The website of Tate Johnson
"Welcome to tatey.com, the transmission belt for my random (and sometimes communist) propaganda. Please, grab a beer and poke around, you may even find something interesting – Cheers, Tate"
Over the previous week, Zingers has been rather flakey. At some point, tatey.com and it’s network of hosted sites experienced an unacceptable downtime of over 24 hours. Fortunately, this is not an issue with the actual hardware or software that is running on Zingers. Instead, it’s appropriate to point the finger at my ISP.
As some of you may be aware, ADSL2+ has been recently introduced into Australia. Now, when I say “recent” I am referring to within the last 12 months. ADSL2+ offers a potential amount of bandwidth up to 24000/1000kbps, however this is greatly dependant on your location and distance from the telephone exchange. Furthermore, it requires ISP’s to install and setup their own special hardware in the exchanges (Called DSLAMS). Once your exchange becomes ADSL2+ enabled by the ISP, you’re telephone line is required to be physically migrated from the Telstra DSLAM into your ISP DSLAM.
My ISP offered a free migration from ADSL to ADSL2 while retaining the same internet plan. Naturally, I accepted the offer and was informed that the migration would take place in March. After March arrived, nothing happened. Eventually, the ISP stated that migrations would take place in August. I was somewhat disappointed, but since it wasn’t going to cost anything I couldn’t really complain. In addition, if I wanted the alternative route it would require me disconnect my existing ADSL connection and wait 10 days until I’m reconnected. Not a viable option in my opinion.
After the above statement, I didn’t worry about purchasing or even researching ADSL2+ modems, or anything related to ADSL2+ for that matter. I found myself in deep water after my ISP migrated me over on the 23 of June without any notice. Okay, I’m thankful that I’m now on ADSL2+, but I would have appreciated some notice. Instead, I lost internet for the entire weekend, and the connection has been up and down since. One week later, it’s under control and I’m making this post. With the extra bandwidth, Owen was able to download off this website at 105kb/sec. I’m quite pleased with that, and hopefully he site should be more of a pleasure to view.
As it currently stands, I’m connected at 5229/1002kbps. I’m about 3.6km from the local exchange and the fastest download speed I’ve been able to attain has been 590kb/sec. Now, that’s comparable to cable and the upload is substantially larger. If I was located closer to the exchange, say less than 1km I’d easily be looking at reaching over 2MB/sec. At any rate, I’m very satisfied with ADSL2+ and relieved that the stability issues have been sorted out. Tatey.com is back!
UPDATE: It appears the connection went down again for a few minutes at around 9pm. I’ll be contacting my ISP later this week.
UPDATE 2 (09/08/06): The TPG Whirlpool forum representative’s are FANTASTIC. After much trouble-shooting and various configuration alterations on both ends, all connection issues have been resolved. In addition, I now have a Static-IP address which is excellent news. I may setup a mail-server in the future.
July 8th, 2006 at 7:55 am
ADSL2+ FTW. I imagine that my home will be migrating to it whence it becomes available; though no doubt that’ll be more than twelve months away. That’s a downside to living in the sticks.
July 8th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Hah, yes it certainly is. How far away are you from the exchange? Hopefully you’re closer than I am. My ISP managed to resolve the syncing issues by capping the speed at which my modem can sync. Apparently it can’t maintain a high sync because of the distance from the exchange. Therefore, I’m capped at 4000/640 atm. I’m really disappointed about the upstream cappage. That said, if the connection remains stable, I might get them to bump it up a little bit more.
July 12th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
I can’t access your site. Your server might be down, or configuration wrong? Can you have a check for me, because I’d really like to visit your web log.
And BTW I was about 1 click away from deleting Flora’s blog from my feed reader when I was purging sites that didn’t exist any more. Then I realised that it’s your nubby fault and didn’t.
July 13th, 2006 at 1:14 am
Hah, I apologise for that. It ended up being that my settings had somehow been lost on the router and the ports weren’t actually forwarded. That said, it’s all good now and everything is back to normal. I appreciate your concern, kind squire.
July 20th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Drop the bomb
July 22nd, 2006 at 10:26 am
You’re the bomb
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Looking back now, I have no idea what that last comment I made, meant. But would you like some cracked pepper with your random?
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:57 pm
Only if you propose to divorce Jo
July 27th, 2006 at 9:53 pm
SPINLOCK RECYCLE