For all the promise of “world class” internet speeds, the National Broadband Network (NBN) can be decidedly underwhelming for some. By nbn’s own admission, some connections are no faster than ADSL2. Thankfully, there are a few hacks you can employ to boost your current NBN speeds by a significant margin; even if you’re already on 100Mbps. Here’s what you need to know.
Jonathan Russell has worked out an NBN hack that has given him one of the fastest home internet connections in the country. And he says anyone can do it.
Here’s what you do: you just take two national broadband network lines, plug them both into a router, and boom – 190 megabits-per-second download speeds.
You could download an episode of Game of Thrones (legally, of course) in about 19 seconds, or the whole first season in a little over three minutes.
Which is fast. But Mr Russell doesn’t think it’s the fastest in the country, because he’s not that crazy.
“I would like to think it’s close to the fastest. However, I believe there would be someone out there crazy enough to have three or even four of these cables,” he says with a laugh.
For most people, the NBN’s maximum download speed – up to 100mbps – will be plenty when it finally arrives in your suburb. Most NBN customers choose only 12 or 25mbps plans, a spokesman said.
But for some, fast is never fast enough. They want to see just how quick they can go.
By day, 20-year-old Robin Singh stacks shelves at his local Woolworths. By night, he roams the internet at 150mbps.
Not that it’s particularly useful. But his friends think it’s cool.
“I already get 100 megabits [with NBN]. So there is no single application that can use 200. Even if I’m streaming 4K video, it only needs 30 megabits per second. So it was just an experiment. I don’t use it.”
Mr Singh achieved his speeds thanks to his next-door neighbour, a family friend, who has an NBN connection and a wireless network.
With his neighbour’s permission, Mr Singh installed a simple program on his own computer that logged onto his neighbour’s new Wi-Fi and “bonded” it with his own wired NBN connection. The result: 150-megabit speeds.
“It was fairly easy”, he shrugs, pointing to several pieces of software that could make the join work.
Jonathan Russell’s technique is even simpler. Mr Russell, a 36-year-old graphic and web designer who runs the TechWizTime Youtube channel, always had two internet connections at his Wollongong property, which he bonded for additional speed.
When the NBN arrived in his suburb, he simply asked his retailer to upgrade both connections to fibre
Convincing confused retailers to connect two NBN lines to a house might be the trickiest part of the scheme, but there is nothing stopping them from doing so, he says.
“If you’re willing to pay, then anyone in Australia would be able to get it.”
Mr Russell then plugged the two connections into an EdgeRouter Lite, a device generally used by large companies as part of business networks.
The router comes with a bonding wizard. Mr Russell activated it, and easy as that, he had 190-mbps download speeds.
Mr Russell works from home and often needs to upload very large files, which makes the additional speed useful enough to be worth paying for a second connection.
But it’s also just cool, he concedes.
“I’ve shown it to a few people, I’ve got a few people who I talk to in Denmark and New York, and they’re astounded at the speeds.”
Comments
24 responses to “How To Get 190Mbps NBN Speeds In Australia”
clickbait ftw!
to my knowledge ISP’s won’t run a second line to your house (for NBN purposes) so the only way this works is if you have a “friendly neighbour”?
also how are the connections load balanced? if at all? is one connection reliant on wifi? what is the “program” used? and does that mean his PC must be on 24/7?
With Linux you bond the connections and setup load balancing. It can be slightly cpu intensive at times as well.
There are several windows apps around to do it with widely varying degrese of sucsess and I’d guess windows server may have inbuilt tools but yeah pc on 24/7. Or use a router suitable for the application but very costly.
The edgerouter lite mentioned in the article is a simple linux box, based off debian – but it supports hardware offloading for most high-cpu functions. Can handle full giabit routing on all ports.
The last few I picked up were new for about $130, so it’s about the same as a mid-range home router. I wouldn’t recommend it for most home users, but if you’re a power user at all it’s a very powerful and reliable tool for the price.
An good ISP will light up 2 ports or you can use 2 ISP’s then you have a bit of fail over.
ompster, your completely wrong.
IF you are on FTTC/FTTN or HFC all you need to do is pay the $300 line installation fee and they will gladly install a second line for you.
If you are lucky and on FTTH/FTTP then the installed line already supports 4 simultaneous services. All you do is call you provider or even a different provider and sign up to a plan.
I have optus cable HFC and they refuse to run a second line
You can have more than one connection if you have Fibre to the Home.
Yep, up to 4 different ISPs for redundancy, though the total throughput will be limited to 2.4Gb 🙂
I saw this article when it was posted on Digital Life and thought “Wow! What a monumentally retarded article!” and immediately closed it.
Now it’s being reposted here?
Yeah, exactly. I was expecting something like “get an ABN, sign up to this business plan, call this special call centre and get them to activate this service for you, etc.”. Instead it’s literally just get 2 nbn services… One of which is your neighbours!?! Utterly ridiculous advice.
OK so we are clear this is for FTTP ONLY!
as an ISP will NOT run a copper (for internet purposes) or cable conection (optus or telstra) additional connection to a house ,etc.
@g-man server 2012+ can do NIC teaming but it’s not great. You’re better off using a router as you said. say a cisco 18/941 that has two ethernet ports on board. equal-cost load-balancing is fine but if the connections differ than that’s an issue and the two would run at the slowest speed of the two ,etc (depending on what type you choose)
And monthly cost for the connection is ?????????
If it’s the same guy who was posting in the whirlpool forums, one of his connection was myrepublic (unlimited 100/40 @ $60), I can’t remember the other ISP but it would have been more expensive. So probably <$150/month.
for remote areas where Internet is crap (experiencing it first hand), the cost will be lots more than $150 per month. 🙁
It’ll be impossible…
Everything is possible. I already have three lines going to the house now so I’m hoping 🙂
Well it would only work with FTTP, which should work the same in rural areas (and cost the same, we’re subsidizing it).
I honestly don’t know about costing the same…all i know is that currently, we spend more on ADSL 2+ here and we be lucky if it’s close to ADSL 1 speeds. That’s even if you are only 300m away from the exchange, which I am currently 🙁
Yeah, this was (in part) a major reason for the NBN. Prices for the NBN are the same regardless where you live (people in cities are paying “more” of the cost, which subsidises the cost of rural areas). Plus, under the original NBN plan (FTTP for everyone), the speed would have been the same everywhere. Now it will depend on if you get FTTP or FTTN.
Wow this article is so lame! Back in the NT 4.0 days and dialup I could get around 112k from two dial modems using RRAS on NT4.0. How is this any different?
Only reliable ISPs can give you speed up to 190Mbps otherwise I don’t think that there is any chance which can change the speed test results.
Faster, or to be precise, higher bandwidth packages are available on nbn FTTP. A few RSPs offer 400Mbps plans. While aimed at enterprise there doesn’t seem to be anything stopping a home-based business signing up.
Presumably they just activate all 4 ports on the NTD. Which could then be bonded per the article or more simply just used for different services (e.g. WLAN, streaming box, SIP, etc).
Wow. Such awesomeness.
Now I’m pretty sure you can’t magically bond 2 connections together unless they are provided by the same ISP and bonded at their end also. Otherwise you end up with 2 connections that would effectively load share, but wouldn’t actually be bonded…
What is the point? The guys who’ve done this in this article even say they don’t use it or need it…
TPG, fibre to the node, copper to the building, WiFi on 2 mobiles, 1 tablet, 1 smart TV, 1 wireless printer, download = 45.2 Mbps.
1 desktop PC, ethernet connection, 98.4 Mbps.
1 VOIP landline ‘phone free calls land-line plus mobiles Australia wide, $89.99 per month unlimited plan.
Under $20.00 per week, cheaper and more beneficial than buying a daily coffee. 🙂
Click bait much? 1 word, 1 program, no need for this fluff and filler: Connectify