[plug] Telstra Bigpond Cable

[craig at postnewspapers.com.au]

> Is anyone here using Bigpong's Cable access with Linux?
That's me!

> Any good stories / bad stories?
Both.

Telstra are upping prices - again. Some people have been bitten _twice_
by this. They're telling me to either [1] pay $20/month more for the
same service (ok, uncapped but not relevant here) or [2] pay the same
for a lesser service. They say 'but we removed the speed caps' but I
DONT'T CARE, they haven't given me the option of hanging on to my
existing plan until contract termination. So I'm less than happy with
them policy- and behavior-wise.

OHOH their network service has been acceptable. Not exemplary, there
have been problems, but most of them I've been able to bypass by tricks
like using a non-telstra secondary DNS server and a local caching DNS,
or swearing until they go away :-/
Overall, though, there have been very few problems, the network is fast
(occasionally high-latency on busy periods but that doesn't affect me
much, the throughput sticks to 25KBps-30KBps reliably.)

So if you're looking for a decent service who'll charge you a couple of
hundred for installation and then try to screw you for more money in
another month or two, go for Telstra.

</bitter_rave>

Oh, and a tip: if you do go for cable, BE SURE to download the program
"BPALogin" if you want to run a linux firewall, or have your linux box
connected directly. Otherwise the link will come up and the gateway will
drop all packets for forwarding from you. BPA Login authenticates the
connection using the Telstra protocols, opening up the gateway/router.

They won't install unless you have a computer running windows. Full
stop. I had a long-running battle about this because the idiot I first
spoke to told me the techs would do the hardware install, a test using
their laptop, and let me do the software if I wanted a linux install.
Pfft. They actually take away the hardware again, even if their laptop
test goes ok, unless they can install the software on a Windows computer and see it working. *arrggh*.

In summary: Telstra are scum, but if you can live with that the service
is quite good.

-- 
Craig Ringer
IT Manager, POST Newspapers
http://www.postnewspapers.com.au/    http://oberthur.dyndns.org/~craig/
GPG Key Fingerprint: AF1C ABFE 7E64 E9C8 FC27  C16E D3CE CDC0 0E93 380D
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