Hooray for Fibre

 Yes the Optus man has switched on our Fibre connection after the NBN man installed the cable earlier in the week.  It means we don't have a landline phone any more but I have run the telstra speed test and connections are vastly improved. At least the test numbers say so.  Previously we were at 9Mbps download and 7Mbps upload.  I could never get above double figures. The test now says 116Mbps download and 21Mpbs upload.  The proof will be in the usage.  Eg Will we see that pesky stalling circle while trying to watch a streaming TV show?  Will it drop back to a hazy blur or stay clear?  I still have a problem with my PC preferring to use WIFI instead of the hard wired connection but I can live with that at these speeds. Debbie's computer goes for hard wired everytime but I have a more recent Windows 11 and that can make a difference.  

NBN Not Quite

 We got the NBN man back again and it seems you never get the same one twice.  The last guy quoted the rules about what you can and can't do. This guy was the same. We can't have the outside junction high up below the eve.  We have vandals in the area and that box will be a beacon.  "I see, I will ask my boss. No the rules say no higher than 1.2m."  Why?  "I don't know but that is the rule."  It was a lot harder job than he thought.  Uncovering the pit cover took an hour and was full of dirt and for some reason had to go to the next pit to get a cable thru. It was mud and slush all the way.  A second guy turned up and between them it was another four hours.  Good thing this is all a freebie. Now we are waiting for an SMS message to say it is turned on for use.  Can take up to 24 hours.

he had to go a lot higher than this both on the pole and the outside of the house

No Fibre here

 I had booked an appointment for the NBN Techo to return this morning to finish the fibre installation. Daniel has prepared the way with a cable and power all ready to go. We have cleaned out three power boards and three power leads from Debbie's office after the new power point reconfiguration. No one turned up from the NBN.  There are no phone numbers to arrange this with, you have to go thru chat windows. I spent an age getting this appointment set up.  So I went back onto the chat window and after 45 minutes the guy says that NBN is not his area of expertise so is going to move me to someone else.  Then all the verification stuff starts again after the first guy says I wouldn't have to do it.  After an hour I gave up.  It seems todays appointment was never set up and I don't have a new appointment either.  What I did learn is that you need to ask for an NBN team member right at the beginning. Also they want you to do all this typing on your phone but they don't want you to talk on your phone.  

Update: after an hour or so Debbie had the idea of ringing up the Optus shop where we first went to get this done. It took three different people and another 30 minutes but we have a new appointment, we think.

 

Tight Fibre

 Trying to get a better internet/streaming service in here is a bit of a pain.  There is an internal 20 metre cable that Daniel has run from the office area to the outside four bricks down from the eave but which is high off the ground.  The corner section of roof space is very tight.  The NBN man is going to place a junction box of some sort to connect this fibre to the one coming from the street but with recent vandals roaming around I don't want such a box at an accessible height. Back in Essendon there were three or four of these junction boxes all on the blind side of the house.  Here we are forced to install this one in plain sight. The next thing is to convince the NBN man that he has to go up a ladder.

FTTP

We have been watching the rollout of fibre cable around here for 6 months. It quietened down and then a letter box drop said we could switch to fibre. Last week I got into a chat window session with an Optus salesman. There is no phone access anymore, you simply cannot ring them up.  They took my mobile number in case the chat window stopped but even then they would not ring me as the chat was the way to go.  Ninety minutes later, that is ninety minutes I wont get back.  Optus are paranoid about security after the Optus breach. The whole thing broke down when I had to scan my own face using my phone after scanning the photo on my drivers license.  Errors kept stopping the process.  Today we went to the Optus shop. We sat in a corner for an hour before one of only two attendants was free.  I knew eactly what was needed but we had to endure the upsell, as these stores are now franchises and the boss was hovering around each negotiation and had to sign off on it. We steadfastly stuck to no phone upgrades, no TV upgrades, no wifi upgrades and no speed upgrades. My chosen 18Mb peak usage option was already going to triple our speed without any cost increase per month. As it turns out we will get this for $89 per month, compared to our current FTTN at $100 per month, so three times the speed for $132 less per year.  PS we did have to get rid of our landline but I am not sure if anyone knew that phone number.

ExpoNet.info

 I have spent almost as much time preparing the pages for submission as writing them.  It is all about giving it a try and see what happens.  Looking over the specifications, they want each page at a certain pixel size ie no less than 1280 for the width and also any images at least 300dpi, both of which I have now.  After copying each page from Word into Paint, I was able to save them as jpg images. Today I resized every page to be 1352 pixels wide which was double what Paint saved them as. These guys from ExpoNet.info are based in the Czech Republic. I do not want to load up a USB drive to wait another six weeks before they get it and then tell me I have to do something else.  There is a File Transfer method that I have asked for, which is similar to what I did years ago with my Team Sarcomere webpage.  Now that is something I have not looked at in 20 yar. Hold that thought.  It seems the Sarcomere page is not working any more. I did a quick check of the Domain name and that part is still valid and payments are up to date. So the problem is at the Optus end. Them again.. I digress.  

Router on the Outer

 We have had various internet outages here as we all do, however tracking down exactly where the problem lies is the trick.  I always suspect power problems can cause other issues although we have the proper trip switch here. Last night during the internet card session the router just froze up, so the game went on hold until I could reboot it.  Previously I had gotten a new router from Optus at no cost. These days they are modem/router/switch all combined.  This one also allows me to plug in a hard drive turning it into a NAS drive to share on the network. I already have 6 Terabyte of NAS (Network attached storage)  as I added a new drive only a week ago.  The new router is working now so we need it to stay that way.  I haven't tried streaming anything yet.

Optus Black Box

This was my other job today, dismantling the Foxtel duplication link from Upstairs Downstairs

 It did not work properly

NBN Technology

Towards the end of 2016 the NBN introduced technology choice where, if you are eligible, you can apply to change the internet delivery service .  You could apply yourself or via your ISP. I spent three days on the phone to Optus and they have not heard about it or at least it has not made its way down to the people who work the phones.  I have now opened my own dialogue with NBN. I want to switch from FTTN to FTTP.  The next step is to pay a $600 fee just to get a quote which is non refundable. Then you get the quote most likely in the thousands.  I think I have found an FTTN node on a pole about 50m away. If that is true then the quote may be under $5000.

SpeedTest

Internet access has become indispensable and when running a business it has to always be there.  We have had a consistent service for the last month and we had to persist with some service calls in the first month.  Our original Optus service was provided by a dedicated co-axial cable to the house with fibre components back in the network.  NBN came along which discarded the Optus co-axial cable and started sharing with the Foxtel co-axial cable.  Our problem with the new house is that there are only old style phone lines as in twisted pair, originally designed for voice and later tweaked for ADSL2+.  Now we are told this old phone line has to carry our NBN service.   I will install Foxtel I said, so we can share the c o-axial again.  OK but new installations are only via a satellite dish.  I have measured our current service speeds at www.speedtest.net.  This site will do a ping to your IP address, as well as measure your upload and download speeds.  The results can be stored in your history and referred to at any time.  We will be comparing this to the results via twisted pair. Streaming online video requires 25 Mbps download for good viewing. We need at least this.

Be Prepared

NBN revisted

We have a need for speed, and as long as the network is up the speed is OK. Our problems are the drop outs.  We have just had all the connections retapped including one inside the house, three at a splitter on the outside of the house and one in the street.  I still haven't seen any fibre  in our part of the network.  Another call has been logged about a degraded signal in the street which may take some weeks to be followed up.  There are other things that can be done. Step 1 remove the second Foxtel Box. Step 2 remove the last Foxtel box and dedicate the wired network to the internet only.  Foxtel can then be accessed by installation of a satellite dish.

This pit has some corrosion from water seepage

NBN Issues

We have been having multiple drop outs here. There were four yesterday and two today but the restarting of the modems doesn't always work first time.  We filled out the ombudsman's  complaint form and sent it off.  This was handy, as after we got through to the Optus man, we seemed to get a better response having mentioned sending our compliant.  So there is more that can be done other than power cycling equipment.  He got us to do a hard reset which picked up a new set of config parameters that he downloaded for the Optus modem.  Then he restarted from the exchange end. This is going to be monitored for 24 hours and we will receive a call on the results.

A paperclip is needed for the hard reset

Beware the VAT

Just had a session ordering tickets over the internet.  The first lot were Shakespeare 'As You Like It' . This theatre is like a Spiegletent but without a roof, although these seats are under cover.  Since I was on a roll I had a go at the Queen tickets for next March.  I ended up on a Resale site which had a pair of tickets for $1000 which was a bit steep so I aborted.  I went to the official site called 'viagogo' which had a pair of seats for $500 but by the time I had got through to the final payment they told me it was now $922.65 which was mostly VAT (value added tax) so I aborted for a 2nd time, however I got all these emails about how to download tickets etc.  The bank said that the transaction was started but did get cancelled.  So don't buy anything via a UK web site like 'viagogo'.

Sarcomere Web Page

Last century I started a web page following the exploits of Team Sarcomere. It is now 20 yar old but I have not paid it much attention after the retirement of the team and also my freebie disk space allotment was getting close to full but I still paid the registration fees during that whole time.  Some months back I got an enquiry about selling the domain name!  I was not sure how serious this was but the buyer is back again so I have had some valuations done and appointed GoDaddy to look into this further.

Team Sarcomere as seen by Pablo

4 Day Dilemma

Don't ever say 80 yar olds can survive without the internet.  We spent 4 days trying to workout why there was no connection to the Internet.  The main culprit was a Telstra pre-paid wifi modem that stopped working.  Or was it the Pryon unknown brand desktop.  After several calls to somewhere, maybe Singapore, it was determined the modem was faulty.  This resulted in a new modem being purchased. However it made no difference. This now points back to the desktop machine so the maintenance guy for this, suggests that the latest wifi drivers for the desktop's  Atheron device needs to be installed.
When I locate these via my laptop and get them across to the offending Pryon, Windows tells me that the driver already installed, is the latest.  So we go back to the Telstra support and they now say that the new Modem should not have had the original SIM moved across but should have used a new SIM.  So another drive to the Telstra shop is required to get a new SIM installed. All along both the old modem and the new modem have worked well within the environment of the Telstra shop. So we go back to try this new configuration and it starts to work.
Nowhere along the way can you identify what the problem actually was. The old machine, modem and SIM would nor work together. But separate them and they would work again in other environments. Not sure what the moral is but isolating each component helped.

Wi Oh Wi

New Generations

Spent time talking to the 11 and 13 yar old whiz kids of tomorrow. Their IT interest is all driven by their game space at the moment eg gaming platforms like Steam and the best browsers to get at the stuff.  Open Source Software is my hobby horse says the 13 yar old.  "Netscape" was the first browser, I say, and it was turned into OpenSource. Then they chime in with "Yes it was the basis for Chrome, Opera and Firefox".  These guys will be running the World from their lounge rooms.

Remember this.

Technobabble

Yes this house is riddled with network cabling as well as two WIFI networks getting the smart TV on the internet but even still having a laptop display with a second screen on your big TV is worthwhile. Also using the laptop's wireless mouse and keyboard is a lot easier than the klunky TV keyboard. Not so easy to do though.  The old TV provided a VGA port for easy plug in as a display. The new smart TV provides for HDMI no VGA.  I found an older gizmo in the cupboard that additionally routes the laptop display and audio via USB to the HDMI of the TV.  I got the display working however the sound does not.  The audio cable was also laying around in the cupboard. I have ordered a no excuses brand new gizmo that will do it via the VGA port.

USB display

There is a beeping sound in this room for the last two days that we can't find. There must be a dying battery in something.

Network trouble

No internet access is the modern nightmare.  Yesterday our router just stopped working! It was around 10 years old.  At the very start of the Optus fibre roll out, around 20 yar ago, the idea then was you could only have one device in your house attached to the modem.  I got round this by getting my own router and a series of switches through the house.  In all this time the original Motorola modem has kept on working and it was still going yesterday after 20 yar.  Optus now concedes that multiple devices are the norm, so in 2011 they sent me an all purpose wifi/firewalling/routing modem, however at that time everything was working so I put the routing modem away for a rainy day. And today is it. The old trusty one is now in the box, the router is in the bin and the five year old modem has got me typing this post.

Freebie modem

NOK NOK Who's there?

Have finally figured out the tethering option on my Nokia Windows phone.  Very handy if I am trying to upload this post whilst down at the beach. Mind you there is no shortage of mobile phones therefore network choices for getting my laptop onto the internet.  I can't last a couple of weeks without an internet fix. A few years back and you were happy listening to the cricket on the radio. We have more relos coming off the ferry from the Light Side to visit us on the Dark Side. Some of the lads have just left for a day of fishing and kicking back at the end of the pier.  There are two tents outside to cater for the overflow.  Even the Plovers are being crowded out.  But you wouldn't have it any other way.

Plover Town

Marathon Man

I can recommend the I-view method of watching some Games events.  For one thing there was only two ads at the start of the broadcast, after that uninterrupted and dedicated coverage of the marathon. Mind you the organisers in Glasgow ran the men's and women's marathons in a staggered arrangement so the coverage swapped from one to the other.  Not to mention that the aussie Michael Shelley pulled away from the Kenyans for a memorable win. So those Africans can be beaten to the utter amazement of the English broadcasters. The quality of the display was a noticeably chunky in full screen mode however the half screen option was passable and with no extra charge, you can't argue. This is where pay tv will get its competition. I have been on cable internet delivery for years but when the NBN gets around the place, live streaming will really become a better quality flood.

Google Map layers

Work expands to fill the time available for completion. So if the word gets around that you supposedly have some spare time then do jobs start appearing.  The evidence so far seems to show that trend.  Not that there is anything wrong with that. I may be looking for things to do down the track.  Anyway the database from the old part time job which now receives more of a focus has a spatial aspect. The clients listed do not have co-ordinates but the address can be used one at a time to build up a google layer.  I may try this to over lay a route around Europe.  After 5 days of effort I am getting close to finishing the client layer.  The number of tools that are available on the internet for general use is growing and Google are continuing the trend.