iBurst very slow

well i must add my few pennies in here, i brows fine and my download from last night and i just downloaded a 20m file from file planet and i finnished on 121k wile i was doing that i done two transfers no probs, i done this after reading this whole thread.

so just a few questions i want to ask...

1) what % signal do you have or get?
2) when did you get the unit and if you got it over a month ago did ou get the Firmwear upgread done? ( befor the firmwear upgread their was a few probs ).
3) why did you get the connection in the first place?

now for me

1) i get between 93% - 100%
2) i got 4 connections and two of them i had to go and get a firmwear upgrade and now they work great thats when i got another two for laptops.
3) i got it cause of mobility, and a decent price for what you get, and the extra bit of bandwidth i do get currently i tested and it say " my current bandwidth reading is : 995.00kbps and i can download at 124.38KB / Sec " and i done this 4 times in 10minutes and same thing. so that tells me it is good compared to.

if you have not had a firmware upgrade yet just ask and i can sort you out.
 
hostkill, are you directing those questions towards me, or just generally to everyone on this thread?

My answers to hostkill:
  1. Signal strength leds: usually 4 or 5, so by extrapolation between 80%..100%, sometimes lower for brief periods (I assume during an attempted basestation hand-off). Note my UTD is attached to my PC via ethernet, not USB.
  2. 2nd week of November 2004; I upgraded my UTD's firmware very shortly after the update was posted on iBurst.co.za
  3. We decided to get iBurst because:
    • We were using ISDN, and the Telkom call charges were killing us.
    • We needed an always-on connection at a fixed monthly price.
    • Being on the move with a notebook was never a factor, which is the reason we got a UTD instead of a UTC.
    • HomeDSL384 / ADSL512 startup costs were just going to be too expensive.
    • I didn't feel that I would get value for money on HomeDSL384 when Telkom couldn't even get ISDN working @ the Olivedale exchange.
    • At home, using HomeDSL384 is/would be a problem due to lightning.
    • MyWireless was a disaster, as well as being more expensive than iBurst on startup costs.
    • A bunch of other smaller reasons that I am not going to bore you with.
 
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To every one, im intrested as well the users that are talking here round about when did you all get your unit.

to be honest i have had my units for a while now and i have not had much problems that have not been sorted out and has not come back.

yes their is one or two things i could mention to improve on or change but befor i do that i will first investigate befor asking, just how i am, befor making a silly nana out of my self first make sure i know what i am talking about.

i see a great future for Iburst not only in South Africa But around the world as long as they keep up with tech trends and keep on working at it.
 
thats cool at home i use ethernet i find it to improve more. i went in to WBS to get my firmwear updated.

these costs of DSL and so one can get costly thats main reson why i left ISDN.
 
I was going to say that it looks like the speed is increasing, but I was sadly mistaken, perhaps one or more people I was contending with stopped contending with me.

If W-BS-M have in fact instructed that the tap be reduced to a single drip of bandwidth every 60 seconds, then it would've been nice to at least let us know before actually doing it. One of my major gripes with W-BS-M is their failure to communicate ahead of time WRT scheduled maintenance/Genetic-Burst-Eye-Mutation-Experiments, or whatever it is that goes on there that kills my connection & gets me rattling my cage all the more (or should that be running about in circles on that wheel that all guinea-pigs are cursed with). Yes, I know pre-launch phase...
 
Well, I must add in that my speeds are still fine as well.
By Bittorrent finished a 4 GB download last night, running at about 30kB/s towards the end. This is not full speed, but that could be many factors. I still managed to pull the 4GB down in about 3 days of 24/7 downloading.

I was playing WOW and nothing has changed at all there, same latency, etc.

I also pulled a 100MB file down at 115kB from an http server in the states somewhere through flashget.

So I am still flying...

as for hostkill

1. Signal Strength - 100%, even in a storm. I must be on top of a tower.
2. Got the new Firmware, doesn't seem to have done much.
3. i) For online MMORPGs, so that I can play when I get home and not wait for callmore time.
ii) Leeching huge files off P2P systems.

That's basically it. Browsing and emailing I can do at work. Mobility is not a factor.
 
well playing games on WOW and STEAM will be a factor for a while longer, after a few tweaks and a program later it works ok on XP with sp2, on a 2000 pro computer it works like a dream a few settings change with the virtul port and get round about 30 - 60 ping in a storm so their is always a way around computers just need to take that itme and play around. downloading for me is a dream when i do see some thing i like. Bittorrent speeds depends on how many people are downloading from you and how many people are seeding or reseeding, a few days ago it took me almost a full 24hours to down load a 2.8gig file with bitorrent. just have to understand how things work to make the best out of it.

the firmwear was just for signal detection and stability. i get a full 100% and im about 1,5k away from the closest tower.
 
I get full signal as well, and my connection has been great, 'till last night. i'll check tonight when I get home though and report back.

I haven't done the firmware upgrade,'cos there's nothing wrong with my current firmware, it works and I'm loathe to do something that could stop it from working.
 
well like they say if it works why fix it. been on now for over 18 hours and still all good. :cool:
 
Decided to bite the bullet & call WBS to find out what is going on, Tshepo said he would get "the technician" to call me back.

Added: I just knew I would be wasting my time calling the helpdesk- still no call back from WBS. Oh well, I am leaving now, will probably be stuck with the same problem in the morning. I think tomorrow, I will just email Anakin (Luis) instead of waiting for a call-back.
 
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bljech... it's SO slow!

I phoned last night, and an extremely grumpy and quite rude Thato (I think that was his name) answered. He told me to hold and and check if it doesn't get better within an hour and phone him if it wasn't better.

Wasn't in the mood for phoning him back, so I went to bed...

This morning, same story: as slow as snailsh!t flowing uphill... so, I'll be phoning today. I'm on leave the whole of next week, and I do NOT want a slow connection!
 
My speeds are also up the pole...can barely browse - I am getting slightly pissed off. Can't even play CS Source anymore - What is going on? WBS seems to be clueless.
 
That lasted longer than i thought... only a month and a half this time before the ISP goes belly up. happens to any ISP I join...

I am Yak - Destroyer of ISPs!

*insert evil cackle here*
 
A quick update: I got back home last night (~23:00) to find that the problem I had been experiencing all of yesterday (as well as again today), which I am going to define with the term UNRESPONSIVENESS, had mysteriously disappeared, it was fine until sometime in the early hours of the morning.

WBS et al, note this particular problem is:
  • Not a speed of connection issue, it does not take ages to send or recieve data, on the contrary data is sent & received at the normal speedy speed.
  • Not a latency problem because I checked that yesterday, and pings were actually good.
  • Definitely a lack of responsiveness because after a simple http request to receive a webpage has been submitted by whatever browser, the request is transmitted immediately, then you sit about waiting for 60..90 seconds before the requested data is actually relayed back by iBurst.
Another thing, right now the effective download throughput (not speed) is capped at 0.1kB/sec, which leads me to believe that we are all being played with, like a cat does with a mouse.
 
Yes ic, this is cat and mouse. I tried both usb and ethernet with my UTD. Strange enough on usb things sucked then I changed to ethernet and suddenly browsing was working again.
Are they trying to implement the 3gig cap software and shaping on their server at the moment - according to the sales person this was only to happen march/april 05.
Speed is back up...interesting, downloading tribes demo from sierra ftp site at 90 KB/s. Who has his hands on the bandwidth valve?
 
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Sadly, my speed is NOT back up, and hasn't been all day today. No callback from WBS, no reply from Luis (Anakin), if anyone @ WBS is paying attention to the plight of your customers then some sort of communication would be appreciated- even if it is smoke signals...
 
Just decided to call WBS again, when I dial 0118774700 I get that ancient old recorded Telkom bird saying The number you have dialled does not exist, strange bcos I got through on 4700 yesterday (after trying 0118774733 several time & it just rang continously).

So this time I got through on 4733, this is the gist of the conversation:
Hello WBS, Tato here (or at least I think that's what he said)
Hello, I have a major problem with iBurst that started yesterday
What is the error message?
There is no error message, I am connected but it takes ages for data to come back from the internet
Aaaah, we have been having a major problem with our upstream supplier UUNET, they are aware of the problem and are working on it
How long will it still take to fix?
There is no timeframe at the moment, it is not a serious problem, so it shouldn't take long, but we know it has been two days now
Is Luis there?
No he is not here
Ok, thank you, bye

BTW, apologies Tato, we both forgot to wish each other a Happy Christmas & New Year.

Now for my post-conversation-blues: how difficult would it have been for someone from WBS to send an email out to us (I still get email at half the pace of a disabled snail, but the point is I get it- duplicating of course), OR how difficult would it be to post something on this thread to let us know whats down & calm the angry beast in each of us?

WBS guys, communication with your customers is key, especially if you want to avoid a high turnover of helpdesk staff.
 
Well, I will probably regret saying this in about 60 seconds, but it looks like "the problem" has (temporararily) been solved.

Thing is I won't be around tomorrow to verify if it has been fixed- I'm spending the day in a boat!
 
still having problems here. Connection is fine and then gradually starts slowing down.

A disconnect and reconnect sorts it out for the next few minutes.

Very irritating.
 
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