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Question of the Day: What's the most interesting small town you've visited in South Africa?
iBurst vs Adsl
- Thread starter Project X
- Start date
who.is.michael
Expert Member
iBurst is Slower!
Hi there
In Cape Town the short answer is absolutely not!
Utilising iBurst in Cape Town's CBD during working hours you would generally achieve speeds not exceeding 500kb.
At night after 6pm, when the corporates no longer make use of the service you should achieve speeds of 850kb to 1.1Mb, provided that you have direct line of sight of the Gardens Centre or The Terraces at the end of St. Georges Mall and make use of an external antenna.
Hope this assists you in making the right choice.
Hi there
In Cape Town the short answer is absolutely not!
Utilising iBurst in Cape Town's CBD during working hours you would generally achieve speeds not exceeding 500kb.
At night after 6pm, when the corporates no longer make use of the service you should achieve speeds of 850kb to 1.1Mb, provided that you have direct line of sight of the Gardens Centre or The Terraces at the end of St. Georges Mall and make use of an external antenna.
Hope this assists you in making the right choice.
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Project-X - I have iBurst at home and 1024 kilobit aDSL at work. In my humble experience, iBurst comes out tops. Whilst iBurst does tend to slow down a bit during the day, most days the aDSL grinds to a screaming halt (sub 100 kilobit speeds everywhere). The aDSL line has had the 4 megabit upgrade, and sometimes yields fantastic speeds, but the erratic performance is infuriating.
I recently also did the calculation of comparing aDSL to iBurst rand-to-rand and if you include all the costs + international bandwidth, aDSL doesn't work out much cheaper either. Then again, the aDSL ISP is IS (fibre) - perhaps other ISP's yield more reliable performance.
Of course, since iBurst is wireless your signal strength will have a huge impact on the throughput you realistically get. I'm lucky to get a good signal where I stay and international downloads generally zip along at a healthy 50 kilobytes/second+, with frequent peaks over 100.
I recently also did the calculation of comparing aDSL to iBurst rand-to-rand and if you include all the costs + international bandwidth, aDSL doesn't work out much cheaper either. Then again, the aDSL ISP is IS (fibre) - perhaps other ISP's yield more reliable performance.
Of course, since iBurst is wireless your signal strength will have a huge impact on the throughput you realistically get. I'm lucky to get a good signal where I stay and international downloads generally zip along at a healthy 50 kilobytes/second+, with frequent peaks over 100.
who.is.michael
Expert Member
Hi RX
Which area are you in work/home and or to which towers do you connect?
Which area are you in work/home and or to which towers do you connect?
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
It all depneds on what signal you get, Iburst has the capabilty to be as good as ADSL, especially IS ADSL. but not as god as SAIX ADSL during the day especially.
And latency will always be a bit worse, but you can get latency internationally better than IS DSL with a good connection.
Unfortuanatley, SAIX's ADSL is the most expensive nad doesnt relly cater much for higher bandiwdth requirements.
And latency will always be a bit worse, but you can get latency internationally better than IS DSL with a good connection.
Unfortuanatley, SAIX's ADSL is the most expensive nad doesnt relly cater much for higher bandiwdth requirements.
Dunno, after last night's performance, I'd say iBurst may have the upper hand - given the right signal, of course. I had a sustained d/l speed of 90+KB/s - peaking at 108KB/s just before the end of the download. Not bad for a 300MB file.
Tjorriemorrie
Well-Known Member
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+1.
My signal suck. my speed never goes over 50KB. I mean, the 512 adsl line at work is faster and definitely more stable/constant. My iburst pings are a joke compared to the adsl at work.
My experience exactly. IBurst is inconsistent as hell! Download speeds fluctuate 100%. I think its because the towers are not powerful enough and overloaded. I think for fixed wireless we need double the amount of towers we have at the moment (JHB, Rosebank), thats just IMHO.
Also one other thing that irritates me with IBurst is that uploads contribute to your cap! No other ISP has that limitation - it makes sharing on P2P impossible, you become an unwilling leacher...
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Your speeds flauctuate because of your signal strength, and if Iburst relys on signal strength like you say then how can you just say its worse than ADSL becasue your signal is bad, thats a bit stupid you know
But it is a problem in some JHB areas with overloaded towers. Which does make it suck unfortunaatley, but a directional antenna or a new tower should fix that, the point is that it doesnt make Iburst worse just because its bad for you.
Oh, and you have no idea what you are talking about with the upload right? EVERY ISP has upload counting towards your cap, infact no ISP has download only counting towards your cap.
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Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Oh, this is actually the post I wanted.
Well your signal sucks, so of course your speeds suck and your pings with that, so what are you trying to say then?
Other people with better signal will have up to 100+kb download speeds and much more compareable pings.
Your speeds flauctuate because of your signal strength, and if Iburst relys on signal strength like you say then how can you just say its worse than ADSL becasue your signal is bad, thats a bit stupid you know
But it is a problem in some JHB areas with overloaded towers. Which does make it suck unfortunaatley, but a directional antenna or a new tower should fix that, the point is that it doesnt make Iburst worse just because its bad for you.
Oh, and you have no idea what you are talking about with the upload right? EVERY ISP has upload counting towards your cap, infact no ISP has download only counting towards your cap.
Point taken on signal strength. However take this into consideration, I have a -78 connection and the download speeds fluctuate 100%. So what we are saying is that signal strength is not such a problem in my case - IBurst just sux
What are you implying about new towers? That I should just go and install one and my signal will be better? Obviously not - so then it's a crap service.
Point taken on the uploading bandwidth counting towards your cap, I was not aware of that, I checked and Telkom Internet works that way, so I assume all ISP's do. And there I was thinking it was just IBurst being cheap - it makes me feel better and worse at same time - broadband in this country sux...
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Interesting, becasue my signal strength is about -102Db, maby it gets a bit better at night, that was day time I think.
But my speeds dont fluctuate 100%, whatever that means... do you mean they fluctuate all the time, or that they flactuate between 0 and whatever?
But my speeds dont fluctuate 100%, whatever that means... do you mean they fluctuate all the time, or that they flactuate between 0 and whatever?
CeeBee
Expert Member
Me quite a newby ito iBurst... don't use it myself, got it for 1 of our directors @home. (Riverclub area in Sandton)
I was at his home recently to check the setup as he is not impressed with the speed (wanted FAST broadband, still no ADSL available!, so got iBurst).
The signal on dashboard soft shows 80-90%, but doing speed test on iBurst speedtest site only gives 120-130kbps (day time), he reckons he sees about 450kbps at night. That sounds crappy to me, I can understand why he unhappy, nowhere near 700kbps+
So what is a good signal strength then?
If 80% signal only gives 128kbps, what does a bad signal give
Helpdesk also no good, with this Lebohang char only able to give bum info.
Is it possible to get a techy from iBurst to help speed the conn up???
I was at his home recently to check the setup as he is not impressed with the speed (wanted FAST broadband, still no ADSL available!, so got iBurst).
The signal on dashboard soft shows 80-90%, but doing speed test on iBurst speedtest site only gives 120-130kbps (day time), he reckons he sees about 450kbps at night. That sounds crappy to me, I can understand why he unhappy, nowhere near 700kbps+
So what is a good signal strength then?
If 80% signal only gives 128kbps, what does a bad signal give
Helpdesk also no good, with this Lebohang char only able to give bum info.
Is it possible to get a techy from iBurst to help speed the conn up???
Just to be clear, I meant 100 times. I use firefox with the plugin DownThemAll as a download manager. When downloading the speed fluctuates between 5 KB/s to 500 KB/s. This is downloading one file from 1 website. Now I don't have ADSL so I cannot compare, but from what I have read on the forums, ADSL seems to be more consistent with it's speed than IBurst.
Anyway, don't get me wrong, I don't hate IBurst, I just hate the state of broadband in this country because I feel we are getting shafted. Some companies shaft us because they can and others because they have no option.
Tjorriemorrie
Well-Known Member
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- Apr 26, 2006
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Jy verstaan my verkeerd...
the topic is about whether iburst or 1024 adsl is faster.
then i "+1" on sabagamma who said he would rather have gone with adsl as our signal suck and it gives such bad speeds that the higher costs involved with adsl would've been better.
my point is: if only ppl with 100+KB post, then poor Project X will be under a misconception. i was trying to give him the idea that he should do the test at his home first.
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Okay, so do you mean 5kb/s to 500kb/s or actualy 5KB/s to 5KB/s? The latter would be actual download speeds that usually get shown on download managers, and the first one the way you measure speeds of services usually, like Iburst is 1024kb or ADSL can be 512kb.
Both of them seem a bit impossible, but I guess it could only be kb/s as you will never get 500KB/s on and internet in SA.
ADSL is very consistent, except maby IS daytime.. but I really dont know how you will get Iburst fluctuating from 5kb/s to 500kb/s, thats crazy. I also dont know if DownThem All is multi-threaded, but I suppose so...
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
O, jammer..
I see what you mean, im just saying you shouldnt say Iburst is bad from a personal experience, the point is that Iburst can be good. You shouldnt really look into getting Iburst if your signal is going to be bad.
SO basically you should check your coverage.. I guess alot of new people simply think it works the same as ADSL.
Ekhaatvensters
Executive Member
Me quite a newby ito iBurst... don't use it myself, got it for 1 of our directors @home. (Riverclub area in Sandton)
I was at his home recently to check the setup as he is not impressed with the speed (wanted FAST broadband, still no ADSL available!, so got iBurst).
The signal on dashboard soft shows 80-90%, but doing speed test on iBurst speedtest site only gives 120-130kbps (day time), he reckons he sees about 450kbps at night. That sounds crappy to me, I can understand why he unhappy, nowhere near 700kbps+
So what is a good signal strength then?
If 80% signal only gives 128kbps, what does a bad signal give
Helpdesk also no good, with this Lebohang char only able to give bum info.
Is it possible to get a techy from iBurst to help speed the conn up???
Well signal strength from the Iburst app generally isnt a good measure of real signal strength, its better to use UTTracestar (www.uttracestart.co.za) and check signal strength in Db.
But I personally had 80-80% signal strength, or a bit worse, and dont get 128kb speeds.. I guess it depends alot on your tower load (can be seen it UTtracestar) and just your posistion.
If you havent set the MTU to 1352, you should do that btw... Otherwise get him an antenna, or use UTts toget the best signal.