A Question About NBN Speeds

[PCH]

Hey guys,

hopefully this will be a straightforward answer to any telecom techs here...

When I first got NBN FTTN connected on a 25/5 plan, the speeds were very impressive at around 23/4 which was lightning fast compared to the 3/1 or less I used to get with ADSL.

However, as more people in our area move across to NBN, the few remaining on adsl are getting faster while the ever increasing NBN service is becoming slower to the point where I now only get about 10/4.

So this is my question...

Would there be any point in me moving to the 100/25 plan?

My hesitation is because I'm thinking if the line can't manage 25Mbps, how could it ever possibly be faster just because I'm on a different plan?

Any ideas anyone?

Thanks in advance :)

[luka]

Likely it is not the line, it is your ISP. Most likely they are overselling the bandwidth, suffering from congestion and throttling downloads.

Who is your ISP?

[acropolite]

Complain to your ISP, I had a similar problem but after lodging a complaint my speed miraculouly improved. 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. Also be careful how you test, my iPad often shows slow speeds on WiFi, test only with a lan connection and make sure the PC you test from isn't loading updates etc in the background.

[doppler]

My lad went for the 100mbs but could only get 32mbs out of it, the ISP said this was ok as it was better than 25mbs , so rather than paying for something he wasn't getting he down graded to 25mbs and that seems to run at full speed. His node is only a couple of houses down, but the copper at his address is 40+ years old.

[PCH]

Thanks for your input Luka, Phil and Rick.

Luka, my ISP is iiNet and I totally get what you are saying. I heard similar reasoning on a radio program so the concept is not new to me.

But with NBN I wasn't sure if they could somehow 'shape' the line to accomodate faster speeds so that with a faster plan, whilst it may not give me the full advertised speed, it may well improve on what I'm getting.

I think I'll go down the complaining path first and see if that produces anything.

[tlgerdes]

It's called oversubscription, it's how they make money when they don't own the infrastructure.

And people think fibre to their house was going to miraculously fix this. :screwy:

[The_bluester]

With FTTN you have a few issues to combat.

First is "Coexistence". Until the cutoff date when old services back to the Telstra exchange are cut off and you are NBN only the node is somewhat nobbled. They talk about vectoring (Which is a noise reduction/mitigation technology) but vectoring can not be properly effective until the device doing it has control over all pairs in the cables.

The next is luck of the draw, how good and how long your line from the node is.

Then there is the real killer and likely something that is impacting you. Ignoring politics (Which led to the cobbled together mess that is being built now) one of the things I will say that the ALP got wrong is the pricing model. To sell you a service a provider has to firstly buy an access circuit and then they have to pay for CVC (Connectivity virtual circuit) which is effectively bandwidth in the NBN part of the service, it is sort of an analog to the old line rental then service charges. One is to have it, the other to use it! the CVC is expensive and some carriers are getting to be notorious for not paying for enough CVC to provide decent services to the customers they put on in a POI (Point Of Interconnect, the aggregating point at which services are taken out of the NBN and into your RSP's network, and something that IMO the ACCC badly cocked up)

TL;DR

I would put money first on your RSP either not having enough backhaul capacity to whichever POI you are on or not buying enough in the CVC space. If your speeds are OK in the middle of the day and crunch through the evening it is usually one of those two. If speed is now down all day then I would call up and get a fault logged.

If you are on fixed wireless like me you can also add tower congestion into this mix which I suffer from. That is an NBN problem and takes even longer to fix. During the day I can see up to about 40mb/sec download and in the evenings I can be back into single digits. Call that one success ballast.

[leon]

Buy the time this NBN is laid and installed to all households it will be obsolete to over seas standard/speed at present.
Australia really needs to catch up.

Leon

[The_bluester]

That is the pity of it. The fibre to the home component of it is already capable of speeds ten times what is being delivered but the CVC pricing makes it so expensive to deliver as to be unviable to offer plans that people will pay for, therefore no RSP offers it and that in turn is being used to run the argument that no one wants it. The same argument is currently being used to argue that (Effectively) no one wants the 100/40 on offer now.

While you could accuse me of being one of our esteemed PM's "Fibre zealots" I would have to agree that only a small percentage of the population as of now could justify a 100/40 service except for "I want it" however that will change. It is only about fifteen years since dial up was normal, 1500kb/sec was "Fast" and our communications minister stated in public that people only wanted broadband for faster access to pornography.

The pity of it is that when even 100/40 becomes "Normal" a large chunk of the population will be unable to get it because of the mess that is being built right now. And it WILL become normal and justifiable to an average household.

[Exfso]

I am with IINet, and will bet my left one that it is a backhaul issue. They are simply not buying enough to satisfy the customer needs. I got the 100/40 connected last week and am around 150-200 metres from the node. During the day I get 95/37 until about 6pm, and last night it dropped to 8/25. By around 11pm it was back up again. I complained and they want me to jump through hoops doing all sorts of tests. Plain and simple like Telstra, too many customers and not enough bandwidth. :mad2:

[Shano592]

Also, keep in mind that your physical distance to the node, won't necessarily correlate to copper cable distance between the node and your house.

My example is a good one. My home line was connected to FTTN just over a month ago. The node is at the other end of the street, about 400m away. The distance of the copper cable - wait for it - came back as being 931m! It goes around the block, rather than in a straight line down the street. Thanks Telstra.

Saying that, I still get 38/12, and because of this, I only pay for a 50/20 connection.

At work, I have the 100/40 FTTN, with 221m to the node, and 335m copper distance. I routinely get 63/35.

Most likely, Paul, is what others have said. You are the mercy of TPG with iiNet. It is likely that they have the bare minimum CVC in your area.

EDIT: Interesting reading... https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=2413856&p=31

[leon]

Shane, I am sure you know what you are talking about, but to a nearly 70 year old with all your. :shrug:

100/40 FTTN, with 221m to the node, and 335m copper distance. I routinely get 63/35.I still get 38/12, came back as being 931m! :rolleyes:

Is like Russian to me, :sadeyes:

Some times members should realize that not all members here especially the older ones know all the abbreviated jargon that you young people know :)

Leon :thumbsup:

[Shano592]

Sorry Leon,

In a straight line, the node is about 400m from my house. Logic would suggest that the copper cable from the node to the house would also be about 400m. The reality is that, because it was a Telstra fixture, logic had nothing to do with anything, and instead of a straight line, the cable does a trip around the block and is over 500m longer than it needs to be. More copper means more signal degradation, so instead of a possible 60-70Mbit connection, the most I can get is around 38Mbit.

Typically, nodes are placed within a few metres of the good old Telstra pillars. I could say I'm 400m from the nearest pillar. Basically the same thing.

The 100/40, 63/35 and 38/12, all refer to NBN speeds. Basically, download/upload speeds.

FTTN - Fibre to the Node, or "Malcolm's Folly".

[julianh72]

Leon,

The sad fact is that it is precisely because most people don't understand all the jargon (and shouldn't need to!), that this sad farce of an MTM (sorry - that's "Multi-Technology Mix") is being foisted upon us, and the NBNco (National Broadband Network Company) is getting away with it.

In simple terms - faster is better. We need to remember that what is "fast enough" today won't be fast enough in the near future. 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. Right now, a typical internet-connected household needs at least 12 Mbps reliably at peak hours (for watching streaming TV etc), and plenty of us need much more. In five to 10 years, who knows what the average household will need? (But it's a sure thing that it will be a lot more than 12 Mbps - and peak users will need a lot more speed than average households.)

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) is capable of delivering 1 Gbps (Gigabits per second) or more today, and can scale to much higher speeds in future. The other technologies which are being rolled out (FTTN - Fibre to the Node, HFC - Hybrid Fibre / Coax, etc) can't, and almost certainly never will.

The more copper wire there is between the end of the fibre and the premises, the lower the theoretical speed that is attainable. In the case of "legacy copper" (i.e. the old Telstra phone lines used in FTTN, and the Foxtel cable that is being used in HFC areas), the length and condition of the copper wire imposes additional constraints. Put simply - if you're unlucky enough to be at the end of a long copper loop in a FTTN neighbourhood, the maximum speed you will get could be a lot lower than the "up to" speeds that the internet companies will sell you. It MIGHT be "fast enough" for your current needs, if all you need to do is browse the IIS site, send a few emails, and watch a bit of Netflix, but it won't be enough to "future-proof" your neighbourhood.

The current MTM NBN is ensuring the "digital divide" is firmly built into Australia moving forward - to me, that is a criminal legacy that is being delivered to Australian taxpayers.

[AndrewJ]

Sounds like we are FUBAR

That said, i recently lost most of my phone access after rains ( but my internet still worked at about 0.04 Mbps.
The Tech who came to fix it let me wander around as he tried to find the problem. It went back to the copper line coming into a large ( supposedly ) watertight plastic connector pot in the pit.
The fine internal wires had copper rot going back under the insulation for about 8inches. He ended up swapping the 2 unused cores over and making them the primary cores, so it is technically not wired to spec, but it does work.
After looking at the state of the cables in the pits near my place, i have no belief it will get better any time soon.

Andrew

[leon]

Guys you don't have to be sorry thank you for trying to explain it.

Thank You.

Leon

[jenchris]

Basically I'm better off using my mobile as a mobile hotspot and getting 20 plus mbs most of the time.
I refused to use Telstra hard line over ten years ago when I saw the state of the copper wiring in a flooded pit about300 yards from my place.my wires were in there in an upended coke bottle.

[The_bluester]

I do have to correct one thing there. It is most definitely not NBN co that is "Getting away with it" It is the coalition government, most specifically Tony Abbot who directed then comms minister, Malcolm Turnbull to "Demolish the NBN", a job he has actually turned out to be spectacularly effective at. All the while delivering something that will let him declare "Job done" about actually building the NBN and be believed by an unfortunate portion of the country.

It is MT who directed the change to a predominantly fibre to the node build (Before his hand picked team of agreemeisters could even get around to finishing their review and agreeing with him) and I really doubt he will be recalled fondly by Australian households in ten years when we are doing it all again to replace the copper bits of the MTM with fibre, and it IS inevitable that it will happen sooner or later.

To top it all off the design of the FTTN component of the network does not give much support to a clean upgrade, most of it and in particular the most expensive to bits to build (The "Last mile" stuff into houses/businesses etc) will have to be rebuilt from scratch. And that is after the MTM (Malcolm Turnbull's Mess) has blown out in cost and time to more or less match what a realistic estimate about the original version would have been.

[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 ;)

[The_bluester]

One thing that is ALWAYS glossed over when they talk about radio speeds is that the data rates they "Achieve" are for a single user, whereas in real usage there will be many concurrent users. We are on a ?G wireless service on NBN but I would dearly love to have a fibre connection. The issue is I like my rural lifestyle more than I want a fibre connection. I would not move in to town to get it.

[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?

[Shano592]

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]

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]

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]

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/2017-06-19/accc-calls-for-volunteers-to-test-nbn-speeds/8630878

[The_bluester]

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]

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]

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]

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. :tasdevil:

[toc]

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...:)