> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Robin Whittle
> Sent: Thursday, 13 January 2000 13:14
> To: Dave Fitch; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [SLUG] OT: internet from telstra BP Direct
>
>
> 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.
This is not correct. Telstra have a news feed that can be accessed using a
normal news reader. I do this every day.
> 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.
It is not possible to require Telstra to give you a non pair-gain line. I
know - I've tried many times!
> My monthly bills are $25 to about $55 maximum - just lots of mail,
> general web surfing and one or two small mailing lists.
My months bills are more in the range of $500, but then I have two people
working full-time and spend 80% of their time on the 'Net.
> 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.
For incoming traffic, you can reduce this to $0.12c / MByte by using
Telstra's proxy server.
> 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 also found them to be quite good. And available 24 hours per day, too
> I have never had any account glitches other than my own misplacing of
> bills.
Telstra BPD billing has been fine. Telstra OnRamp billing has been
incredibly crappy.
> 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.
There is no compression with ISDN.
OnRamp XPress costs $425 per month for a permanent 128k connection.
Regards,
Craig Southeren
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