A Question About NBN Speeds

[PCH (Paul)]

Originally Posted by toc

When I first got my FTTP NBN line I was seeing some issues at around 9pm with speeds. (This was not long after the area was completed). Others in my location had similar issues - after about a week some adjustments were made by the ISP and I have been in 100/40 heaven for the last few years. It has been unbelievably reliable and there is no way I will settle for any other type of connection now . The speed is rock solid.

Perhaps I am being a bit over the top, but I think it is a national shame what the Libs did to the NBN. No matter how good the wireless 4/5/6G technology gets, it is never going to beat the speed of light

So jealous Tim!

So why do some people/households get FTTP where others only get FTTN? It's not like we have a choice. Is it?

[Shano592 (Shane)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

Those of us who have been "on the 'net" since the late 20th Century would remember 14.4 and 28.8 kbps (kilobits per second) modems shared with a phone line, and we got by.

I can go one better. In the 80's, I had a switchable modem, which varied between the dizzying speeds of 1200/75 baud, all the way up to the peaks of 300 baud. Baud is a measure of bits per second. To compare, we are now talking about megabits per second, so we are getting towards a million times faster (in terms of baud rates) than 30 years ago.

And you used to have to pay for each page that loaded. 1 cent here, 5 cents there. Those were the days.

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

Originally Posted by The_bluester

(Which led to the cobbled together mess that is being built now)

I believe within the engineers involved with the project at NBN Co and with the relevant Government Employees, the entire NBN project is referred to as :-

"OPERATION CLUSTERFUKK"

Here is a link to a Parliamentary Reference

https://tinyurl.com/ybk7o5cg

Cheers,
John B

[ausastronomer (John Bambury)]

It's worth remembering that Fibre to the Node (FTTN) has the capability to run at download speeds well in excess of 100mbps.

I was one of the first people in Australia to have the NBN connected with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) when I lived in Kiama, which was one of the very first, if not the first regions rolled out in Australia. I had a 100 Mb Plan with Telstra, bugger all other people connected to it and the best I could ever run it was around 85 to 90 mbs download speed. Which BTW was dayyam fast. Reliability was exceptional. It just never went down. Now that I have moved to Shoalhaven Heads, which is only 20km South of Kiama, my internet is ADSL2 and runs at the speed of a carrier pigeon, with about the same reliability.

The speed issues I believe in regard to FTTN, are more to do with the politics from within the Government, NBN Co and the Service Providers.

Cheers,
John B

[The_bluester (Paul)]

By everything I have seen it is not really accurate to say that FTTN can run at greater than 100mbps download. Which is to say that it is perfectly accurate in theory but the average line length as built will mean that very few would achieve 100mbps let alone more than that. Most of those who are in the "Lucky" camp report theoretical maximum achievable rates up to about 75 or 80mbps.

Give it a decade or so for the digital world to move on and those on FTTN will very likely be on the same side of the digital divide as those of us on fixed wireless.

Line length is just about random, when you see people thanking Telstra for an 800M line length to a new NBN node that they can comfortably see from their window it forgets that the Telstra network was simply not built for this and length of line to the pillar (Where the node will now be) is not quite random but is very much affected by how suburbs were built out potentially over decades. Roll on from the 1970's to now and it means that you can find yourself a lot further from the node by cable than would be the case if all the houses came first and the network after that.

[Steffen]

I'm not on the NBN, but those of you who are might think about volunteering for the ACCC's NBN speed test programme.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-1...speeds/8630878

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Looked at that already, but they are not yet interested in the fixed wireless service, which suffers it seems from NBN side issues far more than the other technologies except for satellite. I am stuck with a service that runs to about 35-40mbps down and 14 up on a 50/20 plan in the day time and falls anywhere to low single digits in peak times in both directions.

Even when one NBN email admitted tower congestion, when the support ticket lapsed recently because of someone at my RSP going on sick leave (If NBN request more information and your RSP does not reply in two business days the ticket is closed, irrevocably) Information gathered for the old ticket is not acceptable for the new one so you have to start gathering data all over again.

Hoops jumped through, bottom bared in Bourke St, Naked Vicar photographed riding through my lounge room on his Norton (For anyone old enough to know about the naked Vicar clause) before the NBN response came back that the tower I am on is suffering congestion and there is an upgrade planned in "Q4 2017"

Great use of everyone's time including my own to make us jump through all of those hoops before re admitting that the tower is oversubscribed.

The required tests by the way generally run to, using an autostart speed test on my RSP's website which runs a logged speed test every 5 minutes to build a speed profile over at least 24 hours. Then doing manual speed tests (At least three in succession to build an average) in the congested time via my network (Only if it is hard wired, which is fair enough, wifi is rubbish) Then disconnecting my network and running the tests directly connected via ethernet to the NBN NTD, then doing that again with a different machine, preferably using a different operating system and browser! Every time you disconnect one bit of gear and connect another you also face up to about 5 minutes wait until the DHCP server recognises the change in device MAC address and hands an IP address to the new device. All in all it is a pretty time consuming test regime and I can see a lot of people not knowing how to do it.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by ausastronomer

It's worth remembering that Fibre to the Node (FTTN) has the capability to run at download speeds well in excess of 100mbps.

IF you are on a very short length of good-quality copper wire from the node.

The problem is that FTTN is being deployed with typical lengths of copper from the Node to the Premises of a couple of hundred metres (quite a bit more in many cases), and the copper is of varying quality. (Most of it has been in the ground for decades.) This very definitely limits the peak theoretical speeds to 100 Mbps or less - MUCH less if the copper is corroded.

Every time NBNco talks about another lab test showing fantastic speeds on FTTN or HFC technology, you need to remember that it is exactly that - a laboratory test, using a single uncontended connection of brand new copper cable. They haven't achieved those sorts of speeds anywhere "in the wild", with a contended node supporting hundreds of houses using existing legacy-Telstra copper phone lines, which is how the NBN FTTN is being deployed.

If you're on FTTN and you can get something close to 100 Mbps, count yourself very lucky, because you have won "node lotto" - you are close to the node, and your copper wire is in good condition. If you are hoping for an upgrade to gigabit speeds in the near future - dream on, it ain't gonna happen until they replace that "last mile" with proper FTTP. (And this would mean a LOT more work than just pulling a couple of hundred metres of fibre from the Node to your house, because it's a completely different network architecture.)

[The_bluester (Paul)]

The most promising development for a while is the move to FTTC architecture. At least for those who are on that rollout the copper line length should be measured in meters rather than in the hundreds of meters with a corresponding increase in potential line speed. As a plus that one does have a possible FTTH upgrade path built in (If built right to begin with, fingers crossed)

[acropolite (Phil)]

Originally Posted by me a few posts back....

There is some anecdotal evidence that the service providers are knobbling some traffic to keep the speeds up for Netflix, my testing seemed to confirm, despite getting less than 10mb/s I was able to stream Netflix at Hd

Ok, I did a test tonight,

I believe this test shows that my ISP is throttling traffic to keep video streaming speeds up. Tonight my speed test (test with nothing else running) hovered around 12mb/s for a 25/5 service over several tests, not good.

I then opened up a browser and streamed a Youtube HD video on one screen and again ran the speed test. It came as no surprise that speed test showed an increase in speed hovering arount 18-20 mb/s while the video was playing. Opened up another window with yet another stream, i.e. 2 x HD video streams on seperate monitors, plus the speed test. Test speed came in at over 23mb/s at the same time as both videos were streaming.

You can be content in the knowledge that while your browsing experience is dog slow, the kids next door streaming netflix are enjoying the experience with no dropouts.

[toc (Tim)]

Originally Posted by PCH

So jealous Tim!

So why do some people/households get FTTP where others only get FTTN? It's not like we have a choice. Is it?

I can thank Julia and Kevin for whatever reason my area was selected as a second release site. Must have been some reasoning behind it I guess.

Downside is that it is making my tree change fantasies hard when I think of the crappy internet Then again there are those dark skies...