11 ms·

Well I don't know about faster than 5G, but for my rural location it's a lifesaver. I get a steady 60Mbps down, 12-15 up, which is just a tad better than my pre

Well I don't know about faster than 5G, but for my rural location it's a lifesaver. I get a steady 60Mbps down, 12-15 up, which is just a tad better than my previous 0.3Mbps ADSL. It's kind of amazing and is literally what enables me to live where I do (ie. for remote work). 4g here is also far better than the shithouse fake NBN foisted on us by our far-right government, which loathes and fears any technology more recent than coal & witch burning.

hug 7y ago
For some people, 4G is definitely better than NBN. Not all people. I’m not saying the NBN isn’t a trash fire of an infrastructure project (it is), or that our 4G is bad (it isn’t), but at least for me I get rock solid 100/40 on HFC, which is for sure better than my NBN service in inner-North Melbourne
- crispinb 7y ago
  Yes of course you're right. In a way that's the big problem with the NBN - a 'national infrastructure' project that is a complete lottery regarding what you get is not worth the name. 40 odd km from me there are estates wired up with NBN's original FTTP. Yet in my location, all that's available is the hopeless Sky Muster satellite service, which tends to go offline for days at a time, and has trouble with weird contingencies like rain. It was originally slated as a last-ditch option for people in truly remote areas, but the hapless NBN Co has gradually extended its use to anywhere they can't be arsed to serve properly. [Edit: as a side note, my location shows the corporate fakery behind the 'mixed tech' model. Using a cheap 4g modem from ebay, and without even so much as a fixed antenna, I can get 60Mbps down with 4g. Yet NBNCo doesn't make the fixed wireless option available here, instead foisting on us the 'outback solution' of satellite with its 600ms ping times, pitiful data caps & unreliability]
- tenryuu 7y ago
  It's interesting, becusee I moved from FTTC getting 100/40 to HFC and still getting 100/40. Each technology has their own hardware faults though, and I've witnessed both. But as a user of the service, I'm actually surprised how decent HFC has been working. My parents of FTTN get about 50/20,which is what I expect a lot of users on these lines would only be able to access. But the sheer cost of using a NBN over 4G makes it a lot easier to sell, data sims are not cheap
  - rosege 7y ago
    What about your latency? - Ive tested FTTP and got around 3ms to 8.8.8.8 but hfc its around 30+ Any idea what FTTC would be?
    - tenryuu 7y ago
      Getting ~20ms on HFC, with 12ms to our BNGv(first hop) I no longer have a FTTC connection to test, but I don't think it's 3ms low. Using AussieBB. It's around 20ms from Sydney to Melbourne on our routes
      - rosege 7y ago
        Yeah I'm going with Aussie too.
jjtheblunt 7y ago
NBN ?
- cstrat 7y ago
  It is an acronym for the National Broadband Network. A government owned enterprise which was supposed to build a ubiquitous broadband network covering Australia but has been plagued with political meddling and interference since the get-go.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  My residence now has NBN as an option. I have decided to wait a year or two. Going for NBN is a bit of a gamble. My OK-ish ADSL connection is finally working without interruptions, and on forums people with NBN are talking about resetting their modem several times a day, coaxial cable connections need to be perfect otherwise it doesn't work etc. Sad really to miss out, but I am prioritizing uptime over speed. The UK got this right in the late 90's by connecting cable to almost every residence (IIRC).
emmelaich 7y ago
Good post until the last sentence! NBN history is far more interesting than that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network
- crispinb 7y ago
  It was a bit of snark not to be taken too seriously, though with regard to the trogs' fear of technology, it has more than a grain of truth ;)
  - aaron695 7y ago
    Stephen Conroy (on the left) was frequently called a Luddite by tech magazines. A leading IT forum even had an short lived happy April Fools he had been fired. https://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1841&show=replies https://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1841&show=replies I'd do more research if you want to know more.
  - sjwright 7y ago
    To the person with the "dead" reply musing about Stephen Conroy being a luddite—I wrote that April fools parody article. Yes, Conroy started off as an embarrassing luddite __BUT__ unlike the luddites that came before him, he improved. He learned. He grew. He surrounded himself with smart, experienced and informed people, and he learned from them. By the time he departed that role he had morphed into perhaps the best communications ministers in recent Australian history. --------- Whereas you can watch the moment of television where all respect I had for Malcolm Turnbull crashed into the floor (fast forward to the 17 minute mark and watch for about one minute): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/nbn-debate/4882232 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/nbn-debate/4882232 "Anthony said that fibre to the premises can deliver one gigabit per second, 1000 megs, and you're quite right, it can. Do you know what it would cost to have a guaranteed one gig' service? At least $20,000 a month." So basically Turnbull used a deceptive truth (the cost of a high speed service with dedicated guaranteed backhaul) to blatantly and intentionally lie about the cost of gigabit services that would be sold to 99.9% of NBN-connected customers. The fact that he knew enough to concoct this deception made me realise that he wasn't just as bad as the rest of them, he's worse. He used his knowledge and intelligence to cleverly and carefully craft a statement that's blatantly false yet defensible as technically true if he were caught out. Nobody is that clever by accident.
quickthrower2 7y ago
Are you affected by weather? Do you use a directional antenna?
- crispinb 7y ago
  I don't need an antenna - I get a good enough signal with my modem stashed in the rafters. I'm about 12km from a 4g tower, but it's up on a decent hill which is nearly line of sight. I did have to go through a few modems to find one that worked reliably. Oddly enough, an old Huawei B315s has turned out to be by far the best for my situation. I've tried fancier models that multiplex radio bands, but they were slower and less reliable. Weather seems to have little to no effect. What does sometimes cause a problem is tourist influxes to the nearest town. The occasional big weekend event can bring speeds down to 12Mbps or so. Still, I'm not complaining and consider ubiquitous internet availability a kind of modern miracle.
fertibm 7y ago
Errr... our government isn’t far right, and the disaster of the nbn was created by the left, and made worse by the right. The narrative being repeated in this and other left wing sites like reddit of “the nbn would have been good if it was all fiber” is just wrong. The nbn from its conception was a half-baked, last minute idea made up by Kevin Rudd. If any public network was needed, it should have been wireless. The nbn discounted any possible future that resulted in wireless being a viable way of delivering the internet to everyone. Wireless is also necessary because things aren’t stationary. Cars can’t use fiber internet, for example. Fiber to every home is ridiculously expensive, with a large percentage of homes not even using any more bandwidth than is required to stream Netflix. Fiber also excludes rural areas, and any lower density areas in general. A public wireless network would be utilised much more, as even a lower speed wireless network that is available everywhere and cheaper opens up more possibilities than a limited high speed network. It isn’t just speed that is important. We also have the issue of data caps. High speed connections that have 20gb per month data caps are pretty useless, yet a large percentage of the population can’t afford any more than that. The nbn, whether fiber or not, would always just result in a product a large percentage of normal people couldn’t even utilise. The liberal party made the nbn worse, but it was a terrible idea to begin with. All the political parties are corrupt.
- ntSean 7y ago
  >If any public network was needed, it should have been wireless. I don't believe the rural NBN customers on Wireless Satellite technology would support this premise. Even customers in suburban shopping centres struggle with their cellular connection - hence Free Wifi being so ubiquitous. But regardless, our conservative government relies on minerals and education rather than investing in Australia's ability to compete in a digital world. So here's hoping we can keep up with developed nations who are making use of the high-bandwidth infrastructure made available to them today.
- jussij 7y ago
  > the disaster of the nbn was created by the left, and made worse by the right The left proposed an NBN based on 'fiber to the home' technology. The right threw out that plan and replaced it with 'fiber to the node and copper to the home' technology. Now it is hard to say if the NBN proposed by the left would have been a disaster as it was only rolled out to a few place. But being fiber based it would at least have been future proofed. However, now that the most of the money has been spent and the NBN copper system is nearing completion, we are seeing that the NBN as it now stands is a total disaster. It is already obsolete before it is complete.
anderspitman 7y ago
I grew up rural. First internet connection I used at home was a 14.4k connection through my dad's Startac. I used to have to put a rubber band on the connector to keep it properly plugged into the phone for data. Eventually we got a 1Mpbs microwave connection from a local WISP. It was a huge improvement in a lot of ways but the latency was terrible and very jittery. Now when I go back to my parent's house I get 10+ Mbps 4G on Verizon and Tmobile. It's awesome.

hug 7y ago

For some people, 4G is definitely better than NBN. Not all people. I’m not saying the NBN isn’t a trash fire of an infrastructure project (it is), or that our 4G is bad (it isn’t), but at least for me I get rock solid 100/40 on HFC, which is for sure better than my NBN service in inner-North Melbourne

crispinb 7y ago
Yes of course you're right. In a way that's the big problem with the NBN - a 'national infrastructure' project that is a complete lottery regarding what you get is not worth the name. 40 odd km from me there are estates wired up with NBN's original FTTP. Yet in my location, all that's available is the hopeless Sky Muster satellite service, which tends to go offline for days at a time, and has trouble with weird contingencies like rain. It was originally slated as a last-ditch option for people in truly remote areas, but the hapless NBN Co has gradually extended its use to anywhere they can't be arsed to serve properly. [Edit: as a side note, my location shows the corporate fakery behind the 'mixed tech' model. Using a cheap 4g modem from ebay, and without even so much as a fixed antenna, I can get 60Mbps down with 4g. Yet NBNCo doesn't make the fixed wireless option available here, instead foisting on us the 'outback solution' of satellite with its 600ms ping times, pitiful data caps & unreliability]
tenryuu 7y ago
It's interesting, becusee I moved from FTTC getting 100/40 to HFC and still getting 100/40. Each technology has their own hardware faults though, and I've witnessed both. But as a user of the service, I'm actually surprised how decent HFC has been working. My parents of FTTN get about 50/20,which is what I expect a lot of users on these lines would only be able to access. But the sheer cost of using a NBN over 4G makes it a lot easier to sell, data sims are not cheap
- rosege 7y ago
  What about your latency? - Ive tested FTTP and got around 3ms to 8.8.8.8 but hfc its around 30+ Any idea what FTTC would be?
  - tenryuu 7y ago
    Getting ~20ms on HFC, with 12ms to our BNGv(first hop) I no longer have a FTTC connection to test, but I don't think it's 3ms low. Using AussieBB. It's around 20ms from Sydney to Melbourne on our routes
    - rosege 7y ago
      Yeah I'm going with Aussie too.

jjtheblunt 7y ago

NBN ?

cstrat 7y ago
It is an acronym for the National Broadband Network. A government owned enterprise which was supposed to build a ubiquitous broadband network covering Australia but has been plagued with political meddling and interference since the get-go.
quickthrower2 7y ago
My residence now has NBN as an option. I have decided to wait a year or two. Going for NBN is a bit of a gamble. My OK-ish ADSL connection is finally working without interruptions, and on forums people with NBN are talking about resetting their modem several times a day, coaxial cable connections need to be perfect otherwise it doesn't work etc. Sad really to miss out, but I am prioritizing uptime over speed. The UK got this right in the late 90's by connecting cable to almost every residence (IIRC).

emmelaich 7y ago

Good post until the last sentence! NBN history is far more interesting than that! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network

crispinb 7y ago
It was a bit of snark not to be taken too seriously, though with regard to the trogs' fear of technology, it has more than a grain of truth ;)
- aaron695 7y ago
  Stephen Conroy (on the left) was frequently called a Luddite by tech magazines. A leading IT forum even had an short lived happy April Fools he had been fired. https://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1841&show=replies https://whirlpool.net.au/news/?id=1841&show=replies I'd do more research if you want to know more.
- sjwright 7y ago
  To the person with the "dead" reply musing about Stephen Conroy being a luddite—I wrote that April fools parody article. Yes, Conroy started off as an embarrassing luddite __BUT__ unlike the luddites that came before him, he improved. He learned. He grew. He surrounded himself with smart, experienced and informed people, and he learned from them. By the time he departed that role he had morphed into perhaps the best communications ministers in recent Australian history. --------- Whereas you can watch the moment of television where all respect I had for Malcolm Turnbull crashed into the floor (fast forward to the 17 minute mark and watch for about one minute): https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/nbn-debate/4882232 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-12/nbn-debate/4882232 "Anthony said that fibre to the premises can deliver one gigabit per second, 1000 megs, and you're quite right, it can. Do you know what it would cost to have a guaranteed one gig' service? At least $20,000 a month." So basically Turnbull used a deceptive truth (the cost of a high speed service with dedicated guaranteed backhaul) to blatantly and intentionally lie about the cost of gigabit services that would be sold to 99.9% of NBN-connected customers. The fact that he knew enough to concoct this deception made me realise that he wasn't just as bad as the rest of them, he's worse. He used his knowledge and intelligence to cleverly and carefully craft a statement that's blatantly false yet defensible as technically true if he were caught out. Nobody is that clever by accident.

quickthrower2 7y ago

Are you affected by weather? Do you use a directional antenna?

crispinb 7y ago
I don't need an antenna - I get a good enough signal with my modem stashed in the rafters. I'm about 12km from a 4g tower, but it's up on a decent hill which is nearly line of sight. I did have to go through a few modems to find one that worked reliably. Oddly enough, an old Huawei B315s has turned out to be by far the best for my situation. I've tried fancier models that multiplex radio bands, but they were slower and less reliable. Weather seems to have little to no effect. What does sometimes cause a problem is tourist influxes to the nearest town. The occasional big weekend event can bring speeds down to 12Mbps or so. Still, I'm not complaining and consider ubiquitous internet availability a kind of modern miracle.

fertibm 7y ago

Errr... our government isn’t far right, and the disaster of the nbn was created by the left, and made worse by the right. The narrative being repeated in this and other left wing sites like reddit of “the nbn would have been good if it was all fiber” is just wrong. The nbn from its conception was a half-baked, last minute idea made up by Kevin Rudd. If any public network was needed, it should have been wireless. The nbn discounted any possible future that resulted in wireless being a viable way of delivering the internet to everyone. Wireless is also necessary because things aren’t stationary. Cars can’t use fiber internet, for example. Fiber to every home is ridiculously expensive, with a large percentage of homes not even using any more bandwidth than is required to stream Netflix. Fiber also excludes rural areas, and any lower density areas in general. A public wireless network would be utilised much more, as even a lower speed wireless network that is available everywhere and cheaper opens up more possibilities than a limited high speed network. It isn’t just speed that is important. We also have the issue of data caps. High speed connections that have 20gb per month data caps are pretty useless, yet a large percentage of the population can’t afford any more than that. The nbn, whether fiber or not, would always just result in a product a large percentage of normal people couldn’t even utilise. The liberal party made the nbn worse, but it was a terrible idea to begin with. All the political parties are corrupt.

ntSean 7y ago
>If any public network was needed, it should have been wireless. I don't believe the rural NBN customers on Wireless Satellite technology would support this premise. Even customers in suburban shopping centres struggle with their cellular connection - hence Free Wifi being so ubiquitous. But regardless, our conservative government relies on minerals and education rather than investing in Australia's ability to compete in a digital world. So here's hoping we can keep up with developed nations who are making use of the high-bandwidth infrastructure made available to them today.
jussij 7y ago
> the disaster of the nbn was created by the left, and made worse by the right The left proposed an NBN based on 'fiber to the home' technology. The right threw out that plan and replaced it with 'fiber to the node and copper to the home' technology. Now it is hard to say if the NBN proposed by the left would have been a disaster as it was only rolled out to a few place. But being fiber based it would at least have been future proofed. However, now that the most of the money has been spent and the NBN copper system is nearing completion, we are seeing that the NBN as it now stands is a total disaster. It is already obsolete before it is complete.

anderspitman 7y ago

I grew up rural. First internet connection I used at home was a 14.4k connection through my dad's Startac. I used to have to put a rubber band on the connector to keep it properly plugged into the phone for data. Eventually we got a 1Mpbs microwave connection from a local WISP. It was a huge improvement in a lot of ways but the latency was terrible and very jittery. Now when I go back to my parent's house I get 10+ Mbps 4G on Verizon and Tmobile. It's awesome.