NBN installed - sort of

[snowyskiesau]

The NBN installer arrived yesterday afternoon to install my NBN Wireless. 3 hours, mostly spent on or in the roof in windy wet weather. They don't pay him enough!
I should have a working connection this evening once the ISP does their bit. I'm looking forward to a usable network speed.

No hurry though, there was a power outage overnight and my main computer is still sulking over it it. THe computer is normally powered on 24/7 and one of the disks is showing its age. A couple of the fans are noisy and need to be replaced.

At least the laptop is still working so I'm not completely cut off.

[Big Shed]

Geoff, you'll like the NBN Wireless, we have had it for a couple of years now and wouldn't be without it.

The normal speed is 25Mbps but we received an email from our ISP that the NBN is doing a free trial of new technology that will give 50Mbps.

Starting May 15 ending in September, can't comment on how good it is, we haven't been home since mid April

No idea how much extra that will cost either.

[snowyskiesau]

Fred, Good to know that there might be something faster to look forward to.
At the moment, I get 9 Mbps at best. The 25 Mbps will be a welcome improvement.

I hope they can do the provisioning over the weekend, I'd hate to spend the weekend just watching the flashing lights on the wall mounted box.

[Big Shed]

When the guy finished installing the aerial on the roof and the modem it was about 17:30, by 20:00 we were online.

NBN does the switch on but only after the installer submits his paper worrk and photos of the install.

[snowyskiesau]

I just emailed my ISP and they said that connection will be active Mon/Tues. Not impressed.

[snowyskiesau]

Still not happy, it's Wednesday afternoone and still no connection.
Four working days is surely enough time for the iSP to set up an account?



EDIT: Just got an email from my was to be ISP and my connection is on hold. Apparently they're concerned about the performance I will get during peak hours. Netflix users are being blamed for this.
I have been offered a choice of moving to a different ISP with a refund on my application fee or taking a much more expensive business account.
Not sure why a business account would not have the same issue nor why another ISP would not be similarly affected.

[snowyskiesau]

Just got a refund from the ISP (connection fee) so I'm not out of pocket but I still don't have NBN.

Looks like the options now are Telstra, Internode or iInet, all more expensive than the original plan but less likely to be affected by Netflix streamers during peak hours.
All three seem to have sufficient back-haul capacity across Bass Strait. Surprisingly Telstra are the cheapest if I want to keep my telephone line, only an extra $10 per month over the broadband charge. Downside is a 2 year contract .

[snowyskiesau]

Finally pulled my finger out and arranged and ISP for my already installed NBN wireless.
Ended up going with iiNet as they seem to have a good reputation overall and other users in Tasmania have reported good speeds.
Still waiting for my phone number to be ported over to a VOIP service then I can drop my landline and ADSL2 service.
I get a 250GB monthly quota which based on previous usage will be more than enough. I'm going through a bit right now due to stream the Tour de France.

The service is 25Mbps download and 5Mbps upload and speed tests show I'm getting very close to that in download and much more in upload.

[Cran]

I have the 50Mbps (trial) installed near Esk in QLD. During peak times (usually 6pm onwards) I'm getting less than 1Mbps. I was using a 4g wireless connection before, and same congestion issues but far far more expensive. I thought they would upgrade the connection from Esk to Brisbane when they put the NBN wireless tower in. How wrong was I

[RoyG]

I have the 50Mbps (trial) installed near Esk in QLD. During peak times (usually 6pm onwards) I'm getting less than 1Mbps. I was using a 4g wireless connection before, and same congestion issues but far far more expensive. I thought they would upgrade the connection from Esk to Brisbane when they put the NBN wireless tower in. How wrong was I

Cran,

Welcome to the forum. It seems like the number of Forum Members who live in the Brisbane Valley area is growing .... one up to two .... are there others ?

The poor evening performance of the NBN Fixed Wireless is not confined to just the Esk Fixed Wireless Tower. I'm on the Toogoolawah NBN Fixed Wireless tower, and get the same performance problems. Nice fast upload and download speeds during the day, and dismally slow speeds (about the same as ADSL1, sometimes worse) between about 6:00pm and 11:00pm on most nights. I've had the Fixed Wireless connection since December 2014, and performance initially on the 25 Mbps plan was excellent, with no evening slow down.

Screenshot-1.pngAround May 2015, I started to notice the evening performance tapering off, and at the same time I got the emails from Internode saying that I was being put on the "50Mbps Trial". I suspect that Internode realised that they had a night time congestion problem and gave us the "50 Mbps Trial" as an unstated compensation. The 50 Mbps Trail was supposed to finish at the end of August 2015, but I just used www.speedtest.net to check the performance, and the 50 Mbps is still there. If you double click on the image at the left, you'll be able to see the wide variation in download speed between daytime, and evenings. Upload speed is not impacted. I've done most of the speed tests recorded on that graph when the link has been slow, so the graph, at first glance, is not a fair representation of the performance of the internet connection. My NBN fixed wireless Internet connection is fast between about midnight and about 5:00pm each day, and between 5:00pm and midnight, performance is dismal.

My NBN connection is through Internode. When I complained to Internode about the dismal performance, they did some tests to confirm that the problem was caused by network congestion, and once confirmed, their compensation for the intermittently poor network performance was to waive the remainder of the 24 month contract period with them (14 months to go on contract - now waived). Internode also refunded one month's fees, which they said was a once only compensation for intermittently poor performance. Internode said that if I wanted to try another NBN re-seller, I could do so without any penalties for leaving the contract early.

Internode are owned by iiNet, as are a huge number of other ISP retailers (NBN Resellers) in Australia, and the congestion in apparently a huge problem in all of iiNet's back haul connections into the capital cities. If you Google "iiNet congestion", you'll get quite a few news reports about the subject, and apparently the congestion is widespread across Australia, and is apparently a result of iiNet's management underestimating the impact of NetFlix streaming when it was introduced to Australia early in 2015. TPG Internet completed their takeover of iiNet and it's subsidiaries in late August 2015, so it'll be interesting to see how quickly the new corporate management fix our performance problems. Whether other ISP Wholesalers are also effected is something that is difficult to find out for sure.

It's important to note that NBNCo only provides the Fixed Wireless Towers, and the data links from the Wireless Towers to the nearest Telstra Exchange, and from that point on all data goes via each of the NBN Reseller's own network cables - whether that be iiNet, Optus, Telstra, or one of the smaller ISPs that have their own data cable network.

I haven't bothered to change over to another NBN Reseller (yet), because it's nearly impossible to find out which of the major Resellers have congestion problems and which do not. Most of my Internet usage occurs during the day, so the problem does not impact greatly on my usage. I rang one NBN Reseller looking for a better deal last week and they confidently told me that they had no congestion issues - and offered me a really good deal. After some Googling, I soon found that the NBN Reseller that I had been talking to was another subsidiary of iiNet. So, I opted not to sign up with them. I'll remain with Internode in the hope that the new owners will address the problem.

Anyway, once again, welcome to the forum.

Regards,

RoyG

[Mobyturns]

Backhaul is the issue for all ISP's. Netflix, Stan etc are all having a huge impact on traffic. NBN only owns part of the backhaul network at this time.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/...sign-dissected

[OldGrain]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-1...leased/6858874