Sentech 128K YES OR NO???

P

PoiZoNouZ

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I live in Melrose North, opposite the Melrose Arch. I am interested in a 128K conn, mainly for plain D/L, browsing and a bit of gaming.
What are d/l, u/l speeds like? Pings on Saix and MWEB? Help me make a decision!!! I had enuff of 56K!!![:p]
 
If you previously had 56k then 128 would be cool for you.
Downloads average about 12-14 KB/sec.
Uploads the same.
Browsing is very cool - this is where this system really rocks.
Pings are much better than your 56k but not as good as ISDN and to Mweb and Saix servers they average between 80-120.
 
Browsing on a wireless system is really amazing. A ping of 80-120 is great for games like warcraft. On cs it should be ok, but not great.

But Proasm said in another Post they are working on it. So expect to get better pings ;)

I would say go for it. My phone bill is currently coming to abt R550. With infinite call scheme. A much faster, 24/7 connection for a R100 would be worth it.

..- dot dot dash ;)
 
The ping on cs are terrible. I have the 128k connection and you dont get a constant ping that is required with fps's. my ping started at 120 and spiked up to 400 ever few seconds.
If its just browsing yoyu want to do the mywireless is perfect
 
Yes Jester, I have to agree with you.
Currently Gaming and MyWireless dont go together very well but I do tend to get to the bottom of it as I am a gamer myself.
But for everything else it rocks.

Some observations I have noticed in my testing here.
During the day I have a good signal, fullscale, connects immediatley and everything works great but pings fluctuate badly (120 to 400)
Doing traceroutes, I often get timeouts etc.
Come evenings (after 7pm) my signal drops slightly (say 80%) everything is still great with a slight improvement in pings (100 to 350) - still the odd timeout on traceroutes.
Testing at 2 am this morning, signal had dropped to about 70%, everything still works great but now my pings were solid.
On Mweb UT2004 server, was a constant 130 with no fluctuations, no spikes and no packetloss also no timeouts at all on traceroutes.

Btw, I'm testing with the 256k system, although when I tested with 128k system the results were about the same as above.
 
the only explanation for that could be that there is less interference at night. so after the gaming routing has been sorted out and pings improve, gaming at night would generally be the thing to do.

..- dot dot dash ;)
 
Yay! I am currently connected using MyWireless.

I am one of the beta testers in Durban. I had some minor problems with the PC software not liking my browser version, but a helpful technician called Basil sorted that out (Thanks Basil). Overall, I must say I am very impressed.

This thing flies. With a download accelerator I am getting ~35 KBytes per second on the 256K package. Quite amazing considering that my signal strength shown in the IPWireless software is only 19%. The base station closest to me (about 200m) is apparently still waiting for an electricity connection, so I am picking up another base station - and must be at the edge of that station's coverage area.

Finally we have some real competition for Telkom.

One more thing:
My two brothers play EverQuest. One got his 128K MyWireless on Wednesday and the other is still uing ISDN 64. They both play on the same US east coast server. The MyWireless connection gives pings of about 250ms-300ms, while IDSN connection shows 400-500ms. So Sentech seems to work great for MMORPGs...

Well, I am off to test some more stuff. :)

Joh:3:17: For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world; but to save the world through Him.
Ro 10:9 If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
 
Hey there ProAsm.

La Lucia Ridge, within site of the water tower above Sunningdale - apparently the node there is still waiting for some power, but that is second hand info... My 19-20% signal strength seems to support that info though, as I am sure I would have a better signal strength from a tower that is very close to me. Unless these towers have a minimum radius as well... anyone?

Are you also in Durban?

Joh:3:17: For God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world; but to save the world through Him.
Ro 10:9 If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
 
LOL yeah [:)]
I managed to borrow some electricity from the Municipality and have run a long thick extension cable to their pump room but SunningDale is up and running but not at full strength as I could not run the aircons.
I went up to there this afternoon and reset the equipment as an alarm was on.
Try it now and see if you have an improvement.

All towers have a 3 to 5 km radius, allthough from the reports I'm getting the Durban North tower is really pumping it out [;)]
 
Hehe. I hope you don't mean "borrow". :)

Do you work for Sentech, ProAsm? I am pretty new to these forums so wouldn't know.

Well, things seem slightly better now. I get the following:
-> All 5 bars are green on the diagram showing the tower (up from 4).
When I hover my mouse over it I get the following numbers:
-> Signal: 21%, Frequency: 2518000 KHz, Basestation: 102, RSCP: -85 dBm, ISCP: -96 dBm

Perhaps you can answer some questions, if you don't mind. (I hope I haven't missed answers to some of these elsewhere)

1. Ok, what I do not get is why it shows me 5 bars with only 21% signal strength?

2. Shouldn't I be getting almost 100% since I am only about 200m or so from the tower, even if it is not running at full power? Or will the % never go that high?

3. Even with five bars I still get a couple of "The remote computer did not respond..." messages before a successful connect. Once connected though it doesn't drop at all. Is that because of the low signal % or is something amiss with the machine handling the connects?

4. What does the two values, RSCP: -85 dBm and ISCP: -96 dBm, mean and is RSCP: -90 bBm better than RSCP: -85 dBm. (I can change some of the values by placing various cooking utensils behind the modem, you know pizza pans, muffin pans, etc :) (to the amusement of my wife I might add).

Thanks.

.--- . ... ..- ... / .-.. --- ...- . ... / -.-- --- ..-
Ro:10:9 - If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord", and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
 
Triune, I dont see a mail icon, so can you please mail me.
There are some things we need to discuss [:)]
 
OK guys, help me with this then, who lives near Melrose and has Sentech? what is the signal strength like? Their site says operational, signal partial. Killarney mall is about 2k's away, there is a base staion there, and Hyde Park, also 2k's away getting a station now. Is it gonna be strong enough? And also, the 2 year contract bothers me, can it be cancelled?

[:p]
 
Hi ProAsm

I am in almost exactly the same situation as Tribune, not quite as close to the tower though, Im in Ennisdale Drive, so about 1Km away from the Tower (although I'm connecting to tower 60, which I dont think is the tower in question...)

Anyway I was looking for answers to most the question that Tribune posted... So please could you drop me a mail with your thoughts on his questions.

I get 4 Lights, and about 18% signal. Appart from some pretty terrible ping speeds (when it doesnt just time out all together) I dont have anything to complain about though, I've only been up for a day or so now, but the download and web-browsing speeds are great.

So far i'm one very happy customer, who just has some small question [:)]
 
Hey PoiZoNouZ I also live up the road from melrose arch and want to get mywireless, if you get any confirmend info on the signal here let me know, cause im not keen on signing 2 years for something that wont work.
 
dont b so negative dude.. it will rock ur budy[:I]
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by newdeal</i>
<br />Hey PoiZoNouZ I also live up the road from melrose arch and want to get mywireless, if you get any confirmend info on the signal here let me know, cause im not keen on signing 2 years for something that wont work.

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
 
too true same here<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Jester</i>
<br />The ping on cs are terrible. I have the 128k connection and you dont get a constant ping that is required with fps's. my ping started at 120 and spiked up to 400 ever few seconds.
If its just browsing yoyu want to do the mywireless is perfect
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
 
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