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FAQ - Other questions and issues about ADSL

This document is copyright © 2004 by Simon Hackett and Internode Systems Pty Ltd.
Copying of this document in whole or in part is not permitted without prior written permission.

Why are the Internode Business ADSL plans so expensive?

It isn't that business offerings are too expensive, its that the residential ones are too cheap (!)

Residential ADSL plans can be more expensive to an ISP than their sticker price, and the overall economics of Residential ADSL is predicated on certain assumptions about average utilisation by customers over time.

The plans work out sensibly for your ISP if, on average, enough people have a life , to make up for the consumption cost for those who l33ch huge quantities of data each month for the heck of it.

Those price points are based on averages which are based on the people using the home plans being home users (strange concept that, isn't it). Home plans are not sustainable if they are used on a 'business' duty cycle.

Business plans lean more towards 'pay as you use' - and to the logical flip side 'don't pay for what you don't use'. Business plans, therefore, are sustainable for the ISP regardless of the usage pattern of their customers. And that's why their $-per-Mb 'inside the download limit' tends to be similar to the '$ per Mb' outside of it.

Home plans lean more towards 'pay a fixed amount that probably covers usage in most months', and they only work at the huge monthly cap figures available because most people don't use all of their cap.

That's why their effective '$ per Mb' seems so amazingly low inside the download limit - because it only works if no more than about 1 in 5 users of the plans actually use that much (on average) each month. What you are achieving on a 'home' plan is a predictable outcome, based on a reasonable price for a reasonable average usage.

I can't get ADSL at my place. What other options are worth considering?

If you have access to 'Cable Internet', this can be worth considering (although there are some long term issues with network congestion that tend to occur with Cable Internet systems, these don't become a factor until enough people in your area are all using the cable system at once).

Another practical option that is faster and better than the use of a modem, and fast enough to be reasonably useful for most people, is 'ISDN Data-Over-Voice' (often just called 'ISDN DoV' or just 'DoV'.

ISDN has been available in Australia for a long time, but it has not been a popular 'home' Internet access mechanism until recently because Telstra have always imposed a 'timed local call' charge for its use (often in the range of $1 to $2 per hour, the same as or more than the cost of the Internet access from the ISP at the other end of the phone call!).

Telstra now have a 'home' ISDN option on the market, called ISDN OnRamp Home Highway (ORHH). The salient factors about ORHH is that the monthly line rental which is cheaper than other ISDN offerings, and which includes your first $5.50 worth of local calls in that monthly fee. The critical point, however, is this one: For voice calls (not 'data' calls) on ORHH, the cost of a local call is an untimed (just like a 'normal' copper phone line).

DoV refers to the creative use of this price point, by arranging for consenting adult ISDN equipment (in your home and in our server room) to undertake a 'voice' call (so that it is charged on an untimed local call basis), but to structure things so that the call is in fact transmitting computer data instead.

This validly accesses the untimed local call tariff on ORHH, and makes everyone happy (or at least, happier than they would otherwise have been).

Internode offers ISDN DoV nationally, anywhere in Australia.

See here for lots of handy information on ISDN DoV

Internode's sister company Agile is also able to offer other types of broadband Internet access such as fibre, ethernet and wireless... however these are localised mainly to South Australia and in particular, Adelaide.

What is a RIM and why does it prevent the use of ADSL to some home or business locations?

ADSL only works when there is an un-broken copper path between your premises and the DSL 'head-end' device (called a DSLAM).

A RIM (Remote Integrated Multiplexer) is a device (often a 'street pillar') which sits at the edge of a suburb or an industrial development area. It is installed by Telstra when there are not enough copper lines available between a telephone exchange and a set of customers. What a RIM uses is an optical fibre cable from the exchange to the site of the RIM. Leaving the RIM are the necessary copper phone lines, which then connect to each home or office.

A RIM connected phone line works just like any other phone line for making and receiving telephone calls. It just so happens that their presence makes the use of ADSL impossible (and they also adversely affect the maximum possible speed on analog dialup modems).

Telstra have the technical capability to install 'miniature DSLAM' units into the RIM boxes in the street. Doing so enables all of the customers attached to that RIM to get ADSL.

Do you have copies of your price list and order form available in something other than PDF format?

YES!!!! our price lists are now available in both HTML and PDF format...

What if I move house?

There are no special arrangements within Telstra that exist to 'transition' an active service from one phone line to another one. If you need to do this (for instance, if you move house), you need to fill out our ADSL Relocation form (noting that of course it isn't guaranteed that service can be provided on the new line, but at least no charges apply if we can't do it).

What about routing additional network ranges (Business xDSL only)?

(Available only with Business DSL services)

We can support enterprise customers who either have existing TCP/IP addressing ranges that they wish to route via their DSL connection, or who need more than 5 static IP addresses allocated with their Business DSL service.

In order to provide these facilities, you need to use a Cisco ADSL router at your site as your ADSL termination device. We also need to have network login access to the router during the setup period, in order to properly configure it to support your additional addressing ranges.

Fees may apply for the allocation of additional IP address ranges from Internode (unless you have existing, portable allocated address ranges, provided to you by a network number allocation authority, in which case we will be happy to route those addresses for you at no extra cost).

Note that provider-allocated IP addresses, including those assigned to you by Internode for your ADSL service, are available only while you are using services from Internode. These address ranges will be recovered for re-use should you cancel your Internode service in the future.

Requests for additional IP address space from Internode IP allocations requires engineering justification which is accepted by our technical staff, prior to the allocation of additional IP ranges. IP addresses are a finite resource, and all Internet Service Providers globally are cooperating to avoid the waste of IP address ranges where this can be avoided.

In almost all cases, in the modern world, a single static IP address is in fact sufficient for practically all Internet access and service requirements. The distinction here is between what is convenient (or lazy :) ) and what can be achieved with just a little more effort to re-use addresses concurrently for multiple purposes. NAT is your friend (as are modern web servers which can service an arbitrary number of different web sites via a single global IP address).

How big is a megabyte, and why isn't it the sort of megabyte that my computer thinks is a megabyte?

In Australia, Telstra, the most historically dominant Internet Service Provider, chose to define a megabyte for charging purposes as 1,000,000 bytes - effectively to define it as a 'metric Megabyte', and their definition in those terms has been in place for at least ten years.

As an (unsurprising) outcome, practically all Australian ISP's use the same definition of a Megabyte, specifically so that comparisons with Telstra billing and Telstra pricing is a 1:1 proposition for customers. 

Since it is very common for potential customers to 'miss' other aspects in which our service offers better value than other providers, it makes sense for the Australian industry to at least use a common definition for a 'megabyte'. And hence, it does.

So. Most if not all ISP's (including Internode) define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes for charging purposes in their contracts - and there really is no ambiguity or unfairness happening here.

In fact its more the opposite - it makes it easier to compare Apples to Apples, and like a number of other aspects of the Australian realm which have been in existence for that long, its unlikely to change now.

As an example of another often misunderstood or not-appreciated difference between providers in the ADSL realm, some providers, including Telstra Retail, charge for Internet data based on the sum of your uploaded and downloaded data. Internode assess only downloads.  Depending on your traffic profile, that means that the Internode plans offer anywhere between 20% and 100% better value-for-your-megabyte than Telstra Retail's assessment of 'usage' does.

This is in addition to the Internode plans being better value even when megabytes-included are directly compared.  So, any way you look at it, Internode offers dramatically better value for your ADSL plan.

Any other suggested reading? I just can't get enough!

Here are some links that you might find interesting::

http://www.whirlpool.net.au