IS Uncapped 512KB speed

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ruan567

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Hi everybody

Is anybody using the Openweb IS Uncapped 512KB with 5 static IPs offering? Or, for that matter, any of the IS Uncapped 512KB or 1MB offerings?

If so, I would much appreciate it if you guys could post an honest account of average download speeds (international and local). I am trying to figure out if it is worthwhile to go for the contract for 12 months. I hate signing up for 12 months but there is no other way for us to obtain the fixed IPs we require here at the office (that I know of). It is damn sad that we have to downgrade our 4MB line to 512KB just to get ONE fixed IP. Dynamic DNS used to work but Telkom has blocked it. Anybody else noticed this? If I do a traceroute from outside back into our dsl it just stops at telkom.ip-net bla bla ....

Much appreciated
Ruan
 
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We have the Uncapped Business 512KB satellite solution (with 5 static IP's) directly from IS. I've been running it here at the office since the beginning of the month, and sofar I can say that apart from a (very) few issues, which seems to have been country wide (SAIX+IS), we've been happy with the speeds -- 1MB would be nicer though :D

Downloading from local News Servers are crap, but that's got nothing to do with the line speeds. P2P sits on average between 30-40KB/s any time of the day. General (http/ftp) downloading maxes out our line speed (using DAP/CuteFTP etc) for both local and international (in most cases).

I must mention that currently I'm the only one in the office on this line. Within the next week or so, the rest of the office (3 more people) will join me.
 
I run a 512k satellite IS uncapped at home and have done for over a year now I suppose. I am very happy with it, but my son complains about terrible gaming lag ( ag shame! ). We pull 60-70 gig every month virtually all international, so the line is pretty well utilised. I find that between 17h00 and 08h00 it runs flat out. During working hours Mon to midday Sat, it runs probably 30-40kbytes/sec, otherwise round about 50kbytes/sec. Sometimes, near monthend, for a few days it might slow to 25-30 during working hours.

I have had a lot of hassles on the Telkom side ( dodgy old corroded line I reckon! ), but virtually none with IS. Once they slowed the line down like it was one of those "Express" ones, but that got sorted out quickly, though they admitted to nothing!;)

The router is solid ( but closed to you ), there aren't quibbles about the "uncapped" part, you have your IP addresses - it works as advertised!. It is not for online gaming though. I don't know why so many people complain about IS - while they moan, I leech! ;)
 
Most of the people complaining seem to be on express accounts, the router-based accounts with static IPs seem to be better.
 
Syndyre said:
Most of the people complaining seem to be on express accounts, the router-based accounts with static IPs seem to be better.
Click to expand...

I get the same feeling. Was considering the express account for home, but will rather try and budget for the business account now.
 
I'm on an IS Express at home. I has switched over from the WebAfrica 10Gig plan. Can't say I've been impressed with anything other than the kinda-sorta uncapped. The speed is rather pedestrian compared to SAIX based accounts. For the price it's really not worth it to me, since like rwensori's son, most of my time is used gaming so the high latency is unacceptable. My usage for this month so far is about 20Gig, may go over 30 by the end of the month, but I've already dl'd everything I think I need so I really doubt it. Next month I'm switching back to WebAfrica and using 3x10Gig accounts.
 
Express vs Business

It does seem to have something to do with the router. I spoke to Allen from Openweb this morning about download speeds, and he suggested I first buy a 512KBps 1GB IS sat account and then check the download speeds on that, after which I can multiply it by 2 to get the avg speed I would get on the same connection with a proper router with fixed IPs installed. Apparently it makes that much of a difference.
 
The problem with the router-based accounts is you can't use any other account if you wanted to, e.g. unshaped for gaming.
 
If you want reliable international speeds, IS would be a bad idea.

Though I only have experience with the "express" accounts, after seeing the prices for the IS business accounts I have to say I wouldn't pay that much.
 
Browser said:
If you want reliable international speeds, IS would be a bad idea.

Though I only have experience with the "express" accounts, after seeing the prices for the IS business accounts I have to say I wouldn't pay that much.
Click to expand...

Well, as stated above, I get pretty acceptable consistent reliable international speeds, so I don't know where you get your claim.

Looking at Openweb's site it seems an uncapped Express costs R1369 for a 512KB. A normal IS satellite 512KB uncapped costs R1539pm. Not a huge difference.

You just seem to like knocking the IS services from thread to thread. What would 70GB international cost you on your SAIX connection?
 
Traceroute

Our router should be here early next week, I will install the traceroute software on one of our web servers.
 
rwenzori said:
Well, as stated above, I get pretty acceptable consistent reliable international speeds, so I don't know where you get your claim.

Looking at Openweb's site it seems an uncapped Express costs R1369 for a 512KB. A normal IS satellite 512KB uncapped costs R1539pm. Not a huge difference.

You just seem to like knocking the IS services from thread to thread. What would 70GB international cost you on your SAIX connection?
Click to expand...

Oops, it was the "IS Business ADSL Fibre" service I had in mind which is 512K R2500pm + R1500 installation. Even so the "IS Business ADSL" also has a R1500 installtion cost.

No I don't like going from thread to thread knocking IS's service, I love it. For the simple reason for this month with my R1000 account I haven't had much use out of it, infact it only worked like it should for the first few days, since then it's been going at about 5kb and rarely 16kb for short bursts. I have no hope of getting anywhere near 70Gb this month on my IS account so the price of 70Gb SAIX is irrelevant.

I would love it if my IS account got the speeds advertised, like I do with SAIX accounts, but I don't so I tell others considering IS accounts about how my experience has been with them so far, and when othere's complain about it I add my experience so others know it isn't just some isolated case.
 
rwenzori said:
Thank heaven! Kilos's request was a bit beyond me! LOL!
:D
Click to expand...

Sorry about the request, my wife says I speak Greek all the time
to her too. Thanks Ruan567, I used to install that with my prev company.

Thanks for your input rwenzori on the Business DSL line, ruan567
give us your feedback when your line is on as I need to look at another solution
as I keep on getting capped and have 4 different accounts, I should rather
considate my accounts into one account.

For a firewall I was quite impressed with www.smoothwall.org ,improved quite
alot since ver 2.0 with the following cool features
* View Instant Messages (who is abusing company time)
* Realtime network traffic graphs
* POP3 proxy to remove viruses (uses ClamAV)
* Traffic shaping - adjust priority levels ie email - low, voip - high)
* Reject certain IP address at certain times
Plus all the other usual firewall features port forwarding, VPN, transparent web proxy)
 
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