Iburst - soon?

hmm...some more research. Here is a review of the Aussie version:

http://www.mtekk.com.au/browse/page842.html



MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%
 
Anyone know what frequencies iBurst is using in SA? In Oz it seems that they are using 1.9GHz. For those people that have bought antennae for MyWi, it would be interesting to know whether they'll work for iBurst.

MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by arf9999</i>
<br />Anyone know what frequencies iBurst is using in SA? In Oz it seems that they are using 1.9GHz. For those people that have bought antennae for MyWi, it would be interesting to know whether they'll work for iBurst.

MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

1800mhz, it's on their website somewhere

Sentech, 99% downtime guarunteed!
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by arf9999</i>
<br />Anyone know what frequencies iBurst is using in SA? In Oz it seems that they are using 1.9GHz. For those people that have bought antennae for MyWi, it would be interesting to know whether they'll work for iBurst.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Testing is being done on 2.3Ghz. However, iBurst will be rolled out commercially on 1.8Ghz. The 1.8Ghz frequency will provide for greater signal quality, reliability and range than 2.3Ghz.

EDIT: Replaced 1.9Ghz with 1.8Ghz.

<hr noshade size="1"><center><i><font size="1">
My views are mine, and mine alone.</i></font id="size1"></center>
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Mean_Monster</i>
<br /><i>From http://www.iburst.co.za/technology.php</i>
<b>"As a result the iBurst network is able to provide data rates of up to 1 Mbps to each user with a maximum base station capacity of 20 Mbps."</b>

My question is if you have 20 noone's downloading porn 24/7 [:p]in your area (and looking at the coverage map the areas covered by one tower are huge), how slow will your downloads and browsing become. Or am I missing something?
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Each base station is capable of handling 640 simultaneous connections, which is the setup WBS's implementation will probably adopt. However, if they needed to, the towers could be upgraded to handle 2000 simultaneous connections.

Not all connections would necessarily be 1Mbps. Some would be lower due to product packaging, others could be throtled due to modulation negotiated, etc. Eventual number of connections would depend on the contention ratios WBS would decide upon, taking the 20Mbps backhauls into consideration.

In my opinion, if WBS has to handle 640 connections per tower, they would be doing well. It would be easy enough to just setup another tower. Cost of setting up iBurst towers is relatively low.

Current coverage maps are merely intended for initial rollout plans. Over time, blanket coverage is planned for the major cities.

<hr noshade size="1"><center><i><font size="1">
My views are mine, and mine alone.</i></font id="size1"></center>
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by regardtv</i>
<br />the pcmcia has a rather unusual antenna connector - will try get pigtail made up and play further ;-)
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
http://www.webb.co.za should have stock of these. Tell them its for iBurst, I forgot the name of the connector.

<hr noshade size="1"><center><i><font size="1">
My views are mine, and mine alone.</i></font id="size1"></center>
 
Hmmmm...this sounds EXACTLY like the sentech stuff in the beginning. Go look through the archives. I'll wait-and-see (tm)
 
so it will be a bit of a head-to-head for WBS and Sentech. Somehow Sentech will win. In this country of ours better does not win .. watch ICASA/Telkom/Sentech somehow throttle WBS.
Anyways I seriously doubt that they will use 1800/1900. Those are cellphone frequencies and with the money behind cell comms in SA they are king.
WBS have a provisional 2.3GHz licence with ICASA (for testing purposes).

As I tried-and-tested MyWi subscriber I will wait a few months extra before WBS takes off. Unless they have a 1Mbps package (With good feedback) under R1k then Im jumping ship. Anyways with all the MyWi people leaving that should free up some bandwidth on our 66.18 network so its a win-win!
 
Well, just looking at the iBurst User Terminal's flash program's 'strings', it appears to be written by a set of very humorous programmers. No, I don't have a UT, but have downloaded their flash update.

Funny, one can always spot the nationality of a programmer from message strings.

The IPWireless stuff was pretty boring, cryptic and nonsensical, and obviously developed on a Windows machine. From the looks of things, it appears that the iBurst UT can also display signal strength whilst <b>connected</b> something which our friends at IPWireless are too clueless to have caught onto yet. The iBurst UT also appears to be using the highly acclaimed vxWorks, instead of IPWireless' GreenHills nonstandard realtime-os. The device appears to have a fully functional TCP/IP, PPP, a PPPoE server and Ethernet stack on the RTOS itsself, which is way cool.

Here are some gems from the iBurst firmware [:)]
Code: 
ut02Boot: Sure hope jumper is in FLASH BOOT mode.
WARNING: cache off  seems to cause crashes! 
/s/wdsl10/rev/ut02Core/20040209.175809/ut02MmuMenu.c 
(^--Seems the product was initially called "wdsl" prolly short for WirelessDSL AND! 
And it's built on Unix, or mingw with msys if looking at the
path conventions)

Setting peeksafe off. Prepare to crash and burn.
VERY STRANGE -- Mmu is disabled?
With .gnu file need code reload for each run 
(^--more indications of a decent development platform)

(vvvv--These ones are gems)
twiddle -- use ppp/ip twiddle parameters now instead of at next start.
CAUTION: this is liable to break something... use with care.
NOTE: Use of twiddle may break something.

tempReport -- returns the measured temperature of two sensors 
on the radio (the first one is near the power amplifier and 
the second is near the Philip'chip).  
The values are reported in degrees Celsius.
(^--very neat feature)

To determine what caused this problem, first check the source code
at the file and line listed above to see why Panic was called,
 and then use shell utilities to do a post-mortem analysis.
(^--definately looks like a Unix dev setup)


This menu item is intended to be used in conjunction with the
ut02TpuPgmAssem.pl tool, though it could be used by itself.
(^--OK, I'm nearly convinced. They're developing on Unix)

huh?
(^--no program would be complete without one of these)

The list continues, with many more interesting ones...

All in all the iBurst firmware looks EXTREMELY rich in functionality - from diagnostics to even protocol support. There's just no comparison with the IPWireless crapware i.m.o. One can see from the style and richness of the firmware diagnostics and messages that whoever wrote this piece of firmware really CAREs about it, and went to great pains to keep it rich with useful information and features.

The air transmission is also encrypted with what appears to be a RC4 shared secret negotiated with a public/private key encryption scheme exchanged during the initial connection with the base station. (Way cool) The fact that this key changes during station handover, and that it works seamlessly is even more amazing.

Well, I know of few people that will wax lyrical about firmware, but perhaps some might find it interesting. I do this because it's like buying a horse, without first having checked it's teeth.

<h2>iBursts' teeth look squeaky clean and well-formed</h2>


<center><h6> MyWireless <s>Hacks</s> Tweaks & Tech Info || Have you checked the fawking FAQ? <br /> <font color="red">Tired of Sentech's bad service? Want to compare speeds? We at least listen...</font id="red"></h6></center>
 
Heya Rodentcia,

The iBurst units truly have a decent setup ;-)

Under linux the drivers create a virtual ethernet port. The port is there primarily to allow establishment of pppoe connections. But has added functionality. The virtual port can have IP/MAC assignments and one can telnet to the port (with the right setup) for debugging purposes.

From the virtual port a header compression is done on the ethernet frames and this is then passed onto the actual device.

Native support for up to 254 devices (linux)

As to the signal strength indication... It works well during connection - in actual fact the ability for the device to detect signal strength is a requirement for the solution to work. From what I understand of the modulation they use the need to send quality reporting back to the base station in order to adjust signalling at all times.

The default windows client shows:
Signal Strength
Link Speed
Frame Error Rate
Current Data Rate
Total Bytes

While iBurst won't be a solution to everyones connectivity woes I truly think this product is suited to the South African market - it has cost effective rollouts (of the base stations) and the gear seems simple enough to manage and maintain.
 
Well I tried: [;)]

Dear Mr ********

Reggretfully, we will be unable to provide you with a pilot because
beta-testers are chosen at the discretion of WBS from a prescribed list. For
any further information and updates, please visit our website at
www.iburst.co.za.

Kind regards,
WBS Helpdesk

MW128, Tower <b>60</b>(Northpark Plaza), Signal:16%,S-N-L: 7, BER: 45%
 
Seems like they're sending out automated replies, i got exactly the same response. [:(][V][:(][V][xx(]

One question though...
how do people get onto these "<i>prescribed list's</i>"??????
cant wait for it to arrive!!!!!!
 
brooko, you have to be a) female and big tiddies with a dash of hotness b) willing to suck big fat willy c) see b d) see c e) all of the above

and regardtv doesnt sound female [:P]

Sentech, 99% downtime guarunteed!
 
grin ...

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><div align="right">8:00 Thursday 26 August 2004 is <font color="red">D-Day</font id="red">....</div id="right"></font id="size1">
 
well im definetly more interested considering their coming out in bellville which sentech seem unable to do.

Proud South african rip offs.
 
Moved this topic to the appropriate forum.....

<hr noshade size="1"><font size="1"><div align="right">8:00 Thursday 26 August 2004 is <font color="red">D-Day</font id="red">....</div id="right"></font id="size1">
 
I'm considering investing in a coupla balloons & a stick of lipstick [:p]

Telkom - South Africa's Handbrake to progress.
 
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