Netcontacts.biz

[JackTheRipper]

Hi There

I have signed up for 64k internet connection with netcontacts. I purely want to use it for http and ftp because I do web development and I need to upload files to web servers and read emails if clients log a fault etc. It will be used at home after hours. All p2p stuff I do during office hours.

How reliable is this service. If there was down times ... how many times does this happen per month or week or day? What speeds can I expect on a 64k digital line.

Thanks for your time.

[Hunted]

Hi there Jack,

I just joined them yesterday, so far so good. I'm on the 128k package and I'm getting the speed I pay for. It's early days for me so I can't really help you out, but if you do a search on megaserve, which is netcontacts, you will get more info.

Good Luck

[bismay]

there service is good. I've been with them for 2 months. On what tower are you?

[JackTheRipper]

Bismay/hunted: Have u experienced any down to with them. If yes how long and how often?

thx

[Hunted]

Jack, no down time at my side. My avg. signal strength I had so far is 45% and the cummunication quality being between 65 and 79%. Taking in mind that I'm not really in clear line of site, with trees in the way.

I played online games this weekend and it wasn't bad at all. FTP sites had good speed and http too. It seems that P2P has problems tho, but it depends what program you use. ;)

Like I said before, I only have the service for about a week now. Lucky for most of us we have the option of moving to another WISP if the one aint cutting it, but so far no problems with the service.

Good Luck

[bismay]

Signal strength is about 52% and so far i only had downtime when they swithed from an old to a new tower. Since then the link has been up and running without any problems. P2p is ok

Anyway, if there was downtime then it's just me fiddling around with my server’s here at home. It is a shared service, but I never really feel the effect of it being shared. Just don’t let them put you on a megaserve tower, you will have endless issues ( I had them all! )

JackTheRipper > where do you stay?

[bismay]

swithed must be switched....

[Clipse]

bismay - Im bit confused, in your signature it says Megaserve sucks according to the sad face but u say netcontactz rock and works great. Then Hunted says, megaserve = netcontactz, wtf?

[Hunted]

I applied through netcontacts and I got signed up with megaserve and that's what e-mail addy I have too. They do the support too. I could have chosen between a netcontacts or a megaserve e-mail addy tho. I think one bought the other or they joined forces, but as far as I know they use the same infrastructure.

[JackTheRipper]

They installed my wireless yesterday and I am very happy so far. The only problem I have at the moment is that I can't get my wife away from the pc.

My signal strength according to them is 79% ... how do you test the signal strength?

Thanks for your input. :D

[bismay]

Ok the Megaserve tower sucks. Im on SSID: SE2 And that works 100% so far. I only had problems with the Megaserve ms-xx towers.

[bismay]

I test the signal strenth using my AP in AP-Client mode. My PCI Wi-Fi card gives me an incorrect value.

[bismay]

I think i now understand the misunderstanding if that makes sense. The contact number on the netcontacts.biz web site is megaserve. Im signed up with a guy names Arno which is a reseller ( that is what megaserve told me ). When im using megaserve Towers i get alot of issues. When using Arno's tower, i have no problem at all. Everything runs smoothly.

Does this clear things up?

[Hunted]

They installed my wireless yesterday and I am very happy so far. The only problem I have at the moment is that I can't get my wife away from the pc.

My signal strength according to them is 79% ... how do you test the signal strength?

Thanks for your input. :D

You should be able see the strength by accessing you AP. They should have showed you how to access your AP with your browser. Should be Http://19*.***.*.* After accessing it you can see to which tower you are connected to and what you signal strength is and what the quality is like.

I'm not sure if there is other software that can the same, but I'm sure someone will reply to this if there is.

Good Luck.

[jackd]

Dear all,

I have been a reseller of Megaserve's/Netcontacts since they started Wireless nearly 2 years ago. Netcontacts is owned by Megaserve and Megaserve owns the wireless network. None of us reseller's owns towers (Arno Included) Arno is in fact one of Megaserve's resellers just like myself.

Bismay, the reason you are now getting better service is possibly due to a number of reasons. The sector antenna that you were connected to had become saturated with clients, and when this happens one would normally get packet loss and latency. Megaserve over the last 3 months has added another 12 towers around the Western Cape region to cater for the big demand in these service. It keeps us and them in business.

Hunted is correct, in trying to see your signal strength, one goes to the ip address of your access point by using your web Brower (internet explorer) > then type in the username and password, which you can get from your installer/reseller most times. Once there go to the web management interface, select wireless from the left option and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Hit F5 and watch the signal and comm quality, communication quality is the one to look out for.

If you have a hassle with your current reseller and you are not getting the results, we will be happy to take over and provide you with a better service.

By the way Bismay, Megaserve/Netcontacts does not have any SSID of "SE2"

[bismay]

Well i am connected to SE2 and my opinion of the service is changing a bit.
Last night the net was dead for no reason. Pinging the gateway was fine, but no browsing could be done.

Chances are that i will be leaving this wireless internet at the end of the month and then ordering DSL.

Thx for clearing things up jackd

[Ratwiz]

Cancelling my connection at the end of the month. Gonna get DSL. I can't stand all the **** I've had with these people. P2P doesn't work, now I'm told its not supported. The head honcho of the company now just rejects my calls!!! :mad: Not my idea of a good customer service.

[Hunted]

Hi everyone,

I'm also experiencing some problems with them, sadly. I found online gaming to be very unstable, one day it works great then the other your ping is so bad you can't connect. This being local on saix games servers. The past weekend I started to see the "grouping" take place. It seems they start to put you in different download groups the more you download. It seems like 500MB / day and then they group you. The last few days I have had problems with FTP access; working and then not working, but with very good HTTP speed at times.

Then their proxy works and then it doesn't. I also sent them an e-mail, regarding the Online Gaming problem, with read receipt on it, but got a report back to say the e-mail got deleted without being read. This from Carey Cooper, who I think is the boss there. I have sent two e-mails to support with no response; I'm now sending Carey an e-mail asking why one of my e-mails got deleted without being read, so I will see what happens from there.

I have also phoned their support about the online gaming problem, but Christo could not tell me why I'm having the problem. The last few days I could not even list the game servers anymore... I don't know why though, maybe the port is being blocked.

So, I'm really not sure what to think about all of this, but I thought it would be just fair to tell everyone of what my experience so far.

As the Ad said use it don't use it.

[JackTheRipper]

My connections was down last Friday (22/07), Monday and last night (29/07). Am I the only one that experienced this down time.

Another problem I have is their is no after hours support. If your connection is down you will have to wait for the next day or monday. :mad:

[Hunted]

Yep, I had downtime too, but only once I know of. You are 100% correct they have no after hour support, sucks big time.

After sending them a mail about deleteing e-mails without reading it and telling them they are getting a bad rap on MYADSL, I got a mail back from Christo that stated that everyone in their companny get's the mail if sent to support@megaserve.net and the CEO will just delete the mail he receive from me. Weird that I got no replies back from anyone else that they actually read it, maybe they all said no for the auto return receipt. He also mentioned that they are very busy with new tower installations and configuring them.

Another thing; I have been struggling to upload MSN 7.5 beta (+-7MB) to a friend of mine today, I tried mailing it via Megaserve, via Gmail, MSN'ing it & FTP'ing it and none of them wants to work.

Really bad that you can't even get a 7 MB file sent from your connection. What's the point of having 24/7 internet?