NBN - Good or Bad
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
yeah, me too. I've already got the Telstra cable, also got the old Optus cable so whichever one is in better condition, I'll take.
Until then, the current telstra cable gives me all the speed I need. |
I agree.
For most (but not all) purposes, there is bugger-all practical speed difference between a properly-sorted, non-overloaded HFC cable setup and NBN. Real fibre has a significantly higher theoretical maximum but most customers don't use that, and won't start to use it for ... oh ... maybe five years or so, Until then, HFC cable is really just as good.
In theory, Fibre to the Node NBN is about as good as HFC cable. (The two systems are actually quite similar.) Like HFC, FTTN has a useful working lifespan of about five years (give or take) before it is obsolete. Trumble will have been booted out by then so some other bugger will have to work out how to pay for replacing it with something modern - i.e., actual fibre, which is the fastest thing there is today, and still will be the fastest thing there is until you and I are dead or we get new Laws of Physics, whichever happens first.
But that's only in theory. In practice, with HFC cable you get a shiny new dedicated copper cable from the network to your house. OK, it's only copper, but new, designed-for-purpose copper cable can still go better than OK. The FTTN (Fraudband) network uses the same crappy old not-designed-for-purpose copper wire you used to use for dial-up. If your wire happens to be in good shape and it's not raining, it can go quite well. Do you feel lucky?
Given a choice between HFC cable and FTTN, all else being equal, stick with HFC every time.
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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So good I had to post it twice
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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think positive 
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Do they let you choose?
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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Culprit 
Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Location: Port Melbourne
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| think positive wrote: | | Do they let you choose? |
No, the roll out depends on what is in your area. If you go to the NBN website and put your address I think you can find out what you will be getting. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| think positive wrote: | | Do they let you choose? |
Of course. All you need to do is make a single phone call and sign some papers. This is the part that a lot of people get wrong. Most people call NBN or their ISP, which doesn't work. What you actually do is call your real estate agent and tell her that you want to sell your house in Footscray and buy one in Newport.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | | David wrote: | | I'm happy with our current internet plan |
Your new one will be cheaper and better. Bet money on that (if you haven't already lost all your money backing Pauline to lose in Queensland). Not because it's NBN (will it even be actual NBN? Probably not.) but simply because it's a newer plan, and Internet plans always get cheaper.
| David wrote: | | am not in much of a position to be paying for installation etc |
NBN installation is free. If you already have a router (most people do), provided you avoid one or two brain-dead ISPs such as Telstra, you don't even need to spend $60 on a new router. You can just keep using your existing one.
Shop around for your your best plan. Repeat, shop around. Repeat, shop around. Some company somewhere will have a plan that really suits you at a price you like. Try Skymesh for the most flexible, BS-free plan of the lot. (I don't use them, for complicated reasons of no relevance here I'm with Telstra, but I've used Skymesh with perfect satisfaction, as have a number of other people I know. But shop around.
Do not, repeat not sign with scum like Dodo. Do you think that, being on a fast, modern NBN connection not actually supplied by them, even Dodo couldn't completely bugger it up and drive you nuts with slow, unreliable Internet and zero response to problems? If so, you are underestimating their talents. When it comes to providing really, really bad service and not even being sorry about it, Dodo is the varsity. |
Thanks Tannin! I'm currently with TPG, for two reasons: 1) price ($60 a month doesn't seem too bad) and 2) more crucially, unlimited downloads. That one's a real dealbreaker. (Unless the maximum is something huge like a terrabyte a month, but even then I'd rather not deal with the potential stress of wondering how much bandwidth I've used and whether I'm going to be given a surprise internet bill.)
The only thing I'd change about our current ADSL setup is upload speed – I can only get about 100 kb/s max at the moment. Download speed seems to be capped at about 1 mb/s which is ok for now, though I'd be happy with faster obviously (and surely a decent NBN contract will provide that, one imagines!).
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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Download speed capped at 1mb/s? 
That's crap. Sorry.
I just tested mine on a few different tests, average download speed 35mb/s, average upload speed of 1 mb/s
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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There is a reason your service is so slow, David, and it's not ADSL and not your copper phone line either: it is TPG. The good thing about TPG is that it is better than Dodo. The bad thing about TPG is that it is worse than just about everyone else.
They never change. Hell, I remember buying $200 worth of dial-up time from TPG once. It was about half the price every other company was charging. What a bargain I thought it was! I would up using about $30 worth of it and just throwing the rest away. Even by dial-up standards, it was glacially slow. Horrible. Unusable.
Theway TPG and most (all?) of the other cheap "unlimited" providers work is ... well, it's like a restaurant that offers $10 "unlimited" meals. Either the food is so bad that you can't eat more than $5 worth of it without being sick, or the service is so slow that most people give up and go home before they've got their money's worth. With restaurants this model doesn't work: customers eat once and never go back. But with Internet service providers it is different for some reason.
TPG has an unlimited NBN plan for the same price you are paying now. Don't expect it to be much if any faster though. Iinet (who used to be OK but are now owned by TPG - another massive truck-up by the ACCC there - offer unlimited for $70. That would be a fair bit better. For that same $70, Skymesh offer 240GB plus 1TB off-peak, which would be vastly faster. (You get what you pay for. The "unlimited" deals don't cap your bandwidth, they just make it so annoying that you don't bother using it.) Optus gives you unlimited NBN plus a phone for $80. Internode (sadly, now owned by Iinet which is owned by TPG) is unlimited for $70. And so on.
Dodo, for some reason, charge $65 for "unlimited". I'd think about that deal, but only if it was them giving me the $65.
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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^
Correct me if i'm wrong please, aren't mobs like Dodo and TPG just resellers who buy space wholesale and resell it retail? they don't actually put their own DSLAMS in the exchanges?
If that's the case, is the main reason they're slow is that they oversubscribe when reselling so you end up with too many people trying to share the same bandwidth?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Dave The Man 
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| stui magpie wrote: | Download speed capped at 1mb/s?
That's crap. Sorry.
I just tested mine on a few different tests, average download speed 35mb/s, average upload speed of 1 mb/s |
1.4mbps is about the best I get. Though I am still on ADSL
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I am Da Man |
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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I just Checked that and Sadly I am getting the Shitty FTTN 
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I am Da Man |
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Dave The Man
Joined: 01 Apr 2005
Location: Someville, Victoria, Australia
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| Tannin wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | ^
yeah, me too. I've already got the Telstra cable, also got the old Optus cable so whichever one is in better condition, I'll take.
Until then, the current telstra cable gives me all the speed I need. |
I agree.
For most (but not all) purposes, there is bugger-all practical speed difference between a properly-sorted, non-overloaded HFC cable setup and NBN. Real fibre has a significantly higher theoretical maximum but most customers don't use that, and won't start to use it for ... oh ... maybe five years or so, Until then, HFC cable is really just as good.
In theory, Fibre to the Node NBN is about as good as HFC cable. (The two systems are actually quite similar.) Like HFC, FTTN has a useful working lifespan of about five years (give or take) before it is obsolete. Trumble will have been booted out by then so some other bugger will have to work out how to pay for replacing it with something modern - i.e., actual fibre, which is the fastest thing there is today, and still will be the fastest thing there is until you and I are dead or we get new Laws of Physics, whichever happens first.
But that's only in theory. In practice, with HFC cable you get a shiny new dedicated copper cable from the network to your house. OK, it's only copper, but new, designed-for-purpose copper cable can still go better than OK. The FTTN (Fraudband) network uses the same crappy old not-designed-for-purpose copper wire you used to use for dial-up. If your wire happens to be in good shape and it's not raining, it can go quite well. Do you feel lucky?
Given a choice between HFC cable and FTTN, all else being equal, stick with HFC every time. |
Agree. What they doing now is just a Waste of Time as when Turbull Finally get's Kicked out of Power. The Labor Party would have to spend even more money to Actually UpDate it where it Really Should be.
Turnbull thinks he is saving Money but in the Mid to Long Term it will cost more
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Tannin wrote: | There is a reason your service is so slow, David, and it's not ADSL and not your copper phone line either: it is TPG. The good thing about TPG is that it is better than Dodo. The bad thing about TPG is that it is worse than just about everyone else.
They never change. Hell, I remember buying $200 worth of dial-up time from TPG once. It was about half the price every other company was charging. What a bargain I thought it was! I would up using about $30 worth of it and just throwing the rest away. Even by dial-up standards, it was glacially slow. Horrible. Unusable.
Theway TPG and most (all?) of the other cheap "unlimited" providers work is ... well, it's like a restaurant that offers $10 "unlimited" meals. Either the food is so bad that you can't eat more than $5 worth of it without being sick, or the service is so slow that most people give up and go home before they've got their money's worth. With restaurants this model doesn't work: customers eat once and never go back. But with Internet service providers it is different for some reason.
TPG has an unlimited NBN plan for the same price you are paying now. Don't expect it to be much if any faster though. Iinet (who used to be OK but are now owned by TPG - another massive truck-up by the ACCC there - offer unlimited for $70. That would be a fair bit better. For that same $70, Skymesh offer 240GB plus 1TB off-peak, which would be vastly faster. (You get what you pay for. The "unlimited" deals don't cap your bandwidth, they just make it so annoying that you don't bother using it.) Optus gives you unlimited NBN plus a phone for $80. Internode (sadly, now owned by Iinet which is owned by TPG) is unlimited for $70. And so on.
Dodo, for some reason, charge $65 for "unlimited". I'd think about that deal, but only if it was them giving me the $65. |
There have certainly been times when I have wished it were faster, but generally speaking TPG has served me well download-wise – I guess maybe I just don't know what I've been missing! It's really their upload speeds that have killed me (particularly regarding the ability to maintain a good ratio on file-sharing websites). Do you know any NBN providers that would have unlimited downloads and a half-decent upload speed? Looking at the prices you've listed above, Optus and others don't sound too unreasonable.
_________________
All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Post subject: | |
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| stui magpie wrote: | ^
Correct me if i'm wrong please, aren't mobs like Dodo and TPG just resellers who buy space wholesale and resell it retail? they don't actually put their own DSLAMS in the exchanges?
If that's the case, is the main reason they're slow is that they oversubscribe when reselling so you end up with too many people trying to share the same bandwidth? |
Spot on, Stui.
Or, to put much the same thing the other way around, they under-specify their backhaul arrangements. TPG and Dodo, so to speak, rent the shiny new four-inch water pipe NBN dug up your street to install, and to supply the water going into that pipe at their end they use a couple of leaky old half-inch garden hoses that have been left out in the sun a few summers oo many.
(Not exact, but you get the idea.)
(Sorry Dave and Dave, I'll get back to you. I have to go and stake myself out on a hot tin roof for an hour or two now. Yes, really.)
_________________
�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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