Labor vs Liberal NBN

and as for finding a solution faster than fibre optics and having a redundant country wide network, until we find something thats faster than the speed of light, fibre will be the king of the hill.

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Originally Posted by lukemcg

Thats a very good point you make, but the kicker here is this, the cabling system in your house is made of copper. Copper is susceptible to the basics like electromagnetic interference, resistance, heat, cold etc etc, then theres the technical problems with twisted pair cabling, near/far end crosstalk, return loss, attenuation, alien crosstalk etc.

The blue cable you speak of would most likely be Category 5 UTP (unshielded, twisted pair), now at time Cat5 was the thing like you say, then it was replaced by Cat5-E, then Cat6, Cat6-A and eventually Cat7. So like you said you invested in a cabling system that is now inferior, to upgrade you'd have to replace all that cable with something better, which would eventually get replaced. Realistically copper cabling networks will never run faster than 10Gigabits per second, we have pretty much hit the limit, and even at 10gbps, its out of reach for most networks due to the enormous cost of equipment to run at that speed.

Fibre is much different, its moving in leaps and bounds. Fibre is glass, and uses laser light. Nothing can hold it back apart from a labourers shovel. If you install a single mode fibre optic link between 2 buildings, as technology develops, there is no need to replace the cable, just replace the switch on each end. The fibre itself is just a really small glass tube for a light to bounce through. Now copper can have 1 voltage on it, and 1 voltage only, you cant put 240V and 100V on the same cable, it will explode in your face. Fibre on the other hand, you can bounce different wavelengths of light through the 1 core, 300+ times, each time making the system faster, and faster.

To put into perspective, the fastest network cabling (cat7) you can buy runs at about 40,000 bits per second (40 gigabits per second) and only for about 50 meters.

The current speed record for fibre was achieved by NEC/Corning, on a 12 core fibre., 10,000,000,000,000,000 bits per second (1 Petabit per second).

Dont get me wrong HSVREDSLED, I agree to an extent with what your saying, but from a technical point of view (i work with fibre optics every day) I can assure you it wont be outdated for a long long time.

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Cheers Luke...good points.

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Originally Posted by Plenty

This same old Liberal argument is pathetic, if it was a Liberal policy/roll out you would be all for it but as it's not and your stupid leaders have no better alternative plan you find any reason to knock it. The absolute joke of a proposal for FTTN by the Liberal government is just absurd, wow it "saves" us $15b now, yet in 10 years time when the copper is rooted and and the FTTN network is no longer capable of supporting our exponentially growing thirst for bandwidth we'll have to shell out $60b to install what is already planned and in construction now.

The hub you had installed being future proof, well that's a great example.... Look at how fast you as a family have progressed with unforeseen technology, right now 25-Mbps might suffice but in another 10-15 years we're without doubt going to need Gbps.

It's a great plan for us as people and our ability as a country to move with the rest of the world, get over the politics and get on board the more that do the less of a "waste" it is!

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Dont get me wrong. I am on board. I support about 60% of Labor policies. However I dont support unqualified amatuers in charge of billion dollar projects. I am way out of my depth with technical knowledge on this front and I am a big fan of SOL so Luke has almost won me over.

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Originally Posted by HSVREDSLED

About 8/9 years ago, we built our house. I plan to die in this house so I thought, do it right do it once as many have stated here. So to 'future proof' we were offered a home 'hub' deal. We were told than in ten years time you would need a computer in every room, the kitchen, home theatre...everywhere. At the time we had one computer, and a decent laptop was $2500 plus. So we put in this u beaut hub system. 100's and 100's of metres of blue cable everywhere through the house. Outlets in nearly every room. Fast forward a few years and the kids get older, and we look at getting more computers and then we are introduced to WI FI. Forward to current day and we have 4 computers, four smartphones, WI FI printer, 2 Ipads, 2 Ipad minis and guess what? The 'future proof' home hub system has NEVER been used. So what the point of this rant? I'm sure there are techno gurus on here who say the NBN is the best thing and future proof etc. Well a mere 9 years ago, I invested in considerable infrastructure in my house and now it is obsolete and never used. (Sounds like a desal plant) Who is to say that when the NBN is rolled out, we wont have a have plasma optic plutonium cable developed that is 1000X faster than fibre optic? Now this whole issue is compounded by massive blowouts in the estimated cost of the NBN. I am all for forward thinking and development, but sometimes, you gotta throttle back for common sense sake and not just continually blow billions and billions of dollars day by day and be brainwashed into thinking this waste is acceptable because it is not and the more that is wasted now, the harder it will be for future governments to claw back.

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My house is full of Ethernet and I use it extensively even with my junk 10Mbps ADSL. Wifi is severely limited once multiple users are involved in high bandwidth solutions. If I stream Terrestrial HDTV to one WiFi device i've almost halved my capacity ~100Mbit... This is LAN usage forget the wider internet for a sec. Add in a high def movie to another wifi device from my ethernet connected NAS drive and its done. Try to make a video call and it simply isn't going to happen as I've exhausted my 100Mbit WiFi network with only devices.

But because I have a gigabit ethernet home, all the fixed devices are wired. Even my Printer, PS3, Laptop which all support WiFi, I have connected to ethernet. That way only the mobile devices are connecting to the limited bandwidth WiFi meaning everything can go to town on the whole LAN. Of course thats providing they are only using my high bandwidth LAN devices Elgato Netstream TV tuner, NAS for stored HD Video. Connect to the wider internet and yeah Wifi alone would be fine, as I'm stuck on a junk 10mbit ADSL2+ connection.

Come under 12 months when 1gbps NBN plans will be available you'll be hard pressed to find a WiFi network that could ever use it. Even a single gigabit ethernet connected PC will struggle unless its got an SSD as HDD's won't use it (excluding RAID). But have a house full of people streaming HD Video, hosting large files, cloud computing simultaneously, then you might get near maxing out 1Gbps fibre connection.

Even for you with your probably on CAT 5 which maxes out at 100Mbit. Thats 100Mbit per connection. Not 100Mbit decided by every device connected to WiFi. So while yeah your home is a bit behind ethernet standards. Its still far better than Wifi once you start using multiple devices that add congestion.

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Originally Posted by macca_779

My house is full of Ethernet and I use it extensively even with my junk 10Mbps ADSL. Wifi is severely limited once multiple users are involved in high bandwidth solutions. If I stream Terrestrial HDTV to one WiFi device i've almost halved my capacity ~100Mbit... This is LAN usage forget the wider internet for a sec. Add in a high def movie to another wifi device from my ethernet connected NAS drive and its done. Try to make a video call and it simply isn't going to happen as I've exhausted my 100Mbit WiFi network with only devices.

But because I have a gigabit ethernet home, all the fixed devices are wired. Even my Printer, PS3, Laptop which all support WiFi, I have connected to ethernet. That way only the mobile devices are connecting to the limited bandwidth WiFi meaning everything can go to town on the whole LAN. Of course thats providing they are only using my high bandwidth LAN devices Elgato Netstream TV tuner, NAS for stored HD Video. Connect to the wider internet and yeah Wifi alone would be fine, as I'm stuck on a junk 10mbit ADSL2+ connection.

Come under 12 months when 1gbps NBN plans will be available you'll be hard pressed to find a WiFi network that could ever use it. Even a single gigabit ethernet connected PC will struggle unless its got an SSD as HDD's won't use it (excluding RAID). But have a house full of people streaming HD Video, hosting large files, cloud computing simultaneously, then you might get near maxing out 1Gbps fibre connection.

Even for you with your probably on CAT 5 which maxes out at 100Mbit. Thats 100Mbit per connection. Not 100Mbit decided by every device connected to WiFi. So while yeah your home is a bit behind ethernet standards. Its still far better than Wifi once you start using multiple devices that add congestion.

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So sounds like good news? Serious question...not a smart ass post..

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Originally Posted by lukemcg

and as for finding a solution faster than fibre optics and having a redundant country wide network, until we find something thats faster than the speed of light, fibre will be the king of the hill.

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The speed of light isn't the benefit of fibre. Its the spectrum and PRI that light can be transmitted at that make it so capable. It doesn't suffer from noise like copper does as the pulse frequencies increase. Then there is the fact that fibre networks today are only using one colour.. Think about how many colours there are. Thats why its future proof

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Originally Posted by HSVREDSLED

So sounds like good news?

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Yeah it is. Now I'm not the norm with how I use my home network but sooner rather than later when things like the NBN become the norm. Houses like yours will come into their own. You were just a bit to early to the party.

Ethernet has got cheaper too. I did my house with 10 ports for under $300 doing all the work myself. It would cost a couple of grand easily for a contractor to come in and do it. But on a new house with no walls, its alot easier and cheaper.

macca if you cabled your house up and you're not a licenced cabler (or had one supervising) what you did is highly illegal FYI, like doing the electrical wiring yourself.

Plenty of good points raised ITT, contention ratios and upstream backhaul will be the key with better connections to the premises; this is why I have Internode as a DSL provider at home rather than Bigpond etc, despite my service coming through a Telstra Wholesale port.

Of course with Mildura being one of the safest Coalition seats in the country we've missed out on another 3 year rollout plan despite extensive lobbying, not to mention the amount of backhaul that comes into town via Telstra, Regional Broadband Project, Victrack etc etc, thankfully within the city limits there is HFC to tide us over, but they are not allowed to expand it due to the NBN.

Being a regional centre, there are heaps and heaps of businesses and government agencies that make use of things like Video Conferencing - the current options are mostly still ISDN based, or like our work, spend thousands a month on a Telstra Fibre link to our other sites.

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Originally Posted by HSVREDSLED

However I dont support unqualified amatuers in charge of billion dollar projects.

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Mike Quigley started his 36 year career in Alcatel research and development, and progressively took on more senior executive positions including being President and Chief Executive Officer of Alcatel USA.

In 2003, Mr Quigley became President of Alcatel's Fixed Communications Group in Paris, responsible for infrastructure products, including network switches and optical communications systems. In 2005, he was appointed Alcatel's President and Chief Operating Officer, overseeing 55,000 staff and operations in 130 countries.

Mr Quigley was educated at the University of NSW and graduated with a Bachelor of Science majoring in Mathematics and Physics, and a Bachelor of Engineering in Telecommunications.


Dont think its fair to say Mike Quigley is an "Unqualified Amateur". In fact, i would REALLY like to know who you recommend to take his place? From everything ive read about Mike, he is one of the very best in the industry (on a global level).

The technology (fibre) is sound, and that is the benefit. Just like copper once upon a time was suitable for 56K and is now able to do 1Gbps, fibre speeds will keep increasing (germans are playing with 24Tbps connections now).

My point is, 80-90% of Australians don't need the speed that the cost warrants.

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Originally Posted by bozodos

macca if you cabled your house up and you're not a licenced cabler (or had one supervising) what you did is highly illegal FYI, like doing the electrical wiring yourself.

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As far as I understand it, a license is only required if the patching merges with existing comms infrastructure (i.e. putting in a patch panel which interacts with phone lines). Cat5/6 which starts and terminates without touching phone lines is fine. Similarly, as long as the phone line (which has been installed with a license) terminates at a modem and THEN uses privately installed cat5 it's fine as the modem is subject to various safety requirements etc. Problem is, it's damn near impossible to find the actual legal documentation on the subject so nobody seems to "actually know" the nitty-gritty details. I suspect there haven't been amendments to consider fibre (no voltage) either.

I don't know if the law has been tested with NBN though (I reckon you could even fight it on cat5 cabling, just need someone to set the precedent). From a network standpoint the NBN box essentially is the "modem" so you're not actually interacting directly with public infrastructure (which is why doing your own electrical is a BIG no-no).

not the actual legislation but it seems to be fairly straightforward here:

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_1455#16

Regardless, you're an idiot to do any sort of cabling without the proper sort of equipment to test it (i.e. a Fluke)

And frankly I don't care what the legalities are. Technically I'm not licenced. But I am qualified to work with data and power transmission on other applications where the standards far exceed household regs. Aircraft

I have no confidence in supposed licenced installers anyway. Seen their shit at work with data cabling.

Even my own house prior to me buying it had the phone lines (even the black main line), TV lines running shortest path with no care to neaten it up or avoid it being crushed from people walking on it. The power is ok but some of the terminations leave me shaking my head. Hence I want it done right, I do it myself. I have the skills so I use them. Can't change a light globe without a licence these days. Ain't nobody got time for that.

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Originally Posted by bozodos

not the actual legislation but it seems to be fairly straightforward here:

http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_1455#16

Regardless, you're an idiot to do any sort of cabling without the proper sort of equipment to test it (i.e. a Fluke)

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The standards are set for a qualified telecommunications cable installer, they are set to protect you as a licensed cable installer and the property owner. If the cables are not to be terminated into a network post telecommunications boundary ie. From the router to a personal computer, a licensed tradesman is not required.

Basically there is no set rules for non-energised LAN cables that are used after the Tele boundary. Saying that it's better to get a skilled/qualified installer but if your competent enough to terminate UTP or STP by yourself then i would do it myself.

Your do any Network Engineering course and they teach you how to terminate and run cable both in domestic and commercial environments and is quite legal unless it's energised or a direct connection to a provider.

A $5 cable tester from ebay will check the terminations as well as my $1100 CIQ-100 tester in a personal home use environment.

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Originally Posted by Plenty

The standards are set for a qualified telecommunications cable installer, they are set to protect you as a licensed cable installer and the property owner. If the cables are not to be terminated into a network post telecommunications boundary ie. From the router to a personal computer, a licensed tradesman is not required.

Basically there is no set rules for non-energised LAN cables that are used after the Tele boundary. Saying that it's better to get a skilled/qualified installer but if your competent enough to terminate UTP or STP by yourself then i would do it myself.

Your do any Network Engineering course and they teach you how to terminate and run cable both in domestic and commercial environments and is quite legal unless it's energised or a direct connection to a provider.

A $5 cable tester from ebay will check the terminations as well as my $1100 CIQ-100 tester in a personal home use environment.

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I just used my laptop and did a local file transfer to validate speeds at each port.