Category: Fixed

1TB Internet Plans Make Their Debut

You could be forgiven for missing this due to the coverage of the Australian federal election but iiNet, iPrimus and TPG have begun to offer internet plans offering at least 1TB (yes, that’s 1000GB). The plans are fairly similar but the breakdown is as follows: iiNet: 1TB quota (upload inclusive), 500GB peak usage, 500GB off-peak usage, 24 …

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Net Filtering vs NBN – What’s it Gonna Be?

As the last few years (and particularly the last few months) have unfolded, we have seen the mandatory web filtering debate get knocked around the press whilst the NBN (only now coming online in a few towns conveniently before an election) got its fair share of airtime. Apart from the issue of credibility and electability …

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Converged vs Standalone Devices – Which is Best?

Particularly over the last decade, we have witnessed convergence of technology at any increasing rate. Ten years ago, mobile phones did little more than make and receive calls and SMS. MMS was later introduced while camera and video functionality started to appear as entry level features. Mobile phones have also turned into mobile broadband modems …

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1Gbps NBN – No Surprise

In an announcement today by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, it was spruiked that the NBN would be capable of achieving speeds of up to 1Gbps. This is up by a factor of ten over the 100Mbps speeds originally promised by the Government. What should come as no surprise is that fibre has incredible capacity for …

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Share Cabled Internet Over Wi-Fi

If you have been following the blog over the last few days you will know that I have made way way around the world to Denmark. Along the way, I have made some observations and also overcome common obstacles presented to travelers on longer journeys. Well, I have come across another issue that can affect …

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The Days of HDMI may be Numbered – All Hail HDBaseT!

As part of my daily browsing, I came across an interesting article regarding HDMI and a new proposed standard with the moniker of “HDBaseT”. The networking gurus amongst us would know that we already have 10BASE-T (10Mbps Ethernet over twisted pair), 100BASE-T (100Mbps Fast Ethernet) and 1000BASE-T (1Gbps Ethernet). Given those standards and naming conventions, …

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Should Broadband Become a Utility Service?

These days, everyone should have access to electricity, water and a telephone line (although I have a brother-in-law of mine that doesn’t have drinkable tap water). Back in the days of analogue and digital dialup modem technology, the telephone line was not only there for emergencies and keeping in touch with people but also opened …

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SUPER – A Great Audio & Video Conversion Utility

SUPER (Main Screen)

Have you ever been caught in a situation where you need to have an audio or video file in a specific file? It could be one of those “just in case” things as you never know when you might need it. Anyway, I was caught in a situation this week where the CIO wanted to …

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TPG Unlimited 24×7 – One Month On

A month ago, I wrote a blog entry regarding TPG’s introduction of their new ADSL2+ Unlimited 24×7 plan at selected exchanges. TPG is still rolling out the availability of this plan at exchanges as it requires the provisioning for suitable backhaul (presumably using the recently acquired PIPE as the, umm, pipe). So how did the …

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IPTV – The Future of Multicast Content Delivery

At home in our living room, we have our LCD TV hooked up to the Foxtel IQ2 (which is a fantastic device by the way) but there are times when we both want to watch something at the same time and time shifting is simply not an option. One such case tonight was when I …

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