Telstra's news server is not for direct access via a newsreader.
http://www.direct.bigpond.com/isps/isps.cfm#news
It is for connecting another server to. Since you are paying for all
the traffic you bring into your service, this will cost more than
simply browsing the articles you want to read on an external server.
For casual news access, perhaps some paid-for service from the US
would be better. One such NNTP or web service is:
http://www.newsguy.com/overview.htm
For accessing picture files in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.xxx, I
think by far the best approach is the web-based service:
http://www.pictureview.com
I have had my Big Pond Direct Modem service since May 1997 and I have
been thoroughly happy with it. I have a separate phone line. Make
sure the line is a real phone line, not going by a pair-gain system
with other services via a single-pair - that gives max 24 kbps or so -
my phone and fax lines are on such a box. I pay rental on the phone
line and local calls every week or so (actually, every two weeks or so
recently) when the call drops out. I found that my USR 56K modem made
all the difference - earlier modems had much higher rates of call
dropout.
I have a RH6.1 Pentium 100MHz machine running a packet filtering
script to keep NFS and Windows (Samba) traffic purely within the LAN
and not to or from the outside world. I run my domain's name server
and mail server, as well as a small web server. I run Majordomo too.
Telstra Internet gives me 32 IP addresses and my machine routes all
but its own address to my 100MBps switched LAN for several other Linux
and Windows machine.
Neither Telstra's nor Optus' HFC cable Internet services can provide
either fixed IP addresses or subnet ranges of IP addresses.
There have been brief times - minutes and tens of minutes rather than
hours - when I believe the Telstra service has been unavailable,
probably due to them rebooting the router which handles two E1 lines
of 30 ISDN / modem calls each - of which my service is one.
There may have been one or two occassions when I thought the router
was not routing properly, and I rebooted my machine . . . but I can't
remember the details.
Over nearly three years, the total downtime would be less than three
hours.
The connection to the Net seems to be good in general, but at peak
times it sometimes seems a little slower. I haven't investigated in
detail.
My monthly bills are $25 to about $55 maximum - just lots of mail,
general web surfing and one or two small mailing lists.
The traffic cost is $0.19 per 1,000,000 bytes for incoming traffic.
There's no charge on outgoing unless it is relatively large. There is
a minimum monthly fee of $20.
The people who run this service are the Telstra Internet backbone
people, not the retail crew for residential or business. To them, you
are an ISP or corporate customer. There's no help desk, marketing
hype etc. In my occasional phone contact regarding suspected faults,
they have been generally on the ball. This used to be AARNET until it
became part of Telstra. I understand that in all this, Geoff Huston
has been at the technical helm. They are a small outfit, based in
Canberra - a safe distance from the Telstra Bullshit Castle in
Exhibition St Melbourne and no doubt a similar thing in Sydney.
I have never had any account glitches other than my own misplacing of
bills.
They offer a backup nameserver and mail server - both of which I use.
I haven't investigated the cacheing or satellite delivery options - my
traffic costs are not high enough for me to worry about. I haven't
even bothered to run SQUID here, though arguably I should.
I don't have an exact figure, but the last time I checked my modem ran
at around 50 kbps incoming. I don't remember the upstream rate, but I
figure it is around 33.6 kbps.
With ISDN, is there compression as there is on a modem? With emails
and HTML pages this compression works wonders and boosts downstream
speeds well over 64kbps - so the benefits of paying all that extra
money for ISDN line rental and its long-held calls (I can't remember
what the scheme is these days, but it is $thousands per year) are not
obvious to me, unless you need several 64K channels together for one
set of IP addresses.
This direct modem service makes sense if you are in a local call zone
from major cities or many regional centres:
http://www.direct.bigpond.com/summary/aboutnet.cfm
I think there is some scheme whereby calls can be redirected from one
intermediate number, and still not be timed. This costs something,
but it expands the untimed call range significantly.
- Robin
===============================================================
Robin Whittle [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.firstpr.com.au
Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Australia
First Principles Research and expression: Consulting and
technical writing. Music. Internet music
marketing. Telecommunications. Consumer
advocacy in telecommunications, especially
privacy. M-F relationships. Kinetic sculpture.
Real World Electronics and software for music including:
Interfaces Devil Fish mods for the TB-303, Akai sampler
memory and Csound synthesis software.
===============================================================
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