What internet speeds should I expect

[Arron]

We live in Epping (the Sydney one) and I'm looking at getting a new Internet Service Provider. Currently, we get an astoundingly slow service for DSL2 - like 2.4mps download speed. It used to be about 6.7mps but has got steadily worse over the last few years. I don't want to make a move to a new provider unless I'm confident they can provide a good service - cos I don't want to be locked into another dud for a year or two.

So is there anyone else here serviced by the Epping exchange who can tell me what service they have and what speeds they get?

I'm interested especially in the Epping exchange because I know that if I ring the provider they will say 'the problem is the epping exchange - its congested - nothing we can do about it etc etc'.

If not the Epping exchange, then anywhere in the NW suburbs would be good to know about.

FWIW, the NBN looks like being a distant dream around here.

Measurements taken using a OCKLA speedtest ap on an Ipad Air (I don't think that matters, but just in case).

cheers
Arron

[doug3030]

We live in Epping (the Sydney one) and I'm looking at getting a new Internet Service Provider.

If you are on an ADSL service it is almost 99.9% certain that the infrastructure there is owned by Telstra. Other providors own very small enclaves of the copper network. Most of it is Telstra's.

No matter who you choose for your service provider the infrastructure being used to provide the service is still the same Telstra network. The other Internet Service providers wholesale lines from Telstra and retail then to their customers. It does not matter who you are paying for your services the same piece of copper wire will be carrying the data.

There are still many areas where exchanges are overcrowded. The copper network was never designed for internet, Most of it was built well before ADSL was even thought of. The ADSL equipment takes up a lot of room in an exchange that was not built to hold it.

Telstra is reluctant to spend money on its copper network now as once an area goes NBN the network is owned by NBN Co so Telstra sees no value for money in upgrading networks that will be taken off them in the next few years.

I know that it is not good news for people in your circumstances Arron, but that is the reality of the commercial world of the Telco's. The only consolation I can offer is that you are not suffering alone. Many people are in your situation.

Cheers

Doug

[Master Splinter]

There's a heatmap here - http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/vie...?Exchange=EPPI - showing speeds that people are reporting in that area, as well as an overview of some alternative service providers. Also try on the Whirlpool Broadband forums, as they'll be able to point you to sites for more detailed line testing (ie signal to noise ratio) that could shed more light on your problem.

According to that site, the exchange is not full, and Internode, TPG, Optus, EFTel and Telstra all have equipment in the exchange there. Just be glad you're not behind a RIM, as you'd never see anything over half dialup speed (22.5kbps)!

[Chris Parks]

I have ADSL2 and if I could get 2.4 I would be doing handstands and telling the world.

[doug3030]

I have ADSL2 and if I could get 2.4 I would be doing handstands and telling the world.

Here' my speed - http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4844090650

Should I be doing cartwheels? Sometimes I get even a bit faster than this.

Cheers

Doug's a slightly faster one http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4844102985

[Yanis]

Arron,
You actual connect speed can be read off your modem. Login and look at your status page and that gives the actual speed at which your modem connects. You real word speed is affected by a number of things. Your upper limit is your ADSL connect speed, then there is the network between your exchange and the ISP's routers, then the speed between there and your site of interest.

Your modem's connect speed is impacted by three basic factors, how far you are from the exchange, the quality of any joints you have between you and the exchange and how many other people are on the cable between you and the exchange that are also using ADSL. Your connect speed may have dropped due to corrosion in the connections but there may also be more people using the cable which will impact your speed. As doug said the copper cable was only ever meant for voice and ADSL was an afterthought so the more ADSL services on a copper multi pair cable the slower the overall speed is for everyone on that cable.

So the bottom line is if your modem's connect speed is 2.4 mb then that is all you will get regardless of the provider since all they will do is connect your copper line to their equipment.

BTW, my connect speed is 20mb which is insanely high for ADSL. There are two reasons for this. One is that everybody else is on NBN, so there are only three other people on my cable using ADSL (we are all outside of the NBN coverage - don't get me started) and we are only a few hundred meters from a RIM outfitted with ADSL equipment connected back to the exchange with fiber.

[Chris Parks]

The problem we have is the limited connectivity to the rest of the world from an isolated town. I am sure every small town has similar issues, infrastructure never meant to support high data loads.

[Fuzzie]

I'm on the Gold Coast and around here my ADSL2+ connect speed at the moment is 1.2 kbit/s. You don't have to be in an isolated town to bask in bad performance.

[doug3030]

Just so that you can all see that I do not have the luxury of 100+ speeds all the time here's what I get in the afternoons when everyone else is online:

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4844641220

But I guess that a lot of you would be happy to get 18 mb/sec anyway

Cheers

Doug

[Thylacene]

Have you tried getting Telstra to check the copper by lodging a fault with them, if you were getting better before you should. I had to argue with them for a bit to have it done, as they reckoned my line was not suitable for ADSL let alone ADSL2. After much pushing it went from 700K to just under 4Mb, turns out the fault was in a junction box 50m from the house.

I am 4.5km cable distance from the exchange and this is my result http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4845305807 which is sad, NBN not planned until 2017 and I intend to sell up and retire in early 2018.

Doug, I am jealous, would love 18Mb

[q9]

It is possible that a move to a different provider will help - I always liked internode, and they traditionally had no minimum terms, so if they were no good you could change. I never had to. They also had the best tech support - if you clearly know what you are doing, they don't run you through the "clueless idiot" script. Sometimes a change in adsl modem will change things too, but not so often. Your's ever been restarted?

Quite slow here tonight

[Arron]

Q9, that's In Japan is it ?


And yes, rebooted frequently.

Arron

[doug3030]

I am 4.5km cable distance from the exchange and this is my result http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4845305807 which is sad, NBN not planned until 2017 and I intend to sell up and retire in early 2018.

Doug, I am jealous, would love 18Mb

4.5 km is about the limit of cable distance for ADSL to work at any usable speed so that's a pretty good result under the circumstances.

The technology has been around for a long time to allow higher data speeds through shorter copper pairs, which is why the government got it so wrong by doing the NBN rollout as fibre to the premises. If they did it nationwide as fibre to the node we could all be on 100mb/sec now. Then with everyone on reasonable speeds, they could have slowly converted the fire to the node to fibre to the premises to allow for an increase in speed later. It would have been much cheaper and quicker to get everyone onto good speeds.

ANyway my internet is a bit quicker this evening than it was yesterday http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4847659747

78mb/sec instead of 18. not that you would notice for most usage anyway.

Cheers

Doug

[q9]

Q9, that's In Japan is it ?

Yes it certainly is.

And yes, rebooted frequently.

Ok, then probably not likely to be anything related to it running for a long time. What brand is it? In my experience D-Link was about the worst, Billion were much better and recommended to me by internode. Linksys were also good, but I did have the odd one with dodgy firmware that needed upgrading before it settled down and played nicely. Unless there is a major fault with the hardware, you are unlikely to be losing a lot of speed, but nevertheless worth checking out if you can.

Related story, I once ran a setup where my internet connection was controlled by an old pc I was running smoothwall on. Long story short, I ended up with terrible conncection speeds, barely cracking 1Mb/s - turned out the motherboard in the firewall pc had dodgy capacitors (remember that one?) causing all kinds of havoc. Replaced with a modern mobo + cpu and I gained about 5Mb/s. Improved everything out of sight.

[Arron]

Well I made the decision to go with one of the big-name carriers. ADSL2 and pay-as-you-go home phone package. Installation was last week, which went smoothly and speeds immediately jumped from the 2.4mbs at which it had resolutely stayed for the last few years to 4.7mbs. This did involve a new wifi router - so not sure how much of the speed increase was attributable to the new router. The 'old' router was a reasonably new Linksys one, but the package included a pre-configured router so in it went.

But the phone didn't work.

So we got tech support looking at that. Today they got it going, and internet speeds have jumped up to 9.8mbs.

Happy me.

cheers
Arron