What distinguishes Internode from other ADSL providers?

We love the Internet - and Internode delivers so much more than just an Internet connection. Here are just some of the features and benefits of selecting Internode for your Internet services:

• We really do love the Internet. And we love exceeding our customers expectations.
• Our own high performance, high reliability, un-congested national and international network dedicated to Internode customers, offering performance and reliability that are simply second to none. We believe there is no better and more consistently performing broadband service in Australia.
• Friendly and caring staff offering free, expert support and sales advice, and based entirely 'in house' here at Internode. Mostly at our head office in Adelaide, but also in our other offices in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.
• Open and honest information (here are our FAQs and live phone queue stats) and dialogue with our customers about Internode, about our services, and about what drives us. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, or chat with us on the Whirlpool Broadband Forums.
• Nationally available home and business services featuring our ever popular Easy ADSL2+ broadband; our home phone product NodeLine; and our great-value VoIP solution NodePhone.
• An easy online signup process for broadband services, offered on a no-success, no-fee basis.
• Customer access plans that are designed with a customer focus, including fixed cost 'shaped' plans, monthly quotas you can use anytime (without needing to wait for peak or offpeak periods), and the extra flexibility to buy additional data blocks on demand if your requirements change from month to month.
• Free and user-configurable Spam Filtering, Virus blocking, and other useful online mail services.
• One of the largest and most popular Online Gaming Services in Australia - unmetered for Internode customers.
• Cool freebies like our iPhone and iPod touch applications, and an ever growing number of WiFi Hotspots around Australia, including places like Adelaide Airport, the MCG and Rundle Mall.
• A huge range of high quality streaming 'radio' stations, exclusive to Internode customers and unmetered - meaning you can listen all day without affecting your download quota!
• A massive unmetered File Server (with Terabytes of data to choose from).
• Minimal contract terms and the freedom to bring your own broadband hardware, or to purchase your hardware from Internode.
• Ease of transfer to Internode from other providers - we participate in all industry transfer/churn processes.
• Up to four free additional mailboxes and personal web space with each broadband or dialup account.
• We give a damn. :)

And More....

• No off-peak/on-peak pricing structure - use the Internet when you want to.
• Servers are allowed. Although our residential ADSL services use a dynamic IP assignment - so that your IP address will change over time - we don't stop you running server programs on your home computer system, if you want to exchange some data with some friends or otherwise experiment with doing this at home. And of course Power packs and Business Packs feature static IP addresses, perfect for onsite hosting, email servers and virtual private networks.
• Minimum commitment period. Just a small early cancellation charge in exchange for a discounted set-up charge - or alternatively, you can pay the full setup charge and have no early cancellation penalty at all. We want you to stay with us because you want to, not because we are forcing you to stay!
• When you're on the road. Use your included dial up Internet access - ten hours free per month, local call Australia-wide. Or use one of over one hundred Internode Wireless Hotspots, at no charge. Or grab a 3G NodeMobile Data stick. You're even covered overseas, with global roaming via the iPass alliance.
• Free, non-commercial web space - up to 50 MB for personal use.

Why doesn't Internode offer 'off-peak' vs 'peak' quota periods? Some other providers offer a bigger allowance as a result - what's going on?

It depends to some extent whether you have a life or not :)

Our monthly quota allowance can be used when you want to use it, 24x7.

We don't force you to wait 'til past midnight to use your allocation - its a 'use it anytime' approach, designed to benefit the majority of people, who would prefer not to be watching the clock while they use their ADSL service.

The tariff structure used by some ISPs splits your allowance into 'peak' and 'off-peak' quotas. Often you will see the total of these two advertised as their monthly allowance, without clearly noting the distinction that you can only use the lion's share of that allowance when most people are asleep in bed.

Most such providers only let you use the majority of their allowance between midnight and 6am weekdays (and sometimes, all weekend). We made the judgement call that in general people would prefer to use the Internet whenever they want - not when their provider wants them to.

Our 'use it anytime' allowance is substantially higher than most ISP's 'on-peak' allowance. Direct comparison of the total peak/off-peak on 'their' plan vs our non-time-sensitive allowance isn't entirely fair (to either party), because they do different things (and may therefore appeal to different people).

In the end, our plans are a better fit for people who have real lives, and some other ISP's plans appeal more to people whose only mission in life is to fill their hard drive overnight faster than their next door neighbour. If you are that sort of person, please, feel free to use a different ISP instead of us, if our plans don't suit you.

Sure, you look good, but maybe if I wait longer, another ISP will turn up who is even better!

Some slower-moving ISP's are finally realising that if they don't provide ADSL to their customers, they'll be left behind. Internode started offering ADSL to its customers in April 2001 - almost a year ahead of most ADSL providers in Australia. We proudly launched the first commercial ADSL2+ services in Australia, and then followed that with launching the first ADSL2+ Annex M services!

Our long term experience with ADSL means that we can provide a much better service, and our pricing is highly competitive.

Ok, so you are cheaper than X, but you are still more expensive than Y. Why is that?

Beware of the people who are obviously guessing about their market models. Those are the ones to be really careful about.

Some ISPs just aren't as experienced in the market as Internode is. Internode was founded in 1991, and our Internet technology experience, and even more importantly our technology business experience, is unsurpassed in Australia today.

We have chosen price points, which are honest, sustainable, and fair. Some ISP's charge less - and your chances of having your service fall out from under you without warning are much higher with them, because they just can't afford to do it right. In an industry full of examples of spectacular failure, Internode is a long term and consistent success story.

Reward the innovators. Not the rear-view-mirror also-rans. And especially not the naive people who offer you the world, and who may ultimately disappoint you deeply.

What about a dialup account? Do I get one of those too?

Yes, you do! With every ADSL account, you receive a 'modem dialup' Internet access as well.

We provide you with the option to use up to ten hours per month of dialup access at no extra charge, with every ADSL account! If you use more than ten hours per month, the extra hours are just charged at $1 per hour.

This account is very useful in case you are travelling (and need Internet access away from your home or office ADSL link). Internode offers 100% national local call dialup access - so you never need to be out of touch when you are travelling!

If you need to use dialup access regularly, you can upgrade from 10 hours to 300 hours of dialup per month, for an additional $10 per month on your broadband account. Simply click here if you'd like to submit a request to Internode Accounts to upgrade your broadband plan to include 300 hours of dialup per month.

Tell me some more about the dialup account that comes with every ADSL service from Internode?

• The dial account isn't just for backup during ADSL outages. It offers full national local call access, plus (at a surcharge) full global roaming via iPass.
• The '10 hours free, then $1 per hour' included account has -zero- standing charges if you don't use it. If you don't want to use it, just don't :)
• Our actual downtime on the ADSL service is very, very small (over the last year, that is, not just 'lately'). However, ADSL is a non-guaranteed service, and no one is pretending that it is perfect.

But here is the thing... no Internet service is perfect. That's because the extra cost that would be required to generate a perfect world would mean that nobody would buy it. It's just another instance of TANSTAAFL.

However, we pride ourselves at Internode on providing a really, really excellent service, and we have the smart people, the excellent equipment, and the positive attitude that achieves that outcome almost all of the time.

Can I dial up at the same time as using ADSL, on the same phone line?

Yes!

A dialup modem is an audio device (like a phone or a fax or an answering machine), and like those other devices, you can use it concurrently with ADSL.

The only thing to bear in mind is that (just like a phone or a fax or an answering machine), you need to use a line filter on the cable into your modem in order to run it concurrently with ADSL.

Your password and username for your ADSL account and Dialup account are the same (username@internode.on.net).

So in physical terms, you can actually leave a modem plugged in to the same phone line as the ADSL box, subject to that need to use a line filter with it.

You aren't as big as Z. So can you keep up with demand, or will you get slower as you sign up more people?

Internode has a deep and long term understanding of Internet technology. We started in 1991, and we continue to be a growing, profitable, privately held company, whose success is critically based on high performance, reliable Internet access.

We always engineer our Internet links in the best manner possible, and we ensure that we always have:

• A huge amount of 'headroom' (reserve capacity). Typically that reserve is six to ten times larger than our peak observed traffic load. The aim of this is to ensure that whatever the situation, whatever the demands from our customers, there is always enough supply available for their needs.
• A network arranged with multiple 'upstream' suppliers connected at the same time, for ultimate reliability. Every major 'backbone' in Australia tends to have a 'bad hair day', often one or more such days per month in fact. By connecting to many upstream providers at once, and by running special in-house created load management software, we detect 'upstream failures' and automatically switch to another supplier when they occur. We also have our very own dedicated links to our own hardware in Tokyo, Los Angeles and San Jose, and we directly connect to other providers in the United States.
• Sophisticated monitoring systems. We have network monitoring systems carefully watching over every element of our service, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. If something does go wrong, our systems have notified appropriate technical staff and those staff have started working on a fix, before you're likely to even notice an issue. Most technical faults that develop in our systems or our servers are remedied without any customer impact at all

We are very, very confident that we can continue to expand our network links and router/switching capacity to keep up with demand. We have a brilliant track record of doing that, and we aren't going to stop now! Our pricing structure is carefully designed to be fair to both you, as our customer, and to us, as your services supplier. It is, in particular designed to ensure that we can afford to keep proactively expanding our network links and our routing equipment into the future. And we do!

Is your service fast? Will it stay fast?

This is a really important question. The answer is emphatically yes!!

We provide really fast access as a professional obsession :)

We have been providing fast Internet access ever since we have been in the Internet Services business. Our aim is to always provide a consistently great quality of service, as far as is humanly possible to provide.

This is one of the reasons why we aren't the lowest cost Internet Service Provider in the market. It is also one of the reasons why we're one of the best.

There will be periods when our service is not performing up to 'ideal' levels, technical problems can occur. But as we run nothing but 'the best' equipment, and our staff are smart and eager people, who have a strong drive to provide excellent service, no problem ever remains current for long, on the rare occasions when a problem does manifest.

If you suspect (or are certain!) that there is a technical problem that is adversely affecting your service, please report it to us. We sometimes aren't aware of some forms of problem until you report them to us (although many problems are detected by our sophisticated monitoring systems).

As an Internode customer we never want you to suffer problems in silence. Please tell us about them, we're only too happy to fix 'em up.

Where do you offer services? And are those service areas expanding?

We can provide ADSL services to any area in Australia where the telephone exchange is enabled for ADSL.

Our specific coverage areas in each state are rapidly expanding. You can check whether your telephone exchange is ADSL enabled by using our online checking utility here.

If we don't offer coverage in your exchange area today, do check back later, because most exchanges in Australia will receive coverage in time. And our 3G NodeMobile Data service is available to over 96% of the Australian population, via the Optus 3G/yesG network.

So where you use Telstra Wholesale ADSL infrastructure, aren't you exactly the same as the BigPond ADSL service?

To clarify the question about whether Internode run on their own network or are somehow just using the Telstra network, we need to go into some detail about how the underlying service works.

The data path from your home or office location to the local Telstra exchange uses Telstra infrastructure, which we access on a wholesale basis from Telstra. Your data flows into a Telstra DSLAM in the exchange, and is then 'backhauled' through Telstra inter-exchange capacity that we buy. The data is delivered into a 'state aggregation point' in each capital city, where it enters a device called an IP Services Node (or IPSN).

From that aggregation point, we collect the data via a very high capacity network channel (some ISP's use small channels at this point and limit your bandwidth in peak times).

Your data is then transported to the Internet via Internode's very high capacity and high availability links to the world.

Internode prides itself on high capacity Internet links, and on the use of the best possible equipment and servers, to ensure that your Internet experience is consistently fast, just as far as it is reasonably possible to do.

This includes the use of multiple 'upstream' Internet links into our national, path-redundant tier-1 network. We always operate multiple independent upstream links, both in Australia and in the United States, because every international provider tends to have at least one 'bad hair day' every now and again - typically once or twice per month. By using multiple upstream providers, we automatically switch your Internet service to the best upstream provider at any given time. So our Internet service is always more reliable, and more consistent, as a result.

What elements distinguish different ADSL service providers in Australia? Aren't all ISP's that use Telstra ADSL infrastructure the same as each other?

There are several components in a full customer-to-Internet ADSL service path. Looking at the strict technical ones, these are:

1. The data link from the customer's premises, via your local telephone exchange, and back to an in-state aggregation point operated by our wholesale ADSL provider (lets call this the 'carrier-end-user path')
2. The path from the aggregation point to the ISP concerned (lets call this the 'aggregating virtual circuit').
3. The number, diversity, bandwidth, and congestion of the upstream Internet transit links that your ISP uses to connect to the rest of the Internet (and whether they use high performance routers inside their network that can keep up). Lets call this 'whether your ISP doesn't suck'.
4. Any other relevant speed boosting features your ISP has (for instance, high performance web caches; Local games servers; Local download servers, peering links). Lets call this 'whether your ISP has sufficient clue '.
5. There is a very important additional issue, technical and general customer support. Lets call this 'whether your ISP actually cares about you as a person' (or just as an account number).

Some ISPs constrain their internal cost by limiting the amount of 'upstream' bandwidth they purchase, either at step 2 or step 3 in the path noted above. This lets that ISP charge less than Internode for access to broadband Internet services. They can do this because they simply aren't buying enough of the 'stuff' you are paying for, and as a result, the speed of your service will suffer (often dramatically) in times of high demand.

If your provider doesn't have multiple path diverse upstream transit ISPs, (i.e. if they only have one upstream supplier to link you to the Internet at step 3 above) then a 'bad hair day' for that single upstream takes out your ADSL service.

In our experience, every one of our upstream providers has a 'bad hair day' around once a month, for various reasons.

The overall cost and value proposition offered by different ISPs is driven by the total costs, and the total features, in all of the above, for that specific ISP.

So there is a -lot- of difference between providers who you might (at first glance) see as 'all the same as BigPond'.

Do I pay by the hour for ADSL access, like I tend to do with dialup access?

In the broadband realm, your service is 'always on' (or more accurately, 'always available', other than during occasional service outages).

Because your connection time is potentially 'all the time, charging by connected time no longer makes sense in the broadband world.

The remaining measurements that can be charged against for ADSL include the peak available speed and the monthly quota (a reflection of the intensity of your Internet usage).

Internode, like most ISPs, charges you based on the peak speed you select, and based on your chosen monthly allowance of quota to be included in the price.

So you are cheaper than BigPond - Are you going to be worse to use?

On the contrary, our quality of service is second to none, nationally. You can't lose :)

So try using Internode, save yourself money, and enjoy a brilliant service from caring people.