Att All Techies: Adsl Advice

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Roxstompa

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Hi Guys/Girls,

Right ive abandoned my 3G card and I have decided to fit Adl in my townhouse. I have a dual phone port in my kitchen and will get Telkom to come and install my adsl line for me (Going to telkom store today). Just a few questions:-

1) What service provider to go through? I have looked at all of them and Afrihost seem to be the best.

2) What wireless router to get? Im looking for something that has good range and can wirelessly broadcast HD movies etc. with good speed.

3) What package should I go for? I'm looking at spending +-R250 on Uncapped internet. Yes I know it is shaped but would a 384K line be sufficient for downloading off P2P/torrent sites. I will just leave my computer on all day when im at work so not to worried with speed.

Any other advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
Congratz on your choice to join the community of random frustration ;p

a) Unfortunately most recently in the ADSL market the service provider that will fit you best differs from person to person depending on what you do most. Im sure some are on par with others, but then again, some are not. Afrihost is pretty descent but caps your speeds on Uncapped. WA has extremely low latencies for online gaming, etc. I suggest reading the ISP forums to gain more knowledge about this.

b) Once again there is no 'best' wireless router but surely a few that stand out above the rest. I personally use a Belkin N Series, some are using the DGN2000 from Netgear, others the normal Telkom ones with the same results. To my best knowledge no wireless router is capable of streaming HD without some issues here and there. Generally the cabled solution works best for HD. Lower quility movies should pose less of an issue tho.

c) Well if you're not worried about speed then 384kb/s is fine really. That should put you back around R150ish if im right, from the Telkom side only. As for which ISP, this ties in with a) above.
 
2) HD Movies are notorious for bandwidth requirements,so minimum 54mbps and higher with very little loss is preferable,your question is very wide so exact answers will be the same
These guys are running a special on Belkin units like this which should cover a fair bit
1+3) Openweb: Package: 384k Gold Uncapped - Data Account Only. Price: R318
Mweb: 384k Uncapped Big Surfer - Option 2 Data only R219 p/m to MWEB
 
When you go to the Telkom store tell them you want to apply for the Uncapped 1meg promotion. That way you won't pay a cent for installation and the bonus is you'll get a free router. Of course you have the choice of using it or you can get yourself a decent one.

You'll then get 3 months free internet this way and if you like you can continue using TelkomInternet as your ISP or you can go to one of the other ISP's (I'm using Axxess with no problems).

On the wireless issue. I don't think using wireless to play HD (1080) is the best way to go. You need a lot of bandwidth to steam between the router and device. I don't know if Wireless-N will cut it.

Oh, and don't waste your time with a 384k line. The difference in price between that and a 1 meg line is so small its almost negligible.

Just my 2c :)
 
Last edited:
Roxstompa said:
Hi Guys/Girls,

Right ive abandoned my 3G card and I have decided to fit Adl in my townhouse. I have a dual phone port in my kitchen and will get Telkom to come and install my adsl line for me (Going to telkom store today). Just a few questions:-

1) What service provider to go through? I have looked at all of them and Afrihost seem to be the best.

2) What wireless router to get? Im looking for something that has good range and can wirelessly broadcast HD movies etc. with good speed.

3) What package should I go for? I'm looking at spending +-R250 on Uncapped internet. Yes I know it is shaped but would a 384K line be sufficient for downloading off P2P/torrent sites. I will just leave my computer on all day when im at work so not to worried with speed.

Any other advice will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I'd actually say take the Telkom uncapped option as you're at work during the day.
 
You won't be able to download HD with 384kbps, you'll get maybe 3 1080p movies a month finished.

I have a linksys E4200 and a netgear modem, I get ~9MBps (real world transfer speed) right next to the router and 300KBps downstairs around 15 metres away from router (through a whole lot of walls).

An average bluray 1080p encode is around 5GB for an hour of video which is 1.42MBps - nothing a wireless network can't handle.
 
awesome , thanks for the advice guys. Went for the Telkom special, wish me luck
 
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