the interwebs are here!
I began to leave work a little early – I’d been emailed to say that naked DSL was active at our place and I was keen to get home and play. Half an hour later, I finally left the office when I found my keys.
Then I spent an hour on Pennant Hills Rd. Not fun. Mental note for next week, find a different Friday afternoon route home, or prepare for a one hour journey.
Finally I got home. Debbie’s parents were kind enough to give us their old ADSL router (they’ve since moved across to cable), and so I updated its firmware to the latest from Netgear, and got it all set up, and then successfully connected it up to our iiNet service… and voila:
I am pretty happy with those speeds. Just as I was typing this though, the connection dropped for no apparent reason. It re-connected itself a few seconds later… but that was strange. And doing subsequent speed tests has only given me about 5Mbps down and the same upload speeds. So I’ll be watching that over the next couple of days with interest…
Something interesting that iiNet have in their account settings is a thing called Speed Connection Manager where you can “adjust” the speed of your ADSL connection. Interesting. There’s 5 settings:
Safe ADSL1 Speed up to 8,000kbps If you have an older modem it may not support ADSL2/2+ speeds in excess of 8,000kbps. So play it safe. Controlled ADSL2/2+ Speeds up to 24,000 kbps (FAST) If you want to push the speed up a little but keep a stable connection. You may need this if you have poor line quality. Standard ADSL2/2+ Speeds up to 24,000 kbps (FASTER) This is our default setting that suits most users. It’s still really fast, but usually gives good connection stability. Thrillseeker ADSL2/2+ Speeds up to 24,000 kbps (FASTEST) If you want to push the broadband speed limit. You’ll definitely get the fastest speeds possible on your line. But you may hit the occasional speed bump or two. Gamer ADSL2/2+ Speeds up to 24,000 kbps (UNINTERRUPTED) Well suited for time sensitive, interactive applications such as gaming, this selection is designed to provide the quickest connection response rather than a faster download speed.
I quickly moved my setting from the “standard” up to “gamer”. The tech nerd inside me wonders what is changed with my ADSL connection with each setting, especially considering the last 4 are all ADSL2+. They say the changes may take a few hours to take effect. So I’ll play around with them a bit more over the next few days.