Broadband Speeds

LG17 · 26-07-2015, 11:59 AM

I am having a running battle with my broadband provider over the "acceptability" of the download speeds I am getting. As far as they are concerned there's nothing wrong but from my point of view it's garbage.

I have started to do those speed tests randomly and take note of them.
My broadband is supplied by Ipstar through the interim nbn satellite.

Here's a few examples of the speeds I've been getting.
21/7 - 37kpbs and 44kpbs
22/7 - 127kpbs, 42kpbs and 33kpbs
23/7 - 52kpbs, 43kpbs
24/7 - 553kpbs, 18kpbs
25/7 - 32kpbs, 48kpbs and 8kpbs
26/7 - 87kpbs

My wife is doing her Masters degree online as we live in the bush and many, many times she can't download pages to do her work.

I'm pretty sure that Ipstar and NBNCo now have me on a list...

I guess what I'm looking for is advice from those who are savvy with this stuff.

Vincenzo · 26-07-2015, 12:17 PM

ADSL2 via WiFi shows 93m/s ping, 12.53Mbps download and 0.83Mbps upload.

I know I can increase speed by connecting via Ethernet. On a big download it is not uncommon to get 1.1MB / sec via Ethernet.

Are you / is the Missus connecting via WiFi or are you hard wired via ethernet?

Cheers Vincenzo

Franco Cozzo · 26-07-2015, 12:18 PM

The NBN Satellite service might be over subscribed, I believe they were talking about it a while back or its at max capacity, but it seems consistently crappy going by your speeds, it shouldn't be anywhere near as slow as that.

JAJH · 26-07-2015, 12:26 PM

Your maximum speed of 533kbps only equates to around half a megabit per second which is about 1/40th of the average ADSL2 speeds of 20megabit. It's not far off dial up speeds. I wouldn't be happy with that let alone paying for it.

**Mechan1k** · 26-07-2015, 12:51 PM

As Damo mentioned .... if it is oversubscribed ... then it will throttle the service back ... severely as well .. just depends how congested it really is. And the consumer won't know as the provider won't share this information out either.

99AUXR · 26-07-2015, 12:55 PM

Speeds are very bad.

Just did a month in the states and saw at one place 100Mbps

LG17 · 26-07-2015, 01:26 PM

My main computer is connected by ethernet cable and everything else is wi-fied from there. When I test I make sure that the others aren't connected.

The satellite is supposedly at maximum and no more subscribers have been allowed for nearly 2 years.

They recently cut our monthly quota back from 60Gb to 45GB so that the system could cope better. Since then, it's been worse in my mind.

**GasoLane** · 26-07-2015, 02:49 PM

Change ISP's ?

Franco Cozzo · 26-07-2015, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GasOLane

Change ISP's ?

All on the same satellite I believe.

Not going to make a difference, when does the new NBN satellite get launched?

Any Telstra phone reception out your way? Even with external antenna?

Would be much more reliable than what the satellite is turning out to be.

LG17 · 26-07-2015, 03:31 PM

That's right Damo.
More chance of survival changing deckchairs on the Titanic.

The NBN satellite options aren't anything like the normal stuff where there's dozens and dozens of competing providers.

If I opt out of the NBN thing I can get satellite at the rate of 5Gb for about $170 a month!!!!

I am still waiting on Telstra.
I have been trying to get information from them for over 12 months.
Their only reply is "your address not on our map so it can't exist."

Franco Cozzo · 26-07-2015, 04:06 PM

Easy way to check, get a Telstra mobile phone (that works on their 850mhz NextG network) with prepaid sim and see if you've got 3G reception.

Any idea of where their mobile towers are in your surrounds?

If you know where it is you could set up an external antenna on the house roof and point it at the tower assuming you have line of sight to it but you only want a short run of coax because you lose signal through it so no putting up antenna away from house.

Should be able to get a solid 3-4mbps connection on Telstra's NextG 850Mhz network.

Problem is data is expensive but its going to be a damn sight better than 500kbps.

xtremerus · 26-07-2015, 04:28 PM

I only get a max of 1.2Mbps in country NSW.
Would be only 1 Km from the exchange.
That's on a land line.

Franco Cozzo · 26-07-2015, 04:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xtremerus

I only get a max of 1.2Mbps in country NSW.
Would be only 1 Km from the exchange.
That's on a land line.

Reminds me of the regional town Tooborac in Victoria, about 40km away from me.

When ever someone in the main street used their welder the lights would dim and flicker inside the pub and people houses because the grid was so old and under specced, when the pub was renovated the power company upgraded the power distrobution setup in the entire town.

At least the power company did something about the problem, not like Telstra.

I don't even have a phone line at my workshop in Gisborne, there is no phone lines in the street and I've had five different Telstra techs come out and go to hook up the phone line only to find out there is nothing in the street.

All my business invoicing and management completely relies on the internet, so I'm tethering my other mobile phone to my laptop, and functioning from that entirely, although Telstra has a 4G tower at Gisborne and I synced at around 33mbps which was bloody amazing vs the 5mbps people on ADSL average in the industrial estate, because of the crap lines and over subscribed exchange.

zilo · 26-07-2015, 06:44 PM

best bet is to see if you have telstra 3g reception.

If you do i have a great solution for you.....

LG17 · 26-07-2015, 07:31 PM

Mobile phone reception goes between ordinary and b awful. It is 3G and Telstra.
I have a repeater which helps a little for that.

devilcv8 · 26-07-2015, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LG17

Mobile phone reception goes between ordinary and b awful. It is 3G and Telstra.
I have a repeater which helps a little for that.

Unless the repeater is a cel fi unit, what you have is illegal.
You are better off with a true 14 or 16dbi Yagi or grid pack antennae on a mast.

Franco Cozzo · 26-07-2015, 09:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by devilcv8

Unless the repeater is a cel fi unit, what you have is illegal.
You are better off with a true 14 or 16dbi Yagi or grid pack antennae on a mast.

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/ca...office/outdoor

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/te...na-700-2700mhz

The legit repeater:

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/ca.../repeater-kits

The illegal repeater explanation:

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/3g...sale-australia

zilo · 26-07-2015, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LG17

Mobile phone reception goes between ordinary and b awful. It is 3G and Telstra.
I have a repeater which helps a little for that.

get a stock adsl2 router with a 3g usb fallback mode...such as a dlink unit.

configure it to 3g mode by default.

That then gives you a routable solution on 3g for about a hundred bucks.

Get an external 3 db gain antennna from the likes of Jaycar electronics and about a 5 metre lead extension....plug the antenna in there.
The Telstra usb stick these days has a little flap for an external antenna on the side of it.

Then buy a prepaid sim from Telstra...about 200 bucks for 15gig/365 days.
It will probably be bundled with the usb stick...

OR...all above but ask for a data share sim linked to your mobile phone.
This means that whatever your phone contract has in the way of data allocation it can be shared to the second sim card linked to it.

Put that sim card into the usb stick above..

I get about 300kilobytes per second download with that....reliably.

I even run remote IP cameras to a remote island with it 24/7.

Would work for you too Damo as the routers have wireless routing inbuilt too.

Looks like this but the external magnetic aerial is on the roof and comes off the blue usb stick...

devilcv8 · 27-07-2015, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Big Damo

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/ca...office/outdoor

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/te...na-700-2700mhz

The legit repeater:

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/ca.../repeater-kits

The illegal repeater explanation:

https://telcoantennas.com.au/site/3g...sale-australia

I know all about that site and as the telco SME at work I would guess I know a bit more about the subject than most.

If you have a cel fi, why didn't you just say that?
The cel fi are a nice bit of kit when setup correctly. Now available in a 4G model. One mistake people make is having the coverage unit too close to the window unit, although in small buildings it is hard to get the distance.

devilcv8 · 27-07-2015, 07:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zilo

get a stock adsl2 router with a 3g usb fallback mode...such as a dlink unit.

configure it to 3g mode by default.

That then gives you a routable solution on 3g for about a hundred bucks.

Get an external 3 db gain antennna from the likes of Jaycar electronics and about a 5 metre lead extension....plug the antenna in there.
I get about 300kilobytes per second download with that....reliably.

Damn iPad safari is crapping out on me. Is there 4G coverage near your island? Costs more to get setup but has the potential to get better speeds than adsl.
The telcoantennas site that damo linked has a good guide on setting up a long distance 4g service.

I should mention another issue with the cel fi. Because they can provide coverage for a couple of hundred metres away from their location they can cause issues for badly installed setups. Been burnt on a remote site that has no coverage at all and paid for a yogi plus external gateway to be installed. Installer has screwed the installation as it appears we connect to the local cel fi unit which gets turned off on occasion. There is some issue with how the yogi was installed. Now we have to get this fixed. Looks like I'll be onsite supervising these installs from now on rather than relying on the installer' expertise.

LG17 · 28-07-2015, 05:33 PM

Well they have finally changed their tune a little, it's just now I need to undertake some study to work out what they want...

Sorry to hear that you’re having speed issues, we’re more than happy to assist you with trying to find out what is going on and finding a resolution for this.

In order to be able to find out what the possible issue is with this, we may need to submit a ticket to the NBN. However, the NBN does require certain troubleshooting to be done before we can submit a ticket. The troubleshooting below is what is required before we can submit a ticket for you.

There are two steps of troubleshooting required, the first step is to try a cable isolation, power cycle, and bypassing any routing devices - so a hardware check ultimately. The second step, is to provide some further information into your network, including speed tests, ping test, traceroutes – etc. All of this is covered below.

The first steps, whilst these sound hard – are quite easy when broken down. To do these cable isolations, power cycles and bypassing routing devices, all you need to do – is unplug your modem from the power, your router if you have one from the power – and leave them off for 10-15 minutes. This will allow the devices to do a complete hard reset. Next, whilst the devices are off, you can mark where each of the plugs are plugged into, and then unplug these as well. When you plug them in, just make sure they are plugged in securely. This will make sure that it wasn’t just a loose plug causing your issue.

If you do not notice any increase in the speed or performance of your network – we will need to look into it further, this is where the tests come into it – all this information is below.

So, in a basic run down – what we need are 6 speed tests to be done on two different websites. Website 1 is www.ozspeedtest.com, and website 2 is http://10.250.56.100.

With these websites, we need One (1) test done on each at three individual times throughout the day. So the first one – around breakfast/morning time, the next around lunch/midday, and the last – evening/dinner time. So at these 3 times during the day, we need you to do one test at website 1, and 1 test at website 2. The reasoning behind this is that website 2 is the NBN’s speedtesting website, they can compare tests between their own tester and a 3rd party tester to see the difference.

Each time you do a speedtest, please screenshot it and save it – once you have all of them done, send them in via email to us so we can forward them on to the NBN as part of your ticket.

Some other information we need is a ping test, traceroute and information from the IPCONFIG. If you don’t know how to do these, we can provide you with assistance with this over the phone.
However, if you or someone in your household does know, I can give you the commands. All testing must be done without a wireless router connected – basically, the NBN requires all our testing to be done without a wireless router and hardwired into the modem directly. The reasoning behind this is that as part of the process of elimination, we need to make sure we eliminate the possibilities that it may be the router causing a bottleneck in your local area network.

For the remaining tests – we need to open a command window. To open the command window, you can go into Start > Run > then type cmd. However, an easier way to do this is press the windows key on the keyboard – between the ctrl and alt button and press R at the same time. This will open the Run window – where you type in cmd and hit enter. A black window will pop up.

For the IPCONFIG – into that window you just type ipconfig. This will run the command and bring up a bunch of information that we need. Scroll up until you find the information listed below.
IPv4 Address – this is your computers IP address.
Subnet Mask – this number usually consists of a lot of 255’s
Default Gateway – Another IP address, but this one is for your modem.

Once you have this information, just close the black window and reopen it the same way as before. This time, we’re going to run a ping test. To do this, you type in ping 61.88.88.88 –n 100
This will cause a whole lot of text to scroll up your screen, it’s going to run a ping 100 times basically. At the end of this it’s going to give you a summary of the results. This is what we need to be written down. Please also provide a ping to 10.250.56.100 with the same command as before – just with the new number. Once that has been done – please provide a ping to 5 different websites, we have picked 5 websites that we believe are fairly common and communal ones; these 5 are facebook, ebay, ipstaraustralia, yahoo and google. To do this, instead of writing the number – you write the website address – for example ping www.facebook.com –n 100

Once you have that information, close and reopen the window again – this time we’re doing a traceroute. To do this, you type in tracert 61.88.88.88. Now this is going to run through a bit of information as well.
Once this has finished, maximize the black window and take a screen shot of this, send this in with the rest of the speedtests.

As I said earlier, if you have any questions in regards to this. Feel free to give us a call back.

I know I've done some of that stuff many times before but they always go back to the beginning so it gets really frustrating

Franco Cozzo · 28-07-2015, 05:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by devilcv8

Damn iPad safari is crapping out on me. Is there 4G coverage near your island? Costs more to get setup but has the potential to get better speeds than adsl.
The telcoantennas site that damo linked has a good guide on setting up a long distance 4g service.

Hell yes on the 4G, I'm in my workshop in Gisborne at the moment, no phone lines in the street so no ADSL for my business or phone lines/fax so I'm talking to you guys with my Nokia Lumia 930 tethered to my laptop to do all my business stuff.

Nokia Lumia 735 tethering test:

For what ever reason my Lumia 735 pulls consistently higher speeds than the 930 which is the more expensive phone and both phones are right next to each other, done over multiple speed tests?

I pull between 5-10mbps at home on my ADSL2+ connection and other business in the industrial estate only pull between 2-4mbps unreliably here in the industrial estate.

ADSL1 here with phone is going to cost me $150/month so I'm half tempted to say F Telstra, fly the jolly roger flag and keep the redirect for my number to my business phone, and use the personal phone for internet.

mik · 30-07-2015, 12:08 PM

wow , you have a good upload speed BigDamo,
in my area 18k`s north of melbourne.........., there's little in the way of isp choices , 5 k`s in either direction from the nearest exchange,

apparently because we are serviced by one big provider , the other big one (T) deems there is not enough coin it for them to supply an alternative service, makes you wonder if they will bother with the nbn coming here !

download is at times surprisingly fast, just checked 101 mbs, although this doesn't always seem to translate into fast internet speeds and does vary with the crowd on the net, have seen single figures at times..
Normally here upload is about one meg per second(pitiful),
and at peak sometimes it is slower than that, very average indeed..

99AUXR · 08-08-2015, 11:50 AM

150/month for adsl . . . **** that lol what is data cap?

I have VDSL Unlimited here in NZ for 150/month and speed of 30Mb/s

Those 4G speeds are awesome.