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Who's got the slowest dial up?

Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 21:51

slammin

We moved 3 months ago and have found the dial up is 24kbps at best and 14 at slowest.

We've always had 52 and sometimes broad band or satellite.

So at 24 I find it a bit tiresome so do a few things at once or request some pages and come back later. When it drops to 14 I send snail mail.

Is 24 average? I've been told that the type of copper wires in the telephone exchange and distance from the exchange is a factor. Here we have microwave towers. Which is a bit of a connundrum because previous experience with microwaves we had 52.

Oh and no we can't get broadband here.

Does anyone have to persevere with 14kbps?

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ThreadID: 36427 Replies: 11
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AnswerID: 187006   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 22:01

Muddy doe (SA) replied:

That is pretty slow!

I did hear that in regional areas Telstra (or Telecom as they were then) used to cheat a bit on wiring to remote properties and used single wires instead of a twisted pair of copper wires - or they would split the twisted pair to service two properties rather than run a new twisted pair.

Apparantly when they were only used for voice libes this was just dandy but with the advent of dial-up internet you need both wires to get 56kbps (the theoretical max speed of dial-up). This explained why many customers in regionals or in unit blocks in the cities even, could only get 28Kbps max speed.

I am not a technical guru on wiring phone systems but that is what I heard.

Do you get CDMA coverage? You may do better with a CDMA Modem to get to maybe 128kbps but it will cost more.

Muddy

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Reply 1 of 11
FollowupID: 444160   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 22:54

joc45 posted:

Not only regional areas but metro areas as well.
Put simply, back in the late 80's/early 90's, Telstra introduced "pair gain systems" which used electronics to effectively put two customers on one pair of wires. This saved digging in more underground cables to meet demand. At the time, the only modems being used on phone lines were about 14.4kb/s or less, so there was little or no loss of performance. So it was a good idea at the time. But with the advent of 28 then 56kb/s modems, the pair gain systems restricted the bandwidth so that these later modems would not work at full speed. And ADSL won't work at all on these systems. The above also applies to Telstra's Remote Integrated Mux (RIM), more electronics in street boxes to distribute lines to customers.
Don't hold your breath waiting for Telstra to upgrade their lines to meet today's requirements.
Gerry
FollowUp 1 of 4
FollowupID: 444161   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 23:13

Muddy doe (SA) posted:

Yep, That was it. Thanks Gerry!

I think it was featured in a Ross Gittens article in the Herald a while back as an illustration of the sort of "ghosts in the closet" that emerge when you start scratching the surface at Telstra in light of the final sale of the Govt share to the public (who already own it - but don't get me started on that one!)

Cheers
Muddy

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FollowUp 2 of 4
FollowupID: 444163   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 23:21

slammin posted:

Muddy we are out of CDMA range as well, we have microwave towers that relay the signal back to the exchange. That's what kind of surprised me because with microwave prev. we always had 52.

What I'm figuring though is maybe the lines to the tower here are as described. I figure this house must of been built in late 70's.

Gerry, No I'm not holding my breath for no one LOL

I have heard talk that the school, which does have a sat dish will be putting in a WiFi network which would be great. As long as the school can keep the network up and running.
FollowUp 3 of 4
FollowupID: 444170   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 23:58

Member - JohnR (Vic)&Moses posted:

Gerry, the pair gain is probably a bit out of date. When we went to ISDN they pinched one pair of our two pairs and made eight out of it. We got two lines out of the other copper pair, giving 128 on the double up systems, 64 when we used the phone.

Before all of that conversion to digital it was usually 21,400 though it oculd go lower. SLOW indeed it seemed
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FollowUp 4 of 4
AnswerID: 187007   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 22:04

raunchy replied:

Hi Slammin,
My inlaws our of Nyah West have Max 19k, People we know in the Painted desert area have 16K max. It depends entirely on the quality of cable etc to your local exchange, In laws are 17kms from the local exchange and the cable regularly hangs in the air and is chewed by rabbits due to the shifting sand. Once you et to the exchange, unless you are in a really remote area, there should be no holdup.
Reply 2 of 11
FollowupID: 444165   Submitted: Thursday, Aug 03, 2006 at 23:25

slammin posted:

Raunchy we are remote so it seems 24 is good. I wonder what the rabbits want from the cable?

Must be that killer rabbit from the goodies cutting the lines so they can't ring for help..... You better call and see if they're all right.
FollowUp 1 of 1
AnswerID: 187021   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 07:39

Michael Carey replied:

I feel sorry for some of my customers out in their fishing boats.
It's not so bad if they are in range of a CDMA tower, but for those fishermen that venture a long way from shore and have to rely on satellite, it's painfully slow!
Optus Mobilesat is a snails pace 2.4k
Globalstar is a little better at 9.6k, but it drops out often.
Not many are able to afford other solutions like Inmarsat Fleet 33 or 55, they are better but cost a whole lot more.

Reply 3 of 11
AnswerID: 187026   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 08:15

Robin replied:

Don't feel to bad - there is more to the picture than just a speed number.

Last night our broadband connection was taking around 30 secs to load this exploroz homepage , at peak times.

Sometimes you just give up and come back out of peak conjestion hours.

The effective thru put of much of comms infrastructure is massively lower at times
than the k's per second number indicate is possible.

Robin Miller
Reply 4 of 11
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AnswerID: 187035   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 08:52

GoneTroppo Member (FNQ) replied:

Have you looked into the subsidised satelite deal. Can't remember the acronym they were using, but it is feasible cost wise.

We were going down that track untill Telstra decided to upgrade our exchange to ADSL, Fortunatley we were just at the edge of the coverage area and some one had put in a 10 pair cable to our place a few years ago:-)
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Reply 5 of 11
FollowupID: 444292   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 15:36

Spike me posted:

Subsidised satellite deal ended 2 weeks ago in regional Victoria.
FollowUp 1 of 1
AnswerID: 187039   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 09:12

Waynepd (NSW) replied:

I remember when i had 14.4 modem last century, and i complained to telecum about only achieving 9600 bps. Their response was that they only guaranteed 2400 bps on copper lines. I don't know if this still applies today.
.....When i finally got up to a 56k modem i could still only get 28.8k and i live in Sydney....... not terribly regional but on the fringe......
Reply 6 of 11
AnswerID: 187048   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 09:42

stevesub replied:

We stayed in a place in Diamond Creek, Melbourne for 6 months a couple of years ago and on a good day we got 19.2kbps. We would leave the PC on all day or all night to download files. THe owners stayed with us last week and their internet is still no better and the CDMA wireless broadband card they bought is very patchy only working in their kitchen.

Thye are not happy campers. No 3G network comes near their place either. ADSL is not an option and Aunty Telstra do not want to know their problem.

I told them to move to where we live, Bribie Is, in QLD to solve their problem.
Reply 7 of 11
AnswerID: 187051   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 10:05

bruce replied:

It is not only rabbits that chew the cables...dogs , cattle , grubs , white ants... I know all about it...it was my job to find where and fix....people that let the dog under the house are the worst offenders...dog gets bored and chews cable , then they complain about the service or lack of it . Distance from the exchange can affect the dial up service... I thought the old prs gain system went out yrs ago when I did...cheers
Reply 8 of 11
AnswerID: 187058   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 10:27

Member - Ivan H (NSW) replied:

From memory....
Telstra must provide you with a clear voice service by law. Phone lines that do not support 19.2k/b of data or more do not provide clear voice services.
So Telstra will fix up your line if you log a fault.

They fixed a mates line near Crookwell last year, he could only get a max of 15k/b and voice traffic was pretty crap.
He now gets 22kb as a min, and 28 normally. Not enough for DSL, but way better than before.
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Reply 9 of 11
AnswerID: 187125   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 15:52

Spike me replied:

Our dial up is at its fastest 31.5 here in regional Victoria.

This web site is slow to load because of all of the crap (read advertising and spinning wheels) that come with it. When people design sites like this they are basically making it hard for anyone without Broadband to load quickly.

Quite often (read 3 times per week) this site is so slow to load that I just switch off and go somewhere else. I actually avoid sites with a lot of info cause they are so slow.
Reply 10 of 11
AnswerID: 187150   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 18:16

100TD replied:

the slowest i have seen mine load at was 1.80kbs and on average it is 4.0 to4.7kbps now thats slow!!!!!
Reply 11 of 11
FollowupID: 444352   Submitted: Friday, Aug 04, 2006 at 18:32

Muddy doe (SA) posted:

hence you can only type in short post replies!!!

LOL
Muddy

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FollowUp 1 of 2
FollowupID: 444482   Submitted: Saturday, Aug 05, 2006 at 12:39

slammin posted:

100TD I think we have a WINNER!

That is incredibly slow, are you on the SAT system as described above?
FollowUp 2 of 2