Item to consider when looking at switching to Aussie Broadband for an Australian NBN Connection. Thoughts from a SysAdmin on residential connections with Aussie BB. FTTP specifically.
Recent mover from iiNet to Aussie BB here. Though iiNet has been rock solid and achieved quoted speeds for the last 5 years. With their semi-recent purchase (2015) by TPG their growth and steam has just run out. They have almost stagnated.
Some of the main reasons I looked at moving across include:
- Australian Owned and Australia Based Support
- Matched pricing to iiNet
- In depth support pages on there website.
- Proactive service and dropout notifications (Personally Confirmed).
- Publicly Accessible NBN CVC Graphs on there site (Updated Daily).
- Up-to-date high level Network Maps on their site including peering arrangements, international backlinks and link speeds.
- On network peering arrangements with cloud providers I use. AWS in Sydney is now 3 hops and 18ms away. Google Cloud Endpoints in Sydney are 4 hops and 20ms away.
- Both iiNet and Aussie BB have on network NTP Servers.
ntp.aussiebroadband.com.au stratum 2,
time.iinet.net.au stratum 3 - Mobile app that matches features with their web portal.
Setup:
- Setup was easy, complete online signup. Ordered was submitted 5:30pm, online just after 6:40pm same evening. (Existing NBN FTTP NTD already installed on prem) New service came up on 2nd NTD port.
- Transition to static IP took 15 minutes and a WAN interface DHCP refresh.
Two items of note when looking at Aussie BB residential services:
- By default residential services are CG-NAT configured. AKA not a publicly accessible IP. Hosting services on your home IP wont work. Workaround is either a small business plan (mainly the same costs/month, requires active ABN) which includes a publicly accessible static IP; or a “bolt-on” static IP to a residential service costing $5 extra/month; or they have an option to “opt-out” of CG-NAT upon request via support ticket.
- By default Inbound Port Blocking on TCP/80 and TCP/443 (+ TCP/25, UDP/135,137-139 and Outbound TCP/25). Can be worked around by raising a support ticket to unblock required ports. Would like the the option toggle this on their customer portal (like iiNet did) but this is a good default for the average consumer to have. (UPDATE: Inbound Port Blocking is now a switchable option (Web and App) under NBN Services > Service Tests > Port Blocking)(This may still require an initial ticket to ABB support requesting port blocking be disabled for it to appear for you)
Overall good experience so far. Very similar service quality to iiNet, nicer/easy to chat with customer support and complete online signup.
Only downside I’ve had so far is no known on-net FTP server for Linux package updates. Might switch across to aarnet ftp mirrors. https://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/