Dear IBurst Management (write your letters)

[Gatecrasher]

Helpdesk told me I connect to the Rosebank base station (I'm in Blairgowrie)

Now that is a complete thumbsuck, and highly unlikely. You are further away from Rosebank than Randburg or Sandton, and you certainly have no LOS to Rosebank. They also told me, initially, that I was on Rosebank. If they can't even identify what base station you are on, how can they provide meaningful support?

Dear Iburst Management,

1) More packages to choose from, please. Specifically, if UUNET (whose backbone you are running on) can offer an uncapped ADSL service, is anything stopping you from offering an uncapped Iburst service for a similar price differential?

2) Please find a way for users to identify which base stations they are currently connected to. It would go a long way to identifying, isolating, and rectifying connectivity problems.

3) Get your POP3 server going, pronto.

4) Roll out more base stations in highly contended areas.

5) Once and for all, FIX Bryanston and Northcliff!

Regards,
Gatecrasher.

 

[lewstherin]

dear adsl users,

please stop comign to our thread and saying iburst is like sentech, I guess when you're on 512 or less you have all sorts of time to go rant about other peoples connections while you wait 3 hours for your 10mb file to download. heh 512, honestly.

Slimothy you should change ur nick to "Smarmy"...because seriously thats about all you seem to post - smarmy comments. I can't wait until you get hit by the same iBurst issues as the other suffering 'bursties...bet you'll be wishing for ADSL then.
On top of that, boasting about how you are pulling down tens of GBs of data is looking for trouble...iBurst will find you and cap you - and you wont find any sympathetic ears here.

tosser.

 

[Drastik]

In my experience thus far I have had no joy in dealing with WBS management. Does anybody know who is the holding company of WBS. At some point their shareholders should be made aware of what is happening. I imagine that a huge capital investment was made by somebody in the startup of WBS and at the moment it is being poured down the drain.

 

[koffiejunkie]

"Now that is a complete thumbsuck, and highly unlikely. You are further away from Rosebank than Randburg or Sandton, and you certainly have no LOS to Rosebank."

Gatecrasher, that's what I thought too. If the tower was down, I should not have reception and a serial link, should I?

We are the the low end of Blairgowrie though, so it is possible that we are picking up Rosebank. I'm actually suspecting this to be the problem (read my other post on gateways).

I do have LOS with Sandton though. When I tested iBurst at home (Gordon Ave in Blairgowrie - further north than the office), it was fantastic, few disconnections, full signal and great download speeds. Since moving it here, the signal is even better (according to the lights on the modem), but it's horribly unstable.

I think I'm hopping between two towers. Wish I knew how to force it to connect to a specific one.

 

[ic]

...Wish I knew how to force it to connect to a specific one.

Actually there is a way of doing this - just construct your own parabolic reflector thingy (link to thread in Readme.1st), since it is directional it means that your UTD (unless it is a UTC ???) will only be able to communicate with something in the directional signal path.

 

[Gatecrasher]

I think I'm hopping between two towers. Wish I knew how to force it to connect to a specific one.

Possible. Today, I was on a tower with very unstable pings and high packet loss (wish I knew which!!!). So I disconnected, rest my modem and reconnect and suddnely the pings are short and stable, and LSM results suddenly much better

So problem #18 requiring a modem reboot can often produce results if you are getting a lousy connection.

What about Randburg BS? Surely, that is your closest?

 

[slimothy]

Slimothy you should change ur nick to "Smarmy"...because seriously thats about all you seem to post - smarmy comments. I can't wait until you get hit by the same iBurst issues as the other suffering 'bursties...bet you'll be wishing for ADSL then.
On top of that, boasting about how you are pulling down tens of GBs of data is looking for trouble...iBurst will find you and cap you - and you wont find any sympathetic ears here.

tosser.

Smarmy, yeah good one.
Theres no cap right now so I can download as much as I want, is it against some rule? If the buffet says all you can eat, some will take a nibble but if I wanna eat the whole shebang, then thats just the risk they take for saying its all you can eat. And they're not gonna track me down and cap me... they're gonna cap everyone soon, so I think they should take a leaf out of my book and get it while its hot. I dont understand your problem with me, I'm just a happy customer who keeps reading how crap my connection is and how if I dont agree then I dont know anything. I think its important for potential iBursters to read about all entire spectrum, not just the bad. So yeah I'm, happy, my connection is better than yours and if you're reading this and in range of the Kempton tower, yours could be too.

 

[ic]

...I'm just a happy customer who keeps reading how crap my connection is and how if I dont agree then I dont know anything. I think its important for potential iBursters to read about all entire spectrum, not just the bad...

Where has it been written that you have a crappy connection? Who said you don't know anything? I think it is crystal clear that there are major problems with some base-stations, not all base-stations. It is also clear that WBS have not managed to sort out these problems on key base-stations since January. The rub comes in when everyone experiencing problems gets told that there is no problem, not only by WBS' Helpdesk, but by fellow iBursters that aren't affected by the problem base-stations.

 

[koffiejunkie]

ic wrote:
"Actually there is a way of doing this - just construct your own parabolic reflector thingy (link to thread in Readme.1st), since it is directional it means that your UTD (unless it is a UTC ???) will only be able to communicate with something in the directional signal path."

I thought one of the big differences between iBurst and Sentech was that iBurst is not directional? My bad... I'm using the ethernet job (I always confuse the UTC and UTD).

Gatecrasher wrote:
"What about Randburg BS? Surely, that is your closest?"

I'm not sure where the Randburg BS is. We're sort of down the hill at the bottom of Blairgowrie. We have LOS with Sandton tho. Is there a list somewhere that tells me exactly where the base stations are?

 

[Gatecrasher]

I thought one of the big differences between iBurst and Sentech was that iBurst is not directional? My bad... I'm using the ethernet job (I always confuse the UTC and UTD).

Yes but a reflector would shield your UTD from other BS's and focus your signal to/from the BS you are "aiming" it at.

Is there a list somewhere that tells me exactly where the base stations are?

There are network coverage maps on the Iburst Website that show where the Basestations are. I -think- I've seen the Randburg BS on a block of flats/offices near the intersection of Jan Smuts and Hendrik Verwoed. It certainly looked like the Iburst BS pictures.