A state cut off from the Internet

[ziogref]

So I live on an Island south of Australia called Tasmania. Tasmania is a fairly large island, taking about 3 hours to drive From Hobart (South of the state) to Launceston (North of the state). Tasmania is home to 520,000 people (1/40 of the population of Australia) as far as Tasmania is concerned we are just another state. A bit of background. There are only 3 undersea cables connecting Tasmania and the Main land (what Tassie's call the rest of Australia) 2 are owned by an ISP called Telstra and the the other is owned by Basslink (Basslink is not an ISP). All the ISP's in Australia use the Basslink fibre cable as its cheaper to use than Telstra's, and Telstra use there own lines. (Also to note that most of Australia internet is NOT owned by ISP, and is owned by the Government)

 

So I'm living here at home enjoying my 100mbit Fibre connection when I hear the new that Basslink is having problems (Basslink also carries Electricity between the Tasmania and the Main land) Now I get a little concerned an go buy a UPS for my server and router in case of power issues. Then on Friday they had to cut Basslink (power and Fibre) cap it and bring the surface to fix the power part of it. Now this is not a problem in itself as Basslink purchased bandwidth from Telstra to use for the next 2 months Except it wasnt enough

 

So Friday night, I go to watch some 1080p Youtube or Vessel, buffers, weird, lets try 720p....nope. oh it works at 360p! well that's not good enough, I can normally stream 4k! So I contact a few friends, some can get 75-100mbit and others (including myself) are only getting 1-2mbits. Im like Oh well maybe it will be fixed tomorrow morning, how how wrong I was....

 

So here its is Monday Midday and internet (for me) has not gotten any higher than around 5mbit. 200,000 People in Tasmania are not using Telstra and are using other ISP's, and go full on rage on facebook at iinet, internode and other isp's some showing speedtest's as slow as 0.02mbits! The internet in my state is basically cut off. for example, I wanted to watch the archive of the most recent wan show (and I apologise in advance Linus) I downloaded it instead of watching on youtube, It took 2 days to download in 720p, my laptop hasn't turned off since the cut. Now its not all bad, I can connect to my mates internet and we can play some games, as that traffic stays in the state, I still get 100mbit, except no one hosts web servers or cache servers in Tassie. So here I am basically stuck without internet along with the 200,000 people struggling to load images on the web. I forgot, without using a VPN you cannot do the following things:

Login into steam (or download games)

Cant download games in Origin (though a VPN it took 14 hours to download Need for speed, instead of 1 hour)

No Microsoft updates

Video streaming services has been throttled

Torrents have been throttled

Files downloaded from the web sometimes fail (kinda sucks waiting 3-4 hours to download 1gb and then failing 2.5 hours in)

and who knows what else (also to note, Internet in Australia is unfiltered and there is no traffic prioritisation, all traffic is equel.

 

iinet posted an update saying on Thursday that more bandwidth will be available and that they would contact all their Tasmanian customers, once basslink is fixed at the end of May, and will compensate for the loss of internet and apply credits to the accounts. I guess its not so bad I still get an upload speed of 35mbit (Max is 40mbit)

 

Below is a map of Australia and you can see the 3 links connecting to Tasmania

Now I can load LTT on my laptop since its fairly light weight, so if you have any questions ask below.

 

[comicsansms]

I am sorry that telstra is a dick and has a monopoly,  but telstra is a dick and has a monopoly. 

[flibberdipper]

Jesus. This just reaffirms my hatred for the Internet services Aussies get. God damn.

[nullbot]

Damn, that sucks. Hope everything gets sorted out. 

Screw monopolies

[KuJoe]

I know people paying $50 a month who would kill for 2Mbps. Sure you're not getting the speeds you pay for but 1-2Mbps is far better than being "cut off from the internet" so stay positive.

[ziogref]

On 14/03/2016 at 11:46 AM, Comic_Sans_MS said:

I am sorry that telstra is a dick and has a monopoly,  but telstra is a dick and has a monopoly. 

Thus the point of the NBN, a fibre network for Australia the replace the copper network owned by a private company, but sadly Tassie is often neglected becuase of the high cost of data links and low population

On 14/03/2016 at 11:50 AM, tmcclelland455 said:

Jesus. This just reaffirms my hatred for the Internet services Aussies get. God damn.

Yeah, NBN fixes this, and because of Netflix release last year our international links are at capacity and like 3 more are being built.

On 14/03/2016 at 11:56 AM, nullbot said:

Damn, that sucks. Hope everything gets sorted out. 

Screw monopolies

Yeah iinet (my isp) contacted there Tasmanian customers and said they have secured more bandwidth on Telstra's basslink cables. And will secure more over the next few days. The news broke and Telstra stated they have more than enough bandwidth for all of Tasmanian customers, but of course we all know Telstra will want money, either from purchased bandwidth from other ISP's or more customers switching isp's like a lot of tassies have already done, since other isp's cannot charge exit or early termination fee's due to Asutralian law and ISP's unable to meet there Customer Service Guarantees. Telstra will make some dough from Tasmanians.

On 14/03/2016 at 2:52 PM, KuJoe said:

I know people paying $50 a month who would kill for 2Mbps. Sure you're not getting the speeds you pay for but 1-2Mbps is far better than being "cut off from the internet" so stay positive.

Yeah but when you only get 6kbs on downloads (like youtube (again sorry linus)) that's pretty poor when i'm paying $145aud/month

[ziogref]

So a small update, iinet sent an email out yesterday saying they secured more bandwidth, so at peak time im not getting 4mbit instead of 2mbit, which now means I can watch youtube in 480p without buffering (yay!) they also said they will have more bandwidth secured by tomorrow, (again YAY!) hopefully enough to break past what I used to get on DSL (ADSL2+ for aussies) of 14mbit.

[dzonidev]

Setup a basic L2TP VPN link to one of your friends who has the full speed. As for the cable, that sucks.

[ziogref]

On 3/17/2016 at 8:29 PM, dzonidev said:

Setup a basic L2TP VPN link to one of your friends who has the full speed. As for the cable, that sucks.

All my friends are in Tasmania. But I was using a VPN based in Melbourne to get around the issue. Well anyway iinet have purchased enough bandwidth to get me back up to 100mbit, but my ping has taken a bit of a hit (30ms --> 130ms)