[LINK] Goodbye....

[grove at zeta.org.au]

....and Hello.

My ancient email address, as I first subscribed to Link with, is about to 
go to the bitbucket.  I got this coveted address when I originally joined 
Kralizec Dialup UNIX, I believe on recommendation from another Link member.

Kralizec was run by the erstwhile Nick Andrew, who obviously loved what 
he did.  He was very disappointed to know that my zeta email address
can't be forwarded to my new ISP.

It seems that Pacific Internet, who through a long period of acquisitions
ultimately acquired Zeta cannot bring themselves to create a simple 
email forwarding rule, for which I would be eternally grateful and 
happy to pay a yearly fee for.   So, although I am not sentimental, 
I do shed a little tear for this email address which I actually consider 
very special for many reasons.   Thus I will also have to get around 
to fixing my .signature and update my subscriptions.  To anyone who has an 
email address as old as mine you know what a pain it is to convert all those
horrible forums, LinkedIn, Twitter etc etc.  This is my second last 
job before I move to the new account.  I still have to cut over my AppleID
to the new account and do likewise for Rob.  Just paid another $135 to keep
my Pacific account open long enough to do this.  That's $135 for "up to" 
20MBps ADSL2+, which I was lucky to get 4MBps out of.

The upshot is, Pathetic Internet don't do "NBN".  They actually seem to 
have an ideological opposition to it.
But We now have a full FTTH connection thanks to NBNCo and Exetel. 
We got a Single Mode fibre connection and associated ONT all done for $50. 
They even installed the gear directly into our upstairs home office and we 
were back on the Internet again in a day.

We also just converted our PSTN phone to a VOIP account, also with Exetel.
We also got to keep our phone number so that was something.  I have to 
say that initially scoping NBN services was a bit confusing, but I decided
to go with Exetel as they seemed to have a good rep and don't filter or 
cut service ports like other ISP's.  The catch is that you are basically on
your own regarding support other than typical infrastructure issues upstream.
But once we selected a provider, getting connected etc was simple enough.

I am considering doing some "consulting" around getting subscribers on the 
NBN, as I believe there is a short term market to assist in getting connected.
Although I found the setup etc initially confusing, I didn't have trouble,
but I suspect many people would, so perhaps there is something can be done
there.  We got a 100/40 connection.  It is quite fast, but we don't notice 
the speed bump much given the latency on many websites, but where I was 
pulling down a multi gb file, it was clear the performance is there. Likewise
pushing a package from home up to my work desktop over SSH/SCP is way 
fast - 100Mb in a few minutes, not several cups of tea etc....

So, there is my little tale and a farewell to my coveted Zeta address.

Goodbye.....  ....and hello!


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
 	The more an answer costs, the more respect it carries.