iBurst Softcap Falling Away

[Xenophon]

New Year = Hello Telkom

 

[ZombiePriest]

iBurst still sends those notices once you reach your 64kbps speed, irrespective..

Yet according to the email, there is no 64 kbps speed as I'm no longer capped for the following 3 months. As long as those 3 months are before February 2010. Wait a minute! We are in December, which means we are in those 3 months. Or not. :twisted:

Do they mean I am uncapped at 64 kpbs speeds, in other words I no longer get my bandwidth that they are contractually obliged to give me?

Do they mean I am uncapped at full speed? This means I no longer get my 64 kpbs throttle. But I do, according to their browser hijacking. But I don't, according to their email notice.

After 3 months you can go back to the old package including 64kbps throttle.

I am to be on uncapped Screamer, uncapped axxess or uncapped DigiChilli by that time. Still looking around (I'm open to suggestions). Afrihost looks great too.

Or maybe there is a wireless competitor out there who could use the iBurst desktop modem. If not, I might be able to make it work :twisted: or pay an engineering friend to make it work. I have three months

Note that all of these work out cheaper than iBurst's suggested price increases. Or maybe not, as the email notification received from iBurst is completely ambiguous and doesn't really give any numbers. iBurst is going to have to drop their prices considerably, or.. well, iBurst tends to do exactly what they want, come hell or high water, so never mind.

For me, I'd rather buy a booster or two at R39/GB then keep my laptop, external HD, iBurst modem etc running the whole night.

I never saw the point of getting a booster from iBurst because:

1. They have never monitored my bandwidth usage accurately. My unthrottled bandwidth gets capped at about the 10th of each month, regardless of whether I actually used it. Sometimes my modem is switched off until then, and the cap still runs out at that time regardless. No point in buying a booster if the chances are slim that they'd count your boosted gigs correctly.

2. Frequently, throttled and unthrottled speeds appear to be about the same. I only notice when the iBurst network is down, which happens often (about twice a week, for about half a day at a time).

3. I'm meant to get uncapped throttled speeds, which is the only selling point iBurst has considering they are no longer cheaper than solid lines and they don't have service. None.

 

[PeterCH]

You are probably sharing that line with your colleagues at work.
At home you will have that line all to yourself.

I get your drift but even when no-one else seems to be on, it's pretty slow.

 

[Qrox]

Like I said before in another thread, Iburst's data monitoring is inacurate and you can get a lot of disconnects. I really pitty people who think that their going to save by buying boosters. Most likely the type of guys that use a lot of internet are going to buy like 5-7bg of boosters and only get 4-5gb of it. The only thing iburst had going for it was it's 64kbs service after cap.

Most likely I will also be moving away from iburst as soon as my contract expires in I think March. Something tells me that the iburst used modem market price is going to take a huge dive come February.

Edit: Also just tried to get into iburst's site to check what they say I've used so far. Anyone wan't to guess what message I got? Request timed out. Server error.
Typical Iburst. And no! It's not my pc or my web browser. I have tried logging in with different web browsers as well as different computers. For anyone thinking of getting iburst.... RUN! RUN NOW!

 

[SaiyanZ]

iBurst still sends those notices once you reach your 64kbps speed, irrespective.

After 3 months you can go back to the old package including 64kbps throttle.

For me, I'd rather buy a booster or two at R39/GB then keep my laptop, external HD, iBurst modem etc running the whole night.

That's something people need to take into account. In order to make full use of and get value for money with the 64kbps throttle you'd have to have your PC on 24/7. That's a load of stress on your PC as well as heat output. Considering Eskom's electricity price hikes you may end up spending a bit more than you expect My monthly electricity bill went from about R140 to R280 a few months ago when tarrifs increased and I don't leave my PC on at night, or when not at home! This is one of the reasons I'm also putting off getting some sort of cheap ADSL uncapped solution.

 

[ZombiePriest]

Edit: Also just tried to get into iburst's site to check what they say I've used so far. Anyone wan't to guess what message I got? Request timed out. Server error.
Typical Iburst. And no! It's not my pc or my web browser. I have tried logging in with different web browsers as well as different computers. For anyone thinking of getting iburst.... RUN! RUN NOW!

No, it's not your PC. I've had similar problems on iBurst's network since time immemorial. I thought it was a network problem on my side, so I replaced my routers and all my LAN cables. Then I tried different operating systems and I even adjusted my packets as per instructions on the iBurst web site. Then I upgraded my PC and reinstalled Windows and still the same error. The problem is not on your side (or on mine).

The help desk did not answer my email queries and each time I phoned the help desk, their action plan was to see if my connection is capped. The best they could do is tell me that I need to buy a booster I told them I didn't phone sales I phoned TECH support.

So I waited until I got the error while I'm NOT capped again, because this happens in and out of cap due to iBurst's DNS settings or some other networking problem. I took screenshots of my bandwidth monitor way in the green and the browser showing DNS errors and emailed it to the helpdesk - no response. I called the help desk again and guess what? They checked my bandwidth usage, when it became clear that I'm not capped, they didn't know what to do but said someone would get in touch with me.

I'm still waiting. Seriously, the uncapped throttled part of iBurst was the only part of the service I used as their capped and uncapped speeds are so random. Regardless, I am sure I can find use for my iBurst modem as it runs on IEEE 802.20 standard so in theory it could talk to plenty of other gadgets.

 

[ZombiePriest]

Edit: Also just tried to get into iburst's site to check what they say I've used so far. Anyone wan't to guess what message I got? Request timed out. Server error.

By the way, the errors I'm getting are DNS Server errors. This means there is something wrong with iBurst's DNS, as you mostly use your ISPs DNS unless you choose otherwise.

Thanks to Google's new public DNS, you may now choose otherwise. See if this helps your connection woes:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

In theory, that should also help with iBurst's crap bandwidth monitoring as a ****ty DNS means you have to go and look for what maps to which IP address more often. This of course takes bandwidth. A better DNS means the IP addresses are stored properly, so less lookup and more mapping.

Don't worry about the jargon, the steps are easy to follow. I only adjusted my DNS settings today. I expect it would take a while to cache but my internet seems faster already.

As per usual, if you have an iBurst problem, you have to sort it out yourself. Hope I could help.