Have you tried turning it off and on? (Photo: Getty Images).

PartnersJuly 22, 2018

How to improve your internet: some really useful (and really not useful) advice

Staff writers

Have you tried turning it off and on? (Photo: Getty Images).

From broadbeans to home wiring, the Spinoff and the Commerce Commission provide some essential tips on how to enhance your broadband performance.

The internet is buzzy as. Think about it for a second. Inexplicable technology has the answer to every question you’ve ever had, held inside magic flying around in the sky, just waiting for you to ask the right question.

New Zealanders appear to understand the deep existential importance of the immense potential of the internet and the power wielded by its gatekeepers – the internet service providers – and each year we spend about $1.2 billion on home broadband.

In fact, believe it or not, New Zealand’s internet is among the world’s fastest and cheapest.

The Commerce Commission’s annual telco monitoring report shows a “premium” 100Mbps fibre broadband service with unlimited data and a voice line is available for $90 a month. That’s 5% below the OECD average, and 24% cheaper than what you’d get in Australia. According to data distribution company Akamai, New Zealand’s average fixed broadband download speed is 14.7 Mbps, up from 10.5 Mbps. Last month it took me 2 minutes to download Ye, compared to an estimated 12 minutes to download My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010. New Zealand continued to widen its speed lead over Australia on the Akamai measure, and continues to hold its spot compared to the rest of the world.

But it’s actually really difficult to get an accurate understanding of internet performance. Especially when the speed of plans being purchased and typical consumption is rising, and we all know about the dramatic unexplained variation in performance caused by things like technology, rain and the 7pm rush hour.

So the Commerce Commission is running a nationwide programme to track the performance of Kiwis’ broadband and the way it’s affected by providers, geography, and things like time of day. This will help consumers choose the best package for their household or business, and accurate information will encourage telco providers to compete transparently on performance, not just price.

To get this clearer picture, they need volunteers from across New Zealand to slap a ‘Whitebox’ (similar to a modem) onto their connection at home. This box performs automated tests on your home internet performance at different times of the day and DOES NOT record any personal information or browsing history, or interfere with your internet service.

Volunteers will also have access to their own internet performance information, which may help diagnose issues and improve their broadband performance.

Your country needs you! Enlist today.

But while we wait for the performance data to be available to incentivise ISPs to provide faster, more consistent broadband, The Spinoff and the Commerce Commission have come up with some helpful tips to ensure you’re getting the most out of your broadband. Some are more helpful than others…

The Spinoff’s helpful tips:

Use a dehumidifier. The water in the air adds resistance and makes your wifi significantly weaker, remove it and you’re winning.
Have a fight with your flatmate that involves them storming out of the flat. Stream UnReal in its entirety afterwards.
Go to your router’s IP and turn it off. Wait for your flatmate to keep turning the router on and off and realise it’s not working, and then leave and go to his girlfriend’s house.
Sell everything. Squat at work, use their internet instead when nobody’s there at night.
Change the wifi password and pretend you don’t know what’s happened, knowing your flatmate is too socially awkward to ever ring up the provider. Continue this process until they move out.
Complain louder. It’s the same logic that makes people move their whole body when playing video games.
Turn your router off, then on again.
Throw a broad bean into a well under the light of a full moon. Broad bean. Broadband. Certainly makes you think.
Change the password so your flatmates can’t use it.
Turn your old phone or laptop into a wifi extender.
Browse the internet as text only. It’s fast AND ‘90s-retro-cool.
Read a book. Run in the long grass. Stand in the middle of your street screaming at the moon. You’ll forget how rubbish your internet connection is.
Relax. The internet is way faster than it used to me you ungrateful son of a…
Knock down your house’s internal walls to enhance your indoor-wifi-flow.
Call the police.
Take a cold hard look at your microwave. It’s probably sabotaging the vibe in the air.
Live alone so you don’t have to share your internet with anyone else and you can also wallow in your own Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting-esque filth.
Delete Fortnite.
Unplug the wifi to cripple your flatmates’ stream, and connect your laptop via an ethernet cable instead
Wrap yourself in tinfoil.
Keep an eye on the neighbours and cut off any freeloaders who are trying to steal your broadband (true story).
Reduce the quality of the *ahem* videos you watch. Shame and self-loathing feels about the same at 240p as 1080p.
Put your phone on your head. Not strictly broadband but helpful for internet access if you’re somewhere remote. When you need some extra bars on your phone to text your wife about what she needs from the supermarket, or to get out that essential Facebook status update from the South Sudan desert (true story), put your phone on your head. The science says this turns your body into an aerial allowing your phone to pick up more signal. The anecdotes say in the depths of Africa or Titirangi it allows you to check your emails. You might look stupid, but it definitely works. (Side note: the same theory applies to the remote on your car key remote, create extra range by holding them to your head.)

Call the IT department. (Photo: Getty Images).

The Commerce Commission’s legit advice:

Turn it off and on. You know it works, but did you know why? Basically it’s like any computer that over a period of time can get clogged doing its own calculations and turning it off resets it. It allows the system to restart and start afresh.
If you are using wireless, have the router in a central location. Distance is your enemy. Keep it away from other electronic devices, because wifi uses the same radio waves as cordless phones, microwaves and baby monitors. Distance between the two things reduces the opportunity for interference.
Make sure your signal is not being interfered with by your neighbours. The radio waves that your wireless router uses is in the same area of the spectrum as other electronics use. Because they are in the same range it can get clogged. The 2.4 GHz range is the problem as it’s a common frequency. You don’t have to pay to use it, anyone can use that spectrum. But that means it a wild west with a lot of things going on.
Newer tech offers the 5GHz spectrum as well, and newer phones and computers will be able to use this.
Use an ethernet cable to get better performance, although this is not always practical.
If you’ve got a big home, use more than one wifi access point to create a mesh network across the property. It extends the coverage using some of that wifi magic and provides a much more consistent signal throughout your home.
If the wiring at your home was done years ago for the telephone and hasn’t been upgraded that’s going to affect your performance. Sometimes a small wiring upgrade can have a big effect on the stability.

This content is brought to you by the Commerce Commission. Sign up to be a broadband volunteer at www.measuringbroadbandnewzealand.com

Keep going!

Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during the 60th Annual GRAMMY Awards.(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS).

PartnersJuly 21, 2018

Review: Kendrick Lamar live in Auckland

Tamsyn Matchett

Guest writer

Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during the 60th Annual GRAMMY Awards.(Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS).

The performance of Kendrick Lamar’s hip-hop carries special meaning for New Zealand’s minorities, Tamsyn Matchett writes.

Kendrick Lamar has been on his DAMN. tour for more than a year. He will finish the 12 month marathon next week in Australia. Such a gruelling, brutal schedule is warranted given the huge mainstream success of DAMN., and its cultural importance and historic moment for US race relations. But this significance travels much further than the US, and to many other ethnic minorities around the world, including my own.

The last time we had the chance to see Kendrick was back in 2016 when he headlined Auckland City Limits. Having just released To Pimp a Butterfly, the performance was full of the funk and soul energy of that release. DAMN. is notably different in energy and intention which made for an entirely different feeling show.

I was pleasantly caught off guard at how representative the audience was of our wider community, here in Aotearoa. As ticket prices continue to soar, I am always concerned at how that will impact the equitable access to stars like Kendrick. Despite my concerns, the crowd was a happy mix of mostly young and fly-as-hell rangatahi from all over, ready for a rap communion with the undisputed king of West Coast hip-hop.

Having peeked at previous setlists, I had a fair idea of what to expect and was prepared for the opening track, ‘DNA’. But not for the pyrotechnics that preceded his entrance; emerged in smoke, Kendrick appeared dressed in his Kenny Kung-Fu threads, and threw down from the start.

This song hits me hard. It’s primal. It resonates with me in a deeply personal way. It reminds me of how attached we, people of colour, are to our identity, our DNA, and how this is used against us in almost every example of systematic racism and oppression. This is why Kendrick matters; he confronts complex shit and makes it accessible. And despite being a straight banger, ‘DNA’ is also a blueprint for the most recent iteration of this rap superstar. This tour, and Kendrick’s brand of rap, is a celebration of identity, and ultimately of defiance.

Behind him, on what was one of the better quality visuals I have seen at Spark Arena, he reminded us he was more than Kung-Fu Kenny: Pulitzer Kenny was in the building, and was ready to rip through this set with that infamously effortless flow. It was also a reminder to us of exactly what this rapper has come to represent. His music is setting the bar for how popular artists can discuss complicated topics of oppression and race.

Throughout the evening he references struggle. He raps about warfare, being a soldier, fighting battles on all fronts, not only with those who might try to bring him down, but also his internal struggle with his own demons. As he performed, sometimes on his knees to the crowd, you could feel his humility. His ability to move from moments like that, to aggressive party vibes cue Dr Dre drums and strings, makes his style so accessible.

Kendrick’s music is deeply connected to location and community; it’s about recognizing yourself, your hood, your homies, your postcode. Tracks like ‘Backstreet Freestyle’, ‘m.A.A.d city’, and ‘Element’ all reference his hometown Compton. And on a reworked ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ saw him rapping about his connection to the West Dominican Republic, you really get a sense of how interlinked his identity is to his personal geography. Identity was such a strong theme throughout the night and most notably it’s the lyrics that deal with racial self-realisation that shine throughout.

Narratives from tracks like ‘Alright’ deal to the heart of his positive affirmation and sense of self in the wake of oppression: “And we hate po-po/ Wanna kill us dead in the streets fo sho’/ N****, I’m at the preacher’s door/ My knees gettin’ weak, and my gun might blow/ But we gon’ be alright”. The police presence post-gig, which was notably larger than any rock concert I have ever been to at Spark Arena, was again a reminder of commonalities we can draw from Kendrick’s experiences.

Kendrick Lamar at Spark Arena in Auckland (Photo: Ollie Wall).

Of course, there were moments in the evening that made me uncomfortable. White dudes in linen button-up shirts rapping the N word during ‘m.A.A.d city’ or jubilantly celebrating that they were “gonna be alright” highlights that we are still not there, still not willing to recognise the complications that come with white consumption of black culture.

Kendrick’s music is so deeply rooted in racial experience it is valid to assume that if you are white, some of it just wasn’t made for you. As Solange so aptly expressed on her track ‘For Us By Us’: ‘don’t be sad if you can’t sing along/ Just be glad you got the whole wide world’. But I guess rap does that – it gives you a sense of belonging whether or not you actually belong.

Ultimately, this music will always resonate deeply with those who need it most. Those who understand what Kendrick means when he grapples with what it is to be black, what it is to not be white, in a world still very orientated towards white success. And I think that here in New Zealand, our communities of colour connect with artists like Kendrick because his experience feels and sounds familiar.

It was Kendrick’s blackness and how that translates here, to our tangata whenua, our pasifika, that hit me the hardest last night. We face similar issues of systematic oppression, to differing levels; we understand how economic slavery can break communities of colour and we live similar realities as a result. We too, cling to our identities, our post-codes. We too, feel loyalty and royalty inside our DNA. But most of all, we recognise that sound of diaspora so present in Kendrick’s music, the feeling of not quite belonging, or of being displaced, having land and sometimes even life stolen from us.

Similarly here as to the US, if you are a person of colour who is a musician or athlete you are accepted. Your humanity however, is less acceptable in other forums. And while our people might not be arrested in a Starbucks for just existing, we are still racially profiled every day, locked up in prisons at horrifyingly disproportionate rates, and vilified as violent thugs in the media. When Kendrick celebrates the complexities of his blackness, he enables us here, in Aotearoa to do something similar. To stand a little taller, talk a bit louder, be a bit prouder.

Last night I saw that. I saw beautiful, young, proud brown faces connecting to an international superstar in the most powerful of ways; no matter the struggle, music will always connect us to something bigger. Tonight, Kendrick was holding up his fist in the air, signaling to all who might recognise it, that he won’t be quiet. And that we shouldn’t either.

Rap is art. It is defiance. It is dissent. It is radical. It is punk. And it is black. And last night Kendrick was all of it.

The Spinoff’s music content is brought to you by our friends at Spark. Listen to all the music you love on Spotify Premium, it’s free on all Spark’s Pay Monthly Mobile plans. Sign up and start listening today.