NBN Discussion

[amaroo]

Jindabyne friend tells me:
ADSL: 3/0.5
FTTN with Telstra speed boost 50/20: 48/6

I told him not to expect too much and it will probably get worse as his CSA (connectivity service area) is the largest in Jindabyne. Still early days - Wait for more people to sign on and the contention will go up.

Pretty good result. Is that peak hour speed?

 

[Quickstatus]

When he got home at 5pm

 

[Quickstatus]

I've just started an install of their gear too. Experimenting with a HD AC last week...it's just as stymied by my Faraday cage of a house as the consumer gear.

I think the end result will be:

US-24-250W switch * 1
US-8-150W switch *2
HD access point *1
Pro access point *4

Possibly a USG as well.

Does mounting orientation of the AP affect wifi coverage - horizontal on ceiling vs vertical on Wal?

 

[jb747]

Does mounting orientation of the AP affect wifi coverage - horizontal on ceiling vs vertical on Wal?

I didn't try comparing the two orientations, though it ended up just about every way up as I moved it around trying different spots. They have ACs that are designed for wall mounting if you wanted to go that way.

It will become more interesting once I have some of the Pros to experiment with as well. I intend laying the entire network out on the floor before getting the sparkie to fit them.

We'll have to cut and move some of the current Cat 6 cables to make it all work...that's where the two smaller switches will be used. I don't know how much slack I've got in the cables, so need to investigate that, though I think I have a design that will work even if there is none.

I'll need at least two more power points, and two wall patch panels too. The sparkie bill will probably exceed the hardware cost.

 

[Quickstatus]

Terminating RJ45 cables is easy with a bit of practice if you are inclined
Solid cables for behind the wall, stranded cables as patch cables.

Is there a tool for making an RF assessment of your building to advise on position of AP and also 2.4 vs 5Ghz?

 

[coriander]

Is there a tool for making an RF assessment of your building to advise on position of AP and also 2.4 vs 5Ghz?

Our home is one of these tilt slab / preformed concrete wall / concrete floored multi-level townhouses. We have a Unifi Pro high up on the wall on each level roughly in centre of our home; our Android phones and my Dell XPS13 seem to switch seamlessly between 2.4G and 5G. Using the Android app "Wifi Analyzer" I've not discerned any noticeable signal strength difference between wall mounting and ceiling mounting the APs.

 

[coriander]

Separate questions: at work (western suburbs Melbourne) we currently have blistering ADSL speeds of 2.37/0.46 Mbps, plus hissing and crackling on all our incoming lines. We're about to have NBN via HFC made available later this year. The Optus cable runs above ground on the other side of the road on the electicity poles.

When they come to install, will we acquire a black cable dangling across the road and clipped to the building?
We have four incoming lines at the moment:will there be four separate NTDs? Only one will need internet.

When NBN cut off our copper, will we still have our lines in rotary? Do we need new telephones? New phone provider? I can't seem to find this info on the web. I'm thinking I'll sit and wait 12-18 months before jumping onto NBN and put up with dial-up speeds given some of the difficulties that have been reported here.

 

[ajw373]

Ajw373

What's the model number for the Uni solution that you have. Will look it up for my FW

Thanks in advance.

I have 2x UniFi UAP AC Lite, one upstairs and one downstairs. These connect to UniFi Edgemax POE switch/router. I then have a raspberry Pi that is the WiFI controller, though really once setup unless you do guest accounts via vouchers or want to monitor the network it's not really needed.

I then have an old Cisco switch for my hard wired devices.

I got this hardware about 18 months ago if I were to do it today I would use an 8 port UniFi switch rather than the edge max and use a UniFi USG as the router. The 8 port switch wasn't available back then. Likewise I would use a cloud key rather than raspberry Pi, again key is relatively new.

Overall been pretty happy with it and the cost was about $700 which is about the same as two high end WiFi routers. Main advantage is nice ceiling mounted access points, good LAN speed and the ability to use UniFI's roaming feature when moving between access points.

I've used UniFi at work too. Biggest network I've installed was 48 access points and 14 x24 port switches.

Overall it's a pretty decent product for the price range. Whilst it is marketed as enterprise grade it certainly isn't out of place in a residential house and is one of the cheaper products of its type out there.

 

[ajw373]

Does mounting orientation of the AP affect wifi coverage - horizontal on ceiling vs vertical on Wal?

Yes. The UniFi ceiling mount ones are designed for ceiling mount because they emit most of their their energy out with little directly above and down. Some people do use them mounted on walls but not ideal would be best in an open space rather than going through walls in this case.

UniFi do have outdoor units that are designed for vertical mount, but ugly inside though.

 

[ajw373]

Aw373 if you have a TESLA battery and recharge port......I want to buy your house !!!!!
How about a ubiuti gear install post please

See post above. No Tesla battery I am afraid. I do however have a c-bus lighting system if that helps! But house not for sale. Two years of heartache the wife and I have a house we are 95% happy with and not going through build process to get to 100% if it is indeed even possible.

 

[Quickstatus]

Separate questions: at work (western suburbs Melbourne) we currently have blistering ADSL speeds of 2.37/0.46 Mbps, plus hissing and crackling on all our incoming lines. We're about to have NBN via HFC made available later this year. The Optus cable runs above ground on the other side of the road on the electicity poles.

When they come to install, will we acquire a black cable dangling across the road and clipped to the building?
We have four incoming lines at the moment:will there be four separate NTDs? Only one will need internet.

When NBN cut off our copper, will we still have our lines in rotary? Do we need new telephones? New phone provider? I can't seem to find this info on the web. I'm thinking I'll sit and wait 12-18 months before jumping onto NBN and put up with dial-up speeds given some of the difficulties that have been reported here.

Yes HFC cable strung to house
Only one NTD as only one HFC cable to house
Once the copper is disconnected, the physical copper will still be there but it will be silent
Can use existing phones - plugged into provider supplied equipment that will come when you get NBn - see above few posts. Or as ajw373 and JB747 says you can get your own equipment

 

[Quickstatus]

Yes. The UniFi ceiling mount ones are designed for ceiling mount because they emit most of their their energy out with little directly above and down. Some people do use them mounted on walls but not ideal would be best in an open space rather than going through walls in this case.

UniFi do have outdoor units that are designed for vertical mount, but ugly inside though.

Thanks - so the radiation is radially in a cone shape?

My Apple Extreme has been really good but it does not really do well in a multi AP scenario and I have some dead spots which I would like to solve when I get the NBN FW

 

[ajw373]

Thanks - so the radiation is radially in a cone shape?

Yeah guess you could call it that but a squashed cone.

Not all brands are the same and most have available radiation maps to see how they go. For UbiFi go to the support section and search and you will find links to the FCC approvals page which has them.

And yeah not many do multiple access points well, well from a roaming perspective anyway. The wifi protocol was actually not designed for mobility in mind (surprised many) so doesn't have a handoff concept. So a device won't switch to a new access point until it drops off which means as you get close to the edge the data rate drops.

Companies like Ubiquiti have ways around it. UbiFi has zero handoff which allows the system to change which access point is handdling a client but all access points need to be on the same frequency for it to work. Which in residential situation isn't bad but in large scale environments a nightmare for total capacity.

 

[Quickstatus]

My wife told me today we should get microwave tested for leakage. I pointed out she should not stand too close to the Apple Extreme as it radiates same 2.4Ghz microwaves (same as Microwave oven).

Yes the Ubiquiti AP seems like it's the way to go back but do you need an always on server that runs the controller app?

 

[ajw373]

Yes the Ubiquiti AP seems like it's the way to go back but do you need an always on server that runs the controller app?

Negative. Only need a controller as they call it to configure, or if you are doing voucher based guest accounts or want to get stats. Neither of which would be a massive issue in a domestic environment. So could just use a PC to set it up and more or less forget. Though the cloud key controller doesn't cost too much and it is handy to have to keep an eye on things. One handy thing it does is monitors the RF environment so you can see how much congestion and interference you get from your neighbors. Too much time to choose a different channel.

 

[coriander]

Yes HFC cable strung to house
Can use existing phones - plugged into provider supplied equipment that will come when you get NBN

Ok, so there'll be four items of provider supplied equipment of some description one for each of the four lines. I find it a little confusing as acronym NBN is National Broadband Network and I only want broadband on one of the four lines.

 

[Quickstatus]

Ok, so there'll be four items of provider supplied equipment of some description one for each of the four lines. I find it a little confusing as acronym NBN is National Broadband Network and I only want broadband on one of the four lines.

Ahh sorry I did not understand. You have 4 separate copper phone lines running 4 telephones.
NBN as supplied by the usual RSP will only supply 1 VoIP phone number per NBN account.
To get 4 VoIP phones onto one NBN account you will need 4 VoIP phones each plugged into the network switch with power over Ethernet. Someone like Telstra will do it for you but $$$.
it seems that the likes of Telstra have quite secretive VoIP implementation - you have to use their equipment and involve them

 

[coriander]

Ahh sorry I did not understand. You have 4 separate copper phone lines running 4 telephones.

Correct. We have 3 lines in rotary (ie one listed phone number but up to three simultaneous incoming calls) feeding into a Commander phone system with the fourth line our comms line (was fax but who uses fax nowadays?) - our outgoing calls line and internet. The comms line -> NBN phone and internet is fine, it's the three business voice lines I was unsure about.

From various RSPs who've started bombarding us with "NBN is coming" brochures and emails, it appears that "unlimited data" will be $70 per month with only the speed being supplier-dependent (ie at that particular price point, Exetel is 100/40, TPG 25/5, iinet 12/2).

 

[moa999]

4 lines is harder - certainly you won't get four HFC cables. Telstra Business/ DOT will have a likely expensive solution.

Key question - do you currently have a PABX and do you want to keep it, and are you happy to replace handsets.
(Keeping equipment is possible and would require say 2x Cisco SPA112 ATA adapters (about $70 each and create 4 analogue lines) but you are better using this as an opportunity to go full IP.

My advice would be to get Internet with whoever you want, buy 4 new/used IP handsets and move to a VOIP provider like Telecube or Maxotel. Your bills are likely to drop substantially.

Recommended IP handsets would include Cisco, Yealink or Gigaset for cordless. New handsets from about $100 to $400 for colour screens/Bluetooth etc
(At home I've got a Cisco 504G that I got on eBay for $30)

Note that you will want a good router that can do QoS (quality of service) as the 150Kbps of TC-1 that NBN provide won't support 4 voice lines, so it will have to go as mixed traffic - albeit with such a coughpy ADSL service I suspect you don't use the internet a great deal.

 

[Quickstatus]

I rang Telstra on 1800993728 . Sales guy says 1 VoIP number per NBN account.
A possible workaround is as I suggest above but then use a VoIP service as suggested above by moa999
As to whether you can keep/port number I don't know