Any Iburst problems in the Cape?

J

JungleRumble

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As a potential new wireless internet subscriber I considered Iburst until I read this forum. Seems like they are not up to standard. However, when I checked helopeter, most of the issues with them seemed to be Gauteng related. I did not see many complaints from the Cape Town area. Is this because Captetonians are too laid back to complain, or does Iburst have their act together in the Cape?
 
Thnink twice!

Hi JungleRumble

Capetonians do complain, we are awaiting ASA sanctions to be imposed on iBurst, so as to prevent them from misleading future consumers.

Should you seriously be considering using their service, I strongly suggest you acquire the service via a reseller like Tradepage or MWeb, this will save you the headache of being incorrectly billed and the laborious process of trying to correct the errors of iBurst’s billings department.

Only consider using iBurst if you will be using more than 3 Gigs worth of data per month, timeously receipt of your email is not of concern (should you receive it at all), some sites might not be accessible for weeks at a time, download speeds local / international will be much lower than with any of the other wireless or DSL service offerings in SA, however you will be paying much more for their service than with any other provider. Also, browsing websites will be much slower than with any other provider.

If you will be utilising it as an alternative to DSL, i.e. you will not be roaming (as the service is not available everywhere and it is not a truly mobile service - contrary to what iBurst advertising campaigns informs.), latency will be an issue (highest of all functional "broadband" service offerings in SA) i.e. online gaming / trading will not be possible, poor downloads due to excessive P2P shaping and you will have to be prepared to spend an additional R 350 – R 700 on a directional external antenna.

There are many other factors to consider, however they are generally linked to personal preferences, have a look at the link below, MyADSL’s wireless report once again unjustifiably flatters the performance of the wireless service providers.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=86&d=1196121686

Should you require any additional info please post, I'm sure most of the guys will gladly inform you of their current iBurst issues…

Regards

M
 
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who.is.michael said:
Hi JungleRumble

Capetonians do complain, we are awaiting ASA sanctions to be imposed on iBurst, so as to prevent them from misleading future consumers.

Should you seriously be considering using their service, I strongly suggest you acquire the service via a reseller like Tradepage or MWeb, this will save you the headache of being incorrectly billed and the laborious process of trying to correct the errors of iBurst’s billings department.

Only consider using iBurst if you will be using more than 3 Gigs worth of data per month, timeously receipt of your email is not of concern (should you receive it at all), some sites might not be accessible for weeks at a time, download speeds local / international will be much lower than with any of the other wireless or DSL service offerings in SA, however you will be paying much more for their service than with any other provider. Also, browsing websites will much slower than with any other provider.

You will be utilising it as an alternative to DSL, i.e. you will not be roaming (as the service is not available everywhere and it is not a truly mobile service), latency will not be an issue (highest of all functional "broadband" service offerings in SA) i.e. online gaming / trading will not be possible, poor downloads (excessive P2P shaping) are not an issue, you are prepared to spend and additional R 350 – R 700 on a directional external antenna.

There are many other factors to consider, however they are generally linked to personal preferences, have a look at the link below, MyADSL’s wireless report once again unjustifiably flatters the performance of the wireless service providers.

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=86&d=1196121686

Should you require any additional info please post, I'm sure most of the guys will gladly inform you of their current iBurst issues…

Regards

M
Click to expand...

You forgot about the fact that you have to buy (via cash or 24 month contract) a R2000 modem that you cannot use for ANYTHING but ibust. If you do decide that you hate ibusts guts you are stuck with a R2000 doorstop...

P.S JungleRumble, I have a R1500 desktop ibust modem if you really want to take the plunge (nothing wrong with the modem, I just canned my ibust month to month contract) :D
 
Pilgrim said:
You forgot about the fact that you have to buy (via cash or 24 month contract) a R2000 modem that you cannot use for ANYTHING but ibust. If you do decide that you hate ibusts guts you are stuck with a R2000 doorstop...
Click to expand...

Oops!, sorry... but that holds true for most of the wireless providers.
 
who.is.michael said:
Oops!, sorry... but that holds true for most of the wireless providers.
Click to expand...

Almost true. At least a standard WiFi modem can be used to join a WUG or another WISP and 3G is a real technology used in the real world.

ibust unfortunately was not adopted in a lot of countries.

I love the iBurst technology but the way it is run by ibust SA is very sad.
 
Thanx all of you. No, I think I will steer away from iBurst. My problem is Telkom cannot provide ADSL in my area, apparently the lines are fiber optic. Dial-up is a drag so I am left with wireless. 3g offered to assist me to test my Vodacom 3g reception. According to their coverage map there is a non-reception black hole around my house - and only my house!

Anyhow, think I will go for it nevertheless - will use external antenna as well.
 
who.is.michael said:
download speeds local / international will be much lower than with any of the other wireless or DSL service offerings in SA, however you will be paying much more for their service than with any other provider. Also, browsing websites will much slower than with any other provider.
Click to expand...

iBurst is not really cost effective anymore, but looking at his options he is stuck with them.

I would disagree about the speeds though, I almost constantly get good download speeds local and international (around 1mbps really) and I know many others do.

Browsing speeds aren't that bad either, I'm not sure if your connection is very badly affected in the CBD. :o The first load of pages can be painful though.
 
JungleRumble said:
Thanx all of you. No, I think I will steer away from iBurst. My problem is Telkom cannot provide ADSL in my area, apparently the lines are fiber optic. Dial-up is a drag so I am left with wireless. 3g offered to assist me to test my Vodacom 3g reception. According to their coverage map there is a non-reception black hole around my house - and only my house!

Anyhow, think I will go for it nevertheless - will use external antenna as well.
Click to expand...

In which area are you, street address? Have you contacted Telkom regarding their WiMax service?
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
iBurst is not really cost effective anymore, but looking at his options he is stuck with them.

I would disagree about the speeds though, I almost constantly get good download speeds local and international (around 1mbps really) and I know many others do.

Browsing speeds aren't that bad either, I'm not sure if your connection is very badly affected in the CBD. :o The first load of pages can be painful though.
Click to expand...

Hi EHV what are you comparing iBurst with? If it's MyWireless or Cell C, I would have to agree with you. As for 1 Mbps on iBurst - it's a total fantasy. The service has been oversold with the introduction of the R 49.00 packages.

If you take the time to read up on the info provided by Kyocera you will clearly see that 1 Mbps is not possible if there is more than 70 odd users that are simultaneously connected to the same tower (Your tower load averages 2-3 'oversubscribed' - which is way over 72 connections, unless you sitting right on top of the tower when you might have a better experience than the average user as local stations gets preference to those further afield) and this is not even considering the poor connectivity to the internet (not iBurst’s network) that the backhaul ISP's provide iBurst with.

iBurst themselves tried to prove this to the ASA and failed…

Sorry, for being blunt…

PS. I've tested the following four towers (CBD TL=3, Century City TL=1, Gardens TL=2, Sea Point TL=1) and not one of these can produce 1 Mbps / 1 024 Kbps / 128 KBps downloads (during OH or AH) on a 9.5 G Pro account within 50 meters direct line of sight (antenna - antenna).

I connect to Gardens tower (less than 20 meters away) with an external antenna (Yagi from Poynting) to prevent base station hopping (Tower Load; TL=2 & pings to the gateway 41.208.224.1 average 58 ms) on a daily basis and am on the net constantly, till the early hours of the morning and have never succeeded to download at speeds of 1 Mbps during the past two years.
 
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who.is.michael said:
Hi EHV what are you comparing iBurst with? If it's MyWireless or Cell C, I would have to agree with you. As for 1 Mbps on iBurst - it's a total fantasy. The service has been oversold with the introduction of the R 49.00 packages.

I connect to Gardens tower (less than 20 meters away) with an external antenna (Yagi from Poynting) to prevent base station hopping (Tower Load; TL=2 & pings to the gateway 41.208.224.1 average 58 ms) on a daily basis and am on the net constantly, till the early hours of the morning and have never succeeded to download at speeds of 1 Mbps during the past two years.
Click to expand...

Interesting, because I can easily achieve this:
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/7230/daytimesinglethreadcx6.jpg
http://img514.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dayqb2.jpg
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5084/localsinglefs6.jpg

And others I know on the Plumstead/Southfield/Tokai towers get the same speeds, if not better than mine. It's usually around 100Kb+ with most international multithreaded downloads, and even the single threaded downloads from rapidshare can hit 1mb during the day.
 
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I can make out the local speed that reflects 1 080 kbps (assume it is multithreaded) and the other of 800 Kbps however the second image quality is too poor?

Still shy of 1 Mbps?
 
who.is.michael said:
I can make out the local speed that reflects 1 080 kbps (assume it is multithreaded) and the other of 800 Kbps however the second image quality is too poor?

Still shy of 1 Mbps?
Click to expand...

The second is a multithreaded international download at 135KBps, obviously about the highest burst speed. That 100KBps is Opera's (browser) internal download manager which sort of gets an average, the download starts slower, by the end it would be around 110Kb. Single thread though.

The local download is a single thread, Uunet's ftp only allows one thread. :( Try grab a download, it should reach those speeds in a few seconds. ftp.uunet.co.za/pub/incoming/ICASA/ICASA.mp3

It would be weird if you never got these sorts of speeds with such a good connection. I just thought 1mbps wasn't a total fantasy, for my surrounding towers at least.
 
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Ekhaatvensters said:
It would be weird if you never got these sorts of speeds with such a good connection. I just thought 1mbps wasn't a total fantasy, for my surrounding towers at least.
Click to expand...

I understand and appreciate your post, however something does not add up... Do you know the actual location of your tower, i.e. street address?

Regards

M
 
who.is.michael said:
I understand and appreciate your post, however something does not add up... Do you know the actual location of your tower, i.e. street address?
Click to expand...

It's on top of the Sheraton factory (or possibly Kolnicks linen) on Princess Vlei Road in Diep River, the small industrial park next to the robots before the bridge, if you know the area.

My actual connection isn't as good as yours, at best I get around 63ms to the local gateway. I would think you could hit 1Mbps with downloads off uunet's ftp and even internationally with a few threads.
 
Thanks, will check it out as soon as I have some free time... When do you achieve the best download speeds AH or OH and is this the only tower you connect to?

No, the Cape Town CBD towers are no longer on Verizon IP's but Telkom's.

Regards

M
 
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