Since moving in at North Melbourne, I signed us up to iiNet’s new broadband2 light plan. What makes this special is that iiNet have been installing their own DSLAMS in the close-to-city areas, including North Melbourne, and I happen to live about 1km from our exchange.

Since ADSL has been available in Australia, Telstra have regulated the speed to a maximum of 1500k. One of the reasons this may be is due to the distance limitations of ADSL, and customer expectations. The following graph from Internode sums up the speed and distance issue pretty well.

The graph shows that after about 2km, the speed of ADSL1 begins to drop. At about 4.8km, the signal drops to a max of 1500k. ADSL2 and ADSL2+ is a whole other kettle of fish…

So, iiNet and other ISP’s decided to install their own DSL infrastructure, and open these speeds right up. What I don’t understand is, why wouldn’t Telstra open their speed up if their infrastructure supports it? Even people between 2km and 4.8km would benefit from the speed increase!

Last night, I got an SMS from iiNet to tell me that my ADSL was activated. After some technical issues, I got it running, and it was FAST! I was downloading a gentoo live-cd, using a multithread downloading app called prozilla, using 16 threads, I downloaded the ISO at an average of 850k/s. It was bitchin!

And therefore, I believe that everyone should move to the city