Broadband Flat Solution

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Wify

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#75734 22-Jan-2011 12:45

Hello everybody :) exceptionally low-level geek here looking for help from more knowledgeable geeks ;)

I have posted a thread already HERE about my flatting situation. I misunderstood a lot, and the discussion ended up getting broken up. You all had great answers but I am slightly confused when reading the thread because of a whole number of reasons, LOL ;) so I thought I would re-post about this, but give a much better overview in the OP (long post warning!).

My Flatting Situation

>I am living in a sleepout located about 1.5 metres away from the main house.

>The sleepout has a [i]telephone line[/i] running through into it from the main house. I'm not sure what this means; I think its just a telephone cable or something.

>I will be living with 5 other people in the main house. They will probably be girls. As a girl myself I know my understanding of broadband is already well-beyond that of [i]most[/i] girls, so they probably won't know much and I'll have control over it.

>I currently live by myself and use 20gb a month. I would like to retain this 20gb to myself.

>I have 2 computers, one is a laptop one is a desktop. Both have WiFi.

>They will require a landline so that they can use their current phones. We will need cheap toll calls I am guessing.

>I want my own phone line, so that my friends can call me (I am thinking a digital phone line might be best here?)

>I don't think I'll be able to get an ethernet cable running between the two houses

Is there a way to limit how much broadband the house gets to use and how much I get to use? That way if they go over, I'm not on dialup! Thats my biggest concern =/ Then I could go with my current provider like SNAP or Orcon, and just split up our bandwidth :)

raytaylor

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#429935 22-Jan-2011 17:27

On the front page of the geekzone website is the recent blog entries. One of the guys is writing up a series on flatting and usage limits for flatmates. You can configure a special modem that will do the job.

My solution is just go onto slingshots all you can eat plan. The speed is okay and if you hit something that they have cached (more than 5 slingshot users downloading the file / youtube video / website) then it comes down super fast.

Slingshot have $140 a month for a landline and all you can eat broadband, and you can set up toll call pin numbers. If you try to make a toll call, you get asked for your personal pin number so you can tell which flatmate made the call when the bill arrives.

In the main house, you will want to install a wireless router with an external antenna. You can then buy a bigger antenna ($20 off trademe) to extend the coverage out to your sleepout if it doesnt reach.

Ray Taylor

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Wify

27 posts

Geek

#430059 22-Jan-2011 23:24

Hi! Thanks for the reply :-)

I considered this, but users on here seemed adamant that this was an awful idea. The speeds were described as unbearably slow, and downloads impossible, and all I require is 50kb/s. Someone said that if one person was downloading a large file, our internet would crawl down to dialup speed :-(

I will definitely though read the blog! Thanks!

raytaylor

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#430070 22-Jan-2011 23:57

50kbps is average. 100kbps is typical. I would really only recomend it to people in your flatting situation. I have a 2mbit SHDSL connection in town but at home only have the slingshot all you can eat.

The good thing with all their caching is that when someone downloads large files, you can continue to surf and watch videos without a problem.

Below is me and my flatmates internet usage today.

Note that between 0:00 and 12:30 I was downloading uncached (not popular) torrents
- At about 3am you can see someone woke up and went online to watch what i guess would be 'videos' and there was a spike from the extra priority slingshot place on surfing.
Then in the afternoon when i turned off the torrenting its just general surfing.
In the evening, one of them started downloading some popular tv shows and hit the slingshot caches so they came in pretty fast. This is a 5min interval display and so if someone was downloading for 3 mins at 300kbps then it wouldnt show up on here unless it crossed a 5 min marker.

Again I wouldnt recomend it to people other than those in flatting situations like me but because they manage it well, it does mean you can download and surf at the same time.

Ray Taylor

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Wify

27 posts

Geek

#430078 23-Jan-2011 00:23

Hmm. I might consider it more then! It'd be great to not have to worry about our internet bill :-) but we would be unfortunately locked into a 24 month contract, and that really sucks :-( but I will definitely think on it. Right now I was looking at a big bandwidth Orcon plan. I'm willing to invest the money (its still only 1/3 when split between us of what I was paying) but I don't know if my flatmates, whom I haven't even met yet, will be willing.

It'll only be an extra $10 a month over this, but people like their money for alcohol and coffee :-P

raytaylor

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#430079 23-Jan-2011 00:26

Have you ever gone flatting before?
The problem will be someone who doesnt know about computers will have a torrent program downloading stuff and not have a clue about usage because at home with their parents they have been on a telecom 3gb plan that limits you to 64k thereafter.

Its a real eye opener when you have to split the broadband bill and dont know who has used what, or if someone decides to download 40gb of stuff without realising or admiting it.

That router that the blog was talking about would help if you went on the 60gb orcon plan as it tracks each users usage.

Ray Taylor

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Wify

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#430082 23-Jan-2011 00:43

No I haven't flatted before. I've been managing my own internet/phone connection. Its great that it'll now be a whole lot cheaper, but its also bad because yeah, there is that people factor. I'd just be waiting for someone to torrent a HD movie and then leave it on to seed -_-

So you can stream youtube without lag? I have iSky so I'm hoping to use that :-) Great to hear general browsing is snappy. Are torrents also cached? Is it true that RS and such is unuseable? If you want to occasionally download a large file, will it be able to handle that OK (as in, 50kb/s) or is it just luck of the draw? I also intend to get VOIP. Do you think the connection will be strong enough for that? For reference, I was previously on bigtime when it was going. I honestly didn't mind the speeds much usually. If I wanted something downloaded I would just leave it going all-night. What is important is that I can do that and it not cut out, and that youtube works.

The router looks tricky to install. I probably could. I wonder how it compares to hacking a Wii in terms of difficulty, LOL.

Thanks! :)

raytaylor

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#430092 23-Jan-2011 03:21

It will handle 50kB/s but rapid share i dont know.
Torrents during the day go about 100kB/s but on the offpeak when the cheaper plans become unmetered they slow down to about 30-40kB/s

However if its cached (they cache http and torrents) then it will come down at 100kB/s to your max line speed depending upon how heavily the cache is being used.
Slingshots torrent cache is really smart. If multiple slingshot users are downloading the same torrent then it will copy it to the cache hard drives, then advertise to other slingshot users as a new peer and say its got 99.9% of the file and then begin multicasting the pieces to each customer stuff as it goes through the system.

Probably shouldnt go into too much indepth as talking about copyrighted material is against geekzone TOS but basically the pirate bay's top 100 and eztv's popular shows come through really fast according to my flatmates - who like to download authorised freely avaliable content from those sites.

Ray Taylor

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Ragnor

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#430370 23-Jan-2011 23:20

Flatting internet situations are always *fun*.

It's also worth pointing out the expensive/non sharing option:

The phone cable into most houses usually contains 2 pairs of wires (commonly 1 spare that's used for 2nd phone line when needed).

This means you can have one phone + adsl service over the 1st pair into the house and another completely different phone service + adsl over the 2nd pair.

Some wiring work would need to be done at the ETP (external temination point, aka the point where the phone cable comes into the house) and reconfiguring of the wiring to make sure line #1 only goes to the main house phone jacks/sockets and line #2 goes to the sleep out phone jacks/sockets.

If possible, take a quick look at where the phone cable comes into the house and find the ETP.. see if you can see where things go, how many phone jacks and whether they are daisy chained off each other or wired back to the ETP in a star layout.

Wify

27 posts

Geek

#430935 25-Jan-2011 11:35

Thanks for your help guys :)

I think I can manage us sharing broadband for now. I have learned more info about my flatmates; as expected, they are 4 english/drama students, who apparently know nothing about the internet.

What I found is I have the proper phone jack in my room. So I will house the router/modem in my sleepout. I have a good enough one right now that it can cover the entire property with my wireless connection (it is a TP brand, only 6 months old). They won't care about having amazing internet access either. Then I, the one who actually cares, can easily maintain it, have full control over it and can use a wire connection (woot!)

I will also go on Orcon if my flatmates agree (dunno how much they're looking to spend per month) and see how we go with a capped amount of broadband. If that fails, we'll switch to telecom, since Orcon don't have a disconnection fee. Alternatively if tolls aren't an issue I'll keep with my current provider Snap so I don't have to pay the disconnection fee -_-