NBN

[Wedgie]

I can relate. My current ADSL is so much quicker/better than the NBN I had at Prospect. But in fairness my housemate did go through Optus.

[HH3]

Our internet is ridiculously slower with the NBN than it was before, and it wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination.

Our Naked DSL was about 12mbps download. I was happy with that.

iiNet made us upgrade to NBN. Now we're between 24 and 48 mbps.

We're only about a km from the exchange though.

[bennymacca]

Our internet is ridiculously slower with the NBN than it was before, and it wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination.

Our Naked DSL was about 12mbps download. I was happy with that.

iiNet made us upgrade to NBN. Now we're between 24 and 48 mbps.

We're only about a km from the exchange though.

For FTTN it depends on where your node is, not the exchange - your node will be closer than 1km away I would think.

Seems like most customers are being forced/encouraged to have 50Mb as their minimum these days which I think is a good thing. It was ridiculous that companies could sell 12 Mb plans and call them "NBN"

[HH3]

Our internet is ridiculously slower with the NBN than it was before, and it wasn't good by any stretch of the imagination.

Our Naked DSL was about 12mbps download. I was happy with that.

iiNet made us upgrade to NBN. Now we're between 24 and 48 mbps.

We're only about a km from the exchange though.

For FTTN it depends on where your node is, not the exchange - your node will be closer than 1km away I would think.

Seems like most customers are being forced/encouraged to have 50Mb as their minimum these days which I think is a good thing. It was ridiculous that companies could sell 12 Mb plans and call them "NBN"

Is the node the box that sits on the street corner that you see technicians mucking around with?

If so, we have one two doors down.

[bennymacca]

yep will be a green cabinet. if you have it that close you should get awesome internet.

[HH3]

yep will be a green cabinet. if you have it that close you should get awesome internet.

Yeah its great. Between two of us on Netflix, MLB.tv, PSN, Spotify, the Mrs surfing the world wide web, we go through between 10 and 30 gb a day (higher if I download a game) without it skipping a beat.

usage.JPG (44.67 KiB) Viewed 449 times

[bennymacca]

yeah my node is about 400m away but it doesn't skip a beat, even with multiple HD streams and gaming etc

[Booney]

( Out of my comfort zone here )

Are you telling me this $30bn whizz bang state of the art system works better if I'm closer to the node?

[Keefy]

( Out of my comfort zone here )

Are you telling me this $30bn whizz bang state of the art system works better if I'm closer to the node?

In most cases, yup, but also depends on the quality of the copper from the node to your house

[bennymacca]

( Out of my comfort zone here )

Are you telling me this $30bn whizz bang state of the art system works better if I'm closer to the node?

Yep. because the libs, in their infinite wisdom, decided to keep the copper for the last bit to your house.

The technologies are roughly this

ADSL/Traditional Phone: copper all the way from your exchange to your house. usually a max of say 5km. Losses are tens of dB per km. what that means is if you have a long run of copper, the signal to noise ratio is very low by the time it gets to your house - which means low speeds (more error correction needs to be done on your data and higher packet loss so some need to be resent)

Surprising that we can even get relatively high speeds out of this copper, which was only ever designed for voice traffic. engineers ftw.

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP): replace the copper with fibre - which has losses of maybe 0.1dB per km rather than tens of dB. which means massively higher speeds. (like 1000Mb or more instead of 24). Expensive to install - not because of the cost of the fibre, which is cheaper than copper, but because of the cost of pulling cable through pits to your house. This is what the Labor govt's original plan was - to run fibre everywhere.

More expensive but would have been a lot better going forward. as with everything you could argue the cost/benefit.

Fibre to the Node (FTTN): an apparently cheaper (cost blowouts have put the cost close to the original labor plan( solution that involves running fibre some of the way to your house, and then using the existing copper for the final run to your house. Uses a technology similar to ADSL but can deliver speeds of up to 100Mb. (note this is 10 times less than the max speeds of FTTP)

Because you still have high loss copper in the way, the length of that copper still matters to your speeds. ADSL used to work to a max of 5km or more, VDSL will do maybe 1km max.

caveat: im not a telecomms engineer, so this could be very slightly wrong in some parts, but you should get the gist.

[Bum Crack]

( Out of my comfort zone here )

Are you telling me this $30bn whizz bang state of the art system works better if I'm closer to the node?

Yep. because the libs, in their infinite wisdom, decided to keep the copper for the last bit to your house.

The technologies are roughly this

ADSL/Traditional Phone: copper all the way from your exchange to your house. usually a max of say 5km. Losses are tens of dB per km. what that means is if you have a long run of copper, the signal to noise ratio is very low by the time it gets to your house - which means low speeds (more error correction needs to be done on your data and higher packet loss so some need to be resent)

Surprising that we can even get relatively high speeds out of this copper, which was only ever designed for voice traffic. engineers ftw.

Fibre to the Premises (FTTP): replace the copper with fibre - which has losses of maybe 0.1dB per km rather than tens of dB. which means massively higher speeds. (like 1000Mb or more instead of 24). Expensive to install - not because of the cost of the fibre, which is cheaper than copper, but because of the cost of pulling cable through pits to your house. This is what the Labor govt's original plan was - to run fibre everywhere.

More expensive but would have been a lot better going forward. as with everything you could argue the cost/benefit.

Fibre to the Node (FTTN): an apparently cheaper (cost blowouts have put the cost close to the original labor plan( solution that involves running fibre some of the way to your house, and then using the existing copper for the final run to your house. Uses a technology similar to ADSL but can deliver speeds of up to 100Mb. (note this is 10 times less than the max speeds of FTTP)

Because you still have high loss copper in the way, the length of that copper still matters to your speeds. ADSL used to work to a max of 5km or more, VDSL will do maybe 1km max.

caveat: im not a telecomms engineer, so this could be very slightly wrong in some parts, but you should get the gist.

I got a headache reading that

[HH3]

I got a headache reading that

Probably my favourite bennymacca post to be honest. Informative, and I learnt something new. Even though it might be wrong apparently.

[bennymacca]

I got a headache reading that

Probably my favourite bennymacca post to be honest. Informative, and I learnt something new. Even though it might be wrong apparently.

thanks

it won't be wrong to a level you guys will pull me up on

but im just an electronic engineer with an interest in the area, not a telecoms engineer, so those loss figures are rough ones, some one who knows more than me would be able to tell you exactly what they are etc

[Bum Crack]

I got a headache reading that

Probably my favourite bennymacca post to be honest. Informative, and I learnt something new. Even though it might be wrong apparently.

thanks

it won't be wrong to a level you guys will pull me up on

but im just an electronic engineer with an interest in the area, not a telecoms engineer, so those loss figures are rough ones, some one who knows more than me would be able to tell you exactly what they are etc

Yeah I'm far too dumb to understand any of that. It sounded impressive though.

[Booney]

I read the "You should get the gist" bit first and that was a mistake.

[HH3]

I read the "You should get the gist" bit first and that was a mistake.

Summary

FTTP - Best
FTTN - Good
ADSL - Ok

[Booney]

And when I do make the mistake and move to NBN how will I know?

[HH3]

And when I do make the mistake and move to NBN how will I know?

If you're anything like me, your ISP will cut your internet off for two weeks without warning, then take three days to figure out why they cut it off, then tell you you dont have a choice, send you a new modem, and wa-la, you have NBN.

It's good, but we were ok having Naked DSL.

[bennymacca]

And when I do make the mistake and move to NBN how will I know?

if you are in an old area you will almost certainly be in a FTTN area

(theres a fourth technology, HFC, using Foxtel cables, but thats similar to FTTN so I didn't bother adding that in)

[Trader]

How long before Wifi makes all the in ground cables redundant? (If ever?).