this? Seems like a generic dns filter(cloudflare family filters?). Or is it something else?
Are airtel routers connected to their servers like jio? (Like jio fiber app has options to manage wifi, seems to do it over internet and not locally)
Might as well change the dns on your own on the routers.
 
1. Which city are you from?
Delhi

2. How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
How long have you been using it?
Are you satisfied?

It's been a few months on fiber, vdsl before that for a few years.

3. What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Any cons of using Airtel?
What made you switch to Airtel?
If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?

- Customer service is a big plus, compared to hyperlocal fiber providers. I have another fiber connection as a backup that's not been working for 3 months. That's prepay so not even bothering to top it up or chase them.
- It can be painful to reach a human if you call, but on the plus side their app can diagnose and detect if you're affected by an outage or not.
- They do packet inspection, and that causes some lag sometimes while loading pages.
- The connection has very minimal downtime, and speeds are pretty decent. Paying for 100mbps, I usually get ~95mbps up/down.

4. Which ONT cum router has been provided to you? Any specific issues you're facing with it?
Some Nokia router.

5. You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.
Highly dependent on server location. Delhi-Mumbai roundtrip is about 30-40ms.

6. Also have the latency issues been solved for direct cities?
No spikes or jitter in my experience.
 
sauravghosh said:
On GoodbyeDPI, do we need to run just the script as admin or the .exe needs to be run on the side as well? There's no usage guide for amateurs.
Click to expand...

Download the zip from releases and unzip it.

Open up an admin command prompt with search>cmd>right click>run as admin.

Then go to the x86_64 folder with pushd e.g. pushd "C:\Users\AGENT47\Downloads\goodbyedpie\x86_64" if you are using Windows 10 64 bit.

Then run goodbyedpi -3

I have turned it into a service using nssm so that it runs at startup.
 
MadAxe said:
Airtel is considered to be the best Internet Service Provider(ISP) by many in our country. It is quite popular among gamers. Also has excellent routing and good customer support.
I would really appreciate members sharing their Airtel Xstream Fiber experience by answering some questions mentioned below:

1. Which city are you from?
Click to expand...
Delhi
MadAxe said:
2. How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
How long have you been using it?
Are you satisfied?
Click to expand...
Been good so far, I've opted for two connections since lockdown

I've had a copper cable for the last 5 years, recently upgraded to fibre(1 year).

Yes
MadAxe said:
3. What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Any cons of using Airtel?
What made you switch to Airtel?
If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?
Click to expand...
Well, for one they weren't giving a landline

Not really

Reliability, consistency and CC (with my previous ISP speeds would vary heavily, and I would have to reboot quite often)

Not my first, experienced others but found this more suitable. I live in an area where there are few houses in between. And other companies would simply refuse installation or had very poor customer service.
MadAxe said:
4. Which ONT cum router has been provided to you? Any specific issues you're facing with it?
Click to expand...

NOKIA, I did face issues with it, random reboots sometimes. So after a healthy dose of emails, it was changed with another brand(it was even worse, no connectivity at all). Then was given a new Nokia router, haven't faced issues since(been a month and a half)
MadAxe said:
5. You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.
Click to expand...

Download speed on 5Ghz hovers around the claimed sometimes over, 100mbps, upload around 250-300mpbs
MadAxe said:
6. Also have the latency issues been solved for direct cities?
LCO cities like Patna are still having latency issues.
Click to expand...
Not encountered a problem so far with latency.
MadAxe said:
Note: The main purpose of this thread is helping out people take an informed decision while choosing their Internet Service Provider(ISP). The info gathered would not be used for any other purpose.
Click to expand...

I have a large family with everybody using their multiple devices at various times. Hence to avoid pressure on the same connection(especially during online classes in the morning) I opted for another connection. This is the most stable arrangement, I wouldn't move to another ISP unless I encounter a problem with airtel.
 
1. Which city are you from?
Delhi

2. How has your experience been with Airtel Xstream Fiber?
How long have you been using it?
Are you satisfied?
Very good experience. Used it for 2 years.

3. What differences did you feel after using Airtel over your previous ISP?
Any cons of using Airtel?
What made you switch to Airtel?
If this is your first ISP, then why did you go for it?
After using airtel, I had to shift to another area where only jio and excitel were there. With airtel I was getting a public facing router with 1:1 connection. So it was possible to host my cloud (nextcloudpi in Rpi4) with external access. But since jio and excitel are both using CGNAT, I am unable to use my pi.

4. Which ONT cum router has been provided to you? Any specific issues you're facing with it?
I was given a huawei one with 2 antenna. Much better than the ones given by jio and excitel

5. You can post speed tests, tracerts, pings to game servers, in game pings.
Was getting advertised speeds. I don't play much games now. When I played old pubgmobile I used to get ping around 30ms on Asia server.
 
Marcus Fenix said:
Download the zip from releases and unzip it.

Open up an admin command prompt with search>cmd>right click>run as admin.

Then go to the x86_64 folder with pushd e.g. pushd "C:\Users\AGENT47\Downloads\goodbyedpie\x86_64" if you are using Windows 10 64 bit.

Then run goodbyedpi -3

I have turned it into a service using nssm so that it runs at startup.
Click to expand...
Lmao. Thanks man. The only thing I did right was downloading and extracting goodbyedpi from right source apparently. I simply would open the folder and run one of the .cmd files by right clicking and run as admin. Why -3 though? Is it the most compatible or what? Noticed on the git page that it says -4 is the best for speed.

Thanks for mentioning about that nssm but I am very confident I won't be able to do all that so manual it is for me. Lol.
 
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sauravghosh said:
Lmao. Thanks man. The only thing I did right was downloading and extracting goodbyedpi from right source apparently. I simply would open the folder and run one of the .cmd files bur right clicking and run as admin. Why -3 though? Is it the most compatible or what? Noticed on the git page that it says -4 is the best for speed.

Thanks for mentioning about that nssm but I am very confident I won't be able to do all that so manual it is for me. Lol.
Click to expand...
I went with 3 after trial and error. 3 managed to unblock almost all torrent sites for me except subscene.com which is weird.

Why is the govt. blocking a subtitle website ?
 
Has anyone subscribed to the Airtel Xstream TV services? They are laying optical fibre lines in my locality and state that they'll be providing TV services with it. I was wondering how the live TV (popular news and entertainment channels) plans are? I cannot seem to find them anywhere or find a list of channels available.

Further, is it possible to use your own router with an Airtel connection? I am currently using ACT and I am very satisfied with the services, but if Airtel sweeps in offering TV and telephony services, I might consider shifting.
 
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