Internet speed, 2015

[Aractus]

OH MY GOD.

My line rate is 74267/25921 kbit/s, I've never seen it that high before. And I just clocked my net on Speedtest at 69 Mbit/s!!

Okay so a few days ago I did beat this line rate, slightly, by plugging into the phone port in the hallway. My plan at this stage is to re-wire it in the next few days (it still has 1970's wiring going to the No. 238 socket, with a RJ11 daisy chained from it) and hopefully get a better line rate.

I also successfully hit my 1000GB "quota" to get shaped. Here's the shaping speed:



Evidently they've only bothered to throttle the download rate and haven't bothered to throttle the upload (the shaping speed is supposed to be 20/20 Mbps). It's the fastest shaping speed I've ever seen offered by any ISP in Australia on any product. For comparison this is the present shaping speeds iiNet offers:

iiNet Residential plans:
ADSL: 256/256kbps
ADSL (naked): 128/128kbps
NBN: 8/1Mbps
Cable: 1Mbps/1Mbps
VDSL2*: 10000/10000kbps
iiNet FttH: 256/256 kbps

iiNet Business plans:
ADSL: 128/128kbps
NBN: 8/1Mbps
Cable: 512/512kbps
VDSL2*: 20/20Mbps

*The VDSL2 network is the Transact network, not the NBN's FttN which is also VDSL2.

And some of the other major ISPs ...

TPG:
ADSL: 256K/256Kkbps - 1/1Mbps (depends on plan)
NBN: 128/128kbps

Telstra Residental:
ADSL: 256kbps
NBN: 256kbps
Cable: 256kbps
FttP: 256kbps
Satelite: 128kbps

Telstra Busisness:
ADSL: Is not shaped, extra data fees apply.
NBN: Is not shaped, extra data fees apply.

Optus:
ADSL: 256kbps
Cable: 256kbps
NBN: 256kbps

Internode (Residential):
ADSL: 256/256kbps
ADSL (naked): 128/128kbps
NBN: 256/256kbps

Internode (Busisness):
ADSL: 512/512 kbps

Okay, granted there are a few ISPs that offer so-called "unlimited" plans (although most say in the fine print that your line will be throttled without notice if you are a heavy user).  So you can technically buy so-called unlimited unshaped speeds up to 200/200Mbit/s (from Spirit if you're lucky enough to live in area serviced by their fibre-to-the-apartment network) or 100/40Mbit on the NBN for $100/mo which is what I pay for my service, although do note I get a VOIP account with unlimited Australian calls including mobiles. But again, with so-called "unlimited" you're at their whim. At least with my service I know what I'm getting. I can theoretically use 5000GB* of data transfer and my speed won't drop below the shaped speed of 20/20 (and it took me 20 days of continually trying to download everything not nailed down on the internet just to get to 1,000GB!)

*Theoretically at 20Mbit/s I can download up to 200GB per day. Thus if I managed to use up 1000GB in the first 10 days, then over the next 20 days of the calendar month I could use a maximum of 4000GB just from download data (of course if I set up a web-server I could theoretically use 200GB a day in uploads also), but uploads aside (even though they are counted) I can only realistically expect to be able to use 5,000GB and that's if I really, really try.

But this gets me back to my point that shaping speeds are atrocious in this country. I'm lucky to be on the Transact network, which now offers NBN-like speeds, and a fucking terrific shaping speed that's much faster than most of Australia gets before being shaped (the average being 7.8Mbps as of Q3 2015, which appears to include both upload and download data making the true average something like 6.6/1.3Mbps). Out of the major ISPs, only iiNet offers competitive shaping speeds - and even then there's huge room for improvement. Cable internet delivers speeds of up to 100/20 (with some users reporting higher speeds), so it's faster than the Transact network which is advertised as delivering "up to" 80/20 speeds, yet the shaping speed is a merely 1/1Mbps. And also what's with their NBN shaping speed being a non-symmetrical 8/1Mbps? Why can't they offer 9.8/9.8Mbps like the Transact VDSL2?

It is, of course, all about Location Location. The SN I'm connected to, this one:



Is located 15 houses from me (I don't know where the node is, but I believe it's located on a pole in someone's back yard up to 8 houses away). Anyway, the point is the more congested the SN the worse your peak hour speeds (I never really notice a drop in speed, thus this box must have enough fibre running into it to cope with peak hour usage, others are not so lucky).