This page is of only historical interest. It was written in January 2011, and hasn't had any material update since October 2012. Since then the Australian National Broadband Network started work to build a fixed wireless tower in Dereel. That was delayed by a small group of hysterical Luddites, but it went live in December 2013. I talk about that more here.

Dereel is 100 km west of Melbourne—not exactly “out in the sticks”. But looking at the infrastructure, you'd think so. There's almost no Internet connectivity.

This page was written in January 2011 and is intended to describe what options there are, and what the pros and cons are. It's not overly technical. Because of the dismal situation in Dereel, just about everybody is eligible for the Australian Broadband Guarantee, which guarantees maximum prices and minimum (very minimum) quality of service.

What we need from a network connection

An ideal network connection would be free, would be as fast as anything in the house, and would have no access delays. Clearly there's no such thing. In general, we have to pay for access, and the access depends on a number of things:

1. Traffic. How much data are we allowed to transfer? Typical limits are between about 250 MB per month (almost nothing) and 1 TB (1,000,000 MB, more than most people can possibly use). In general 5 to 10 GB (5,000 to 10,000 MB) are enough, unless you're downloading films or other image material.

2. Download speed. The Australian Broadband Guarantee specifies a minimum of 512 kb/s download speed. Current maximum speeds are in the order of 20 Mb/s, and the National Broadband Network is targeting 100 Mb/s.

3. Upload speed. For most people this isn't as important as download speed, and it's generally lower. The Australian Broadband Guarantee specifies at least 128 kb/s upload speed. Current speeds are up to about 5 Mb/s for very fast links.

4. Latency, the time it takes for a data packet to get through the network. Not many people talk about this, but it's a very important issue. I'll talk about it below.

Latency

Data is passed through the Internet in packets between about 40 and 1500 bytes. To transfer anything serious, you need a large number of packets. The time it takes to transfer a packet depends on the packet size and the latency. The Internet Protocols handle latency well in a single connection, so if you're downloading a large file, it's not usually a problem. Unfortunately, many applications, notably web pages, create multiple connections to download the page data. Each connection requires at least 3 exchanges of data, so the minimum time it can take is 3 × latency. If the latency is small (10 ms, for example), that's not important. With satellites with a latency of 1.5 s, this means that the exchange can take up to 5 seconds—no matter how fast the connection and how little data gets transferred. Some clever web sites set up many connections, and this can mean that it can take over a minute to display pages on satellite that would only take a few seconds on other connections.

Another issue with high latency is that it makes it very difficult to use VoIP (voice telephony over the Internet). The result is similar to people talking from the moon: one person speaks, then there's a delay, then you get the reply, in this case “only” 1.5 seconds later. With practice you get used to it, but typically people you call on the phone don't have that practice, and you'll find them interrupting you all the time because they think you haven't said anything.

Another problem with VoIP over high latency lines is that the latency usually isn't constant. This makes the sounds break up to an extent that they're often unintelligible.

What kind of connection?

Basically, modern high-speed (“broadband”) networking is delivered by a number of media, in decreasing order of desirability. Note that in the descriptions I use terms like Mb/s (megabits per second), which is the way the ISPs look at things. They define a megabit to be 1,000,000 bits (or 125,000 bytes), not the more normal 1,048,576 bits. This means that a 0.5 Mb/s connection doesn't fulfil the Australian Broadband Guarantee.

1. ADSL is the method of choice. Download speeds range from 1.5 Mb/s to 24 Mb/s, and upload speeds range from 250 kb/s to about 4 Mb/s. Latency is in the range 10 to 50 ms (0.01 to 0.05 seconds). It's cheap, fast and reliable—and not available in Dereel. So we have to make do with second best.

2. Wireless communications are more expensive and less reliable. There are two basic kinds: 3G, which is delivered by the mobile telephone network, and WiMAX, which is a separate kind of wireless dedicated for Internet connections.

   3G services are available from Telstra and Optus. Neither guarantees any speed, and there's no choice: you get what's available. Both providers are very cagey about the exact speed of the link, but from recollection, with modern modems, Telstra peaks at 21 Mb/s downlink, and Optus is about 3.6 Mb/s. In each case, these are theoretical maximums.

3. In addition to Telstra and Optus, a number of ISPs resell Optus connectivity, notably Exetel and Internode.

Dereel doesn't have a mobile telephone tower, of course, and to get reasonable reception you'll need an antenna. This should change for Optus users when the tower in Corindhap is complete.

4. According to the Departemnt of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), Aussie Broadband offers WiMAX in Dereel. According to Aussie Broadband, they don't, though the jury's still out. My recollection is that the speeds are over 10 Mb/s downlink, and their prices are better than 3G, but they've hidden their pages and will only display them to people who should be able to get the service, so I can't quote them.

5. Satellite communication is the absolute last choice. It's expensive, slow and unreliable. Tariffs are about 50% to 100% higher than 3G for the same data allocation. Download speeds can be up to 5 Mb/s, but the latency is extremely high. The technology adds 0.48 s to the latency, which is bad enough, but some providers come closer to 1.5 s latency.

Reliability and speed

This section is based on my own experience. If you have other experience, please contact me.

I've already stated that ADSL is very reliable. Typically you can expect a link to stay up for weeks on end. I have no experience with WiMAX, so I can't say anything there.

3G connectivity with Telstra is good, and latency is in the order of 60 ms. The connectivity with Optus is also good, but the links here currently suffer from extreme congestion, and from time to time the latency can increase from a “normal” 110 ms to completely unacceptable values. My record so far is over 90 seconds.

Satellite reliability with the IPstar satellite is appallingly bad. I've had a satellite connection for 3 years, and in that time I have measured 1684 outages, an average of one every 15 hours. With an average duration of nearly 6 minutes, it's particularly irritating. The software implementation has known bugs that cause many of these dropouts, but apparently not all of them.

Most ISPs use IPStar, because it's cheaper. IPStar themselves are based in Thailand, and it's clear that the local ISPs don't have much to say.

Optus also run satellite connections. I haven't investigated them, and for the reasons I've stated above, I don't intend to.

Support

None of the ISPs have really stellar support. If you're having trouble installing software on your computer, they may be able to help. If you're having trouble with their network, things look a lot worse. Internode are probably the best I've dealt with, and Telstra are far and away the worst—read my tale of woe for more details.

Which one to choose?

So what can we do? My personal choice would be to get Aussie Broadband to check WiMAX availability, and I'm planning to push that one. Probably it would require an antenna, maybe a relatively expensive one, but the connectivity should be better, and the prices are lower, so it should be worth while.

If that doesn't work, 3G seems the only game in town. My attitude is “try Telstra first. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, don't even try to fix it, try Optus”. Telstra support has never fixed any problem I have reported.