Advice needed: Internet stability above all else.

G

Gamos

Active Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2003
Messages
93
Reaction score
51
Edit: This was the findings after this thread's advice and some weeks

Righto, so it has been a few weeks and Speedify is a definite life saver and I can happily recommend it. They have a server in JHB so you get al the good local latency you need. For the year subscription it works out to R115 per month. The software has 3 modes you can choose from but we run the redundancy mode. This essentially use our MTN (connected via Lan cable) and rain wirelessly connected at the same time. You can use numerous connections if you have the connectivity to do so. So while you use both connection's data, if one drops you continue working without a single drop. There is even stats section that shows you how many drops you experienced and prevented a drop.

My sister actually got a mail from the company telling her that they have noticed an improvement in the issues she's been having.

Also, we since had Fibre installed in our area and it is definitely the most stable solution for

Original Post:

My sister does online teaching as career. She's been having all kinds of Internet issues. Every time the Internet drops she gets penalized. This is actively causing her money and worse, could cost her, her job. She is constantly taken to task about her Internet issues, from a first world that just doesn't understand.

We tried many solutions. At the house we have ADSL, Telkom LTE, MTN 4G Fixed LTE and RAIN 4G LTE.

The ADSL is stable, but the upload speeds are just not good enough (0.6Mbit on a good day)
All the other connections are hopes and a prayers for a good day. Every other day one would drop, and you'd have to reconnect with the other. The towers in the area are either overloaded, or the signal strength at home isn't great ( I measured 98Dbm last night - BAD!)

We are out of Fibre and 5G range.

I don't know what to do any more. I'm trying to assist her with an external antenna, but don't exactly have the tools to find the strongest signal, other than walking around in the yard with the antenna on a stick.

What other suggestions can you guys make? We need the stability above all else. About 10Mbit/2 Mbit or so would do. Is point to point wireless an option? Is it stable? Do I get the Poynting guys out to my house? Do I throw a LAN cable a km down the road to someone's Fibre connection (I joke, but I'm thinking it... )

Any suggestions would be great.
 
Last edited:
Bridge multiple internet connections to use simultaneously.
 
Fibre then Rain 5G. Everything else is just trash unfortunately.
 
AA1 said:
Bridge multiple internet connections to use simultaneously.
Click to expand...

This... Get a bonded device so if one connection fails the others will keep going.
 
Gamos said:
My sister does online teaching as career. She's been having all kinds of Internet issues. Every time the Internet drops she gets penalized. This is actively causing her money and worse, could cost her, her job. She is constantly taken to task about her Internet issues, from a first world that just doesn't understand.

We tried many solutions. At the house we have ADSL, Telkom LTE, MTN 4G Fixed LTE and RAIN 4G LTE.

The ADSL is stable, but the upload speeds are just not good enough (0.6Mbit on a good day)
All the other connections are hopes and a prayers for a good day. Every other day one would drop, and you'd have to reconnect with the other. The towers in the area are either overloaded, or the signal strength at home isn't great ( I measured 98Dbm last night - BAD!)

We are out of Fibre and 5G range.

I don't know what to do any more. I'm trying to assist her with an external antenna, but don't exactly have the tools to find the strongest signal, other than walking around in the yard with the antenna on a stick.

What other suggestions can you guys make? We need the stability above all else. About 10Mbit/2 Mbit or so would do. Is point to point wireless an option? Is it stable? Do I get the Poynting guys out to my house? Do I throw a LAN cable a km down the road to someone's Fibre connection (I joke, but I'm thinking it... )

Any sugguestions would be great.
Click to expand...
It is -98 dBm, an absolutely useless signal level.
As you already have just about every available mobile service, you should be able to identify which one is the best of all them.
Some speed tests over each, reporting the signal levels on all of them might offer some clues.
Where are you located? In an urban or rural area?
Do all the network providers have their own infrastructure or they roaming on only one or two?
Is there no way to upgrade the ADSL service? Is it out of the question?.
For the type of job your wife is doing, a fully symmetrical connection would be best and 10/2 is border line.- the return path does not have the capacity needed.
You would need to try and see if there is an operator, WISP etc, that can offer you a direct PTP connection to a node.
You can try and get someone to help you with the bonding solution as proposed and see if that will help. However, even bonding does not always ensure or prevent session drop outs.
Without knowing where you are located it is not really possible to suggest alternative solutions.
Once you know who the main network providers are, you can investigate the possibility of an external antenna for that network and a possibly a repeater. Some network providers do provide them.
 
Will leave the bonding solution to others' to help you with.
Are you able to post the ADSL/VDSL performance figures as measured by your router? Maybe there is something obvious we can see to help analyse the line noise problem. The filters in place and okay?

Try changing the filter and even putting two in series to see if that helps.

Overhead copper feed? When last was the drop wire replaced? ADSL service provider/ISP Telkom.

Have you approached Level 7 for a quote suggestion? What does your neighbour say about the service?

Go for a business package instead of residential maybe?
You have eliminated end-user equipment, PC,s s/w as a source of issues I presume?
 
Last edited:
My wife is also teaching english online, to China. We just migrated from a Herotel Wisp 10 / 3 Mbps package @ R999 pm to Vox pure ADSL 10 / 1 @ R575 pm. Both are currently active while we see out the last month of the Wisp contract, but she is using the ADSL exclusively. Whilst the connection to China is fine on the ADSL, and her lessons happen without a hitch, her teaching platform constantly tells her that her "connection is unstable."

I did a couple of speedtests on the ADSL and the Wisp connections and found to my surprise that the wisp had a much lower ping to Shanghai than the ADSL. And the Wisp never gave her the"Network is unstable" message. There are 5 wireless hops between us and the fibre breakout on the Wisp, yet it has a lower latency than the ADSL. Go figure.

I have decided to upgrade to 20 Mbps VDSL to get the 5 Mbps upload, and will see if that improves matters.
 
Grouter said:
My wife is also teaching english online, to China. We just migrated from a Herotel Wisp 10 / 3 Mbps package @ R999 pm to Vox pure ADSL 10 / 1 @ R575 pm. Both are currently active while we see out the last month of the Wisp contract, but she is using the ADSL exclusively. Whilst the connection to China is fine on the ADSL, and her lessons happen without a hitch, her teaching platform constantly tells her that her "connection is unstable."

I did a couple of speedtests on the ADSL and the Wisp connections and found to my surprise that the wisp had a much lower ping to Shanghai than the ADSL. And the Wisp never gave her the"Network is unstable" message. There are 5 wireless hops between us and the fibre breakout on the Wisp, yet it has a lower latency than the ADSL. Go figure.

I have decided to upgrade to 20 Mbps VDSL to get the 5 Mbps upload, and will see if that improves matters.
Click to expand...

Traceroutes and WINMTR or Pingplotter is what you need to do to try and see where the latency differences are coming from. 5 hops of radio connections is a recipe for instability. The real issue is the jitter performance figures. Stable latency is preferable ro instability even if higher.

PS right now in a good coverage area on VC I am measuring terrible performance on 3G and 4G with extreme levels of jitter.
 
Grouter said:
My wife is also teaching english online, to China. We just migrated from a Herotel Wisp 10 / 3 Mbps package @ R999 pm to Vox pure ADSL 10 / 1 @ R575 pm. Both are currently active while we see out the last month of the Wisp contract, but she is using the ADSL exclusively. Whilst the connection to China is fine on the ADSL, and her lessons happen without a hitch, her teaching platform constantly tells her that her "connection is unstable."

I did a couple of speedtests on the ADSL and the Wisp connections and found to my surprise that the wisp had a much lower ping to Shanghai than the ADSL. And the Wisp never gave her the"Network is unstable" message. There are 5 wireless hops between us and the fibre breakout on the Wisp, yet it has a lower latency than the ADSL. Go figure.

I have decided to upgrade to 20 Mbps VDSL to get the 5 Mbps upload, and will see if that improves matters.
Click to expand...
What does the ADSL line stats say in the router?

I also had 10Mbps ADSL some years back and then Telkom changed something (modulation or some such) so the line could in theory sync higher (and even showed as such in the router) but it affected the latency.
 
Gamos said:
We miss Fibre by about 1km, and OpenServe is not buying further trenching rights. This would have been solution #1.

We do have VSDL 20/2 in our area. Because of the noise on my line, the router shows the best case scenario as 18 down / 1.1 up from my current 10 down/1 up. Unless VDSL ports work better/different with those attenuation ratings. This would be option #2 if somehow VDSL is better on the same noisy copper as normal ADSL.

I've tested Rain 5G, but we are on the edge of the reception map, so it is spotty. I get good downloads, but uploads are still suffering (because of signal) and it's just not stable.

Bitco does not have coverage.

As for Telkom, MTN and Rain 4G, I have no idea how to track down which towers they use. I've driven around the suburb with my phone, but when I'm at home pointing an antenna to those towers, I seem to get worse signal. I don't know if an aerial installer with some equipment will help.

Telkom LTE is useless. I get 3 down / 1 up.

MTN seems to be the strongest signal. I get 70mbit down / 40 up in the middle of the night, but even that connection would just randomly drop during business hours time.

Rain 4G seems, okayish, and functions as the manual fallback if MTN drops. But we can't have those drops happening at all...

The routes are all ZTE MF286C, Huawei something etc. that comes with the contracts.

Our neighbours have a wireless point to point with Level 7. It's quite expensive, but how reliable are those type of internet connections? There is no real way for me to test. Reliability is more important than the cost.

Lastly, how would I bound/bridge 2 links together? Are we talking Mikrotik router in front, with the MTN / Rain routers connecting to it, or something to that effect?
Click to expand...
When using LTE, are you connecting to your router via Wifi or with cable?

I use both MTN and Telkom LTE but I can't comment on stability because I honestly don't notice it in my environment. Unfortunately wireless solutions will always have the possibility of drops.
 
Gamos said:
My sister does online teaching as career. She's been having all kinds of Internet issues. Every time the Internet drops she gets penalized. This is actively causing her money and worse, could cost her, her job. She is constantly taken to task about her Internet issues, from a first world that just doesn't understand.

We tried many solutions. At the house we have ADSL, Telkom LTE, MTN 4G Fixed LTE and RAIN 4G LTE.

The ADSL is stable, but the upload speeds are just not good enough (0.6Mbit on a good day)
All the other connections are hopes and a prayers for a good day. Every other day one would drop, and you'd have to reconnect with the other. The towers in the area are either overloaded, or the signal strength at home isn't great ( I measured 98Dbm last night - BAD!)

We are out of Fibre and 5G range.

I don't know what to do any more. I'm trying to assist her with an external antenna, but don't exactly have the tools to find the strongest signal, other than walking around in the yard with the antenna on a stick.

What other suggestions can you guys make? We need the stability above all else. About 10Mbit/2 Mbit or so would do. Is point to point wireless an option? Is it stable? Do I get the Poynting guys out to my house? Do I throw a LAN cable a km down the road to someone's Fibre connection (I joke, but I'm thinking it... )

Any sugguestions would be great.
Click to expand...

Move...
 
netstrider said:
What does the ADSL line stats say in the router?

I also had 10Mbps ADSL some years back and then Telkom changed something (modulation or some such) so the line could in theory sync higher (and even showed as such in the router) but it affected the latency.
Click to expand...
Pretty good stats as a matter of fact:

Screenshot 2020-09-18 102517.jpg
 
Geoff.D said:
Traceroutes and WINMTR or Pingplotter is what you need to do to try and see where the latency differences are coming from. 5 hops of radio connections is a recipe for instability. The real issue is the jitter performance figures. Stable latency is preferable ro instability even if higher.
Click to expand...
Academic at this point in time. Once Vox upgrades my line to 20 Mbps VDSL all should be schweet.
 
Grouter said:
Academic at this point in time. Once Vox upgrades my line to 20 Mbps VDSL all should be schweet.
Click to expand...
I like your optimism! Let us know if you are right! :ROFL:

Me? I know too much about the inner workings of Vox to be that optimistic.
 
netstrider said:
Yeah.

I think the main thing that's changed in recent years is interleaved path mode. Fast path gives better results latency wise.
Click to expand...
Ja the interleaved/fastpath BS did nothing for customer satisfaction and just made their job easier -- they could spend more time playing solitaire.
 
Geoff.D said:
I like your optimism! Let us know if you are right! :ROFL:
Click to expand...
In the last 17 years I've tried every type of internet bar fibre (unavailable) at this address, and my 20 Mbps VDSL, which I gave up 2 years ago, was hands down the best I ever had. Looking forward to getting it back.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X