With the NBN currently rolling out across Australia, we thought it was time to shed some light on the speeds you can expect when the NBN comes to your home.

For most people, any plan on the NBN will be faster than what they have now on ADSL – but how much faster? And are there limitations? This month we asked our NBN Manager, Rachael McIntyre, about the speeds you and other Westnet members could expect once the network is up and running in your area.

First things first – what are the theoretical maximum speeds with the NBN?

For our technical enthusiasts out there, here are the maximum speeds you can get to your home. These speeds aren’t necessarily the speeds you’ll get on that particular plan. Real world usage is unlikely to consistently achieve such speeds, due to the factors we’ll touch on soon.

The theoretical maximum access speeds for Westnet’s NBN plans are:

• Standard – 12/1 Mbps – which means that the theoretical peak download speed (from the Internet) is 12 Megabits per second, and the theoretical peak upload speed (to the Internet) is 1 Megabit per second. This is the basic service, comparable to an average ADSL2+ connection.
• Fast – 25/5 Mbps – which means that the theoretical peak download speed (from the Internet) is 25 Megabits per second, and the theoretical peak upload speed (to the Internet) is 5 Megabits per second. This is ideal for most home applications.
• Faster - 50/20 Mbps – which means that the theoretical peak download speed is 50 Megabits per second, and the theoretical peak upload speed is 20 Megabits per second. This may deliver a better outcome if there are multiple online users at your house.
• Fastest - 100/40 Mbps – which means that the theoretical peak download speed is 100 Megabits per second, and the theoretical peak upload speed is 40 Megabits per second. This is a professional grade service, and you’ll need a professional grade router to get the full benefit from it.

Will everyone get maximum speed with the NBN?

When connected on a service with (for example) a 100 Mbps rated speed, but it’s not guaranteed that everything that you download from the Internet will come to you at 100 Mbps. External factors that might affect your actual speed including things like:

• the computer you’re using to access the Internet
• the links between Westnet and your computer
• the network connecting your community to Westnet

What kind of technical factors can affect speed performance?

You might find your speed is affected by technical issues within your own home. Things that might affect your speed in this respect include:

• hardware you use to connect to the network – for example, the capability of your router
• performance of your home network – for example, your line speeds may be greater than that of your wireless home network
• limitations imposed by the hardware and software operating in your PC

When choosing a plan, it’s important to remember NBN plan speeds described on our website are the ‘theoretical network maximum speeds’. Your actual speeds may be slower due to a number of factors beyond our control.

Posted by josh.nicholson

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 11:37 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.