4 April 2012

Does the internet still suck in Gungahlin?

| arescarti42
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Some friends and I are looking to move in to a house together. We all study/work in either Belconnen or the City, so rentals on the north side are looking good.

One area that really appeals are the Gungahlin suburbs south of the town centre (big new houses, not far from the City/Belco, good public transport, relatively inexpensive etc). The only problem is that as a household, we’re likely to be an extremely heavy consumer of internet services, and posts from a few years back suggest that Gungahlin is a total clusterfrak of RIMs, network congestion and other forms of Telstra bullshittery.

My question to Rioters is has anything changed in the last few years, or is Gungahlin still a no go zone until the NBN comes online.

If the latter, we might have to try and cluster ourselves around the Belconnen, Scullin or Melba telephone exchanges.

I’d also be interested to hear the experiences of people in the Giralang/Kaleen area, which TPG seems to think is connected to the Crace exchange, and as such would probably suffer similar problems to those in Gungahlin.

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I’m connected at 7.3 Mbps (750 Kbps) with adsl2+ unlimited in Gungahlin. Average about 1.8TB worth of downloads per month with not a problem

Old post I know, but I’m still here in Giralang and I’m still connected to the faraway Crace exchange by what seems to be nothing more than a long piece of string that stumbles along at 1.5 Mbps on a good day.

I hope the OP eventually found a nice place somewhere with a big sweet fat internet connection that worked as it should

poetix said :

rosscoact said :

I’m getting 15mbs on wireless right now with Naked ADSL

Is that legal?

Amongst consenting adults and until the Mad Monk commences the reformation in late 2013, yes.

rosscoact said :

I’m getting 15mbs on wireless right now with Naked ADSL

Is that legal?

For those of you who are confused: Those referring to Bonner, Harrison and Franklin are in fact referring to what you know as Bonners, Harrisons and Franklins (not to be confused with the supermarket chain)

I’m getting 15mbs on wireless right now with Naked ADSL

hotwaterservice1:54 pm 09 Jan 13

If you can believe NBN timelines Palmerston and Gungahlin (town centre) should have NBN by mid-year! Only waited almost 20 years for broadband and not holding ones breath! 😎

I’ve lived in Giralang for over 6 years, and the internet here is utter crapola.A never ending bad joke with no punchline. I work with guys who simply expect ADSL2+ download speeds that are many many times faster than anything I’ve ever achieved.

If you need to have multiple simultaneous high bandwidth users, don’t pick Giralang.

Sic said :

Giralang is total balls. If you’re super lucky, Telstra will connect you to Belconnen exchange where you can get 2.5mb worth of ADSL2+.

Otherwise your options are pretty well a bunch of useless TransACT ISP’s that will speed test at 8mbps while being completely incapable of streaming a video on youtube.

I am in Giralang with Internode and have GREAT connection, fast, never drop out which is good cos I use a VOIP phone and have NO Telstra connection.

Giralang is total balls. If you’re super lucky, Telstra will connect you to Belconnen exchange where you can get 2.5mb worth of ADSL2+.

Otherwise your options are pretty well a bunch of useless TransACT ISP’s that will speed test at 8mbps while being completely incapable of streaming a video on youtube.

We’re got a staff member at the Mac Experts connected to a RIM on the Crave Exchange, yes, it absolutely sucks and runs horribly during peak time.

Our solution? We got him a business Internode connection. It’s only like $50-60 bucks extra over the residential services and works much better.

And before anyone hates on me with the fact that there is no different between a Telstra wholesale provided residential and business connection, there is: a Telstra wholesale provided business ADSL service is a layer 2 service (allowing stuff like frame routed IPs, etc). I believe most (if not all) residential connections are also layer 2, however, with a business service – you don’t get the same contention and service guarantee issues that residential customers do.

For our staff member, the business connection was definitely a huge improvement. Ping times were stable and bandwidth throughput was massively improved.

Im in Harrison with TPG on an ‘offnet’ plan and I get 800kb/s download consistently with maybe a dropout a year.

I can throw a stone from my place and hit the Gungahlin exchange and often do. Unfortunately, I’m being rimmed (pun intended) at the Crace exchange. Can’t wait for the NBN to come in a few months.

That being said I still get 8 Mbs download (tested at 7pm night) which is a heap better than a year or so ago.

parts of newer Gungahlin (such as harrison) are on the Gungahlin sub-exchange, which although a Telstra ADSL 2+ facility, also has Internode DSLAMs. We had naked 18Mbit/s at the Anthony Rolfe end of Harrison a couple of years ago.

Thanks for the responses everyone.

Sounds like Gungahlin will only really be an option if we can get transact VDSL or FTTP, which will probably be a much better service and cost considerably more than generic all you can eat ADSL2+.

screaming banshee5:48 pm 04 Apr 12

Kaleen is on the crace exchange. But 4g ftw, today I got 33 down 6 up in fyshwick. Just now I get 12 down 4 up in kaleen.

It certainly does suck in Ngunnawal. We’re on some crappy ADSL plan with Telstra and it is painfully slow and drops out frequently. Having said that they have finally started laying cables for the NBN here so hopefully improvements aren’t far off.

We are in Franklin with FTTH, ISP is Apex. I think we are on the 30mbps plan. IT IS BRILLIANT. The price is not for everyone but given there is no other service comparable for speed and reliability, we are not worried about the cost as it is an essential in our home. Our plan with Apex provides for a huge download each month (I think is it 250gb) and despite being above average users of the internet (when compared to friends and family), we never come close to the limit despite a lot of internet TV. In the 2 years we have been there, we have had maybe 2 days of downtime (a few hours here and there and one long outage). Check out whirlpool for more info.

On the forum on Whirlpool concerned with getting broadband, most of the threads seem to be about Gunghalin! Lot of disgusted Gunghalin-dwellers on there.

I have been on 100/20 in Crace for a week now and the speed is pretty great. As with all ISPs, though, international links are the main problem but as for Austraian-based, very quick. Fastest I have seen for a torrent is 4.5 Mbps and obviously a lot quicker for test files from internode’s mirror (unmetered on Apex.)

It’s fairly pricey but I would rather pay extra for quick internet than be stuck languishing on ADSL1 at my old place.

arescarti42 said :

Anyone live in Harrison, Franklin or Gungahlin?

Franklin has FTTH which is generally pretty decent (I’m on a 10/2 megabits per sec option from Transact). It does tend to slow around dinner time, and more on weekends. Haven’t looked into it much though. There was a 100/10 option last time I looked at Transact’s site.

Love the internet out in Bonner, 10down/2up Mbps transact fttp line, with grapevine as the ISP, and get downloads at constant 1.3mbps from torrents etc.You could get a 100mbps line and I assume that would be faster.
Much better than the adsl2+ line i had in Evatt previously.

arescarti42 said :

Anyone live in Harrison, Franklin or Gungahlin?

I’m in Franklin with FTTH, and fairly satisfied with 10Mbps (sharing with 2 others).

100Mbps is available if I want to pay for it, though at this point I don’t think its worth the money – seems I’m generally limited to the speed of ‘The Internet’ anyway. When enough people are on similar connections it will probably be worthwhile

Well, the Internet sucks where ever you are, what with every second story being about Kim Kardashian or a celeb in rehab and all.

Caractacus Potts10:49 am 04 Apr 12

Kaleen sucks at our end of the copper. 1.5/0.8 Mbps on our ADSL2+ plan.

Holden Caulfield10:38 am 04 Apr 12

I’m struggling to get consistent speeds over 3Mbps on my “24Mbps” plan in the inner north, so Gungahlin and its NBN can GAGF as far as I’m concerned, haha.

I am in Palmerston and am on a RIM so I can only get ADSL1, was on 1.5mbs but now with Telstra on 8mbs. It rarely (if ever on Telstra) drops out, and gets consistent 800KB/s down.

A friend is in Harrison and gets good consistent speeds. I know they are with Grapevine, but am not sure if it is ADSL2 or Transact.

Tony said :

My ADSL syncs as 18Mbps, and get really good speeds 24 hours, so very little contention.
Oh wait, group house. No my internets suck balls; constant dropouts, slow downloads and I even have to use internet via my mobile sometimes. Id stay away from Casey if I were you.

That’s cool, it looks like Casey is wired to the Hall exchange, which I didn’t know. Bit of a trade off as far as public transport and distance though I suppose. Similarly for Bonner (which I understand has Transact FTTP).

Anyone live in Harrison, Franklin or Gungahlin?

Shinigami_Josh9:52 am 04 Apr 12

If you want faster internet, look at the newer suburbs in gungahlin that are on transacts fibre that is fairly close to what the NBN will be. or if you are willing to wait find somewhere earlier in the nbn schedule

My ADSL syncs as 18Mbps, and get really good speeds 24 hours, so very little contention.
Oh wait, group house. No my internets suck balls; constant dropouts, slow downloads and I even have to use internet via my mobile sometimes. Id stay away from Casey if I were you.

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