On Thu, Jul 17, 2008 at 8:05 PM, Don Gould <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Matthew Whiting wrote: >> >> Why do you say Telstra Cable is way better than ADSL? > > The backhaul that TC have committed to the network simply means it runs > faster in most cases. > > If you're in an area where not many people are using DSL then the > performance may be ok. My parents are on the sort of DSL plan you're > talking about and it's great all week. Come the weekend it's not worth > using. > > I've used both. I have the choice of both and I choose TC. > > I'm using a 4/2 plan with 5gb. It's must faster from most sites than the > ADSL2+ plan I had with Orcon (out of the Riccarton exchange).
The good points: The reliability is excellent - I have been on Telstra Cable since they came to Christchurch, and have had only 1 outage of any consequence. About a couple of hours several years ago, and one of 10 mins or so just recently. The other major winner is that by and large the ping times are much quicker, which results in a far superior experience if you are into massive networked games. I hasten to add that I'm not, but my son was. The help desk bodies seem, not only polite, but reasonably knowledgeble. You get a Cable modem with with a fixed address and an ethernet connection as part of the deal. Thus getting on-line is a complete doddle. The down side points: Speeds to the rest of the world never even approach that advertised. Telstra refuse to set up peering at the NZ Internet Exchanges so the major free and open software archive for NZ at citylink.co.nz is accessed via North America. This resullts in download speeds of only 20 to 40kBytes per second on a good day when the speed should really be approaching the advertised 1MBytes per sec. I think this is so far from the truth that a complaint to the Commerce Commission is justified. I'd be interested in what other members who use Telstra think. The other major problem is their mail system. The Web mail interface is absolutely hopeless, and frankly the spam filtering is well below par - lots of spam in your mail. That problem is easily fixed by using Google Mail, which works a treat. A minor niggle is that the web interface to get to your traffic meter is just the pits. For us the positives outweigh the negatives. -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
