UQ Res: Internet connection

[Daemos]

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So...

I've been hearing some odd things like a 400MB/mo limit...which personally to me...is nothing, I have 6GB off my mobile phone a month for $30/mo...

My home internet has no such bandwidth restrictions but other ISPs here have 60GB/100GB limits for around the same price which is reasonable.

So...what are the alternatives to using campus internet?

Unless if living off campus is reasonable.

Also are residencies bedrooms air conditioned?

 

[redshifteffect]

So...

I've been hearing some odd things like a 400MB/mo limit...which personally to me...is nothing, I have 6GB off my mobile phone a month for $30/mo...

My home internet has no such bandwidth restrictions but other ISPs here have 60GB/100GB limits for around the same price which is reasonable.

So...what are the alternatives to using campus internet?

Unless if living off campus is reasonable.

Also are residencies bedrooms air conditioned?

Unfortunately in Australia, residences do not have very generous internet limits.

If you go off campus you can easily get 60/100Gb limits. I've compared these with Rogers Cable and they seem to be similar in price (with taxes included). I'd rather have a good internet connection and live off campus.

The reason internet in Oz is higher in price is that most of the internet is overseas (in the US) and there are currently only 3 cables connecting overseas - whereas Canada enjoys land based cables to the US (which are cheaper to maintain and deploy then overseas cables).

 

[Theillestill]

Rogers Cable is the bomb.

Residences have pretty terrible internet limits. I know at Melbourne there's something like 125mb/week for every student, and then the residency has an extra 1gb/year for everyone on residence.

 

[Daemos]

so...is it reasonable to live off campus then? Would I need to purchase a car? I don't know how much higher my loans can go lol...but having good internet is IMPORTANT.

Is it not possible to get a company to install internet in your dorm room ^_^;?

 

[redshifteffect]

I completely agree with you. with slingbox my internet runs my canadian cable tv, with voip my phone lines and with rapidshare everything else. As for Rogers being good in the GTA there nodes are oversold and they limit torrents and voip. so that 60gigs is pretty much unusable unless you watch that much youtube. Just check out their forums at dslreports they have a very bad rep. unfortunately even in canada caps are the way of the future.

 

[HanmoLi]

i live off campus in toowong, and it's probably one of the most convenient places you can live at. i'm paying a lot for my internet (dodo broadband), 70$/month for 200gb (100gb on-peak and 100gb off-peak), but splitting that between 3 people isn't bad at all.

i don't find living off-campus inconvenient at all. there is much more flexibility with pretty much every aspect of life. as for a car... my roommates and I rented a car when we first arrived in australia in order to do some apartment hunting and to buy some furniture (and to go to the gold coast). but other than that, i haven't really felt that I needed to have a car. public transportation is pretty efficient here. on the other hand, if you live in st. lucia, it's actually more difficult to get around, because public transportation is more limited there.

 

[dentisthyd]

mm

 

[Theillestill]

public transport is overall so much better in Australia. runs on time and every 10 minutes.

 

[Daemos]

hmm I think res would be good for social things though lol. Hard to meet people if you live on your own =p

This would be easy if I could just get a different internet connection inside res.

Is there a way to purchase more bandwidth for a reasonable price? There must be some way around the bandwidth limit.

 

[redshifteffect]

hmm I think res would be good for social things though lol. Hard to meet people if you live on your own =p

This would be easy if I could just get a different internet connection inside res.

Is there a way to purchase more bandwidth for a reasonable price? There must be some way around the bandwidth limit.

You could always try and install your own phone line in res, and then get a "naked" internet plan (ie you don't have to connect a phone line). I don't think it would be cheap to get the phone line connected.

 

[Tuttley]

Is there a way to purchase more bandwidth for a reasonable price? There must be some way around the bandwidth limit.

Absolutely. You can purchase extra bandwidth on a pre-paid basis on campus fairly cheaply. You can see the prices at
http://www.uqconnect.net/download

 

[Daemos]

You could always try and install your own phone line in res, and then get a "naked" internet plan (ie you don't have to connect a phone line). I don't think it would be cheap to get the phone line connected.

was thinking more of a cable line, or like what they have out in the boonies in Canada, Wireless.

 

[Daemos]

Absolutely. You can purchase extra bandwidth on a pre-paid basis on campus fairly cheaply. You can see the prices at
http://www.uqconnect.net/download

5GB $40.00

I think our opinions differ on what is 'cheap' =( I currently pay $30.00 CAD for unlimited bandwidth at home...and even the other ISPs in australia have 70AUD for 60GB peak hours and unlimited during non peak, as well as upload not counted towards bandwidth...for $30CAD I get 6GB off my cellular phone at HSPDA/HSPUA speeds...

I think I'd easily need to spend $120AUD a month on just bandwidth alone...=(

 

[Theillestill]

You won't be using that much internet unless your torrenting constantly.

 

[Daemos]

You won't be using that much internet unless your torrenting constantly.

It's quite easy to use up 5-10GB without torrenting or newsgroups.

My parents alone who I would say do very little 'downloading' with the internet and account for about 15GB a month of internet usage.

 

[jellyfishing]

hehe 400mb is actually an improvement from last year, when we got 200/month...
u can always borrow your friends' accounts (given they live off campus)

i go thru 1G a month it works ok for me as long as i don't go on youtube 🙂 (1G is $10 if i remember correctly)

residenties don't have air conditioning.. which gets hot in summer..but u can always buy a heater for winter

 

[Daemos]

hehe 400mb is actually an improvement from last year, when we got 200/month...
u can always borrow your friends' accounts (given they live off campus)

i go thru 1G a month it works ok for me as long as i don't go on youtube 🙂 (1G is $10 if i remember correctly)

residenties don't have air conditioning.. which gets hot in summer..but u can always buy a heater for winter

lol...yea youtube with HD is bad...I could easily see someone watching HD trailers at like 4GB for 1.5 hours!

No Air con...can I buy my own Air con? LOL...I had to live without aircon in a climate that i'm sure doesn't get as hot as Australia, and I was dying! lol

finding rent just to be comfortable is looking like a more tempting option, and to fix any lack of socialization I will need to throw parties! lol

As long as I get in though =p

Good thing I'm handy with tools, i'll most likely install a window side airconditioning, but I noticed some units have balconies, which means I can get a portable AC unit, get some wood, cut a hole, cover all edges in some sort of weatherstripping, close the sliding door on the wood, and duct tape the vent to the hole XD

 

[redshifteffect]

lol...yea youtube with HD is bad...I could easily see someone watching HD trailers at like 4GB for 1.5 hours!

No Air con...can I buy my own Air con? LOL...I had to live without aircon in a climate that i'm sure doesn't get as hot as Australia, and I was dying! lol

finding rent just to be comfortable is looking like a more tempting option, and to fix any lack of socialization I will need to throw parties! lol

As long as I get in though =p

Good thing I'm handy with tools, i'll most likely install a window side airconditioning, but I noticed some units have balconies, which means I can get a portable AC unit, get some wood, cut a hole, cover all edges in some sort of weatherstripping, close the sliding door on the wood, and duct tape the vent to the hole XD

I've seen a few of the portable aircon units in Mitre 10 for some pretty cheap prices, and you don't need to disfigure your apartment for them to work.

http://www.mitre10.co.nz/competitions/competitions.cfm

This one is in NZ but the concept is the same. Remember if you are renting an apartment you have periodic inspections and they may not be too happy with that sort of handy work on to their property.

If you were looking at using HSUPA/HSDPA you have a lot of choices in Oz. I'm currently stuck with that while I get my internet up and running and if you are in an Optus 3G area I'd recommend Exetel. I'm using both Optus and Telstra, and Telstra is overpriced but unfortunately is the fastest network I've used ever, and that includes in Canada or Europe. It feels as if I'm using a true high speed line. Their PAYG services means if you don't like it just resell your USB modem and switch to something else. It should be possible for you to get 6GB for around 30-50AUD (except with Telstra). The main companies are Telstra, Optus, Virgin, Vodafone and 3. However each of these a myriad of resellers, which usually offer much better value for money, so you can do a search on them.

1GB barely gets any surfing done, and if you start browsing (legit) medical sites with high res images (I'm viewing path slides at the moment) or other data you may wish you had more data.

$30 is a good price - which province are you in again? I was trying to get my parents "upto" 18mbps with Rogers (Ontario) and for 100gbs that was costing them $99 CDN/month plus taxes and uploads counted.

 

[Daemos]

I've seen a few of the portable aircon units in Mitre 10 for some pretty cheap prices, and you don't need to disfigure your apartment for them to work.

http://www.mitre10.co.nz/competitions/competitions.cfm

This one is in NZ but the concept is the same. Remember if you are renting an apartment you have periodic inspections and they may not be too happy with that sort of handy work on to their property.

If you were looking at using HSUPA/HSDPA you have a lot of choices in Oz. I'm currently stuck with that while I get my internet up and running and if you are in an Optus 3G area I'd recommend Exetel. I'm using both Optus and Telstra, and Telstra is overpriced but unfortunately is the fastest network I've used ever, and that includes in Canada or Europe. It feels as if I'm using a true high speed line. Their PAYG services means if you don't like it just resell your USB modem and switch to something else. It should be possible for you to get 6GB for around 30-50AUD (except with Telstra). The main companies are Telstra, Optus, Virgin, Vodafone and 3. However each of these a myriad of resellers, which usually offer much better value for money, so you can do a search on them.

1GB barely gets any surfing done, and if you start browsing (legit) medical sites with high res images (I'm viewing path slides at the moment) or other data you may wish you had more data.

$30 is a good price - which province are you in again? I was trying to get my parents "upto" 18mbps with Rogers (Ontario) and for 100gbs that was costing them $99 CDN/month plus taxes and uploads counted.

lol none of my alterations would of involved permanent alterations to the apartment. just a sheet of plywood acting as a sliding door stopper (surrounded by weatherstripping) with a hole for the ac vent =) easily reverseable in 2 mins or so.

thanks for the site ill check it out later =)

for the wireless i was thinking more line of sight satalite services. that might not be possible depending on how the dorm is setup. hspa would work though as with rogers hspa i do about 3.5mbit down and the newer revision hardware does 7.2 mbit down. pricing doesnt seem to be too bad for hspa services either. is wimax available in australia?

I agree 1GB is far too little for any reasonable surfing in a month. websites have become far more bandwidth intensive lately =(

I live in Manitoba and get internet through the local teleco (MTS) i currently use their vdsl service with tv. it gets me 9mbit down and 2mbit up =) the 30 is a promo until next year then its 40 a month. ill admit shaw cable has faster download speeds available and lower ping times but they restrict their bandwidth to 60 or 100GB depending on your plan =( MTS has no such restrictions =)

 

[redshifteffect]

lol none of my alterations would of involved permanent alterations to the apartment. just a sheet of plywood acting as a sliding door stopper (surrounded by weatherstripping) with a hole for the ac vent =) easily reverseable in 2 mins or so.

thanks for the site ill check it out later =)

for the wireless i was thinking more line of sight satalite services. that might not be possible depending on how the dorm is setup. hspa would work though as with rogers hspa i do about 3.5mbit down and the newer revision hardware does 7.2 mbit down. pricing doesnt seem to be too bad for hspa services either. is wimax available in australia?

I agree 1GB is far too little for any reasonable surfing in a month. websites have become far more bandwidth intensive lately =(

I live in Manitoba and get internet through the local teleco (MTS) i currently use their vdsl service with tv. it gets me 9mbit down and 2mbit up =) the 30 is a promo until next year then its 40 a month. ill admit shaw cable has faster download speeds available and lower ping times but they restrict their bandwidth to 60 or 100GB depending on your plan =( MTS has no such restrictions =)

I have to admit checking out the details on the MTS and Sasktel websites they are far ahead of Ontario. Ontario doesn't even have ADSL2+ services let alone VDSL. With 2mbps up, that means they are using annex m, which Ontario hasn't even heard of yet! (Though this is available in Australia). Internet should be much cheaper in Canada, because of the land connections to the US, but the ISPs have gotten greedier, and are moving to Australian style capping systems, so they make even more profits.

HSDPA is reasonably priced and widely available, and I believe Telstra is planning on upgrading their speeds to 50mbps by sometime thsi year. Whether you will actually reach those speeds is hard to say, and most USB modems are only capable of 7.5mpbs anyway. Either way I can say that actual usage is better then what I experience with Rogers, and it doesn't require a 3 year contract (which is what Rogers wanted me to do for their promo rate of $50/month, otherwise it was $100/month for 6Gb of data). Since there are no roaming charges in Oz (except with 3) you can use your service anywhere in the country.

I would avoid Satellite the high latency and jitter make it useless for anything but surfing. They probably also have even more draconian caps then other serivces. I'm not sure if Brisbane has cable (or HFC as it's known in Oz) but they might. Telstra has recently enabled 30mbps cable service, and I think Optus is also following suite.

WiMax is probably the best option then in your case, and it's certainly available, but I'm not sure in which cities. There are quite a few different companies providing it so you'll have to have a search.

ADSL in my opinion is the better of the two, because you don't have the problem of oversold nodes like you do with cable. If you do get bandwidth crunches it's at the CO (or Exchange here in oz) so you can just upgrade the fibre links, much easier then upgrading every single congested node. Plus with new technology such as VDSL2+ you can theoretically achieve speeds of 100mbps (as long as you are not too far from the Exchange) without resorting to overselling a line to get Docsis 3.0 speeds like they are doing on cable.

 

[Daemos]

MTS will be moving to VDSL2 shortly (in winnipeg, it's rolled out in other areas), I believe sasktel is already at the level as they offer IPTV (which to my knowledge requires the higher bandwidth that VDSL2 offers). So with VDSL2 50mbit shouldn't even be a concern to anyone =)

MTS actualy doesn't haev an ADSL2 network, just a regular ADSL...although I belive they will be rolling out ADSL2+ with VDSL2.

TBH though MTS should of been at fiber to the home already (as they bought out allstream a long time ago), but when the current CEO took over he canceled many major projects to save money, and they've fallen behind =(

HSDPA is more than enough speed, as long as I can get reasonable amounts of data, the max I've seen so far is 6GB. It's also quite annoying that most austrlian ISPs use this "on peak/off peak" bandwidth and everyone is different from like 2am-2pm to like 3am-10am etc.

I think Wimax/HSPA, Wimax perferably because it's more of a true internet service where HSPA is still advertised as a 'mobile broadband' service, options might be the only choices because I'm still leaning to living in the dorms for sake of convience and the social aspect (although hopefully not having to share a washroom with 6 people...that would get annoying in a very short period of time)

Good to know that Cable in Australia oversells everything =(

I also checked out the mitre10 link, it's quite amazing, the first portable air conditioning unit that I've seen that doesn't need a vent (thus eliminating the need for me to do anything with plywood and doors =D )

 

[redshifteffect]

MTS will be moving to VDSL2 shortly (in Winnipeg, it's rolled out in other areas), I believe sasktel is already at the level as they offer IPTV (which to my knowledge requires the higher bandwidth that VDSL2 offers). So with VDSL2 50mbit shouldn't even be a concern to anyone =)

MTS actualy doesn't haev an ADSL2 network, just a regular ADSL...although I belive they will be rolling out ADSL2+ with VDSL2.

TBH though MTS should of been at fiber to the home already (as they bought out allstream a long time ago), but when the current CEO took over he canceled many major projects to save money, and they've fallen behind =(

HSDPA is more than enough speed, as long as I can get reasonable amounts of data, the max I've seen so far is 6GB. It's also quite annoying that most austrlian ISPs use this "on peak/off peak" bandwidth and everyone is different from like 2am-2pm to like 3am-10am etc.

I think Wimax/HSPA, Wimax perferably because it's more of a true internet service where HSPA is still advertised as a 'mobile broadband' service, options might be the only choices because I'm still leaning to living in the dorms for sake of convience and the social aspect (although hopefully not having to share a washroom with 6 people...that would get annoying in a very short period of time)

Good to know that Cable in Australia oversells everything =(

I also checked out the mitre10 link, it's quite amazing, the first portable air conditioning unit that I've seen that doesn't need a vent (thus eliminating the need for me to do anything with plywood and doors =D )

The Cable comment was actually in regards to Ontario lol which does oversell everything.

Actually the contention ratios in Australia are excellent, at least in my experience. There is a slight premium but there is no overselling here, and definitely no throttling of any type. I can get 2MB/s easily from my rapidshare account, whereas with Rogers I was getting a measily 200kbps even when using download accelerators like FlashGet. The sad part is that the servers are predominately in the US, so I was getting a faster connection using the overseas cables from Australia compared with the land cables in Ontario.

I personally hate the off peak/on peak system as well, which is I why I use internode, though they are more expensive then other services they give you the quota to use at anytime of the day. Their network is among the best I've used (again world wide, and I've used some in almost every continent except Antarctica) but I take the net seriously - so it might be overkill for some. To be honest most programs have scheduling functions, and this system helps to ensure that people that hammer their connection don't do so during "peak times" typically from 5pm to about 10pm.

TBH VDSL2+ would have already been deployed last year in Oz if it wasn't for this National broadband network BS, which has basically scared people from investing in better technology in the hopes that the government will do it all for them.

FTTH is the future, but just isn't economically viable in large scale deployment here in Oz yet - only capital cities in the US are really getting that. I hope that that is what is used in the NBN instead of some copper based form of broadband.

I've already seen a few of the units advertised here in the Hospital I'm working at second hand - so it shouldn't be too much trouble for you to get it off someone moving overseas/interstate.

 

[Daemos]

The Cable comment was actually in regards to Ontario lol which does oversell everything.

Actually the contention ratios in Australia are excellent, at least in my experience. There is a slight premium but there is no overselling here, and definitely no throttling of any type. I can get 2MB/s easily from my rapidshare account, whereas with Rogers I was getting a measily 200kbps even when using download accelerators like FlashGet. The sad part is that the servers are predominately in the US, so I was getting a faster connection using the overseas cables from Australia compared with the land cables in Ontario.

I personally hate the off peak/on peak system as well, which is I why I use internode, though they are more expensive then other services they give you the quota to use at anytime of the day. Their network is among the best I've used (again world wide, and I've used some in almost every continent except Antarctica) but I take the net seriously - so it might be overkill for some. To be honest most programs have scheduling functions, and this system helps to ensure that people that hammer their connection don't do so during "peak times" typically from 5pm to about 10pm.

TBH VDSL2+ would have already been deployed last year in Oz if it wasn't for this National broadband network BS, which has basically scared people from investing in better technology in the hopes that the government will do it all for them.

FTTH is the future, but just isn't economically viable in large scale deployment here in Oz yet - only capital cities in the US are really getting that. I hope that that is what is used in the NBN instead of some copper based form of broadband.

I've already seen a few of the units advertised here in the Hospital I'm working at second hand - so it shouldn't be too much trouble for you to get it off someone moving overseas/interstate.

ah! didn't know they oversold cable in Ontario =( that's surprising how bad it is.

I'm with you a good internet connection is very important to me. I know some people who still use dial up, and I have no idea how they survive!

Lol government deploying broadband for the people...isn't this the same government that wants to introduce some form of internet censorship?

Good to hear I will be able to find the unit easily =)

Thanks for all your help once again, you are a fountain of knowledge =)

 

[redshifteffect]

ah! didn't know they oversold cable in Ontario =( that's surprising how bad it is.

I'm with you a good internet connection is very important to me. I know some people who still use dial up, and I have no idea how they survive!

Lol government deploying broadband for the people...isn't this the same government that wants to introduce some form of internet censorship?

Good to hear I will be able to find the unit easily =)

Thanks for all your help once again, you are a fountain of knowledge =)

LOL the censorship of the internet, what a joke. I seroiusly hope that this idea never actually makes it into law.

Ironically the company that is one of the top picks for the National broadband network is a Canadian company named Axia; they have some experience deploying fibre in Alberta.