Originally Posted by richb

Really - Telstra cable in Melbourne is 3Mb up? Do you have a link that describes these plans? I can't find anything on the Bigpond web site.

Hi. Cable works like so:

Turbo: 128kbit/s up, 8mbit/s down (actually capped at around 128kbit/10mbit), so you'll usually get around 9 - 10mbit.
Elite: 1mbit up, 30mbit/s down (actually capped at 1.1mbit/38mbit) so you'll usually see around 35 - 38 down and 1.1 up.
Ultimate: 2mbit up, 100mbit down (actually capped at 2.4mbit/120mbit). Most people seem to get around 110mbit down and the full 2.4mbit up.

I have finally had BigPond cable installed. It is not something you want to do if you are in a hurry. After originally being told it would take six days, after multiple visits I finally have it after two months.
Is it worth it?
Compare and contrast.

my old connection: iinet ADSL2+



my new connection: BigPond cable

These speeds make me drool, I'm out of ADSL2+ Bigpond contract for months now, should I upgrade? I've already got a Foxtel cable socket since I used to have Foxtel in the room, so does that mean they won't have to install it again? Here are my current results, pretty good but faster is always better :P

---------- Post added at 05:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:28 PM ----------

Anybody done a Bigpond cable pingtest? Here are my ADSL2+ results, they didn't have a Sydney one so this is the closest I could get to check my ping:

Edit: Why does it say my ping is so low on the speed test but it's much higher on ping test?

Originally Posted by torana355

Upgraded to Ultimate this week

Is it even possible to take advantage of those speeds or do you always hit the max download speed the site your downloading from offers?

the NBN will hit the same server limits as ADSL and cable. I doubt anyone would notice a difference web surfing.

High speed broadband is useful for large files, or streaming video. The NBN, if you are prepared to pay an arm and a leg every month, will deliver blue ray quality video streams. For most people living on a real world budget, the NBN will only deliver cable speeds (or less) for a long time.

Originally Posted by torana355

Yeah i can max it out when downloading from multiple connections like Usenet or Torrents, i mainly wanted the extra upload to keep my ratios up. For everyday surfing there no real difference though. Until the NBN comes out this is a good option for fast speeds.

It's a brilliant option, honestly with speeds like that why even bother with the NBN :P It looks good for torrents but in practice people just don't seed enough for me to max my 20mb/s connection even with multiple torrents. Shame really.

This actually brings up an interesting discussion, what is the bottleneck for browsing speeds most of the time? I've always wondered what it is in modern-day laptops and desktops but I'm not sure.

---------- Post added at 06:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:53 PM ----------

Originally Posted by entropy

The NBN, if you are prepared to pay an arm and a leg every month, will deliver blue ray quality video streams.

Doubt it. Who will offer these Blu-Ray quality streams? Won't be enough demand for it so I don't see it happening for a long time.

Originally Posted by torana355

I say its only good rather then great because it costs $110 a month for 200g which is bloody expensive.

I think it depends if there are many images on a webpage, if there are the 100Mb/s connection does make a big difference, for most sites with only a few images i would guess a 5Mb/s download would be just as fast as a much qucker connection.

I think I've only come close to 200GB last November when I was downloading numerous games for PC, mainly I pay for the speed, yes you can get 200GB of TPG or whatever for under $50 probably but it's nothing compared to Bigpond speeds. A few years ago I remember I was happy with 12GB, how times have changed!

Originally Posted by torana355

Yeah i used to be happy with the 25gig Telstra cable plan a few years ago, now i can use over 200gigs a month!!

This thing is though I didn't really notice a big change in my usage pattern apart from the big downloads, but mainly just browsing the web and everything is done in a higher quality with bigger images and HD videos etc.

I have 100Mb cable and it is fast - it does slow down as more people use it - but it is still fast.

I recently downloaded something from the adobe site and I was getting 13.5 MB/sec.

Cheers!