* Ger Vloothuis writes to Rowan_Crowe, on Sunday September 28 1997
   at 11:40:

 RC>> If you've got the ca$h then think about a permanent link...
 RC>> Telstra charge $500 install once off, then 19c per Mb inbound. No
 RC>> monthly charges, just pure volume charging.

 GV> I am looking at ways to get a permanent link for the place where I
 GV> work. We have UUCP dialup only. This has served us well over the last
 GV> years but the amount of email traffic and web access through other
 GV> lines starts to get large enough to look at a direct connect. What is
 GV> this $500 deal called? Is it ISDN? Or is it a reserved modem line that
 GV> you have to dialup from your end? What call charges do you incurr
 GV> then? Is it only 25 cent and you let the connection sit for days until
 GV> it drops?

It's a standard 33.6k modem, with a dedicated line at Telstra's end. You
pay 25c per local call, and the calls last anything up to 11 days (in my
experience). It's inconsistent so it's difficult to put a figure on how
much phone calls will cost you.

Here are the logs of the last couple of connections from my home network to
give you an idea:

Sat Sep 20 18:53:35 EST 1997 link UP, remote address is 203.20.114.2
[richmond.sensation.net.au]
Fri Sep 26 04:37:02 EST 1997 link DOWN
Fri Sep 26 04:40:31 EST 1997 link UP, remote address is 203.20.114.2
[richmond.sensation.net.au]
Sun Sep 28 15:20:53 EST 1997 link DOWN
Sun Sep 28 15:30:37 EST 1997 link UP, remote address is 203.20.114.2
[richmond.sensation.net.au]

6 and 2 days.

You can also pay $350 per month to get unlimited megs, but you would have
to be sure you would be downloading more than 1.8Gb per month because it's
an ADVANCE payment for that month. Even if you do less than $350 worth of
download, you still pay $350. (BTW, one of my clients is averaging a
staggering 2.6Gb/$500 of traffic per month at the moment!)

 RC>> What about a cable modem?

 GV> Looked at it. The Telstra cable modem seems pretty expensive and the
 GV> word is that others cannot access your end through the cable modem.
 GV> So
 GV> you cannot run a mailserver or webserver or FTP server at your end.
 GV> You can only initiate the connections through a Telstra proxy server.

Telstra are apparently removing their firewall, but I can understand their
concerns. I suggested a cable modem to Tony to use as an alternative dialup
connection, rather than a replacement for a permanent modem or ISDN
connection.

Cable modems also have IP addresses dynamically assigned, and use
proprietary software. 35c per Mb...

Cheers.


... rowan{at}sensation.net.au  |  http://www.rowan.sensation.net.au/
---