I recently shifted, although still very much in rural Victoria I am now in ADSL range of an exchange (just over 5000 metres cable distance). I am considering getting the Telstra S+ bundle, this being a phone and ADSL broadband with a 50g alocation a month on a 24 month contract.
I am fairly happy with this bundle it will save me around $4 to 500 dollars a year and giving __much__ higher data allowance.
Is there any issues with this, will it work OK into a Linux system. For instance I found with Virgin moble broadband this system had to be enabled on a Windows system, something I do not have with network access.
If it helps I have a small network of 4 machines one of which is the internet access box with a "do not speak unless spoken to" fire wall set up. ie firewall is set up so that only external incoming connections that are related to outgoing connections are allowed. NO machine is on all the time, so the ADSL line will mostly be connected to machine thats switched off.
Lindsay _______________________________________________ Hi Lindsay We use Linux for everything, 2 Fedora 20 boxes and 3 Ubuntu laptops and are 5Km from the exchange, have been using Telstra 12g ADSL allocation for some years. Line speed drops to 0.2 K/sec quite frequently because the exchange was modified for some 100 subscribers and they have over 2000 signed up so their infrastructure is unable to cope, absolute crap. We may get NBN in 20 years or so so they won't fix the problem.
May I suggest, check with Telstra how many subscribers their exchange can manage and how many in the surrounding exchange connected area are using ADSL through that exchange. They sell 1500k/sec or better but at the very best I get 640k/sec for max 2 minutes a month, not all at once though, variously 120k/sec and frequently as above 1 to 0.2 k/sec or nothing for hours at a time. Talk to Telstra technicians in Melbourne or Sydney- not the help desk, Asian or Indian call centre staff go completely blank if you mention Linux. Apart from the rant above, I have no problems. Roger