With Telstra sending me increasingly hysterical letters telling me that my copper service will be cut off and therefore the end of my world is nigh, I finally bit the bullet and got cutover today to NBN.

The installer was no better than the 457 visa bozos who months ago installed conduit on the front wall at an angle of about 10 degrees to the perpendicular.

This guy managed to blow out the face of the brickwork thanks to blunt masonry drills -- probably bought at Bunnings. He mounted the internal NBN connector plate skew-whiff, too.

I recovered the piece of exploded-out brick and drilled though it to allow the coax through, and I ground off some of the back of it to allow it to be glued back into position. The result is passably OK.

I'll have a go at squaring up the internal connector plate.

I should have told this guy to go get a sandwich and then done the masonry work myself, and let him just do the coax terminations and activation.

Anyway 52 Mbps (at the time of writing) is a tad better than the ~2 Mbps I have 'enjoyed' for years.

I'm going to miss my copper line as I used it to wait on hold when dealing with ISP issues. I won't wait on hold on my mobile.

NBN isn't so bad, really. It's just the process of getting there that hurts.

Mysteriously my modem crashed a bit after 2am this morning, so I had to manually reboot it.
It's still pretty reliable though.

I won't wait on hold on my mobile.

I haven't done that for years now. When I ring up hell-desks the person at the other end is usually a non-English speaker or in another country and hard to understand anyway. When I get asked to ring instead of e-mailing, I refuse and just tell them I am deaf. To an extent it is the truth so I don't feel guilty about the white lie.

When I give the webhost any stick it is always via e-mail. Despite being a local company, the staff's names will usually give a clue as to where they are.

Mysteriously my modem crashed a bit after 2am

I've read somewhere that some people have powered their NBN modems via a time switch to initiate a cold boot every day during the wee hours. I don't know which NBN connection technology was involved, nor whose modems were being used, but apparently that's what it took to ensure no internet connectivity problems during the waking hours.

My most common NBN issue is phone drop-out. The phone is the old copper wire system connected to the router (Optus). Just turn modem and router off and on again to fix.

Trouble is there is no way of knowing the phone has dropped out without looking at the router which is in the garage or picking up the phone and listening for the dial tone. So can a couple of days until someone rings on the mobile asking why you aren't answering the beep-beep-beep phone.....

So I like the idea of the timer if it fixes the issue.

So I like the idea of the timer if it fixes the issue.

Worth a try and easy to implement.

Have timers for Christmas lights so will set it up tomorrow.

When I used to host this site at home I had something even better - a remote device to reboot the server. It worked from a kit I purchased which has a GSM link and space for a SIM card. The board is optically isolated and there's four relays for switching outputs. I had one of these set up to switch the server off and then back on again after a 10 second timeout when I sent a special command to it via SMS. It was good except for one thing - I had to write the command down on a piece of paper and keep that behind my phone's back cover so I could remember it.

The server had wake-on-power and wake-on-lan set up so there was no chance of it not starting again once power was applied to it. Because servers need to be up all the time and associated internet connections also up all the time (and we all know why I shifted from home hosting to a commercial host - hint: TPG) so a simpler timer restart wasn't an option.

The NBN is far more complex than it needs to be and each connection, regardless of what type it is, relies on seemingly endless bits and pieces of Chinese-made electronics which is nowhere near as reliable as the modems of old.

Speaking of timers, I have just this week upgraded the time switches on the house lighting circuits at the workshop complex. For some unfathomable reason, the original contractor installed electromechanical switches which required me to deal with DST changes twice a year and to keep an eye on them for drift due to brownouts and blackouts.

I had the sparkie install a couple of Theben TR 608 units. Expensive, but German quality, battery backed and programmable for DST.

I've never really liked timers for exterior lighting because you still need to update the timer(s) for summer and winter, as the lights don't need to be on as long through the night in summer. PE cells are better because they always turn the lights on only when they are needed.

A not-well known trick for lighting that need only be on at say sunset to 22:00 then 04:00 to sunrise is to have a PE cell and a timer in series and use the timer to turn the lights out in the depths of the night. Modern security cameras can see quite well in the dark so there are times when lighting doesn't need to be on. Lighting near trip hazards can be automated and triggered by movement.

I've never really liked timers for exterior lighting because you still need to update the timer(s) for summer and winter, as the lights don't need to be on as long through the night in summer.

There are timers in this series which allow for sophisticated programming, week by week if necessary. You do that via a PC program and download it to a card which plugs into the timer.

The PE cell in series with the timer is a good idea, but at the location in question it would involve some rewiring, though not impossible. The external lights are only on for a few hours after sunset so it wouldn't really make a huge difference.

What I would really like to do is replace these horrible compact fluoro tubes, which burn out very quickly, with LEDs:

https://au.rs-online.com/web/p/non-integrated-compact-fluorescent-lamps/7025302/

They sit in lamp holders cemented into the walls of pathways.

Some of those LED's are not as reliable as one may think. I have had CFL's on a timer & marked with install date. 8 - 10 thousand hours is not unusual. The one on the pump has seen two of them out so has to be over twenty.

That Goose installer may have been the one I had. Stuff all training since he got off the boat and a set of tools barely appropriate for the job. Like two shifters a blunt hole cutter for wood, think he had a hammer. That stuffed him here.

NBN is in the workshop, phone landline. I had set up a fire proof spot for the boxes, between two shelves. I.e. Lined the top of the bottom shelf , under the above shelf and on the wall as its lined with foam insulation. So diddum's has to bore a hole through it to the outside, he was already worried, as he saw what was in here & the pre-work & concluded I knew communications & building.

So it ended up, that as it was a metal wall, my equipment and I drilled the hole. Totally perplexing as he had never seen a stepper drill and how fast it could work, to make a hole around an inch diameter, plus stay parallel when drilled from both sides.

Actually I get regular calls from Nicole from NBN who may be related to Microsoft Technical Department. I love the fake Telstra bills that come by email from several addresses. That's two ways that are a dead give away that its a fake.

Marc

If a Telstra bill has a low price then its fake.

GTC, I tried a few of the programmable timers you mention about ten years ago. They don't do a bad job though the thing I like about PE cells is that they also cater for days when it is overcast, and you'd want the lights on earlier on those afternoons. You are right about wiring for the control circuit being painful when changing from one switching technology to the other though. PE cells are always outside whereas timers are usually just placed inside the switchboard right next to the contactor for the power circuit.

PE cells are always outside whereas timers are usually just placed inside the switchboard right next to the contactor for the power circuit.

Exactly the situation there, although a cable through the incoming cable tray could be arranged without too much effort and a PE cell mounted just above the entry point outside.

I personally live far too rural for fibre-to-the-node let alond fibre to the premise. Alas I've been put on NBN wireless! barely a step up of NBN satellite. although it is generally reliable.

I did hear somewhere that all fibre NBN connections have fixed IP addresses.