In 2016, the Federal Court ordered ISPs to block five popular torrent websites including The Pirate Bay, TorrentHound and IsoHunt within 15 business days. Since then, a swathe of additional sites have been added to the block list in a bid to eradicate piracy.

Torrenting itself is completely legal of course, and it's not all that difficult to circumvent ISP blocking of torrent websites. For instance, you can do it through a VPN, which often requires a monthly subscription fee. Here are some ways to gain access to blocked torrent sites for free.

NBN Co says that since December 2017, orders for wholesale speed tiers of 50 Mbps or higher have almost tripled 16 percent to 44 percent and average bandwidth network congestion reduced from more than five hours to less than 30 minutes per service per week compared to this time last year. This numbers exclude the Sky Muster satellite service that's been deployed in rural areas.

The company behind the National Broadband Network has updated its searchable rollout map to coincide with its revised three-year timetable. Want to know when the NBN is coming to your suburb? All you need to do is type your address into the website.

With the NBN rollout moving forward we should be expecting Australia to move up through the global broadband rankings. After all, with tens of billions of dollars being ploughed into connecting people across the nation, we should be seeing things get better. But is that the case? How do we compare to other countries and are we treading water compared to other countries or are we getting world-class performance? Let's see what the data says.

Over the past six months, internet service providers have made a raft of changes to their National Broadband Network (NBN) products in a bid to improve transparency with customers. Based on recommendations provided by the ACCC, the changes are supposed to make it easier to compare NBN products between different telcos. Here's what you need to know.

We can think of more than a few dead or long-ignored websites we want dusted off and brought back to life. Here are the seven sites we miss the most. Let's surf the web of nostalgia.

Browser cookies are useful in some instances; unpleasant in others. While they can save you from having to go through a complicated authentication process whenever you're trying to access your favourite sites, they can also store data on what you've done on a particular website -- which can then be used to serve you more "relevant" advertising at a future point.

Maybe you've heard someone mention GDPR in passing, but were too embarrassed to ask what those letters actually stood for. Or maybe your friend posted something online about what GDPR means for online data protection. At the very least, you've probably received a few dozen emails from various companies about how their updated their privacy policies comply with the new law.

Bad news for many regional customers on NBN's fixed wireless network, with NBN Co announcing on Thursday night that they have killed off 100 megabit per second speeds to their fixed wireless network, citing a lack of "mass-market demand" and "the economics".

Remember NBN's address checker tool? Despite a series of upgrades, the site never did a great job of providing an accurate answer on when you were getting connected. Thankfully, NBN Co has rolled out yet another tweak to the search engine that actually makes it useful.

Where do you go to waste time on the internet? Facebook and Twitter, the usual default answers, are exhausting. Scrolling through them feels like work. "I don't know how to waste time on the internet anymore," says Dan Nosowitz in the internet-culture blog Select All. We agree with him that it's way too easy to get trapped on boring and negative social feeds. But we don't agree that the internet doesn't have any fun, crazy places left. If you've forgotten how to waste time online, try these sites and happily while away the hours.

Lightning bolts suck. Thankfully, the painstaking work of software engineer Stephen Cook doesn't include any of these (cheater) tricks. In his simplified version of Mario Kart, which you can play right in your browser, you just have to worry about easy driving, not item management.

We have access to so many unique services with so much great content that it's difficult to filter through it all. How many times do you go to start a new TV show but don't know whether it's worth the time? Every night? Same. When you do settle on one and it's three seasons long, it throws you - do you really want to spend all that time on a show that might not even be good?

Lucky for you, we've plucked 10 of Netflix's best new shows - and they're all still in their first season.

WiFi is one of the most important developments in the evolution of the internet -- no one wants to be chained to a desktop -- but it's also one of the most frustrating. If you're plagued by slow speeds, bad reception, and other WiFi issues, here are 10 ways you can power up the WiFi in your home.

Good news, Telstra cable customers! People on Twitter and Reddit have been reporting free speed upgrades on their accounts! And it has now also been confirmed by Telstra.

Kogan have launched their own NBN service, Kogan Internet, featuring unlimited data and month-to-month contracts. They're also spruiking an introductory offer of NBN 50 for less than $60 a month, making them one of the most affordable NBN providers in the country.

Cloudflare announced a brand-new DNS service this weekend - on April Fool's Day, of course-- because its launch date ties into the IP address you use to access it: 1.1.1.1. Four ones. Get it? 4/1?

Over the weekend, Cloudflare announced a new DNS service, in partnership with APNIC, that promises faster performance and improved privacy. And while those are good things, making such an announcement on April Fools Day left may people shaking their heads and wondering if the whole thing was a hoax. It turns out, it's not a hoax with the new service offering faster address resolution and a promise to wipe all logs of DNS queries within 24 hours.

The first thing I do when my internet goes down is panic. I panic thinking about all the things in the world that I'll be missing out on. The viral tweets, the breaches of my privacy by Facebook and god, all those images of delicious donuts on Instagram. I imagine that's what Julian Assange thought when they cut off his internet earlier this week.

What should you do when your internet goes down to get yourself back online as quickly as possible?