[LINK] Australia Gets Broadband -- A S low Connection For A High Price

[Paul Brooks]

Glen Turner wrote:
> The original author of the media release should have been more
> careful when using terms that may be confused with widely-used
> industry jargon. They probably should have written "Telstra
> expects users to occasionally experience network congestion
> when using its 8Mbps ADSL service". To me, that's a hint that
> Telstra have underprovisioned their network and that I should
> buy fast ADSL elsewhere.
>   
Have another read of the article folks.

When I read it, I understood it to be referring to the 8 Mbps ADSL line 
sync speed not being guaranteed, rather than anything to do with traffic 
latency, congestion, or degree of packet-loss. This is a perfectly good 
instance where the use of 'best efforts' is correct. Under the ACIF 
specs which deal with such things, out to the phone line lengths that 
Telstra allow ADSL to be provisioned, line synchronisation up to 1.5 
Mbps is guaranteed. Above that (in the classic sense of "up to" 8 Mbps), 
you get whatever your modem and the DSLAM can agree to, and this might 
vary up or down each hour or day depending on line conditions, whether 
your neighbours have their ADSL service running or not, or any other 
noise on the line which can vary over time. In this sense, 8 Mbps is 
"best efforts", but is not dependent on anything to do with how the 
network operator designs the backhaul or core network, but rather is due 
to the best efforts of the modem and DSLAM negotiation - and it doean't 
matter where you buy your "fast ADSL" from.