ADSL - is it worth it?

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fusion01

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Hi there to all whom have made the effort to support this site... I am pleased to see such a venting in a country where people are generally slow to gripe.

My phone bills on a dial-up average at R1 300.00 per month, so obviously I'm looking into alternatives. I do realise that with ADSL my costs will be slightly higher, but not by much. But after reading every single post, I do wonder if a dial-up is actually a less painful route. Could users please advise. Dial-up? ADSL? ISDN? I can't afford a leased line so these are my options. Also, I have a dial-up internet subscription through Ananzi at R580.00 per year, would I STILL NEED to pay for another account should I get ADSL through Telkom etc? I know they charge R220.00 per month when I'm paying around R50.00 now, so onbviously I want to avoid this.

Thanks in advance for any help offered.

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Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
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May I also add another question, and that is regarding ADSL modems. I import all of my music from the UK at R130.00 each (with FedEx shipping and customs included) so naturally I'd look to importing an ADSL modem too. I know there might be filter issues. Has anyone had definite success with better modems than the crap I suspect Telkom offer? I can get one for half the price. Netgear etc? Functioning? Thanks for any help in advance peeps.

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Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
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<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by fusion01</i>
<br />May I also add another question, and that is regarding ADSL modems. I import all of my music from the UK at R130.00 each (with FedEx shipping and customs included) so naturally I'd look to importing an ADSL modem too. I know there might be filter issues. Has anyone had definite success with better modems than the crap I suspect Telkom offer? I can get one for half the price. Netgear etc? Functioning? Thanks for any help in advance peeps.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You will pay about R975 total excluding voice calls if you use Telkom as an ISP. Netgear works fine, I'm using a DG814 myself and a number of other people in SA are too. Note that if your phone is registered as a business line the cost is approximately R1100 per month.

See other posts abour the cap and port throttling before you decide.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by fusion01</i>
<br />I import all of my music from the UK at R130.00 each (with FedEx shipping and customs included) <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Now this I want to know more about. I'm sick of the prices and range of music available in SA. That sounds very cheap especially if it's Fed-Exed. Care to share how this works?
 
Paf, everything I like is distributed by small labels in the UK, here in Cape Town, CD Wherehouse has the largest range but **** you over for R250.00 per cd. Alternative is simple. Amazon.co.uk. Go with the 2-3 day courier option - it's FedEx. It's basically around a 30 GBP basic charge, so the more you order the cheaper all work out. R130 is based on around 12-15 CD's... a larger order. But let's face it, this country is in the dark ages when it comes to more specialist musical interests, so thank god there's an alternative...

As far as ADSL... no-one actually told me whether ADSL is actually a good route to take! Only advice on modems etc... (thanks for that BTW). But not encouraging. People, after using your service for however many months - IS IT WORTH IT? Simple question! :)

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Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
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If you wish to judge whether ADSL would beneficual to you consider the following :

1) Is the majority of your current internet Traffic local or international ?

* If local ADSL is a viable option
* If International then ask yourself how much do you download and upload internationally , basically ask will 3 gigs be enough because quiet frankly the alternative route after you are capped is useless (in my experience)

2) Do you use your internet connection for anything other than browsing and e-mail, example gaming oversees, Kazaa, audio and video streaming (Basically anthing that doesn't use HTTP/FTP/SMTP protocols)

* If yes be advised that during business hours and peak browsing periods any application other than FTP/HTTP/SMTP will be badly effected.

3) Do you intend to host webpages on your own server ? or a e-mail server or any internet use server that needs an static IP address ?

* Be advise ADSL has a dynamic IP address system and will discconect you if you have your connection alive for 24hrs (on continous connection) - You would have to find some means to negotiate this dynamic IP system.

Regarding your Ananzi subscription - That subscription is for dial-up accounts and would not be usable for ADSL. You would need to get an ADSL subscription on top of the ADSL line rental...irrespective of what ISP you use.

Hope that helps you a bit.
 
too bad amazon won't ship electronics to SA
 
While ADSL is pretty rubbish after capped internationally, it's pretty easy to get past this using a proxy server for HTTP, FTP and Messenger (which is perfectly legitimate so don't worry about legality), unfortunately for P2P, etc. the best alternative is a SOCKS5 proxy (and these generally require you pay) and thats normally out of the question. All this of course is dependant on you actually hitting the cap - not exactly difficult, but can be prevented. If you can organize yourself a proxy for HTTP/FTP (there are free ones out there - even locally) then 99% of the time your speeds should be greater than dialup on those services. Game playing is unfortunately best kept local (which is a pity because there's a far larger selection of games services internationally :P).

Uncapped though it's a whole other matter, speeds are generally fast across the board (except during SA business hours) and you can expect anything between 20-50KB/s from international and local sources, and because of this I'm over the moon that I got ADSL - it truly is leaps and bounds ahead of my old dial-up speeds, downloads are blazingly fast, and things I could have never done with a dialup are finally realizable with the "always-on" and "relatively fast" nature of the system. That said, I do believe the service you get (3GB cap and port prioritization, speed notwithstanding) does not warrant the ~R1000 price tag, and it's something you will have to consider.

As for a modem, I cannot stress how important it is to get a high quality one, ADSL lines are prone to interference and other such ugly things and anything but a good modem is going to invariably have issues with this. I tried getting ahold of one of the SMC Barricade Router+ADSL Modem's and I got endless grief when it came to shipping delays, etc. and then being told "we got many returns because it presumably doesn't work with the Telkom network" (at which point I decided to go with the Netgear router).

What bliss, the Netgear DG814 (Router+ADSL Modem) and DG824M (Router+ADSL Modem+Wireless Hotspot+Business Level Firewall - the one I got teeheehee) is all you could want when it comes to an ADSL router. I'm not entirely sure on the 814, but the 824M comes with built in DynDNS functionality so that it can automatically register your new IP with the DynDNS.org service upon reconnection (EXTREMELY useful as your DynDNS almost instantly resolves to the new IP), which is important if you want to host something due to the volatile nature of your IP and the 24hour reset. The firewall functionality on the DG824M is brilliant with port forwarding and hack e-mail notification, etc. A note though, these routers take some configuring and it's best to use the latest firmware (as of writing 1.4 release 05 for the DG824M).

The only downside to the above "modems" is their price, while the 814 clocks in at a reasonable R1500-R1700 (well worth it), the 824M comes in at a whopping R3100 - definately something you need to think about: "Do I really need all the bells and whistles or will a lower level system do me perfectly well?" and even more importantly "Do I really need wireless hotspot functionality?".

All in all I'm really happy with my ADSL - it's perhaps not worth the price, and you have to understand you ARE going to be buying into a good deal of grief and irritation at times, coupled with the fact that this IS Telkom you're going to be dealing with (and they're inherently evil), but, well... it's your decision :)
 
In general:

Please remember that Telkom has so little confidence in their service that they are offering it without any Service Level Agreement - or as they say: A Best Effort service. If something does not work - they offered their best :-)

It is almost always on.
The cost to download 3GB via telephone/ISDN is tremendous
It is usually faster than telephone/ISDN

For many it is the most cost effective option available.

This does not mean it is as cost effective as it shoud be - it is way to expensive compared to other countries, but cheaper compared to ISDN and telephone - if you are only interested in the activities Telkom considers worth the Internet.

The Telkom offering of ADSL not what people in the UK, Germany and the US would expect of ADSL.

If it would shave around R1000 per month (or even less) of your monthly telephone bill, it could be a definite option - due to the absence of alternatives.
 
Quite a bit to read through after the last posts and I'm hoping this will fill me in somewhat as to making an informed decision.

Thanks to all for taking the time to leave such impressive postings. Exactly what I was hoping for.

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Fusion.01 : Internet Design & Production
www.fusion01.com
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Just a note:

I can download up to 300 Megabytes of data a night on ISDN and it only costs me R8 a night. (This excludes the R50/month for the privilege.) It would then cost me R80 + R50 = R130 to download 3 Gigabytes of data. In a month I can download 9 Gigabytes of data for R290 in call charges. Add the cost of the ISP (R120 Imaginet) and the ISDN subs (R200), I can do 9 Gigs for approximately R600 a month and that does not include being connected for an entire weekend. It's not that expensive.

However, it's not all that convenient either. While you're downloading 300 Megs of data a night, you can do very little else.

By closely managing my internet expenses, I've never had a phone bill in excess of R800 and that includes calls other than my ISP. R1300 seems like an awful lot though, so maybe you can look at cutting that down a bit. Also remember that any calls you currently make to non-ISP numbers will still have to be made even with ADSL, so that expense will remain.

*) Get itemised billing. Check to see how many non-ISP calls you're actually making every month. Try to cut down on cell-phone calls in particular.
*) Dial up through a gateway PC to stop reboots from disconnecting you.
*) Get Telkom to sort out random disconnects on your line.
*) Always use a Keepalive agent to prevent disconnects 'for your own protection.'
*) Subscribe to the InfintyCall plan to cap the cost of a single call to R8 for R50. R8 will buy you an hour of connectivity, so everything over that is a bonus. 5 hours over the limit will recover your subscription fee.
*) Try to dial up only once per callmore period. Ever since my random disconnects were resolved by Telkom, I've been able to stick to a one call per night or weekend rule. This limits you to only about 20 calls to your ISP per month, for a total cost of R160.
*) Oh yes, and never dial up outside Callmore time (19:00 till 07:00).

Juice
 
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