considering snowball

[Gurr]

Hi,

Im considering getting wireless access from snowball.co.za
Mainly using it for day-to-day development (sql, sourceforge, cvs, www, ftp, skype ect). Just wondering about support, connection reliabilty levels ect.
I was thinking of the R399 per month home user package.

 

[Vlad]

their coverage seems quite limited, so mobility is out of the question, but personally i'd give them a try (edit: if you don't use P2P). I especially like :

# Unlimited traffic on all packages
# Free signal strength testing needs to be done at your premises

(Edit: read the small print though)

 

[sparklehorse]

Overall I would recommend them - having used them for a few months now. Although there are a few minor problems.

Normal web surfing is good, but it can get a bit slow during the day - home users probably get lower priority during business hours. Speeds are 5-6KBps with ~50KBps burst - so small pages are fast, but big downloads are not.
FTP and ssh is slow - but it probably depends on where the server is - dunno.
Skype is barely ok to bad depending on when you use it. It was good at some stage, but something changed.

Reliability in terms of the connection being up is excellent - even through some heavy wind and rain, but I have clear LOS without trees in the way. They use normal wireless lan technology so there's plenty of info available.
They don't want you to 'abuse' their 'unlimited' bandwidth. That means no streaming, p2p or other broadband uses. I don't know for sure but skype is bad probably because they limit the streaming content.

You have no external IP.
The fixed amount per month with no contract might change on 1 Nov.

Recently I have a big problem with the connection resetting every 5-10 minutes which is irritatingly disconnecting all downloads and IM clients. Which brings me to their support. They aren't that big, so if you phone them they are very helpful. Probably best to phone them directly - because their other support suck big time.

 

[Gurr]

thanks for the replies, sparklehorse you mentioned burst able speeds, what sort of average maintainable speeds would one expect during business hours. (10kb-20kb maybe?). At this moment I'm leaning towards 192kb + 3gig axxess account.

regards

 

[sparklehorse]

Yes 10-20KB sounds about right.

 

[def]

snowball is nice

Hi

I've had Snowball wireless for a few months now and it has been perfect.

I always get the rate they quoted.
Support is fine!

Don't know what's happening 1Nov... (i see they have taken the wireless off their website...)


go for it if you can.

-d

 

[eugenevdm]

Comments regarding Snowball

Hi guys,

Thanks for discussing Snowball on MyADSL. I am the owner of Snowball and I would love to make some comments regarding our service.

1. We recently removed some of the wireless content from our web site because we are busy with a major overhaul of all our wireless services in order to be more competitive and also because we're introducing some very exciting changes. We'll be promoting our consumer and business wireless services under the brand SNOWISP.com, and using our snowball.co.za site mainly for wireless infrastructure services such as metropolitan area networks and engineering projects.

2. Skype should work! We have however had some problems with our load balancing software which we're busy phasing out in the next few weeks. We take any complaint such as Skype not working very seriously and I guarantee you should you log an official support call we will endevaour to solve the problem.

3. Yes I know sometimes our automated systems (such as the help desk!) doesn't give the best response and I do actually encourage you to use the phone when you have a problem. We are implementing alert software for the automated systems (more automation!) which we hope will improve the response time when you submit an electronic request. But remember the phone is a shortcut and may always provide a quicker answer: +27 21 880-2228 or just phone me on my cell 24 hours +27 82 413-4338.

4. Just a side note on usage based billing systems such as that what was recently introducted by Telkom. If you take away hard capping (which can cripple a business) and the very high price of R 59.00 odd rand (cost price to the ISP), usage based systems do have some merrit. What I'm trying to say is should the guy who is using 2.5 GB per month pay the same price as the guy who is paying 15 GB per month? Most would agree the answer is no.

5. Remember in order to provide LOW COST Internet one has to be very creative. Some things just don't go well with that such as peer-to-peer. For the time being we won't offer peer-to-peer. It just does not make it worth our while. End-user wireless broadband services is a relatively new field and until the technology is sufficiently matured we're not going to compromise the network by offering peer-to-peer.

6. At present we have a relaxed policy regarding bandwidth usage. All in all we try to do things to protect our whole customer base so that everyone is happy (pipe dream?). We have phoned a couple of customers who relative to the whole customer base appeared to be using a lot more than usual. We'll never cut anyone off, but it has happend that we had to severely limit bandwidth usage when we discovered our customer had a worm. Overall we always try to give you what we promise.

7. I'm glad someone mentioned reliability. I was a network engineer by trade and network stability is my biggest concern. It really pains me when something goes wrong which fortunately doesn't happen that often. But we're always working hard at improving the network and ensuring 24-hour uptime. Running a WISP is extremely challenging and consumes all of my time. But I live for my customers and will always do my utmost to give them the most reliable network backed up by the best support.

Eugene

 

[sparklehorse]

2. Skype should work! We have however had some problems with our load balancing software which we're busy phasing out in the next few weeks. We take any complaint such as Skype not working very seriously and I guarantee you should you log an official support call we will endevaour to solve the problem.

Yes, since I last posted, skype is much better. I get almost no packet loss and roundtrip to the uk test service is under 400ms which I think is normal. It even works ok while surfing the net, but obviously not as good
But during office hours the packet loss is about 10% which is usable but could be better.
I don't use voip, so I won't complain until I do

4. Just a side note on usage based billing systems such as that what was recently introducted by Telkom. If you take away hard capping (which can cripple a business) and the very high price of R 59.00 odd rand (cost price to the ISP), usage based systems do have some merrit. What I'm trying to say is should the guy who is using 2.5 GB per month pay the same price as the guy who is paying 15 GB per month? Most would agree the answer is no.

I agree - usage based billing certainly has it's place. As long as it is fair. But if I pay for the bandwidth I use then I must be able to do with it what I want. If I want to use it to stream audio from an online radio station, read news or download a linux distro over bittorrent then that is my business.

5. Remember in order to provide LOW COST Internet one has to be very creative. Some things just don't go well with that such as peer-to-peer. For the time being we won't offer peer-to-peer. It just does not make it worth our while. End-user wireless broadband services is a relatively new field and until the technology is sufficiently matured we're not going to compromise the network by offering peer-to-peer.

So is the no p2p policy more to do with network performance than bandwidth usage? In that case, why not allow some access to p2p after hours or after midnight or something. I don't really use p2p, but once in a while it would have been nice to get something from a torrent or two, instead of being cut off completely. This limits your freedom on the net.

7. I'm glad someone mentioned reliability. I was a network engineer by trade and network stability is my biggest concern. It really pains me when something goes wrong which fortunately doesn't happen that often. But we're always working hard at improving the network and ensuring 24-hour uptime. Running a WISP is extremely challenging and consumes all of my time. But I live for my customers and will always do my utmost to give them the most reliable network backed up by the best support.

Yes, the reliability is really good. All your hard work certainly shows
I have always recommended snowball to my friends, and I will be continue doing so, because your service is a cut above the rest.