Hey All

Just looking for a few opnions from people as to whether to go for ADSL 2 or Telstra cable (as I cant get optus at my house)

I will let you know my situation. I live approximatly 4kms from my Exchange (so a fair way away) which is probably the only reason why I havent jumped straight in and got ADSL2. My usage is very small, and I looking at having the internet solely for playing games, and occationally surfing the net, downloading is a very low priority for me.

So just basically looking for the best option that will give me the best pings possible in games, on a range of servers.

All opinions welcome,

And thanks everyone for their help, appreciate it.

telstra cable for best pings


also how do you find out how far away you are from an exchange

ADSL2 from who?

Thanks guys, keep the reply's coming..

Looking for all the opinions I can get..

ADSL2 would be from iinet..

To be honest.
Gamearena has the most servers and you'll probably get better ping to them on telstra rather than other ISP's.

There is no real point ot change if you have no reason to, right? Why would you want to change from cable?

The IInet servers seem alright but in no way 'better' than gamearena.
http://games.iinet.net.au/gamestats.cgi

adsl2 is much faster than cable and has way better upstream which i love (my iinet is 95k/s upstream, compared with 16k/s for optus cable)

my only drama, is that cable was always on
i have sorted most of my drop outs for iinet, but its a long way form cable still

id go adsl2 (inode or iinet) depending on if your exchange has been done and how close you are to it;

Yeah iinet is good except for how often it drops out :(
Still, it has some pretty good plans.

adsl2 is much faster than cable

How much faster? On my parents cable I get 1mb/s downloads from fast local servers.

well, if you get full speed adsl2 it easily over 1mb/s
iinet being 12000kbs and inode up to 25000kbs

i get about 600k/s downstream and im over 3k from the exchange

what is telstras upstream? optus is 16k/s which is horrible and maxes out extremely easily;

last edited by Spook at 13:33:25 15/Dec/05

128kbs im pretty sure for telstra cable upstream

To get adsl2 with iinet you have to be on there phone service yes?

yes
yes you do;

optus is 16k/s which is horrible and maxes out extremely easily;

wrong, i've been getting 30k/s as of late

^^ same here shrapse, ive been getting a steady >25kb/s upload rate for a while

Since your looking at gaming performance, I'd say go T cable bud. I'm on it and have no complaints. If you play on GA servers you don’t get charged for data traffic so you can get a good cheap plan as well (since you aren't looking for downloads).

after 5 years on it, im getting off telstra cable and just today signed up to iinet 12/1. hopefully should be pretty quick at around 1.2km from the exchange.

can someone tell me how this voip thing works though.
if i have one phone in the house and its connected through the modem and someone calls me through my normal (non-voip) number, will it still ring and function as normal?
or for the old standard line to ring, do i still need a phone plugged into a normal wall socket.

im getting this modem http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=2&&bid=2&sid=13262

eagerly awaiting adsl 2 from internode here (if they do my area that is)

iinet adsl 2 here at work.

having the net drop out while your in the middle of something is great - it's like having the speed of cable combined with dial-up hazards.

if I was big on gaming I'd prolly go with Bigpuddle cable... and I can't believe I actually just said that given the past threads about Bigpuddle's 'service'

last edited by koopz at 16:46:13 15/Dec/05

optus upped the upload cap to 256kbits/s couple weeks ago. hella awesum pity i had only just jumped on iinet the week before :(
telstra is 64kbits/s upload. same as iinet etcetc.

as much as i hate telstra in your case i think telstra cable will be the best for you.

can someone tell me how this voip thing works though.
if i have one phone in the house and its connected through the modem and someone calls me through my normal (non-voip) number, will it still ring and function as normal?
or for the old standard line to ring, do i still need a phone plugged into a normal wall socket.

no it is seperate. have one phone plugged into your house line and another phone plugged into your voip modem.
before it will work you have to goto the iinet website->toolbox->iinetphone dropbox->configure voip

i can't fault optus' cable. super fast pings, massive download quotes, just doubled their upload speed to 256k. escellent uptime (i have had like 3 drop outs in 4 years, one of those being a 7 day suspension =P). i'm guessing i will be with optus for as long as they want me.

yea optus rock

Thanks for the help all, appreciate it..

Think I have decided what to go with now..

optus FTW

Optus has been the best ISP I've ever been with. 2 hours downtime in the last 3 or more years and their service has been great.

Optus cable. Oh right!

8-)

Id defiantly go optus cable for gaming nothing beats low 7 ms first hop latencys iinet dsl 2 uses interleaving witch your will see about 15-20 ms first hop...

but most games have client side predicition anyways these day so low latency is really mute issue if your pure gamer no leeching and dont share it then go cable.

if you gamer / leecher then the large qouta will be good plus free upstream traffic off iinet dsl 2 not to mention most cases you will get full 1mbit/80KB upload.

All depends on how far you are from the exchange with dsl2, cable on the other hand dosent have this issue but is a shared medium heaps of leechers on your node then its s*** pings. 8-(

Catch 22 situation there....

PS. as if steal my 1.6 nick :P


last edited by 0z at 19:27:49 15/Dec/05

Optus FTW.

i can't fault optus' cable. super fast pings, massive download quotes, just doubled their upload speed to 256k. escellent uptime (i have had like 3 drop outs in 4 years, one of those being a 7 day suspension =P). i'm guessing i will be with optus for as long as they want me.

I cannot agree more!!!!! The only problems I have ever had with OPTUS is with the billing dept. Been with them for 5 years had about 3 outages in that time, if you want reliable, stable, fast, problem free internet OPTUS gets my vote.

Bugpond cable is good too apart from well............dealing with Telstra.

The only problems I have ever had with OPTUS is with the billing dept

yeah I'll add to that - as it's something to keep an eye on. Specifically the Optus/Singtel-to-Telstra breakdown in communication.


I went the 3-in-1 service with cable/phone/mobile. Little did I know that Optus slates out excess STD and International traffic via the Telstra backbone. I was quite surprised to have Telstra phone bills come in under my name (despite never having a Telstra phone - EVER). It's all in the fine print apparrently. The real kicker has been fighting a a bill for several thousand bucks after I moved out, changed addy, moved cable/phone to new address. The Optus (and subsequently Telstra) deal I signed up for continued on for my mates, who continued to call family in Austria for months (insert Nazi joke here) - never gettig a bill and increasing their communication traffic due to not worrying about usual said bills. All the while the Telstra billing system has clocked up over 10k of debt in my name :/


Loved the cable - not to sure about Singtel now though :/


btw.. never give your real DOB to people knocking on the door wanting to sell you communications services ;)

I'm pretty sure the 256 optus upstream is only in the offpeak period. I could be wrong but thats what I found when I tested it out myself.

But hey thats when I do all my downloading etc anyway :)

it got changed to 24/7 recently

nope the 256k is 24/7. just don't keep it running 24/7 or you'll find yourself b&