Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is this a "decent" internet connection?

m85476585 said:
I am talking about Georgia Tech specifically.
Click to expand...

ok right well that makes sense.

I have heard a lot about the internet being generally slow and limited in Australia. It must be because of the limitations of undersea cables and the fact that most servers for English websites are probably in the US or Europe.
Click to expand...

oh i dont know.. we have ALOT of dedicated servers and companies in our country, e.g. Google, Yahoo, MSN (including hotmail and the news stuff etc), ebay and many more. its not that our overseas connections are slow or limited, its more of the fact that locally there is no competition and basically "one company rules them all" type thing.


It would make a lot of sense for an ISP there to set up a massive caching proxy so commonly accessed content only has to be downloaded from another part of the world once.
Click to expand...

i dare-say that there would indeed be lots of those, however our government isnt very "IT" focused, they have recently announced an upgrade to the whole of the country (a MASSIVE feat) - however by the time they roll it out it will already be outdated.

Populaiton density could be another factor, but I haven't been to Australia so I don't know. In the US, average internet speeds are lower than places like Japan since everything is spread out, and it is very expensive to run to places that don't have it.
Click to expand...

our population is SO less dense then anywhere else, but the majority (80%) of the population lives on the east side. there are massive fibre optic cables running up and down the coast line, yet only in the city can you get ADSL2+ speeds, go 10km out of the city and you are forced back to near dial up speeds.


To make matters works, the phone and cable companies are often local monopolies, so they do not have much competition or reason to offer higher speeds.
Click to expand...

local monopolies? here in australia they are national monopolies, Telstra Bigpond basically owns/manages a large percentage of the exchanges, controlling who comes in and not allowing ADSL2+ access to other "cheaper" companies. on our exchange we can only get ADSL2+ from Telstra Bigpond, they are BY FAR the most expensive group out there, and of late their service has been pathetic (got disconnected for 3 days straight the other day).


Cable seems to have gained an edge over DSL recently, though, and I suspect cable companies are trying to switch all their customers over to digital (requiring a settop box for most TVs) as soon as possible to free up more bandwidth for internet and HD content.[/QUOTE]

cable is only in the cities, cant get it anywhere outside of there.

conch575 said:
Yes omg! I always did it, it was so good, even if you went over the limit it would be fast. That was my downloading day :D
Click to expand...

omg i called it that too!!! the "downloading day".. hahahahaha funny as!
 
jav6454 said:
1. No problem... just let me get back to my dorm. Currently in Honduras;)
Click to expand...

hahaha ok thats cool, i have no idea where Honduras is :-S but hope your having fun there.

2. I don't know the exact speeds, but I did a combination from the totals from each teaching department (I didn't include Admin, Library and other miscellaneous departments). Also, I think we don't pay, I think we are a Internet node or gateway by ourselves, which might explain the crazy speed per user.
Click to expand...

bastards, free internet should be a right me thinks lol! even at our local cafe's we have to pay :( (macas has free 50mb though :))
 
DoFoT9 said:
hahaha ok thats cool, i have no idea where Honduras is :-S but hope your having fun there.
Click to expand...

Look over by Central America....

DoFoT9 said:
bastards, free internet should be a right me thinks lol! even at our local cafe's we have to pay :( (macas has free 50mb though :))
Click to expand...

We also have to pay at Coffee shops or hotspots (Starbucks)... Lol, we get free AT&T Wi-Fi just because of the iPhone, other than that, you need AT&T basic internet (DSL or U-Verse) to get access to some Wi-Fi.
 
jav6454 said:
Look over by Central America....



We also have to pay at Coffee shops or hotspots (Starbucks)... Lol, we get free AT&T Wi-Fi just because of the iPhone, other than that, you need AT&T basic internet (DSL or U-Verse) to get access to some Wi-Fi.
Click to expand...

A lot of smaller places have free wifi, but typically big national chains have either AT&T or T-mobile (or something else), both of which are too expensive in my opinion. They are charging around $8-10 for day passes, but I would only pay $1-2. Annoyingly, a lot of airports charge for wifi too (the same $8-10), which is to much if I'm only going to be there for an hour. Luckily, two of the three airports I go to the most do have free wifi. I would gladly pay $10-15 for in-flight wifi, though, especially on longer flights.
 
jav6454 said:
Look over by Central America....
Click to expand...

here :confused:

We also have to pay at Coffee shops or hotspots (Starbucks)... Lol, we get free AT&T Wi-Fi just because of the iPhone, other than that, you need AT&T basic internet (DSL or U-Verse) to get access to some Wi-Fi.
Click to expand...

ohh so is AT&T somewhat like the larger more powerful company (like Telstra is here)?? they have a whole bunch of resources to use and stuff that forces you to use them if you want the coverage.
 
DoFoT9 said:
here :confused:
Click to expand...

More like here

ohh so is AT&T somewhat like the larger more powerful company (like Telstra is here)?? they have a whole bunch of resources to use and stuff that forces you to use them if you want the coverage.
Click to expand...

AT&T is the one of the biggest provider here in terms of landlines and cellphones. They also provide U-Verse which is a HD TV + Internet + Telephone service via Fiber Optic. They also run many Wi-Fi hotspots. So for iPhone users, it is a biggie to have AT&T as carrier as we know we have extensive coverage and free Wi-Fi (for the iPhone only, but its better than nothing)
 
Heres my crappy charter low end internet over 802.11g on my macbook:
 

Attachments

  • test.jpg
    test.jpg
    28.6 KB · Views: 121
I think it's funny how the 4 major US cellphone companies, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint/Nextel, and T-Mobile, all charge exactly $59.99 a month (except AT&T, which charges a penny more) for mobile broadband (laptop card) plans and they are all limited to 5gb a month.
 
jav6454 said:
More like here
Click to expand...

oh, right! mybad

AT&T is the one of the biggest provider here in terms of landlines and cellphones. They also provide U-Verse which is a HD TV + Internet + Telephone service via Fiber Optic. They also run many Wi-Fi hotspots. So for iPhone users, it is a biggie to have AT&T as carrier as we know we have extensive coverage and free Wi-Fi (for the iPhone only, but its better than nothing)
Click to expand...

ahhhhh ok yea so your kinda forced to use their overpriced, underrated service if you want coverage and all that stuff. yup yup i know that feeling very well!

yg17 said:
Er, no, not quite.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&sou....966013,-86.19873&spn=12.374358,16.896973&z=6

Do they not teach you geography down under? ;)
Click to expand...

ok Mr. Smartypants thats enough! they teach us geography of our own country! not of wherever jav lives. i quickly glanced at his location b4 i checked google earth and saw a US location and put two and two together.

it would be like me asking you where Cabarita is... there are two of them here in Australia :p
 
DoFoT9 said:
ahhhhh ok yea so your kinda forced to use their overpriced, underrated service if you want coverage and all that stuff. yup yup i know that feeling very well!
Click to expand...

Well, I am forced to use their service. However, AT&T is not underrated nor overpriced. When it comes to competition, they all are the same prices. And service is great in my area, and best of all no caps, except on those plans they explicitly say so.
 
jav6454 said:
Well, I am forced to use their service. However, AT&T is not underrated nor overpriced. When it comes to competition, they all are the same prices. And service is great in my area, and best of all no caps, except on those plans they explicitly say so.
Click to expand...

oh right well that is great news then! over here, if a company has more coverage, or offers more services then there will quite often be a nice price hike to cover these "features". i guess thats the difference. :mad: you lucky thing lol
 
jav6454 said:
I'm afraid to ask but, is Telstra that bad?
Click to expand...

oh you have NO idea. they are terrible! we got disconnected for 3 days the other week, called up their services and told them the problem and the lady went through all the basics (which i had already been thru with the fake computer guy) and she said we would be put onto "service 2" or something and said a guy would come visit. no guy came. it fixed itself after a while but im furious at them because dad does stock work, i do uni work (i actually had enrollment on one of the days we were disconnected, i wasnt happy), my brother does high school work etcetc.

its their overall service and attitude that contributes to it the most. one of their radio advertisements on the radio:
"why should you go with us? we are the biggest and largest mobile company in australia". that, to me is NOT advertising. tricking people into going with your company isnt how you do business.

anyway i probably sound like a whinger now... but all i want is a decent internet connection and there is none to be had.

/rant!
 
I had a similar experience with DSL in the US. We had Bellsouth (now owned by AT&T), and one day it went out. I was fairly sure nothing was wrong on our end, but with I called support they just walked me through dumb stuff like rebooting my computer and resetting network settings, which was irrelevant because none of the computers on our network could connect. They denied any problem on their end, but after probably four hours they agreed to dispatch a technician. He showed up the next day and told us that there was actually a server problem at Bellsouth, but the support people didn't know about it. I think he also tried to change some stuff while he was there to make it faster (we were not getting the speed we were paying for), but that didn't help. I think he gave us a new modem and ran a dedicated cable in the basement.

Another time there was an outage that I was able to trace to their DNS servers not working. Instead of wasting my time with support, I pointed the router to Open DNS and was happily browsing the net while the rest of the neighborhood couldn't access anything!

Luckily, the DSL rarely went out, and it was a decent connection (advertised 3mbps down and 300kbps up, I don't remember what we actually got). The cable TV (Comcast), on the other hand, had some kind of outage at least once a month. I'm glad we didn't have cable internet there.

We lived in an apartment for a few months that did have Comcast for the internet, and it was terrible. The advertised speed was about 8mbps, and speed tests showed nearly that, but browsing the web was always painfully slow. I never figured it out. Latency was OK too.

Comcast ads were the worst. They have terrible puns, an annoying announcer, and annoying music. The one I can think of off the top of my head shows a lifeguard doing CPR on a large male deer, which is laying on a beach. The pun is "save big bucks" by switching to Comcast. And all the ads end in "It's Comcastic!"
http://www.clipland.com/Live/video/4765
 
jav6454 said:
I'm afraid to ask but, is Telstra that bad?
Click to expand...

DoFoT9 has already addressed this, but they suck!! Slow, expensive internet which drops out half the time!!! When you ring them you have to speak to people you can't understand and follow their stupid instructions which don't work!
 
conch575 said:
DoFoT9 has already addressed this, but they suck!! Slow, expensive internet which drops out half the time!!! When you ring them you have to speak to people you can't understand and follow their stupid instructions which don't work!
Click to expand...

you summed it up very nicely :) id say they are the worst "powerful" company in the world.. ;)

jav6454 said:
Ok, so if I ever go to Australia... the general rule over there, is stay the hell away from Telstra and avoid it as the plague, same as Verizon here?
Click to expand...

yup, stay FAR away. that means you cant go very far out of the city, otherwise you will be forced to use them hahahaha
 
jav6454 said:
Ok, so if I ever go to Australia... the general rule over there, is stay the hell away from Telstra and avoid it as the plague, same as Verizon here?
Click to expand...

Yep, Australia is awesome, Telstra, not so much. Telstra is run by an Ass-sol (Chasers fans will remember)

DoFoT9 said:
you summed it up very nicely :) id say they are the worst "powerful" company in the world.. ;)

yup, stay FAR away. that means you cant go very far out of the city, otherwise you will be forced to use them hahahaha
Click to expand...

Totally the WORST company in the world, but did you know that TPG, Optus and some other companies use their exchanges?
 
conch575 said:
Totally the WORST company in the world, but did you know that TPG, Optus and some other companies use their exchanges?
Click to expand...

they are forced too!!! because in the areas out of the city Telstra owns/regulates pretty much all of them (optus is slowy expanding and stuff but it costs so much)..

have you heard of internode?? they are a fairly decent company, much cheaper then Tel-Crap and have MUCH better services and reliability (and dont charge for uploads :D:D), but of course we cant get it here (can only get ADSL2+ from bigpond). internode (trying to be the good citizen) has struck a deal with Telstra, we can get ADSL2+, but its at the same price, downloads, everything as what Telstra is..DOH.. anyway.. point of the story. Telstra sucks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back