FAQs
Please click on the questions below to reveal the answers.
Technology | |
| Q. | Why is bandwidth so important? |
| A. | The more bandwidth that you have, the faster your speed will be. File sharing, gaming, music downloads, Video conferencing and video-on-demand all require bandwidth (faster speeds) to work well. And over the next year we can expect many new online applications and services, all demanding faster connection speeds. With Silver's broadband you can enjoy all the benefits of a super fast Internet experience. |
| Q. | Is all broadband the same? |
| A. | In terms of broadband, there is enormous variation between general providers on speed, with offerings ranging from 256k to 1500k for downloads and 64k to 256k for uploads. In contrast to this, Silver offers speeds of 2MB for both downloads and uploads. |
| Q. | What is ADSL? |
| A. | ADSL is a widely deployed broadband technology developed for the commodity market. ADSL supports distances up to 6 kilometres and can offer as much as 8 Mbps in the downstream direction and 1 Mbps upstream. Typical deployments in Australia though, yield far less bandwidth (1500/256Kbps), are highly unreliable and cannot support video. Moreover, ADSL is a complex technology and consumes a great deal of power (about 5 watts per line). |
| Q. | What is SDSL? |
| A. | SDSL overcomes some of the shortcomings of ADSL. For instance, its performance is more scalable, providing a greater range of speeds. It also consumes far less power. However, SDSL is not widely available in Australia, can be difficult to deploy and suffers from significant cost restrictions. In fact, both ADSL and SDSL-based operations can cost up to five times that of Ethernet-based DSL solution. |
| Q. | What is HFC Cable? |
| A. | Hybrid Fibre Coaxial cable (commonly known as HFC or simply Cable) should not be the technology choice for developers or engineers for the provision of broadband. It is a shared medium and cannot provide a dedicated amount of broadband. Silver does not propose community-wide solutions based on cable due to these quality of service issues and because it is not a future-proof delivery platform. |
| Q. | What is Fibre / Ethernet to the Home? |
| A. | Ethernet has become a dominant backbone technology, and is Silver’s preferred solution wherever this is technically feasible. It has evolved from simply supporting work group environments to serving as the primary medium for entire corporate and residential campuses. During that evolution, line speeds have surged from 10Mbps to 100Mbps to 1,000Mbps, and future data rates are expected to reach 10,000Mbps, or 10Gbps. This scalability has allowed Ethernet to continue meeting the needs of increasingly sophisticated and bandwidth-hungry applications. Ethernet to the Home is a technology that delivers data and information at speeds up to 50Mbps or even up to 1Gbps, and clearly represents the next generation of networking. |
| Q. | What is the difference between a bit and a byte? |
| A. | Data, or Internet Protocol (IP) network transmissions are measured in bits, whereas hard drive and system memory capacities are measured in bytes. These are defined by using upper and lower case notation. One gigabit is written as 1Gb, whereas one gigabyte is 1GB, same with kilobits (Kb) and kilobytes (KB). There are eight bits in a Byte, (technically there is actually a bit more but we want to keep this explanation as simple as we can). This bit/byte confusion is one of the reasons some people don't understand why you cannot transfer a 4GB DVD movie in four seconds across a 1Gb network. |
IP Telephony | |
| Q. | What is IP Telephony? |
| A. | IP telephony uses a computer based data network to initiate and terminate voice traffic, rather than the conventional voice network. It differs from the increasingly available VoIP services which are becoming popular in the residential marketplace. VoIP services carry voice traffic over the public internet, meaning no quality of service can be offered. With an IP telephony solution, voice is carried over a private data network, so call traffic can be prioritised to ensure quality of service can be delivered. |
Internet Security | |
| Q. | How can I make my connection more secure? |
| A. | Here are 12 things you can do to make your Internet browsing as safe as possible: 1. Make sure your antivirus software is up to date. 2. Make sure your firewall software is up to date. 3. Make sure your anti-spyware software is up to date. 4. Make sure your Operating System is up to date. 5. Schedule weekly scans/updates for all your security software. 6. Make sure your Internet Explorer is up to date. You should be running a Cipher Strength of 128-bit. Check this by opening your Internet Explorer program and looking in Help, and then About. 7. Be careful using credit cards and online banking facilities. Only deal with secure or trusted sites. (Look for the little lock icon towards the bottom of your browser window.) It's important to realise that banks will not request information via email. If you receive such a request, it is almost certainly someone looking to gain information from you. Never send any login or account details over email and never click on links in emails that ask you to verify personal details 8. Be careful how and where you store your username and password. 9. Don't click on unexpected popups, no matter what they appear to be offering. They may infect your machine with spyware or other threats. 10. Delete suspicious emails without replying or reading. 11. Don't install any programs suggested by websites unless you need the software and/or you totally trust the site making the recommendation. 12. Be careful with peer-2-peer file sharing software as this is a common way of transferring viruses. |
| Q. | What is a virus? |
| A. | Viruses are generally malicious pieces of software that are spread between computers. They can do serious damage, from making your computer misbehave to completely destroying your data. Viruses also affect Internet Service Providers because as they spread, viruses can quickly "clog up" the Internet, meaning much slower access and a great deal of frustration for customers. There are several types of virus. Some have been around for many years, and are simply referred to as 'viruses'; others are classified by the way they reproduce and spread. The latter include 'worms' and 'trojans'. 'Virus' Almost all viruses are attached to a file, which means you can import them onto your computer through your email. Generally, they won't do any harm unless they are opened. 'Worm' Worms spread between computers without any help from people by taking advantage of network and Internet connections on your system as well as your floppy disk and CD drives. Worms also have the ability to reproduce on your system, so rather than your computer sending out a single worm, it could send out hundreds or thousands of copies across the Internet. The computers that receive each worm then end up doing the same. The results can be devastating. 'Trojan' This kind of virus looks friendly and unthreatening, and that's no accident. As their name suggests, Trojans deliberately misrepresent themselves to encourage those receiving them to open them. They can appear to be legitimate software or files from a trusted source such as an email from a friend. Trojans can be just annoying - they might change your desktop by adding icons, for example - but they can also cause serious direct or indirect damage. One of the more worrying things Trojans can do is to create what's known as a back door. That's literally an unofficial entry point onto your computer that gives strangers access to your system. Once they are 'inside', these people can then open, read, spread or compromise your confidential or personal information. |
| Q. | What is an anti-virus program? |
| A. | Antivirus programs are pieces of software that scan your computer's drives and disks to find and remove viruses. Because the viruses in circulation on the Internet are continually changing, it's important to update your software regularly with new 'virus definitions' (a list of known viruses that the antivirus program is able to detect and remove). Outdated virus definitions won't recognise and stop new viruses. Most good antivirus programs have this update feature and most can update their definitions quickly and easily using a built-in automatic update service. Since many infections get into your system through email, make sure that the product you choose scans email, is compatible with your email system and that it can filter both incoming and outgoing traffic. Finally, make sure that your antivirus software is turned on to scan all traffic coming in and going out of your system. Popular antivirus software programs include: - Norton Antivirus - McAfee Antivirus - AVG |
| Q. | What virus and spam filtering for email does Silver provide? |
| A. | We're doing our best to protect your systems by filtering the email traffic that flows in and out of our network for viruses and spam. Spam is the common term for unsolicited email. Most don't seek your permission before doing so, and the result is a deluge of email from all over the world that clogs your mailbox and can make it hard to determine what is actually legitimate email. This practice is known as 'spamming'. The problem has now become so common that some countries, including Australia, have even moved to make it illegal. That's why all the email coming through the Silver system is scanned and filtered by our advanced antivirus and antispam software before being forwarded on. Any email that is detected carrying a virus has the virus removed. An alert is then attached to the text message body telling you that a virus has been detected and removed. Email that is recognised as spam is delivered intact, but the subject line of the message is changed to say that the email has been classified as SPAM. Silver's antivirus and spam filtering should filter most viruses and spam emails. However, we cannot guarantee to stop every virus and/or spam email and Silver is not liable for any damage caused to your computer if you do receive a virus. For this reason, we strongly advise you to install your own antivirus and antispam software on your computer. |
| Q. | What is a firewall? |
| A. | Personal firewalls protect your system from intrusions. Most of these intrusion attempts are from people looking for ways to get into your computer while you are on the Internet to communicate with or install Trojan and worm viruses. A firewall can also help make sure that programs installed on your computer are not sending data from your computer through the Internet out to people you don't know. Running two software firewalls on the same computer can cause problems, including being unable to access the Internet at all. If you decide to try out several firewalls, be sure to fully uninstall one before installing another. If you've got Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed on your machine, it has a built-in firewall. If you decide you want to use another firewall, you'll need to disable XP's built-in firewall before you do so. Popular firewall programs include: - Zone Alarm - Norton Internet Security - McAfee Internet Security |
| Q. | What is Spyware? |
| A. | Spyware is software that can be used to collect private information about your Internet usage habits, personal information, computer preferences and much, much more. Other forms of spyware look like they are helpful, but can prevent access to some websites and encourage or force you to visit specific websites. Common symptoms of this type of spyware include forced use of a particular home page and the continued appearance of unwelcome popup windows. As a result, your computer struggles with increased traffic being sent out. This in turn can slow down your website browsing and mean it takes much longer to download information. The best way to detect and remove spyware is with 'anti-spyware' software. Just like antivirus software, anti-spyware software has been specifically designed to detect and remove these particular types of threats. Like antivirus software, anti-spyware programs usually come with an update feature, which will install updates for the program itself as well as revising spyware definitions. It's important that you carry out your own research to find a product with the features you're looking for. Try running a search for 'spyware software' on Google Some of the more popular spyware removal tools are: - Ad-aware - Spybot Search & Destroy - Microsoft Anti-Spyware Please note that we do not support, endorse or guarantee the performance of any of the antivirus, spyware and/or firewall solutions mentioned here. Any use of these programs is your decision alone. |
Billing | |
| Q. | When does my billing period start? |
| A. | The billing period starts on the day you subscribe and first cycle ends on the last day of that month. If you subscribe on the 15th day of a month you are billed on connection date and your billing cycle finishes at the end of that month and your next charges will be applied at the beginning of the next month for that calendar month. |
| Q. | What charges will appear on my bill? |
| A. | Your bill will reflect your access charges related to your chosen plan, for the month in advance. It will also contain any additional charges accrued during your last billing month which were not charged in advance on your last invoice. This will be the case if you changed plans mid month or activated any optional features/ services during the month or used more than you chosen plans limit and therefore excess charges are applicable. All equipment purchases will be charged and receipted at the time of purchase. |
| Q. | Why do I have more than one item listed on my broadband account? |
| A. | As well as your monthly plan fee, selected additional products and services will be displayed on your bill. These might consist of extra mailboxes or additional usage purchased throughout the previous month. If you have changed plans mid month you will also see two additional items on the invoice for your access charges. This is because the two plans selected during the month have different access fees. You will be charged separate access fees for the days you were on each of the plans during your billing month. This results in a credit for days from the plan change, prorated at the original plan fee, and a debit for the number of days from the plan change, prorated for the new plan fee to the end of the billing period. If you have changed plans during the month, your monthly plan fee in advance will relate to the access charge for the last plan you changed to. |
| Q. | What payment options are available? |
| A. | For residential customers, payment for all services and equipment purchases are by credit card only, this is an immediate charge. Each month you will be sent an invoice advising the amount that has been debited to your nominated credit card. For our business customers, we offer 14 day terms as well as the credit card option. |
| Q. | What happens if I don't pay my bill by the due date? |
| A. | Your credit card will be automatically debited at the beginning of each calendar month once connection is in place. If charges are not accepted against your credit card you will be notified on the invoice you receive and given an opportunity to update your details prior to your service being suspended for non payment. |
| Q. | How can I change my credit card details? |
| A. | You can change your nominated credit card by contacting our accounts department on 1300 790 932 between Monday to Friday 8.30am to 5.00 pm or by sending an email to accounts@silvertelecom.com.au. |
| Q. | Do I receive an invoice each month? |
| A. | Each month you will be sent an invoice which will advise the payment debited to your nominated credit card for that month’s charges within 7 days of the card being debited. A copy can be requested at any time by sending an email to accounts@silvertelecom.com.au |
Home Networking | |
| Q. | I have more than one PC - can I connect them all to the internet? |
| A. | Yes. The best way to do this is through a router (one which features several network sockets or Ethernet ports) A PC can be plugged into each port of the router provided the PC has a ‘network interface card’ installed. |