DSL recommendations

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StuG

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Guys I live on the west coast of the US but am looking to move to family in SA (haven't lived there for over 10 years).

What is the current recommendation as far as plans?

It sounds like Telkom is making some progress with the closer/dobroadband plans. Here people don't do wireless much but it seems it is used there although I would wonder about latency.

Here I have a 6 meg connection with a static. I know I'll probably have to use dyndns or similar there.

So if I wanted say for example a 4 meg connection is Telkom the way to go? Also I see guys getting different accounts for what looks like when they reach the international cap (I think).

I feel your pain but it seems you are slowly edging towards better pricing and connects.
 
Wireless is not the way to go IMO. Telkom ADSL (upto) 4mbps line would be the way to go. They are (still) the only provider in SA - For now. The ADSL Line rental for this runs at a cost of R413 per month. Telkom do have some Closer/DO broadband plans. The DO3 Plan includes your ADSL Line rental and a SAIX Int ISP 3GB account @ R554. See the Telkom site for the other options available.

Usually everyone had the Normal Telkom Internet accounts that were soft capped at 3GB of usage. After reaching that 3GB, your connection to International sites slowed to a halt, but any Local usage (DC++/ Torrents etc etc Inside SA) was still available for the rest of the month (People pulled 100s of Gigabytes of data from DC this way).

This all changed - go figure. Now your local access is capped too. The current options in terms of ISP’s are:

IS (Via Satellite) offers you options on International or Local Only accounts. All their international accounts come with an additional 10-30GB of Local use after your initial 1/2/etc GB Cap. Their Local Only accounts works out cheaper than SAIX.

SAIX (Telkom) (Via faster SAT3 Cable) offers you an array of prepaid/monthly options on International or Local Only accounts.

There are allot of ISP's reselling this:
Openweb
Web Africa
Axxess

The thing is though, Int works out to about R70/GB prepaid on SAIX. While the local only accounts work out at about R7/GB on IS. Telkom/SAIX/IS counts ALL usage on the international accounts as international traffic. So it would be rather stupid to use your International account to surf sites, like the MyADSL Forums, locally. What works for some people, is to use an app called Routesentry. This enables you to Split your International usage from your Local usage by using 2 different accounts. Thus enabling you to "save" your precious International bandwidth.

What also works, is to get one of the IS 1/10 or 2/30 accounts. This allows an initial 1/2/etc GB of International surfing. People tend to blast through this because you sometimes get more on these accounts than what you bargained for :p . Then after you are capped, you get an additional 10-30GB of Local Only usage. They then get a PrePaid SAIX account, and use routesentry to spit their usage over the 2 ISP’s.

Ask if you need to know more details, it’s late and this thing is probably full of typos. :sick:

Good Luck!

Edit:
There is alllllllot of details I skipped, too many and too complicated :mad: (Thanx Telkom)
One Important thing to maybe check out is the ISP's offering you, Like the Telkom DO plans, a One-Price DSL option that Includes your ADSL Line Rental + X amount of GB. Could be a nice Idea to look at that too. Just DONT sign ANY contracts!!!

The ADSL FAQ is also A good read

All these options is too confusing :confused: :mad: :confused:
 
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very slowly edging forward..

3gig cap is around R200 +-
512K Uncapped accounts are R1350+ and are limited to 30gig actually lol
 
Start off with one of the Telkom Do plans and then change your ISP if this proves to be inadequate. The 2GB and 3GB products are actually hard capped at 4GB and 6GB respectively. You can also buy topup 2GB (4GB) or 3GB (6GB) accounts from Telkom if necessary. There are lots of complaints about the speed and reliability of some of the IS international services which are satellite based.

See www.dobroadband.co.za for the latest offers from Telkom. Overall Telkom offers the best service in the market because they are the only ones that have access to the international submarine cables.

Currently if you ask for the self-install option you do not need to pay any installation charges and get a free WiFi router.
 
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Thanks for all the replies a wealth of info here.

I am very technically savvy but don't normally need to do sumersaults to route my traffic hehe. I understand what you are saying about routesentry. I would probably need to read through it to work out what to do. I wonder if some routers already have that traffic splitting capability built in.

I think the suggestion of a do/closer plan to get the ball rolling makes sense.

I wonder if I can forward my domain to a dyndns. Kind of a funky way but it might work.

Ideally I don't want to be tied into 12 month or so contracts.

I need to look at the telkom site again.
 
StuG said:
Thanks for all the replies a wealth of info here.
..
I would probably need to read through it to work out what to do. I wonder if some routers already have that traffic splitting capability built in.
..
I wonder if I can forward my domain to a dyndns. Kind of a funky way but it might work.
Click to expand...

Get the Linksys WRT54GL(inux) Wireless ADSL Router. Would be the way to go. It does not have a built-in traffic splitting capability, but you can make it built in. There are numerous scripts and even Firmware available that would allow you to do this (Routesentry) on the router itself. Bring one of these with you from over the waters if you want one. Could be cheaper there. Care to throw a price or two this way? Would be interesting to compare.

Want to host a site here on your Dynamic-IP ADSL? DynDNS will work like a charm.

Good Luck!
 
StuG said:
Thanks for all the replies a wealth of info here.

I am very technically savvy but don't normally need to do sumersaults to route my traffic hehe. I understand what you are saying about routesentry. I would probably need to read through it to work out what to do. I wonder if some routers already have that traffic splitting capability built in.

I think the suggestion of a do/closer plan to get the ball rolling makes sense.

I wonder if I can forward my domain to a dyndns. Kind of a funky way but it might work.

Ideally I don't want to be tied into 12 month or so contracts.

I need to look at the telkom site again.
Click to expand...

My Billion 7300 router has build in dyndns capability :cool:
 
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