Well after a hectic week since getting a contract on our house sale ect, organising the s***load of stuff you have to do invovled in moving from somewhere you have been grounded for 16+ years. During my organising, I discover that the rental we will be moving into on the 27th is nice and close to an ADSL2+ enabled exchange at Chapel Hill. And how handy is that considering I recently bought a compatible modem! So I am organising the disconnection of our phone lines and the establishment of the new line for the rental, new phone numbers and such ect.. I had spoken with the wife to confirm that she can still claim broadband as a tax deduction, which she confirms and decide to go for the ADSL extreme plan for $119/ month. then I find out I get some sweet half price deal from the Telstra guy, drops it down to $59.95 a month...which I will still get half off for again! U beauty!

What's the general thought's of people about the ADSL2 v Cable comparisons, because the house has cable as well and I can change over to that if I want...like I said it all a tax write off anyways. :}

Anyone here using ADSL2 ect, maybe even someone on the chapel hill exchange?? any good?, is it as awesome a they claim? If so I am looking forward to it and once again using Gamearena game servers again. :

(edit: post is not mean to sound harsh, just be informative)

Wow, you make it sound like Telstra is the best company in the world. They aren't. They've been trying to suppress ADSL2+ and the only reason they are into it now is because other companies have been offering it for months and they finally want some cake.

If it were up to them, everyone in Australia would be stuck on dialup or 256kbps ADSL paying $100 for 3GB quota.

drops it down to $59.95 a month

1. How long is the contract?
2. How long before the price bumps back up.

iiNet offers ADSL2+ with 30GB quota for $60 (regular price), bundled. Should have shopped around!

What's the general thought's of people about the ADSL2 v Cable comparisons

Cable is a shared medium in your neighbourhood hence speeds can vary. ADSL is a point-to-point connection meaning you have the full capacity of your line at your disposal. I believe cable is artificially capped to 256kbps upstream while your ADSL should do 1Mbps. Internode recently enabled 2Mbps upstream.

It will probably be months or never until Telstra follows because high upstream starts threatening their uber-expensive business plans. Hence they try to leave a large speed margin between home and business plans so that they can continue ripping off businesses.

Anyone here using ADSL2 ect

I've had uncapped iiNet ADSL @ 7Mbps and Bigpond Cable (truly unlimited quota at the time) in the past. ADSL just wins due to being consistent and having a decent upload speed (95kB/s), and shorter contract times (6 months).


last edited by parabol at 03:21:34 18/Nov/06

I have Telstra cable in st. lucia and it's s***house.

...like I said it all a tax write off anyways

So thats like free then?

no, it means his taxable income is less

i highly recommend adsl2

we're on iinet here about 2.5 ks from our local exchange and we get great speeds (down and up)

arent cable upstreams still s***ty? we get full 1024mb/s upstream which is just under 100k/s

upstream makes a difference to me

downstream we sync 15000mb/s
have dled from some of the quicker sites (apple are always quick) at 2meg/second

no sync issues, iinet is pretty stable, hardly ever down

no dramas recommending adsl2 to others

GET IT
BEST INTERNETS AROUND

You can claim it when tax man comes round. It's a business expense and you get 10% back. You can claim anything you want. But if they decide to check up on you, make sure you have receipts and can prove that whateva you are claiming, you use it for your business. If you don't have a business but are employed, when you do your tax return you can still claim, but again makes sure you have receipts and can prove you use it for work.

Bundle the phone with your mobile and online billing, then that's 12 months @ half price. That a broadband specific promotion, Telstra Rewards still applies on top again if you single bill (10%?), although I think if you have it applied now, it's just free calls or similar.

Whether ADSL or Cable, you get all the free (legit) traffic to Bigpond (gamearena/pings/movies/tv/music etc.) Telstra are investing squillions into Bigpond at the moment and for some reason are really trying hard to retain/gain customers.

The general rule of thumb is cable trumps DSL. (However with the recent DSL changes, it's not so clear cut). Less things go wrong, it's easier to fix, and there are proportionately more techs available for Cable than ADSL, it's faster, and will get faster still. Now, while Cable is shared (duh as to why Cable is slow in St Lucia), "Cable Extreme" is on a dedicated, seperate RF band to the rest of the "Normal" cable users on a segment. You also need a new Modem, which is a barrier entry for current "normal" users. In Chapel Hill I can flat out guarantee you that you'll get your full 17Mbps all the time. Pings are lower. Upload is limited to 256k, but I dunno - we did OK on 28.8! Also, if you already have a cable plug I think they just mail you the modem and by the time you get it, you plug in and go. You don't need a phone line. With the installation discount you may actually get the modem for free.

DSL depends on distance to the exchange which you don't know. You can get DSL2 but a very small percentage of peeps get their 20Mbit. I only get about 6Mbit. it's.. well ADSL is just alot messier.

I think the iiNet comparison isn't really fair because while it's $60 and 30GB, 20GB of that is between midnight and 8am. I'd really just prefer to get what I want when I want it. You also have to bundle the phone line at $35 a month, so that's $95 a month for 10GB. Instead, you could get say 20GB $100 cable extreme halved to $50, throw on the $20 budget homeline, then voip your calls thru the cable..

I would get cable (extreme).

last edited by dRanged at 10:00:59 18/Nov/06

Thanks dRanged, I'll defineately look into those options. cheers. I basically went for the ADSL2 option only because I had just recently bought a compatible modem but if Cable extreme is much better I might go with that ad just hang onto the adsl modem for when we move back out to Bellbowrie after the new house is finished. No cable out there so the adsl modem will be of use again.

I only wanted a 12 month contract and it just so happened that the half price deal suited too, my wife can claim our broadband because online advertising is something she watches and researces as part of her job.

ta.

ahh, well if you are moving again to non-cable that's different. I'd get DSL2+, non-bigpond have better download limits etc but you won't get all the bundling/free content bonuses.

Why are you going with telstra, absolute ripoff they are, and you think their half price deals are great, hello they are only for 6 - 12 months then you cop the full bill after that period not to mention your locked into a contract and when you try and receive support for non-supplied modems by telstra, the consultants you would speak to for assistance will hang up on you.

www.dslamwatch.com.au (site is under reconstruction)

ADSL2+ Providers:
Internode
iinet
nexstep

Those are the 3 carriers and they are all wholesale except internode, so isps like TPG People Telecom utilise one of those carriers.

Oh and I didn't mention telstra because their pricing is bs.

i use optus adsl2 and it f***ing blows dont go near them

hello they are only for 6 - 12 months

er thats what I said in my post we are only going to this area for like 11 months..while we hae a new house built back out in Bellbowrie where we will be returning. So the 12 month deal is cool because I wont be with them any longer. I reckon I'll just jump back onto Internode when we get back to Bellbowrie.

You also have to bundle the phone line at $35 a month

Yes but aren't the Telstra discounts due to bundling? So it's no different.

Also Telstra count upstream traffic as well so you lose even more quota.

If you want the half price thing, you have to do a 2 year contract.

Yes, but Telstra will always bundle better. ie, $20 line rental + half price BB + bigpond movies/tv etc + telstra rewards on top. You can bundle on bundles! I would expect more of these deals appearing as converging product families unite (ie specific applications servicing both mobile and fixed)

Uploads yes they count and this is lame but for most people this is not a problem.

Uploads yes they count and this is lame but for most people this is not a problem.

Chances are if you're after ADSL2+, you are generally planning to use the connection otherwise 256kbps would do to check your e-mail.

Almost everyone I know with Bigpond who is P2P-aware is a leecher giving nothing back to the community. They just leech (with upstream-limiting software in place) and close the client as soon as the download is complete. Not their direct fault. Pretty lame considering almost every other decent ISP in Australia doesn't count uploads.

Also, gotta love the $150/GB excess charge. You could easily foot a $300,000 bill in a month at 8Mbps if unaware.

Basically it comes down to this. You are doing everyone a disservice by recommending Bigpond. Say anything positive you like about them but there is always 100x more negative stuff to make it insignificant. Most people who have left Bigpond to dabble in other ISPs know this quite well.

last edited by parabol at 13:07:37 18/Nov/06

I just think that this era of free-for-all piracy can't last forever. We are gunna have to start paying for this s*** sooner or later, otherwise all broadband will ever be is what it is now, but faster.

You can see Apple with iTunes and how they legitimized online music and video (and made it work!), well Telstra and Bigpond are trying to do the same thing. This is a good thing, I think it will spur so much legitimate and useful software creativity and growth.

$150/Gig? Could be worse! it's over $20,000 per Gig on their mobile networks! Never used to be a problem, but next year NextG will see double digit megabit speeds, scary! ;)

Psycho,

I live in Chapel Hill and have had both telstra cable and am currently on iinet adsl2++++.

Cable had pretty good speeds but has limited uploads (which sucks for Bittorrent), you won't suffer from the "shared" aspect of cable though, Chapel Hill doesn't have anywhere near the population density to worry about it.

IInet adsl has always been pretty fantastic but I get s***ty speeds 5500/980 due to my distance from the exchange so your mileage may vary. I wouldn't go back to cable though as I really do rely on the upload stream to be consistently good.

I'm also on the Chapel Hill exchange through iinet's ADSL2+ service. Must be a bit closer than the above poster as I get 10Mb/1Mb and would never go back to Bigpond's cable service. Would suggest that if you're not locked into a Bigpond contract that you do consider other ADSL providers... if you are then good luck to you.

Would it be right for me to hijack this thread?
I'm having serious trouble securing a wireless network.

^ What router/AP are you using?

D-link DSL-G604T
It's a DSL modem router combo.
The deal is, every time I enable WEP encrypting and reboot the router, all the PC in the house cannot find the wireless router. When I reset to default factory settings using a little button on the back they all pick it up again.
I can connect to the net but it’s free for others to use.
What is confusing is that all my PCs should be able to see the router regardless of encryption, just not connect.
Much like I can view various networks throughout the street, just not connect.

last edited by Lynx at 21:07:14 18/Nov/06

I just looked up the manual for that router. It's a bit hard to troubleshoot when so many things could be wrong :P

Can you post exactly the options you set in the WEP/SSID config page? Or a screenshot of it. Also the Advanced->WirelessAccessManagement page too.

Internode doesn't ADSL2 on the chapel hill exchange... You got me all excited there for a sec...

Wireless Settings

Wireless Management

That is quite odd.

Using WPA or a different SSID doesn't help?

Also did you actually specify the SSID of the router on the PC/laptop side of things or are you purely doing it by scan and select?

last edited by parabol at 01:38:11 19/Nov/06

Look for something like 'enable SSID broadcast', that's why you don't see it on the list of available networks. If you can't find it as parabol says add in the SSID manually in the scan/select window.

Start from the basics and work your way up. Remove all encryption, get all the stations on the network, allocated ip addresses etc.

add each station address to the mac filter (ipconfig /all under wireless adaptor). At least if you can't get WEP to work
you have something. Make sure all the stations still work.

make sure the clients use only wireless zero configuration OR the supplied software for the cards. (disable/enable wireless zero in services)

add WEP 128 (not 64!) to the router. write it down. Apply and reboot.
add in the correct SSID and WEP key to each client.

Ring D-link on Monday ;)

This is the first network I have setup, wired or wireless so this terminology is pretty new to me.

I haven't tried WPA yet because it seems far more complex then WEP to setup and because the Wii only supports WEP encrypting.

I have tried both 64bit and 128bit Ciphers, makes no difference.
I've also tried multiple SSIDs, still get the same problem.
I’ve tried both scan selecting networks, and specifying SSIDs.

I think I’ll just ring D-Link.
Till then I’ll just keep the router turned off, already a laptop called “Nickslaptop” and a PC called “CARRS” has been connecting to the router.

DRanged is right you need to look for a box on the router setup page 'enable SSID broadcast', i setup one of these last week for some friends and its there. (pretty sure it was the same router), the menu on the DLink page is not really intuitive so keep looking

I think I found it, it's called "Hidden SSID" and it's in the Advanced-Wireless Performance.
It wasn't set to hide SSID

Just an update...did the big move to Chapel Hill (god was it a nightmare) man do you collect some s*** after 16 yrs in the same place and with two kids!! Anyway settling in very well in our rental as its a very nice place to be and finally got the Smelstra ADLS2 running on my Dynalink router and its pretty bloody sweet. Especially coming from 1500/256 adsl line. Getting on averaage between 8-10mb/s. very nice indeed.

Another thing I didn't realise is that the FTA channels are on Fox digital platinum plan, we only had the stellite option out at Bellbowrie and well even only being here for a couple of weeks I am very much liking the benefits of living close to the CBD. We will be building a new home out at Moggill, but I reckon I might be a bit reluctant to go back out there after a year of being so close to shops an services ect... :P

how much did your new place set you back?

Im at Indro and got adsl2+ through TPG on the chapel hill exchange $60 a month for 30 gig, awesome speed no complaints at all...

psycho i feel sorry for your kids living in the middle of the sticks :(

how much did your new place set you back?

we are just renting here for 12 months while we build a new home back out in Moggill. Not looking forward to the moving thing again but we are taking it easy this year, all our yard and pool maintenance is included in our rental and its a nice house with a great gourmet kitchen in it and I am having a ball doing cooking and stuff.