Mar 31, 2014

Gigabit WAN – THE FUTURE IS HERE, DON’T WAIT FOR IT

What is the NBN? To most people, it is just another acronym that we have heard of, but it is stored in the ever expanding acronym section of our brain where we have no real understanding of what a random combination of capitalised letters means. NBN (in this instance), stands for National Broadband Network and it essentially refers to the fibre infrastructure being rolled out across the country that will provide us with supersonic high speed Internet. As you have probably been alerted to, the government is spending a considerable amount of tax payers money to create this network with the aim of bringing us in line with the more advanced countries in the world and ensure we are not left behind in the increasingly important world of IT (Information Technology for those who prefer to deal in whole words).


93% of Australian premises will have access to a fibre broadband connection that can provide Internet connection speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (or 1000Mbps). Not bad, considering the maximum speed you can get from an ADSL connection is 24Mbps. This roughly equates to speeds that are 40x faster than what most of us are capable of getting now (it’s worth noting that ADSL connections never hit their maximum speed either). So what impact can this have on us? This isn’t all about loading a web page faster, rather we will have a whole suite of applications become available to us with these increased speeds. Watching movies from the web, watching your favourite overseas TV show or sporting event from a streaming site, making HD video calls to your family and friends, accessing a leading doctor in a particular field who is remote to you, taking online video education courses from an institute in another country and downloading multiple files (legally of course), are all applications that will be improved and that can be carried out simultaneously without the bottleneck.

I just mentioned a key word – bottleneck. Just like when three lanes turn into one when you are driving down the freeway and everything comes to an insanely annoying stop, the same can happen with your Internet. Think of the NBN as a three lane freeway. When the NBN gets to your house, you want that three lane freeway to continue – you don’t want all of your Internet merging into one lane.

Connection to your Fibre (NBN) termination point will be through Ethernet. Therefore, whatever you plug into it needs to be able to facilitate these impressive speeds. This is the job for a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port, commonly found on many routers. As the name suggests, a Gigabit Ethernet port is capable of speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second (the same as NBN) and a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port is the link between the NBN network and the router that provides Internet access around your house.

NetComm Wireless for example have a range of routers that feature a Gigabit Ethernet WAN port that are designed to connect you to your chosen Internet service today and also future proof you for when the NBN rolls out to your area, whenever that may be.

NetComm’s latest WiFi routers have a Gigabit port that will enable you to connect to NBN’s fibre broadband.

NF2 – Also features concurrent dual band N900 WiFi, 2x USB host ports and Gigabit LAN ports NP805N – Also features WiFi N, 1x USB host port and Gigabit LAN ports

Most of you are probably on ADSL or cable and wondering when you’ll have access to NBN’s broadband service.

Well don’t wait for fibre broadband to enjoy the latest in WiFi technology. NetComm’s range of Gigabit routers allow you to connect to ADSL today and Fibre when you’re ready to connect.

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