amag January issue

amag welcomes the New Year

Happy New Year and welcome to the January issue of amag, Amnet’s monthly e-magazine newsletter. It’s been an exciting start to the year at Amnet, with news that we were voted the third best ISP in PC Authority’s Reliability and Service Awards, a fantastic achievement for a Perth based company.

In this issue we’re concluding our look at ADSL speeds and what factors impact upon them, it’s certainly been an eye opening experience for me. We’re also weighing in on the ISP filtering debate with an overview of what the issues are.

Enjoy this edition and if you have any feedback or suggestions, please email us on amag@amnet.com.au.

Chris Liebetrau
Marketing Coordinator & amag Editor in Chief

Five star ISP

Amnet voted 3rd Best ISP in PC Authority Survey.

Amnet is proud to have been voted the third best ISP nationally in 2008 in PC Authority Magazines Reliability and Service Awards. We were given a 5 star rating for Customer Support, Service Reliability and Value For Money. This placed Amnet ahead of many of other providers like iiNet, Bigpond, Optus and many more.

We would like to thank all our customers who voted for Amnet in the survey. We appreciate the endorsement and look forward to continuing to meet the five star standards.

Refer A Friend winner - November

And the winner is...

November winner - Anthony Kicic

Congratulations to Anthony Kicic of Cloverdale who was the November winner of our Refer a Friend promotion.

To date we’ve given away five iPod Touchs and also saved many customers hundreds of dollars with our Refer A Friend special. So if you want a chance to win an iPod then keep referring your friends to Amnet. The more friends you refer, the more chances you have to win this great prize. Don’t forget, it’s a great deal for your friends too - every referred friend gets a $100 credit to use on their new Amnet Broadband account.

To nominate your friends, log in here and follow the Refer a Friend link. Don’t waste a moment, the clock's already ticking on the next iPod draw.

To filter or not to filter...

that is the question

Bad Shakespearean puns aside we had a request from an amag reader to shed some light on the Federal Governments proposed ISP filtering initiative.

Speaking of light that seems to be the way the media is portraying this story: dark versus light, good versus bad. It turns out there are more shades of grey than expected.

First the facts: what is the government proposing? Effectively they are proposing a content filter at the ISP level which is intended to block illegal and inappropriate content. This means ISP's like Amnet will need to install equipment and run the filtering system on their networks. The filter will blacklist thousands of 'illegal' web pages and block access to those pages. There will also be a second opt-out censorship filter which will automatically censor adult content, with the aim of protecting children from adult material.

Now to the grey area which makes the subject a little more complicated. The argument is that the filtering software is not sophisticated enough to block all illegal content and that it’s easy to bypass. It’s also argued that it will slow down the internet, accidently block access to many legitimate websites and that the government has too much control over what it deems “illegal” thus impinging on Australians freedom of choice. ISPs will also have to bear the brunt of costs associated with installing the filters, which is estimated to reach hundreds of thousands - even millions of dollars - potentially crippling small ISP’s Australia wide. For some ISPs that cost may even be passed onto the consumer.

The argument made by those for the filters such as Bernadette McMenamin, Child Wise CEO, suggests that anyone opposed to the filters are effectively for child pornography. She argues that although the filters aren’t perfect at least they will stop some of the illegal content. A valid point, but this could be considered an over simplified approach to a much bigger issue.

It would seem like there is a long way to go for this government initiative. The lack of industry endorsement for the government’s real-world trial is a major stumbling block and the fact that the argument is starting to lean towards Australians consumer rights rather than illegal content means it’s going to be bobbing around for a while.

From an ISP perspective, the mandatory filtering poses a threat to the broadband industry. It has the potential, if badly implemented, to impact not only on the quality of service but change the face of the industry and the Internet in general.

From a consumer perspective, it’s hard to weigh up the pros versus the cons. No one is against protecting children and making the internet safer, but it’s hard to determine the price we pay for that peace of mind. Will filtering save unfortunate children from child pornography rings or will it be the end of the Internet as we know it, that is the question?

For more information and to draw your own opinions of the government proposal visit The Australian website, they have a number of interesting articles on the subject of ISP filters.

NB: Any views expressed in this story are those of the author and may not necessarily reflect the views of Amnet, a subsidiary of Amcom Telecommunications.

Hopman Cup Competition winners a-plenty

Thanks to everyone who participated in our Hopman Cup Competition and congratulations to everyone who won a double pass to the Hyundai Hopman Cup XXI. We had some fantastic entries and after much deliberation awarded the session tickets to the lucky winners.

The major theme in the submissions was how much everyone appreciated our customer service and we can assure you, the sentiment is not lost on us. Our biggest goal at Amnet is to maintain and improve the level of customer service which every Amnet customer enjoys.

We hope the winners all enjoyed the tennis and thank you again for participating.

Understanding the speed of your broadband service - part 2

If you didn’t read last months issue of amag, we’re focusing on broadband speed and specifically what impacts on it. Last month we discussed Attenuation, Noise and Rain. This month we’re looking at Packet Loss, Latency, Interleaving and Web servers.

Packet Loss
Ever wondered why sometimes a file downloads really slowly but then the exact same file downloads really fast when you try it again? That could well be packet loss! Essentially packet loss occurs when ‘packets’ of data travelling across a network, like your modem, telephone line, etc, fail to reach the target.

It can occur for a number of reasons, like the packet could get corrupted (meaning it mysteriously losses ‘data’), the network could be busy, or the hardware is faulty. Packet loss can also occur due to signal loss (which we discussed last month), where the data has to travel too far and loses information along the way.

The effect is a noticeable drop in performance like a ‘stutter’. This is the result of the packet being resent, as every time a packet is lost the data transfer needs to start over. It’s kind of like it’s doing a puzzle and there’s a piece missing so it starts all over again.

Latency
Latency refers to the time taken for a packet of data to be sent to the destination and for it to be returned. For instance, if you access a website, you enter the address and the website returns the content.

Whilst latency issues don’t impact the true speed (meaning the speed information is sent from your modem to the exchange) of your ADSL service, it does impact the speed of the information you’re trying to access. For example, if you’re accessing a website in America, there are a number of ‘hops’ or detours that the information needs to go through. Each hop adds a delay and the more hops the information takes, the longer the information will take to return to you.

So next time when you think your Internet connection is slow, check where the information is coming from (see our traceroutes article in amag issue 1).

Interleaving
Interleaving is heavily related to Packet Loss and Latency, you could say they’re first cousins. As we explained before Packet Loss occurs when a data packet is lost and all the data needs to be retransmitted, Interleaving is the method of dealing with this.

Instead of the entire ‘package’ needing to be resent, the ADSL hardware uses Interleaving to put the packets in a random order. To use the puzzle metaphor again, it’s like there’s a puzzle piece missing so we remove half of the puzzle and start that half again. This means the entire ‘package’ doesn’t need to be sent again, therefore increasing the speed.

Whilst it might improve the throughput of the ADSL connection it does introduce an element of Latency by adding another detour the data needs to take.

In summary Interleaving improves the stability of your ADSL service but it can slow it down, because of this Interleaving is something optional which you can ask Amnet to adjust on your ADSL connection.

Web Servers
When you visit a website, you’re downloading information from that website. This information comes from a server that is delivered over an Internet connection. This is where the impact on speed happens.

The Internet connection to the web sever only has a finite amount of ‘bandwidth’ or capability for a certain amount of people to access the server at the same time. So when too many people try and access the site, it slows down as there is not enough bandwidth to deliver the data to all visitors. This can result in the website slowing down or timing out.

That’s all we have on the topic of internet speed. We hope this information has helped you better understand your ADSL broadband service and the speed of your service.

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