27 May 2012

Internet Speeds in MacGregor?

| frankie
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For those of you who live in Macgregor: Do you get fast internet speeds? Who is your ISP? What package are you subscribed to?

I’m currently in Page and can’t get faster download speeds than 8Mbps through the TPG Unlimited ADSL plan. I will be moving to Macgregor in a few months and was wondering what the best options for getting internet in that suburb were.

Cheers.

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wildturkeycanoe said :

I am in the new Macgregor and have constant line speed of 9.8Mbps, Download speed of 1MB/s with Telstra ADSL2. It’s okay for our day to day stuff but like mentioned, it takes a good hour or so to download a T-box movie. I’ve tried online gaming too and keep getting kicked off their server because my line speed is too slow. That really sucks in a new suburb of our capital city. No fiber either. This is as good as it gets. I have heard through the rumor mill that the Melba exchange is being upgraded for the NBN. Maybe that will help with things a bit.

NBN is more about the cables to the house than upgrading exchanges, as the wires are the limiting factor at present. So not sure where you heard Melba was being upgraded to NBN, especially as the area served by Melba is still 2 years off getting it and besides doesn’t help in Macgregor which is connected to Scullin.

somewhere_between_bundah_and_goulburn said :

Supposedly the new part is getting connected to the NBN. – http://www.nbnco.com.au/rollout/rollout-map.html

Fantastic, this made my day. I’ll be moving into a Stage 4 home, so hopefully homes in that area will get the same NBN treatment as Stage 1… I’d expect so in a high density area. Thanks!

Truthiness said :

You know South Korea has faster speeds than the NBN *on their phones*?

Not really.

They either use the WiBro variant of WiMax (here, Vivid Wireless uses WiMax) or LTE (like Telstra 4G) or HSDPA (3G.) Real speeds experienced by the South Koreans are not faster than the 100/40 plan offered on NBN.

They certainly can’t offer the 1000/1000 that NBNCo hardware is capable of today (old ONTs in Tasmania excepted.)

I live in Macgregor5:57 pm 28 May 12

I live in old macgregor. We’ve had TransACT since 2003 and it has been pretty good. Cheapest package also includes pay TV and an extra phone line.

Oh, I forgot: If you’re going to West MacGregor, some parts already have NBN!

http://www.nbnco.com.au/rollout/rollout-map.html

Stage 1 already has it, others are “commenced”

Before you ask “who is the best?” you need to find out who’s available. Your speeds will be dictated by what’s available your specific address. This will differ from street to street – not just suburb to suburb.

Find your new address (or existing phone number at that address) and put it into a site like http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/ to find out what is available there.

You may be stuck on a RIM, perhaps with Zero ports available – http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/viewsuburb.php?Abbrev=MACGRGR

There may also be other providers to consider like TransACT who could offer a different kind of connection like VDSL/VDSL2 (“cable”) – check via their website or call them.

JC said :

Are you moving to the old bit or the new bit?

The new bit. Brindabella at Macgregor. Down the back, near the water desalination plant thingy, across the stream from Dunlop.

dvaey said :

Once you get to these sorts of speeds, its generally not just the ISP limiting you, but the sources youre using. Who wouldnt be happy with over 1mb/sec anyway.. what a shame you might have to wait a minute to download the latest lady gag CD or at worst 10 for a movie.

The kicker is that you want fast internet, because your 8mbit isnt fast enough, but still want an unlimited service.. I keep remembering a quote about the first world…

Clearly you have never tried to run a home server of any sort, let alone multiple servers. You do know the internet is useful for more things than just surfing the web right? At any given time I could be seeding a dozen Linux distributions, a hundred open source movies and tens of thousands of open source songs, while running a web server, an i2p server and any number of web applications. And that is just one computer, there are six in the house, and there are only two of us. I’ve been in group houses with 20+ computers, all sucking down as much information as they can possibly get.

I can gaurantee I will eat through every ounce of extra speed I can get, the NBN is no where near fast enough for the kinds of things I *could* be doing given half a chance. You know South Korea has faster speeds than the NBN *on their phones*?

Just because you don’t have the imagination or the know how to use more than 1mb/sec, does not mean the rest of us are similarly impaired.

wildturkeycanoe said :

I am in the new Macgregor and have constant line speed of 9.8Mbps, Download speed of 1MB/s with Telstra ADSL2. It’s okay for our day to day stuff but like mentioned, it takes a good hour or so to download a T-box movie. I’ve tried online gaming too and keep getting kicked off their server because my line speed is too slow. That really sucks in a new suburb of our capital city. No fiber either. This is as good as it gets. I have heard through the rumor mill that the Melba exchange is being upgraded for the NBN. Maybe that will help with things a bit.

The T-Box won’t let you watch a movie while it is downloading (no buffering)? I thought the T-Box had adaptive bitrate streaming.

In terms of getting dropped from online games, line speed has nothing to do with it if you have any ADSL. Connection quality is the issue (from you to the exchange to the game server). Does your ISP have ADSL 2 profiles you can select via their website? Maybe choose a more reliable profile rather than the fastest speed possible profile? If I got disconnected from game servers often, I’d call my ISP and complain.

I’m on 8Mbit ADSL 1 (speedtest shows 7Mbit actual speed) and ever since Telstra Wholesale upgraded the “RIM” (upgraded the link from the “RIM” to the exchange from 8Mbit to 155Mbit) I’m on about 2 years ago, I only remember disconnecting from a game server (Starcraft 2 US server) once, with that occurring when drop hacks were being used a few patches ago. The connection has been remarkably reliable in that and other online games.

wildturkeycanoe4:34 am 28 May 12

I am in the new Macgregor and have constant line speed of 9.8Mbps, Download speed of 1MB/s with Telstra ADSL2. It’s okay for our day to day stuff but like mentioned, it takes a good hour or so to download a T-box movie. I’ve tried online gaming too and keep getting kicked off their server because my line speed is too slow. That really sucks in a new suburb of our capital city. No fiber either. This is as good as it gets. I have heard through the rumor mill that the Melba exchange is being upgraded for the NBN. Maybe that will help with things a bit.

somewhere_between_bundah_and_goulburn12:50 am 28 May 12

Supposedly the new part is getting connected to the NBN. – http://www.nbnco.com.au/rollout/rollout-map.html

Not sure about the old part. I think they’re stuck on the Scullin Exchange (corner of Belconnen Way and Kingsford Smith Drive).

dvaey said :

thatsnotme said :

You’re unlikely to get a faster connection than you’re currently getting, and will probably have to settle for a slower speed if you stick with ADSL. We’re connected to the Scullin exchange, so the distance from the suburb to the exchange is the major limiting factor. That’s likely to limit you far more than the ISP you use once you get here.

Once you get to these sorts of speeds, its generally not just the ISP limiting you, but the sources youre using. Who wouldnt be happy with over 1mb/sec anyway.. what a shame you might have to wait a minute to download the latest lady gag CD or at worst 10 for a movie.

The kicker is that you want fast internet, because your 8mbit isnt fast enough, but still want an unlimited service.. I keep remembering a quote about the first world…

No. You can bring up quotes about first world problems all you like, but the fact is we live in the first world, and if you’re on a 1Mbps connection you will be limited in what you can do.

8Mbps is not high speed. It’s not bleeding edge. These days, that speed is the limiting factor – the site your connected to is likely able to serve you data more quickly.

You might want to rethink how long it would take you to download things too. On my connection, it sure as hell takes longer than 10 minutes to download a movie. Try 2-3 hours for a normal length movie, in decent resolution. That’s at 5Mbps – at your utopian 1Mbps, you’re looking at half a day (assuming you’re not using your connection for anything else).

If you want to whinge about first world problems, find someone complaining about not being able to afford the jump up from their 50Mbit connection to a 100Mbit connection. A large proportion of the 3rd world would think your 1Mbps sucks too.

Are you moving to the old bit or the new bit? If the old then the suburb is copper to the Scullin exchange, so on the edge a little distance wise (depending upon where in the suburb) and as someone mentioned you could have issues with the copper being old. Old Macgregor also has Transact.

New Macgregor is on RIM, I assume being new the RIM’s are built with ADSL2 compatible DSLAM’s. However the problem with all RIM’s is it is a Telstra service regardless of who your ISP is, so the pricing is going to be higher than being in a place where the ISP can provide their own service. For example I live in Dunlop and pay $60 a month for ADSL1 with iinet, if I lived 500m away in old Macgregor then I could get ADSL2 from iinet for $40 a month with higher speeds and more data allowance.

Telstra/Bigpond have just offered me $40 p/m for the same thing, so am jumping ship because iinet cannot match it on a RIM site.

dvaey said :

Once you get to these sorts of speeds, its generally not just the ISP limiting you, but the sources youre using. Who wouldnt be happy with over 1mb/sec anyway.. what a shame you might have to wait a minute to download the latest lady gag CD or at worst 10 for a movie.

The kicker is that you want fast internet, because your 8mbit isnt fast enough, but still want an unlimited service.. I keep remembering a quote about the first world…

Online gaming, video conferencing, hosting my own servers for various purposes, accessing servers overseas constantly for various purposes, sometimes all simultaneously… you need more than 1Mbps for that. 8Mbps is ok for streaming video, but there is some lag involved for other things. Unlimited is not essential; I generally use about 2-3Gb a day down and 1Gb up, so a 100Gb/30Gb monthly plan ought to do it.

Internode looks like the winner so far, so I’ll check them out. Thanks everyone (and more comments are welcome as well).

thatsnotme said :

You’re unlikely to get a faster connection than you’re currently getting, and will probably have to settle for a slower speed if you stick with ADSL. We’re connected to the Scullin exchange, so the distance from the suburb to the exchange is the major limiting factor. That’s likely to limit you far more than the ISP you use once you get here.

Once you get to these sorts of speeds, its generally not just the ISP limiting you, but the sources youre using. Who wouldnt be happy with over 1mb/sec anyway.. what a shame you might have to wait a minute to download the latest lady gag CD or at worst 10 for a movie.

The kicker is that you want fast internet, because your 8mbit isnt fast enough, but still want an unlimited service.. I keep remembering a quote about the first world…

Another long time Internode fan here. Evatt location, a gazillion miles from Melba exchange and speed OK. $60 pcm for naked DSL with 150GB data and $10 voip call credit which. No line rental involved with naked DSL but fixed line services are dead anyway.

I’m in old Macgregor, and I get around 5Mbps. Took me a good 18 months after moving in to get a stable connection though, because the copper to the house was so poor. I’m with Internode.

You’re unlikely to get a faster connection than you’re currently getting, and will probably have to settle for a slower speed if you stick with ADSL. We’re connected to the Scullin exchange, so the distance from the suburb to the exchange is the major limiting factor. That’s likely to limit you far more than the ISP you use once you get here.

I’m in the new bit and stuck on a RIM. On a good day Internet speeds are good (1.8MBytes/s). During peak times it can get a little slow (400-600KBytes/s). Because of the RIM can’t get naked ADSL. Currently on Internode which resells Telstra connections when a connection back to their DSLAM isn’t available.

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