I was having a chat with Tegan the other day about a bit of a sore point – our future internet connection. Just before we moved into our new place, the glorious address checker on the NBN told us that, yes indeed, we would be getting “fibre to the premises”. Beauty. But now that we’ve moved in, our suburb has been “upgraded” to the not-quite-so-fast technology of fibre to the curb (FTTC).
Hmph. Fortunately, our copper connection is quite good already, so hopefully we’ll be able to get close to 90mbps on the highest speed plan. But for today’s Big Question, it got me wondering: how fast is your internet?
For this week’s Big Question we’ll do it in two polls. The first will be connection by type, with a second for connection by speed. I’m curious to know how good most people’s internet actually is. Is it capable of streaming? Do you have enough download and upload to work remotely? How much can your internet cope with multiple devices?
First up, what type of internet you have. Note this is for your main connection only.
Second up: how fast is that internet? I’ll allow multiple answers here: pick one for your download, one for your upload speed.
As an addendum for the comments, is anyone looking at an internet upgrade any time soon – or waiting a fabled upgrade to the NBN?
Comments
86 responses to “How Fast Is Your Internet?”
I technically fit in to two categories when it comes to speed. Connected normally, I get between 90-100Mbps, (avg 12MB/sec), but when I’m connected to my VPN, I get 130+Mbps.
Didn’t realize i had to choose upload too. Now it won’t add my result. Put another vote in for 20+Mbps up. (usually around 37Mbps)
How is it possible to have faster internet connected to a VPN?
hahah I have no idea. Still haven’t figured that one out myself, but I’ve demonstrated it and taken pics as proof on several occasions. At first I thought it was just an error/glitch, but nope… legit gives me about 133Mbps! 😀
I have no idea what @welbot’s DNS configuration is so I’ll explain with experience from myself and my mate who has NBN.
Basically when you try to access a online service, some trickery with DNS is used to route one to a local mirror.
Now, one would think that throughput would be better if a local mirror is used. Sadly it seems all mirrors in Australia are running on IBM AT computers because by simply changing one’s DNS settings or using a VPN like Welbot (which depending on the configuration may also pipe through DNS requests), one can force the use of non-local (and sometimes, overseas) servers and thus get speeds.
A while back, it was suggested to block a certain IP to speed up PS4 downloads. While it also takes out other services on the console, I’ve tried that trick and it works.
The moral to the story, even if both side didn’t mess around national broadband, there are still service providers who have servers that can’t even keep up with 300 baud modems.
I had considered that option but I’ve used the same DNS on both connections to test, and made zero difference. I’ve tried using several different ones based here and o/s, and with the exception of one or two servers, speeds remained higher on VPN. The one or two exceptions I refer to, were obviously crappy DNS servers, as they slowed both VPN and non VPN connections (but by equal amounts)
Hm, I think I might have another explanation. And one I should have though of first and now I feel idiotic.
Before I put another bullet hole in my foot, what services were you accessing if I may ask?
I’ve only really tested it with speedtest, steam, and general downloads from various sites so far.
OK, I though some geo-location was coming into play but the variety rules that out.
Instead I think it is a simple case of your VPN traffic is being seen as some form of high priority network traffic.
Which makes sense given the nature of tunnelling which makes VPNs work.
Failing that, you VPN provider must have high quality path ways which make the throughput possible.
But to quote a popular YouTuber, that’s just a theory, a [Network] Theory, 😛
hahah I honestly don’t know, but considering I paid less than $50 for a lifetime subscription to this VPN service, I doubt it’s classed too highly 😉
I have two questions. What VPN, and what isp?
VPN Unlimited, and MyRepublic
Just fast enough for multiplayer and barely fast enough for HD streaming (but not if you want to do most anything at the same time).
about 8-10Mbps down and about 1.5Mbps up.
The second poll doesn’t have my download speed available. I’m on ‘adsl2+’ with a download speed of 50-250 kbps and a almost nonexistent upload. No streams for me.
That’d be ADSL1 then, even if you’re on a supposed ADSL2+ service
Crikey, it barely even qualifies for ADSL1 at that speed. That’s woeful. Bad copper lines and at the absolute distance limit from the exchange?
I feel you. It’s the same here – but when it rains it also stops working!! ??
Ugh that sucks. Been there myself and Telstra was bugger all help, fortunately the phone stopped working completely so they actually sent someone out to fix that. Even more fortunately I got NBN a few months after *phew* saved by the magic bullet.
Have you tried talking to your provider? they are required to give you a minimum speed.
NBN to the cabinet with upload of around 4MB/s and top download I have hit is 11.6MB/s sustained for 10 minutes. Nice jump from the 600k/s download with 40k/s upload I was on prior..
Should be getting the NBN tomorrow – FTTN – will probably get under 50/20 due to the length of copper from are house to the node
Given that the internet in Caroline springs was around 0.2-0.5mg/second downloads, I’m sitting pretty now over in a Maribyrnong at 4.5mg/second.
So in other words, absolutely shithouse, but it could be far, far worse on a tertiary node, or out in the middle of nowhere.
Note, my mobile data is sensational(ly expensive so I don’t use it).
Ah, but if you live in the special area of maribyrnong, you get nbn fttp. All the other plebs have it planned. I’m fairly close the exchange, so I’m pretty lucky
I live in the not so special area of Moonee Ponds and I don’t get NBN for (at least) another couple of years. How do you already have it in Maribyrnong?
Certain areas have it. I’m not one of them. I should have clarified. Edgewater and a few other homes in maribyrnong area already have it.
I do not.
Sigh. Yes. Yes you are.
I’m on adsl 2. Sorry for being confusing. But being close to the exchange is nice. Nbn is not coming for another two years
My parents area had upgraded and recently downgraded. Try and work that one out.
I just went with iinet 2 months ago. Ultra fast fibre cable (Non-NBN), courtesy of the old company Neighborhood Cable. As far as I’m aware, only supported in some Victorian towns, such as Geelong where I am. I get 170mbps download, 75mbps upload.
Same with me here in Ballarat. I sometimes get in excess of 200mbps download, but my upload doesn’t get anywhere near your 75mbps, lucky to get above 10.
Wellington, NZ. Not going to vote because I don’t want to add an out-of-region result to the poll.
I’m on 1000/100 Cable (copper) – Vodafone’s FibreX solution (not fibre despite the name).
I get about 960mbit down and full up of that so I’m pretty happy. The Docsis 3.1 rollout has been good for a while even if they had some initial teething problems with their modem configs.
Chorus will be rolling fibre to my area in 2019 so I’ll likely swap over in future.
Fuck me.
Christchurch NZ
Enable Fibre 1000/500 plan
Usually hits the 850mbps must be a bit of congestion tonight
http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6429639302
Those aren’t real numbers.
they really are i can download off steam at around 100 megabytes a second and most of new zealand with fiber is gonna be able to get gigabit soonish
Stunningly beautiful country with internet connections that fast??? Why aren’t us Aussies all moving to NZ instead of vice-versa?
Just go NBN FTTN connected, and managed to get a upgrade to 50/20, but should be able to get to 100 if I want to fork out the extra $10 to Telstra (I’m pretty close to the node).
My speed test results last night. DOWNLOAD 46.98Mb/s UPLOAD 18.98Mb/s PING 8 ms
I’m on HFC with the speed restrictions lifted so it’s around 280 down and 40 up
How’d you get those speeds?
The speed restrictions are removed on our HFC.
Suggest an additional question, ‘What speed are you paying for?’
Is there any way to find where a node will be/is positioned? In the next couple of months we’ll have the superbly amazing FTTN available to us and I want to figure out if it’s worth upgrading straight away.
ADSL1 here. My account settings page says “up to 8,000/384kbps” but usually when I speed test it’s around 5 Mbps down / 300 kbps up.
Edit to add: I can stream Netflix/Stan just fine in SD with next to no buffering. Youtube in HD is fine, though I do have to pause for buffering sometimes. 4K is impossible. Two people can both watch youtube at the same time. I can watch Netflix while someone else watches youtube etc. The only intense thing we do in gaming is TF2/Overwatch and they only work if no one is doing anything else online. I can’t for example play TF2 while my son watches youtube. Its one or the other.
After getting my old address’s nbn fixed from 36/10 to 76/20, (after 6 months of fighting with telstra complaints team) we moved less than 2km’s and the new NBN’s best speed was 36/10, suddenly dropped to 20/7 after a few months so after a few months complaining again has come back to 32/10 – been “contracted” to 100/40 the whole time.. They have since contacted me to try and get me to drop my speed boost so that i’m on a lower tier so that the speed i’m getting is closer to the speed i’m paying for guess the fear of the ACCC investigation results impacting their bottom line…
And each time i’ve had a problem i’ve had to send a detailed email to the telstra CEO to be resolved (and the responders are the reason i’m still with telstra) as the overseas complaints team – lie/mislead, avoid ownership and close disputes as “unresolved” when they can’t get you to accept their excuses.. Signed up for the ACCCs investigation but i think any other business selling a product as broken as the NBN is at times would have been shut down within a week.
Agreed. The NBN is a massive scam and plagued with incompetence and corruption.
Good rule of thumb is never go with a phone provider for internet.
every connection here in Armidale on the initial FTTH rollout was fine, except the ones from [insert phone company here]. Every single one of those had major issues. Usually to do with incorrect details being passed to NBNCO. Requests for specific ports were put in, then the phone company contractor would turn up and plug into wrong port, say it’s nbn’s problem and go home (didn’t even look at the optic fibre connected light).
Add this to the blatant misinformation (“You can’t have multiple phone lines with the NBN”) and downright ineptitude of the businesses in the phone industry to actually understand modern technology (we still have connecting line only disconnects for old phone lines around here) and you have a recipe for problems.
Go with a proper ISP, ignore the phone companies, they cannot provide the level of support and expertise required.
Was on ADSL2+ with around 1.5mbit/s down and 1 mbit/s up. Switched to cable around 5 years ago and get a bit over 100mbit/s and 1mbit/s up. Fibre was supposed to come to my area a few years ago and even got a letter back then saying it will be installed in the next year. Now it seems their not bothering with fibre and just making cable the NBN for our area. This is suburban Adelaide but I think 70s suburbs are hard and expensive to upgrade.
Currently on HFC (non-NBN) getting 30 down/1 up, the actual quoted speeds from Telstra which is nice.
NBN is supposed to be coming to my area early next year and it’ll be…HFC. I’m looking forward to it so I can switch to My Republic, cut my bill and increase to 100/40. Remains to be seen what speeds I’ll actually get.
13/0.9Mbps. I hate the tiny upload. Took about 27 hours of straight uploading a couple of days ago to get a little over two hours of footage up on youtube (one of the videos turned out to have a freezing error near the start so had to do that one over again which took another two hours on the initial 25) and left the internet running at about dialup grade for everyone else in the meantime.
I’m on FTTP up in Gungahlin in Canberra (it’s half the reason why I moved up there, TBH). I usually get 92-93Mbps down, and about 34Mbps up (on a 100/40 plan). That sometimes drops to 70-odd Mbps down at peak times, but my ISP is pretty good at monitoring that situation and making sure that they have enough bandwidth for everyone.
My internet speed actually kept dropping every time I moved house for a long time, because back in the day I was on 30Mbps cable internet at my family home. At my next place we were on ADSL2+ at around 13Mbps, then I moved to a place that got about 6.5, then another place that got 4, and finally a place that struggled to get 3Mbps.
Having the NBN fibre speed is awesome, because it means that I don’t have to think about managing my bandwidth any more. Streaming something while also downloading on Steam? No problem.
Just got connected last week on NBN25 FTTN.
Get around 18Mb down and 4.5Mb up. Plenty for what I use the net for.
I’d like to know what routers the fastest people are using? I’m wondering whether the router acts as an artificial speed cap at times.
If you’re using a gigabit router with gigabit wan port, it shouldn’t make a difference. Even with 100Mbit WAN and LAN ports, unless your connection is capable of over 100, it should be fine as you’re unlikely to actually get 100 down sustained. (Like my connection, unless I’m on my VPN, I get avg between 95-98 down consistently.) When connected to my VPN, I get 130 down avg, which I obviously wouldn’t be able to achieve with a 100Mbit router.
I have an SMC WGBR14-N router running my LAN, and it connects to the ISP supplied device which has all gigabit ports as well. Note, that I likely wouldn’t be able to achieve those speeds if I was using wireless. Everything is cabled in my place thankfully. (except my phones, but I don’t really use them for anything but calls and sms.)
I’m not talking about their network links being the limiting factor so much as their processors. I reckon a lot of routers will happily handle a 100mbit speed file transfer but give them thousands of bittorrent connections and they start to choke. That’s more what I was thinking about.
Side note: Yet again the site is playing up. Had to logout and back in again because I was getting an error trying to post 🙁
I think that really depends on how much you intend to torrent. I haven’t really done much in a while. I’ve downloaded a couple of torrents since getting my connection, but I’ve never really been one to just queue up shit loads to start with. I would imagine that if you’re going to try pulling down 100 torrents at a time it might choke a bit, but if you’re doing stuff like that, I think you’ve got bigger issues than worrying about how your router will cope 😉
That was just an example, you can flood a router with lots of packets in different ways, that was just an obvious one.
We were using the telstra supplied wifi modem/router – but with 4 adults and a child using it, it started to choke a bit (especially with the new house being longer so each edge of the house was poor for wifi) and the wifi wasn’t working very well – upgraded to the DLINK 4320 and its been wonderful ever since… specially as QOS seems to ensure my gaming isn’t impacted by ppl streaming 4k netflix..
So this is a sore point for me at the moment. We just got NBN here at forest lake. The technician told me we’re in a prime spot, I’m getting 36mbp on a 25mbps line. No shit. Because I’m *right next* to the node, I can see it from my back fence.
However, due to coexistance, with ADSL2 and NBN on the same infrastructure, for at least the next 18 months to 2 years, I won’t ever get anything higher. I SHOULD be getting 95-100mbps but I’m hamstrung at the moment because of this situation.
Adding to that, most of the morons in this area are declaring ‘we want to stay with DSL2!’ and taking up fucking petitions for it! Jesus christ…
Time to learn how to splice fiber and roll your own link to that exchange.
This was the reason given for my speeds being a third of what i was contracted for – thankfully the petrie exchange finishes co-existance in september/october this year. But even after that ends (if we don’t get the same type of morons that you do down in forest lake) i doubt i will get anywhere close to 100/40.. i’d be happy with 70/30…… for a 4 adult, one child house that should cover our internet needs for the next few years at least.
You’re having poor speeds in Petrie? Weird, I’m in Petrie too and I’m peaking around the 90/38 on a 100/40 plan. Almost always see 80+ when it’s a decent site.
http://www.half-assed.net/images/NBN_Performance.jpg
I’m in “old Petrie” less than a kilometre from the exchange (near Petrie School) are you in one of the newer estates? Could it be ISP related (I’m using Internode)?
Any elderly protesting in that group?
They might have a reason as a lot of the newer offerings won’t work with medical alert devices that still rely on the old methods of telephony.
Perhaps, however that should’ve been taken into account by the government. It was just completely overlooked. This is one of those issues that wasn’t even considered and only realised *very* late in the game that ‘co-existence’ on the line would retard everyones speed until such time as everyone was changed over? I wonder how the law will be put into play when there’s no fixed line for emergencies, when I’m pretty sure it states there must be at all time to access 000???
I think this was a problem even under Labor.
It all comes down to how the Internet provider offers telephone. Some use the fibre via POTS while others use VOIP thus rendering them incompatible with such emergency devices.
From what I have read, it is possible to have a POTS connection with one provider and Internet with another but the plans for POTS are insane. Some were as high as $50 a month which is basically just capitalising on the elderly.
I remember reading that the copper network was going to be kept in place for a while under labor for the needs of emergency communication in the short term until an alternative was found or something. Other than that, the fibreoptic network wouldn’t have impacted it. What we have now though it the hybrid beast with a million backs that’s causing a bigger issue :\
I think you mean a billion, 😛
Personally, I think even the original plan was going to be a multi-technology mix if they wanted to keep to deadlines (especially if fibre roll outs became stalled due to poor conduits thus requiring FTTC as a short term work around).
The common thread for both sides is they both put politics first and bad handling second.
I’m even starting to hope that MyRepublic’s 10 Gigabit city project gains momentum and moves from town to town because, honestly, I don’t see either side putting an end to their games any time soon.
I’ve had NBN HFC for about a month now and couldn’t be happier. Averaging 23-24mbs down and 4.5mbs up on a 25/5 service. Compared to my old 500kbs down 200kbs up adsl2 it’s a godsend. I’ve had no dropouts since getting it either :).
What’re the connection speed options you had when signing up to your isp out of curiousity? And what’s the congestion like during peak periods, assuming everyone in your area is now having to use the same HFC connection? I’m currently on pre-NBN HFC so there’s a lot of congestion and next to noe upload speed at all
I had the options of 12/1, 25/5 and 100/40. I’m seeing very little congestion, majority of the time it’s 20+ down and 4+ up even at 5-10pm. I’m. It sure if that’s. ecause of my connection or because there hasn’t been a big NBN take up in my area yet.
Oops, double post
I’ve had cable for years and year and always had a good speed, now I have to change to the bulshit version of the NBN that we apparently have and that’ll slow down my connection. 🙁
Might not have to. My mate in Melbourne was on Telstra 100Mbit cable, and he switched to HFC NBN, and he gets the same d/l speeds he got through Telstra, but his uploads went from 1Mbit to 35Mbit.
If you’re with Telstra, check with Belong if you can get NBN through them, as it’s owned by Telstra, and should use the same cable.
I’ll give the NBN this, your download speeds on cable might be comparable but your upload speeds on NBN will be drastically increased.
With iinet currently and did a speed test the other day; .54 mbps dl and .23 upload.
yes, thats point 54.
apparently the nbn is available through “fixed wireless” at my address. So will look into that.
funnily enough it’s only been since the techs have been doing the nbn servicing in the area that the dl speed has dropped to a crawl. It used to be pretty good for a regional town, iinet blames telstra for the slowdown but refuses to come to the party regarding the near useless internet speeds and costings.
its infuriating.
I’m on VDSL in Canberra, but from what I’ve read it’s VDSL for one hop to an exchange and fibre from there, so It’s technically FTTN.
I consistently get 80/40mbps, with the occasional drop down to 30 if everyone in the neighbourhood is on netflix.
For what it’s worth, Work is on dark fibre and gets 1gbps, we’ll be multiplexed and on 10gbps by the end of the year.
surprised you guys aren’t on a 50gbps connection on dark.
we’re not maxing what we have right now, anything more would be a waste of money.
We’re on the NBN satellite, just outside Canberra. The download speed is actually pretty good, often 25Mb/s. But the latency!! Our ping is usually around 700ms. That’s slow enough that something as simple as logging into an email account sometimes times out and fails.
It’s a strange situation, where it’s good for downloading large files or streaming video, but not good for basic browsing of the internet.
Or, say, it’d be great at downloading large games/updates for the PS4, but consistently fails the prerequisite first step of logging into the PS Network.
Note that fibre to the curb (aka fibre to the distribution point) is not the same as fibre to the node (what I assume cabinet/fire hydrant refers to). Performance wise, it should be pretty much identical to FTTP.
All it means is that instead of the fibre terminating in your house, it terminates on the street right outside of your house. You’re then looking at tens of metres of copper rather than hundreds, so you should be able to reach much higher speeds than FTTN.
Yep.
Considering my area was for the longest time slated for HFC NBN [*gag*], I’m well chuffed it’s now getting FTTC. A pretty good compromise and frankly not going to be an issue until you want to go over 1Gb/s.
Assuming the FTTC install is done well, and the contention ratios in your area aren’t awful, almost all end users are not going to see any difference between FTTP and FTTC.
As long as you are in a relatively new house and the twisted pair wasn’t split to save money you should get good speeds.
Kinda pointless going to FTTC from a cost-saving point of view, as an extra few metres of fibre vs the cost of power to the converter and line and the extra expense in adding the conversion point as well as the cost of having another technology in the mix outweigh just using fibre (which in bulk costs are almost equivalant as copper)
I’ve been on NBN HFC 100mbps/40mbps for about 5 months now, not a single dropout or issue since. I’ve got to be one of the lucky ones from all the horror stories I’ve read online when it comes to the NBN.
Got NBN 100/40 back in August which gave us a steady 35mb/s down and 10mb/s up.
4 weeks ago it went down for 6 days and they finally sent an NBN guy out to fix it, he said the first 150 meters was badly degraded, but he was requires to get us some kind of connection which ended up being 15mb/s down 4mb/s up which is worse then our previous ADSL2+, he had to jumped between different lines or something to get it working.
Last 3 weeks they keep sending either NBN or TPG people to test the connection in our house which is useless really, none of them have gone back to check the actual cable or box that first guy touched. Funny thing is they say we are 1.8km from the node/box and that we’re getting the minimum speeds for our distance but the first guy and others in the past say it’s only 600 meters.
Has anyone had them replace the copper wire completely or know of it happening? or are we out of luck?
My NBN POI is good now
with myrepublic in the south west
hitting 60mbit down and 20mbit up
waiting for XGFast codec to up those speeds now
im on 120 down 1 up… bloody telstra cable. not sure why they still refuse to increase upload speeds.