Rubénerd!

In a move that has shocked those in the industry, Internode has been purchased by iinet for AU$180 million. Those overseas may know iinet as the Australian ISP being sued for the "alleged" copyright infringement of its customers.

Perhaps because it's the hardest night of the year for the remainder of my family, or that I feel Australian internet is terrible anyway, but I find it hard to be as upset and outraged by this news as much of my online Australian IT cohort. I suppose rearranging the deckchairs may well prove to be an entertaining and distracting sideshow in the coming days though.

Having lived most of my life in countries where they don't do this, all internet service providers in Australia automatically suck and are Epic Fail because they employ nonsensical (and maddening!) bandwidth shaping, but out of all of them Internode sucks the least. Aside from one disconnection issue they've been fantastic since I started studying in Australia again late last year. Their technical support team are lightning fast and very helpful, so I have no qualm giving their new blog a plug.

Dear Internode Customer,

Internode has just launched its new public blog site:

http://www.internode.on.net/blog

The site launch commences with our coverage of the Global Green Challenge (http://www.globalgreenchallenge.com.au).

Internode is the major commercial sponsor of the event, and we are taking the Internode Tesla Roadster from Darwin to Adelaide in the 'Eco Challenge' category.

The Tesla Roadster is an exemplar of the way that 'green' and 'high performance' can go together - just like Internode.

We hope you enjoy our coverage of the event as it unfolds.

We plan to expand the blog site into other areas of interest to Internode customers in the future.

Regards,

The Internode Team

For the first time in weeks I now have a home internet connection and a working MacBook Pro upon which to use it! It's true you don't know what you've got until you lose it!

So here's what happened. On Friday last week I contacted Telstra and finally managed to get our home phone line reconnected; why it was disconnected is a long and boring story that I'm in too much of a good mood to relay. Despite having a working telephone line, our Internode home ADSL connection we signed up for in August last year still wasn't working, but an Internode tech support guy got back to me fairly quickly explaining why:

Hi Ruben,

Your ADSL connection was disconnected along with your phone service. It is best to contact our Sales team on Monday to look at having this done.

If you have any further questions regarding this matter, please reply to this email or contact our Helpdesk by phone.

Kind regards,
Andrew

I admit I my heart sank at the prospect of having to wait over the weekend, then go into the city on Monday, get the account reactivated and wait for a further 2-7 business days to have it put through. Despite only going into their Sales office this morning though, as of early this afternoon we had home internet again!

Kudos to the Internode team for their ridiculously fast service :).

So here's the problem, our home internet has now been down all week and I haven't been able to blog much at all during that time, and the timing could not have been worse! Consider this a whinging blog entry to end all whinging blog entries!

We live down the street from the Mawson Lakes campus but I can't easily use their internet for blogging because I configured WordPress in a few specialised ways (tokens, specially crafted cookies etc), and I can't upload any material because their firewall blocks SFTP and SSH connections. I can continue to blog from my iTelephone and publish directly, but by another stroke of terrible luck for some reason my data plan has been so slow its almost been unusable. I've hit the Publish button here nine times and each time it tells me the connection failed. It's not the iTelephone's fault of course, its the darn Optus and their less than stellar coverage.

To ward off the jitters, cold sweats (and for some reason munchies) that result from not having an outlet to post ridiculous streams of consciousness, I've started blogging on a local Django install on my MacBook Pro which currently has to be plugged into an external display because the internal one crapped out (another stroke of good luck!) in the hopes I'll be able to publish them once home internet is restored. I've blogged some more anime episodes, some Ruby and Python observations compared to The Javas, receiving Esther Golton's Aurora Borelis CDs, the daily Sudoku puzzles I've finished, floss software on a ThinkPad X40, my inverter adventures on my MacBook Pro...

So far both Telstra and Internode claim nothing is wrong on their respective ends, and our modem is in the identical configuration it was in before The Internets died. I really hope this doesn't degenerate into a farce, I have too much work and too many assignments to put up with and deal with politics. Sometimes the Internode technical support team is quick to reply, but I've sent two messages today and have not got back a single response. Luck of the draw I suppose.

Okay, I'm pressing the darn Publish button again. If I were with SingTel Mobile in Singapore I wouldn't need luck, it would work instantly. The ironic part is of course that Optus here in Australia is a subsidiary now of SingTel.

And because this friggen internet trouble has wrecked this week, it means I'll have to spend all next week working and studying when I was supposed to be on week two of my mid semester break. Absolutely brilliant :(. Ah developed, first world problems!

Since early this morning our home Internet connection has been down for some reason (I'm typing this on my iPhone through its painfully slow Aussie data plan directly) which has made my assignments far more complex and has turned my work I do in Singapore from here into a disaster. Hopefully I won't be gone from here for too long, but I've now got even more work to do.

I'm going to need a break from this so called mid semester break!

Tuesday 22nd September: Still down.

Wednesday 23rd September: Still down.

Thursday 24th September: Still down.

Friday 25th September: Still down.

Unfortunately one of the only downsides to living in Australia other than the public transport (or lack thereof!) is metred internet connections: coming from Singapore where the internet is fast, cheap, reliable and unmetred this is quite a shock. All Australian home broadband internet plans come with a ridiculously low specified download quota, after which your connection is throttled or disabled. The justifications for download quotas are as dubious as the system itself, but that's for another post... and believe me it's coming!

I feel I should give credit though where credit is due and applaud Adelaide's very own Internode for their service. We were approaching our download quota we were able to login to the Internode site and buy an additional data block which went live within 90 minutes. As with all our Internode bills and payments I received an email invoice and all was taken care of. No fuss.

Dear Internode Customer -

Thank-you for ordering an Internode Broadband Data Block!

You have ordered a 10 Gbyte data block, at a cost of $15.00 for the account [...]. This charge will appear on your next invoice.

Note that it may take up to 90 minutes for this Data Block to take effect in our systems. This includes newly purchased Data Blocks being shown in online tools and 3rd party usage metering and for bandwidth shaping (if applicable) to be removed.

[...]

Regards,
The Internode Team

I can't recommend Internode highly enough if you live in Australia... even if they do cap your downloads (everyone else here does too). They're quick, no nonsense, helpful and they just... work!

ASIDE: This is not a paid advertisement, despite it reading as such. Having something go well for me is a big thing you see!

After several weeks of disastrous encounters with phone companies (Telstra and Virgin Mobile, I'm looking at you guys!) something has finally gone well: I'm typing this post from our newly established Internode ADSL connection!

Internode (Wikipedia link) is a local, Adelaide based internet service provider that, unlike other ISPs in Australia I've had experience with, have two very important things going for them: their heads are screwed on and their arses aren't on fire! We went from applying for a connection from scratch, to having a modem and working connection in less 4 days.

Monday, 11th August

Registered online for ADSL2+ broadband plan

Tuesday, 12th August

Recieved SMS saying that our local phone exchange isn't ADSL2+ ready and that they can't connect us (Telstra's fault, not theirs). Went online and changed the plan to ADSL 8Mb/s

Thursday, 14th August

Recieved SMS saying we were all connected and ready to go. Went into the city and picked up the modem, went back home and went to RubenerdShow.com :-)

What blew me away even more than their timeliness (is that a word?) was their customer support. When we registered online, I chose the option to pick up the modem from their office in the CBD instead of waiting for a courier delivery. Getting the train into the city from Mawson Lakes only takes 20 minutes or so, and I figured I might as well save the $15 and grab a bite to eat. What, I'm not allowed to eat? I'm only human.

When I arrived in the city, I went to their office to get the connection finalised and collect the modem:

11:29

Walked into building. Told receptionist what I was there for. Was directed to a counter. Noticed all their computers were aluminium iMacs and their chairs were bright orange... very important!

11:30

Was told that my credit card worked and that the new connection was successful. Was told to wait while their technician configured the new modem. Was asked if I wanted to pay for the modem with the same credit card they had on file. Naaaaaaaaaah worries.

11:38

Walked out of customer service centre with modem and activated account.

Compared to Netspace that sent Kevin Tan and I a faulty modem back in 2005 and took a whopping two months to get connected as a result, and TPG Australia that took over three weeks, this was fantastic! Virgin Mobile Broadbandget a clue!

ASIDE: If you didn't read my adventure with Virgin Mobile's Wireless Broadband service, they wouldn't let me register before I provided an Australian bank statement as "capacity to pay". My Singaporean bank accounts and credit cards were useless despite them meeting the minimum requirements and then some. Fine with me, I took my business elsewhere!

Internode House on Grenfell St, from Google Maps street view

As a free and open source software advocate (no, me, really?) what really impresses me about Internode is that they're also an officially licenced mirror of SourceForge, meaning when I download software I'm getting it from a server that's geographically next door, and doesn't count towards the monthly quota. They also have another comprehensive local software mirror that includes amongst other software... FreeBSD ISO images :-).

Unfortunately as I elaborated in a previous post, our local telephone exchange's DSLAM isn't ADSL2+ ready, meaning we're stuck with 8Mb/s 40GiB-limit plan until at least the end of the year. Telstra trying to get to me again it seems... what an oven of stupid grilled cheese sandwiches.

ASIDE: What's the collective term for grilled cheese sandwiches? Chuck Peddle?