Telstra, Lebanon, Punks and a very socialiable week

[tcpip]

Tuesday night was Linux User's Victoria; Richard Smith gave a surprisingly entertaining talk on Opteron Hardware Performance. Russell Coker gave a less entertaining, but thoroughly valid, presentation on security issues in /tmp and /var/tmp. On theme, Friday night attended the local node of 2600 AU, whereupon caseopaya partied damn hard for a couple of older folk.

On a somewhat related topic Telstra are being arsehats again, by deciding not to upgrade to a national fibre network leaving Australia with broadband speeds so slow they're not even counted as broadband on international standards.

Obviously still in the partying mood, attended the Continuum ball the following night; I like Continuum balls, it means I can go clubbing with Perth people once a year ;-) Following night had dinner post Contiuum at the increasingly famous Xanghai on St Kilda Rd and followed up with East Timorese (I really can't get a grip on Timor Lestenese) coffee afterwards at home.

In between all this (Thursday night) visited Mr. and Ms. txxxpxx who proved to be most delightful hosts as we watched the notorious Hitchcock film Jamaica Inn and on Wednesday night watched "Punk's Not Dead" at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Included lots of footage of elder punks (most in their fifties) like the Exploited, Subhumans, GBH, UK Subs etc and a fair bit of the new scence in the US (not so good, imo).

Briefly visited the peace vigil on Friday night against the recent invasion and violence in the mid-east. More than a handful of the local Lebonese community present, poor blighters. In comparing Israeli attacks you can either use abstract maps (hat-tip to erudito which suggest one thing or aerial photographs (courtesy of Professor Juan Cole).

Oh, and ran Cybernoia on Sunday. Players went to Berlin, foiled an assasination attempt against them and blew up more hotels.

Comments

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The Age article about broadband is appalling. Whoever Garry Barker is, he's a liar and a fool. His lack of understanding of mega (M) vs milli (m) is a poor start. After 3 lies within 2 opening sentences, his credibility drops to zero.

The international minimum broadband standard is 2 megabits per second (mbps)

Lie. ITU FAQ says "1.5 or 2.0 Megabits per second". Most homes can get 1.5Mb/s so, of course, using the 2.0Mb/s figure is just a beat-up.

The best domestic service in Australia offers 1.5 mbps

Lie. The best domestic service in Australia offers 24Mb/s. (DSL2+ is offered by Internode, Iinet, and various others.)

and is available only to subscribers less than 1.5 kilometres from a telephone exchange.

Lie. 1.5Mb/s DSL is available out to over 4km from the exchange.


After the lies, he moves on to merely misleading commentary. Singapore, for example, has more than 10 times the population density of Melbourne. Of course they will be able to build broadband cheaply for all Singaporeans and we will never, ever, be able to compete with that, except in the CBD. There's also the question of how important that is. Singapore is tiny. I've found international links to Singapore sites to be appallingly slow and overloaded in the past and the vast majority of internet traffic into Singapore will not be local. 100Mb/s to every home is utterly useless when their international links can't possibly supply a fraction of that.

A much more appropriate comparison might be the USA, where most DSL is between 640kb/s and 1.5Mb/s. DSL2+ is much more widely available in Australia than in the USA.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I think you need to send a letter to The Age on the subject. Start with the assumption that Gary Barker is ignorant rather than being a deliberate liar.

That said, I have absolutely no love for Telstra.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Judging by the reaction on Whirlpool to his recently bullshit-filled articles, quite a number of people are indeed contacting the Age.

And I don't care whether his lies are deliberate or not. If he is completely unaware of reality, he shouldn't be allowed to write articles for a major newspaper.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I feel a littl embarressed that I didn't double check the article more carefully myself. :/

[greylock.livejournal.com]

1.5Mb/s DSL is available out to over 4km from the exchange.

Not in my case it isn't.
We live around 4km from the exchange... and we are unable to get broadband.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The article claimed that no DSL is available at >1.5km from the exchange, a number presumably extracted from thin air. Internode has some 1.5Mb/s customers at over 9km. 4km is a reasonable expectation, but won't work for everyone. Dodgy exchanges and poor quality copper wires can reduce the maximum significantly.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Whoa, hang on... Internode can do this (because they're better at it), but does Telstra. For whatever his faults, Mr. Barker is clearly talking about Telstra's standards.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

While it's clear to you or I that Barker is talking about Telstra, he doesn't say so, so it's not going to be clear to readers. (... and there's a hell of a lot of broadband out there that isn't Telstra.)

In answer to your question, yes, Telstra does do broadband out to over 4km. There is no specific distance limit. The Telstra method is that when you apply to them for DSL, they test your line first and either allow you to have DSL or not (for any plan) based on whether your line can cope with 1.5Mb/s. This is why they don't offer higher speeds: it would require re-testing the line and they apparently consider this too much of a pain to bother with. (It might resemble customer service!) It also means that those who would be happy with a lower speed of, say, 1Mb/s or 512kB/s, are denied any DSL service at all if their line can't cope with 1.5Mb/s.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

If Telstra do test at 1.5 Mb/s, and they are telling me I am unable to get broadband (where 512 kb/s would be 10x faster than dial-up) any suggestions as to what I can do, and how I can argue the fact?

I know Westnet, my ISP, rely on what Telstra tells them, but there's no reason I need to put up with that.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

I don't think you've got much hope in arguing it. They do have an understandable point: Most of their customers are within range for 1.5Mb/s. If they test at that speed, then all plan changes and "shaping" are simply software changes, which greatly simplifies administration. Best place to read about such things is whirlpool.net.au.

Totally unrelated: The picture on your LJ bio also appears on my home page. I guess we'll have to find something else after the next US presidential election.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I don't give a shit what the theory says, or the optimal parameters are, but in reality, effectively, this is true: ADSL 1 is not able to transmit over copper further than 5km. ADSL2+ has extended this out to a little over 8km.

Agreed

[maxxxie2.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if anyone would comment on the factual accuracy of this guy's article. What a bunch of malarky. And you're right, the average peon would interpret it as "Australia doesn't support greater than 1.5Mbps", not "it's just Telstra being backwards boobs".

Max