Any computer wizz's here?

[willedoo]

The NBN has been kaput for more than a week. There's a technician coming tomorrow to check it out which is not bad considering I only rang my server on Friday. It will be interesting to see what he finds. The NBN used to be fairly reliable with only the odd rare dropout for a matter of seconds. It's been playing up for about four months now, taking about three or four reboots to get it going and a week ago stopped altogether. Generally, once it finally connected when it was playing up, it would stay on with no further problems until the next session. I don't leave the gear on 24 hours per day; before hitting the sack, the NBN network terminating device and my LAN modem get switched off. I know a lot of people who leave them on all the time.

 

So the NBN is on parole. If it plays up again I'll ditch it and just use my mobile data to wirelessly hotspot to the laptop. It's hard for the NBN and retail servers to compete with mobile phone plans these days. As a comparison, my internet plan with my server is $50 per month for 100GB of data. That's all, no rollover, you use it or lose the data. I'm with Aldi with my phone and I can upgrade my plan to $50 per month (same price as my server's NBN plan) and get 120GB of data plus unlimited phone calls and SMS within Australia and twenty overseas countries, plus unlimited rollover. Whatever data you don't use in a one month period rolls over and is added to the total data available.

 

The other advantage with the phone is that it's virtually 100% reliable and faster than the NBN. Speed tests show the phone's slowest speed is around about the fastest speed you can get here with the NBN. Another advantage with the phone pan is that it's a 5G enabled plan. At the moment I'm on 4G and right on the network boundary for 5G. I can only get 4G and my next door neighbour gets 5G. But it will only be a matter of time before a network upgrade provides 5G here, and when that happens a phone plan will be a long way faster than the NBN.

[willedoo]

The NBN technician came today and replaced all their gear. At this stage the NBN is working again but almost unusable. It's very slow and seems to be getting small dropouts frequently. Speed tests show the speed up around 10Mbps but the slow browsing speed doesn't back that figure. Next step is to try a new modem and see if that's the problem. If that doesn't work I'll have to give the NBN the flick as it's substandard as it is. In the meantime, I've gone back to hotspotting with my mobile data which gets around 15 to 20 Mbps.

[nomadpete]

Gee, I wish we got more than 1Mb/s on our mobile hotspotting.

I agree, the NBN has become an albatross around Australia's neck.

It could have been a real asset to the public. Nah

 

[spacesailor]

Welcome to my world.

NBN , has never made a full month , without a problem or fault . some times 4 days without internet and phone ,

( to ring them )   .

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

A mate of mine is on a property in western Queensland and he's on satellite internet with the NBN. He said on the occasions you can get a connection it's dial-up speed and sometimes worse. I have terrible memories of dial-up. I used to go and make a cup of coffee waiting for a basic HTML page to load.

[nomadpete]

It seems everyone has forgotten this :-

 

"The Universal Service Obligation (USO) is a long-standing consumer protection that supports access to phone services and payphones.

Telstra is responsible for delivering the USO, and must provide standard telephone services (STS) on request to premises in Australia within reasonable timeframes, "

I am a long time supporter of Telstra, but they can be held to accout when necessary.  Every time the USO is not occurring - that is, failure to provide basic telephone service, a letter tothe telecommunications ombudsman should be sent with details of the problem.

 

Dont quote me, but these days, I  would expect that the USO should cover basic internet access as well as voice.

[nomadpete]

Then I  read to the end of the gov't article. The USO was originally all about 'fixed line voice services'. This was primarily to ensure everyone with a phone can always call triple oh. It has not been updated to allow for the discontinuation of fixed line services. These days, fixed lines to houses are replaced by NBN. Bloody typical government slackos.

 

Anyway, everyone who is suffering from intermittent NBN should keep a log of times, durations, etc. And send regular letters of complaint to the telecommunications ombudsman. That is the only way to get action.

[willedoo]

Still no joy from the NBN. I'm trying an upgraded phone plan for the month to see how that goes. $49 per month gets me a 5G enabled plan of 120GB of data with unlimited rollover, unlimited phone calls and SMS in Australia and 20 other countries, and seemingly no problems. I had 30GB of rollover data from my old phone plan so started the month with 150GB of data up my sleeve for $49. It's plenty fast enough and virtually 100% reliable.

 

On the other hand, my usual server charges me $50 per month for an unreliable 100GB slow speed, no rollover, sometimes connection with the added bonus of customer service via overseas call centres manned by people extremely difficult to understand and who seem to delight in jerking customers chains. Observing them trying to resolve an issue reminds me of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet following their own footprints around and around in the snow.

 

The choice is rapidly becoming a no brainer. If the NBN and the server can't combine to fix it in the next week or so, I'll ring them up and tell them to come and get their junk off my roof.

Edited September 8 by willedoo

[Jerry_Atrick]

Uggh! One of the selling points of moving to Aus is that we can get (in the cities) reasonable speeds via NBN. If they are unreliable, then I am not going to let the family see this thread!

 

[willedoo]

Jerry, I'm rural on fixed wireless. FTTN, FTTP, FTTC and HFC in the cities probably don't have as many reliability issues.

 

A mate and his wife just came back from a couple of months in Thailand where they were getting 300Mbps. He was a bit shocked when I told him the NBN fixed wireless delivers 10Mbps at best.

[red750]

Just ran a fast.com speed test. NBN, Vermont.

 

[willedoo]

It's sad to see good companies go bad. I've been with the same server since we first had ADSL. They were Adelaide based, and employed locals with no foreign call centres. They even used to have little old ladies post them a cheque for their monthly plan fees. The customer tech help was done mainly by IT uni students working to pay their way through their uni course. None of those jobs exist any more. It's all hard to understand people from India and the Philippines who struggle to get a grip on the issue. The company doesn't have a very good reputation these days and that started when one of the big mobs bought them out.

 

One thing you learn is that it's pointless harbouring misguided loyalty to any particular company or brand as it's not reciprocated.

[willedoo]

8 minutes ago, red750 said:

Just ran a fast.com speed test. NBN, Vermont.

 

That's not too bad compared with what I get. The NBN is 6,8, or 10ish. The phone data with Aldi is 17 to 20 on 4G. The NBN technician who was here the other day said he was getting 5G on his phone at my place. A mate is going to bring his 5G phone over so I can try the download speed as I suspect it might be limited by signal strength. If the speed is worth it, the next step is buy a 5G phone and stick to that.

[onetrack]

Jerry, there's no problem with NBN speeds in all the Australian cities, it's the rural regions where the population is much lower, and where the installation of infrastructure can be difficult and costly, due to terrain and ground conditions, is where the communications gaps show up.

 

Just tested my internet speed, it's fine. I'm around 5kms NE of the Perth CBD.

 

 

[octave]

Geelong. Pretty stable and reliable. 

 

[willedoo]

The nbn has different speed levels. The more you pay, the faster it is. This chart is from iiNet nbn and shows typical speeds. On the lowest tier, wireless is 9.3 Mbps download average compared to 12 Mbps with all the fibre types of connection.

 

[spacesailor]

onetrack

5 kilometres from the city should be good .

I live 40 kilometres from Sydney city . Still on ' copper-cable ' .  And can't get through one month without

a maintenance or other outage . From day one .

No recompense for loss of service . Even after 4 days .

spacesailor

 

 

[willedoo]

On the subject of NBN/internet outages, they are still running around in circles creating 'tickets'. I told them today their tickets are not fixing the connection. I had a win; I asked them for a refund of two months internet plan fees and to compensate me for the router I bought on the recommendation of the NBN technician, which didn't fix the problem. They're refunding me $170 (70 for the router, 100 for the two months fees). I told them I'd give them another week to fix it, if not I'll ditch the NBN and the retail server. In reality, I'll wait till that refund is in the bank before cutting ties.

 

Meanwhile, the mobile phone data to the laptop via mobile hotspot is going gangbusters. There's only two speed plans available on fixed wireless through the NBN/retail server combo. To get an average download speed of 14Mbps, the clowns want $80 per month, or $60 per month for 9Mbps speed. Using my phone data at the moment, I'm getting up to 25Mbps speed, all the bandwidth I need, unlimited rollover, and unlimited phone calls here and in 20 other countries for $49. I'll see what happens next week but I can't see much incentive to stay with the NBN even if they fix the service.

[willedoo]

The tech help people rang back tonight and said the NBN is ok and that the router is most likely faulty. I told them the story of how the NBN technician suggested I buy a new router after they replaced all the NBN gear a week and a half ago and announced that their end was working. And how I bought a new router and couldn't get it to configure to communicate with the NBN box, then contacted the manufacturer who said I needed the server to configure it with the right credentials. A week ago I rang the tech help people and this dill flatly refused to walk me through the setup process with the new router, saying it was the NBN at fault.

 

To cut a long story short, the service person tonight agreed to do what they refused to do a week ago, and walked me through the configurations. She had to have a couple of attempts due to her missing a checkbox but in the end it worked and it's all up and running ok so far. She said they would give me a month's credit added to the previous compensation they agreed to pay, so I've got two months refunded, a free router and one month in credit.

 

I tried to tell the clown I conversed with last week that the NBN technician had cleared their side of things, so my logic told me the obvious next step was to eliminate the router as a problem. I was right all along and this could have been fixed a week ago if I'd encountered a server's support technician with half a brain.

 

Next step is to see how it goes and compare it to the mobile data option until the end of the month and see which one to stick with. The phone option is still looking good.

[newsaroundme]

I'm learning some new programming languages. I first learnt programming in 1988 and it's a while since I've started to learn a new language but I'm really enjoying it. It's a bit like tinkering under the bonnet of a car for me. I've not been good at hardware (yet) but have been a software developer before (amateur mostly).

[Jerry_Atrick]

What programming languages did you learn back in 1988 and up to now? And what languages are you learning now?

If you learned C (or its forerunner, Algol) back in 1988, not much has actually changed, except graphics and object oriented, functional, and aspect oriented programming. The latter are programming paradigms rather than technology themselves.

[newsaroundme]

4 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

What programming languages did you learn back in 1988 and up to now? And what languages are you learning now?

If you learned C (or its forerunner, Algol) back in 1988, not much has actually changed, except graphics and object oriented, functional, and aspect oriented programming. The latter are programming paradigms rather than technology themselves.

In 1988 as a school student I learnt BASIC. I didn't learn C for many years after that. I'm learning Python now and studied many different languages including Ada, Haskell, Miranda, PHP, Modula-2 and C at uni. It feels good to be adopting new syntax. Do you know Python? My guess is you're a coder.

 

[newsaroundme]

I also learnt machine code and binary code at uni which I loved to learn.

[pmccarthy]

I was in a museum yesterday (Maldon machinery museum) and saw a HP9825, a model that I used to program in HP modified BASIC in 1976. Made me feel old.

Edited September 15 by pmccarthy

[Jerry_Atrick]

11 hours ago, newsaroundme said:

My guess is you're a coder.

A coder? tsk tsk tsk... I was a software engineer, or developer, or systems programmer - but coder???!! 😉

 

A few on here are, or were.

 

Surpised you don't have COBOL from university in that era...

 

I still dabble - mainly Java  and C/C++ these days...

 

Though will have to learn Rust (not of the kind that corrodes metal!!) as, although it is already over 8 years old, it is slowly going to be overtake C and C++ because it is both a low level language and is memory safe - alledgedly anyway.