[H-GEN] Telstra and Linux

Wed Feb 19 22:33:44 EST 2003

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On Thu, 20 Feb 2003, Stuart Longland wrote:

> Date: Thu, 20 Feb 2003 11:32:21 +1000
> From: Stuart Longland <stuartl at longlandclan.hopto.org>
> Reply-To: general at lists.humbug.org.au
> To: general at lists.humbug.org.au
> Subject: Re: [H-GEN] Telstra and Linux
> 
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
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> Sandra Milne wrote:
> 
> > We just finished our contract and are about to finish our first month
> > on download cap. Whilst looking for information for a TAFE Assignment
> > the other day, I noticed that TPG Internet offers unlimited ADSL
> > 256/64 for $69.95. After much discussion in the household, we've
> > decided to go with that. Significantly slower than cable, but at least
> > we don't have to worry about how much we're downloading.
> 
> > And BTW, there is no 'free traffic' with optusnet. Last I heard
> > mirror.  aarnet was on optusnet, and they promote it, but still no
> > free traffic.  that's one of our main reasons for quitting. another
> > is, who the hell wants the speed of cable so that they can download
> > only 3gig?  we couldn't even find out if the game servers are free
> > traffic (I suspect they're not, and I've not heard anything good about
> > them in any case)
> 
> > Sandra.
> 
> I'd watch TPG, my (now old) school, St. James College decided to get
> ADSL through TPG, it was down half the time and *Tel$tra* was to blame
> for *every* service outage.  I know Tel$tra is bad, but not _that_ bad.

Actually - it really is Telstra most of the time.  I have friends who work on
Technical Support Desks for a few [1] different broadband capable ISPs, when
their ADSL customers start dialing because the link has been dropped for more
than 5 minutes - you can almost guarantee that a CMUX/DSLAM has died somewhere
or the authentication server on Telstra's side has seen the blue screen of
light again.

The disappointing thing is the response from Telstra for ISPs when faced with
this problem.  It is usually a myriad of vague responses with outage times
often given in hours or even days.  In the meantime all they can do is tell
customers 'sorry but it is a Telstra problem - they are looking into it'.  
Also most customers are not aware of just how much time Telstra sometimes
takes even during planned outages [2].  This is an ongoing problem which has
been made quite public on numerous forums [3].

On a seperate note (regarding unlimited plans), Hypermax has some unlimited
plans for ADSL (http://www.hypermax.net.au) which are rather good.  They do
utilise traffic shaping however I have yet to see a performance drop for
anything other than kazaa-lite (and that's only during the peak times).  They
have a 256/64 plan for $99 and a 512/128 for $195.  My only beef would be that
I get odd dropouts; but to be honest I'm not sure if that is from the
connection or due to the hardware router I'm using and it is only once in
awhile (TCP connections dying is what I'm talking about - I don't think Ive
seen an actual outage yet connectivity wise).

[1] being Hypermax, IInet and Arachnet. 

[2] See http://www.hypermax.net.au/outages.html for an idea and look at some
of those nice pretty 8 hour outage windows.  You can check Telstra's own
server status page too (http://telstra.com/servicestatus/) however it is
sometimes not up-to-date (can be out by up to 3 hours).

[3] See:
ZDNet -
http://www.zdnet.com.au/newstech/communications/story/0,2000024993,20266887,00.htm
Whirlpool -
http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/519
AustralianIT -
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,1776721%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html

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