Going to be moving house soon - Internet concerns

Dhalphir

Hi guys,

I'm not sure how much you'll be able to help. Nevertheless, this has me worried.

I am currently living in an area that is approximately 1.5km from my local ADSL2+ exchange. I get decent internet performance - relatively low latency when connecting to Australian servers and playable (~200ms) connecting to American-based Battle.net servers playing Starcraft 2).

In about 2 months, I'll be moving to our new place. Its all very exciting, its a brand new house. But - we'll be more than twice as far from the exchange.

What the hell are my options? cable internet is not widely available in Western Australia, and certainly not in our area. We are not hugely constrained by budget - I'd be willing to look at all options and evaluate them, but I just don't know if there ARE any options. Are we doomed to pretty much have terrible internet from now on?

Hope anyone can help,

Dhal

Tox

I don't know how prevalent it is down in aussie land, but here the latest craze is fiber internet. It usually has variable pricing, different costs for different max speeds. You may run into a bandwidth cap, but it's usually pretty high so you shouldn't hit it.

chrishallett83

Tox, we're getting a nation-wide fibre internet network over the next 3 to 4 years. So far, there are about 40 suburbs in the whole country that are hooked up to the goodness.

All Dhalphir can do is find out the current phone number of the place he's moving to, ring up someone like iinet, and ask them how good the lines are.

Tox

You aussies and your socialism.

Your delicious, delicious socialism.

This is what happens when you make people vote.

Tef

I'll throw out http://forums.whirlpool.net.au as a good source for info. For the love of god only go into the broadband and networking forums though.

Dhalphir

chrishallett83 wrote:

Tox, we're getting a nation-wide fibre internet network over the next 3 to 4 years. So far, there are about 40 suburbs in the whole country that are hooked up to the goodness.

All Dhalphir can do is find out the current phone number of the place he's moving to, ring up someone like iinet, and ask them how good the lines are.

@chrishallet83

unfortunately its a brand new villa in Balga, there aren't even finished land titles issued for it yet, and no phone-line run-in has been done, so it has no phone line.
Apparently iinet offers an option called Bonded DSL which combines two ADSl lines for better sync speeds - there is a few sites at nearly 4km from an exchange that get upwards of 10mbps sync speeds with Bonded DSL. its very expensive but I have an option at least if its truly horrible.

Draygo

You might need to contact the city to find out what services are (or will be) availible. The other option is to call around to the various ISP providers and ask if they provide coverage or plan to.

I would assume there will be some way to get internet access, at minimum you can get a 3G/4G hotspot and use that.

Dhalphir

Oh it will definitely be possible to get Internet access - You'd have to go pretty far out of the city here to not be able to get Internet at all - My concern is that due to being 3.5km+ from the exchange, I'll be suffering through sub 1mbps sync speeds, which, while manageable for the vast majority of Internet use, will be like going back to the dark ages as far as modern stuff like video streaming is concerned.

Additionally, Perth is not wired at all for cable except in very very small areas due to a government blockage on the cable rollout service a number of years ago, so for much of the suburban areas, ADSL2+ is literally your only option, and if you're far from an exchange, you're essentially shit out of luck for getting high speed.

The fibre network is planned and is being rolled out as we speak, but it only began last year and projected completion date is 2020, which as we all know isn't likely to happen either.

romanqwerty

Unless you can find somewhere wired for cable, look up your ISP (or a bunch of proposed ones) and make sure you're in their "fast service zone".. (i think most have maps you can browse)...I literally live across the road from a fast service zone and my speed is 60%(30% U/L) of someone living near to the exchange...Otherwise you can kiss streaming your games goodbye...

punk

At 3.5km, probably around 6Mbps. That depends on the ISP and really, how much total loss there is on the connection. Your mileage (or kilometers?) may vary. That's assuming that there isn't a remote DSLAM closer to your residential area, which would render the whole thing moot. Check with your local ISPs - it'll get you the most accurate information.

Dhalphir

punk wrote:

At 3.5km, probably around 6Mbps. That depends on the ISP and really, how much total loss there is on the connection. Your mileage (or kilometers?) may vary. That's assuming that there isn't a remote DSLAM closer to your residential area, which would render the whole thing moot. Check with your local ISPs - it'll get you the most accurate information.

I'm currently getting 2mbps at 1.9km from the exchange - though I'm fairly sure there is a significant fault somewhere along the line because less than six months ago we were getting 8+.