Looking at Sentech

W

wushutiger

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Hi Guys!

I am currently an Iburst subscriber, and with all the nonsense lately and terrible service/speeds I have been thinking of getting Sentech. I need some feedback from you guys as to your experiences. Mainly on:

Reliability, service, speed, shaping, prioritisation, complaints etc.

Thanks!
 
Brilliant for browsing and email (what the 'web was for' afterall) and local downloading is fine. Other than that, international is limited to a third of your full thorough put after about 1min. Sometimes its always limited, sometimes its full speed wothout being limited.

My words cannot explain how bad it is for gaming. Just know, pings are high and very spikey.
Shaping = same as dsl (ie, high local, even higher international)
 
Sentech

Don't assume that you will get any speed improvement by switching to Sentech.

Broadband Services in SA still have to come a long way and it would probably be wiser to wait and see what other ISP's become available in the future. Have a look at my results below on a "Premium 512kbps" account............
 
Nasty comment!
Some of us haven't been here for that long so how would we know what to search for!
 
OK update time: It seems Senk@k take great pleasure in deliberately upping the latency during the afternoons. I dont know if its just me, just the Durban area or if its everyone else, but im getting 1500ms to www.ananzi.co.za. Browsing is near impossible - this is very much comparable to a 28.8k modem.. if that.

I honestly recommend to NOT get sentech untill they sort their ****. ****ers
 
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dfantom just because you know all about this site doesnt mean we do!!!

adsl master
more like adsl ass
 
wushutiger, if you want to look at Sentech, go over to thier website, look at it for 5 minutes and don't take it any further than that :D

Take the advise of pretty much anyone who had/has the service - it's to all intents and purposes, no better than a 56k modem.
 
Resolving host 'www.ananzi.co.za'
Pinging [196.34.149.67] x 4 with 32 bytes of data

Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=183 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=220 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=138 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=199 ms
Min=138 : Max=220 : Ave=185 ms : Packetloss = 0%

This from Bay of Plenty in Durban
 
Pinging www.ananzi.co.za [196.34.149.67] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=245
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=245
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=32 time=90ms TTL=245
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=32 time=250ms TTL=245

Ping statistics for 196.34.149.67:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 90ms, Maximum = 250ms, Average = 141ms

And that's in Edenvale.

Well, the Sentech folks want to try iBurst and the iBurst folks want to try Sentech. So what to do? Stay where you are until it's clear where the grass is greener. But then, do I really have a choice, given that my contract has another year on it... :(
 
And from Pta we have :

Resolving host 'www.ananzi.co.za'
Pinging [196.34.149.67] x 4 with 32 bytes of data

Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=240 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=322 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=177 ms
Reply from 196.34.149.67 : bytes=32 : time=119 ms
Min=119 : Max=322 : Ave=214 ms : Packetloss = 0%

Results *do* vary though
 
Sigh, it must just be me then...

Pinging www.ananzi.co.za [196.34.149.67] with 32 bytes of data:
Ping statistics for 196.34.149.67:
Packets: Sent = 30, Received = 29, Lost = 1 (3% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 153ms, Maximum = 3080ms, Average = 1250ms

lol...sniff..*cries*
 
my speed test results have been shocking lately. I havent even been at home to use the connection.

Oh, for those that think sentech is crap because of the 1min throttle, try using Free Download manager and set the scheduler to start all downloads every 1 min. Then add another entry which stops all downloads when the speed drops below 12000bps within 1min. Works like a charm ;)
 
Kei said:
Some of us haven't been here for that long so how would we know what to search for!
Click to expand...

killadoob said:
dfantom just because you know all about this site doesnt mean we do!!!
Click to expand...

Thats why it's called a search. If you don't know you search. If you are unsure you search. If you don't know what to search for, then you don't know the question, which means you shouldn't post anything since you have nothing to post about.

killadoob said:
adsl master
more like adsl ass
Click to expand...
Now do we really have to be childish like this? If you don't like me or my posts, please feel free to put me in your ignore list. Oh and if you need to know how to do that, then SEARCH
 
Iburst

www.ananzi.co.za
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=250ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=60ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=184ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=124ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=88ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=66ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=80ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=137ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=116ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=89ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=123ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=98ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=92ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=103ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=90ms TTL=249
Reply from 196.34.149.67: bytes=1 time=148ms TTL=249

Ping statistics for 196.34.149.67:
Packets: Sent = 16, Received = 16, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 60ms, Maximum = 250ms, Average = 115ms
Control-C

www.google.com
Pinging www.l.google.com [66.249.85.99] with 1 bytes of data:

Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=472ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=1272ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=459ms TTL=235
Request timed out.
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=565ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=524ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=523ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=568ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=780ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=1583ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=454ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=433ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=491ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=691ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=609ms TTL=235
Request timed out.
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=460ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=509ms TTL=235
Reply from 66.249.85.99: bytes=1 time=614ms TTL=235

Ping statistics for 66.249.85.99:
Packets: Sent = 19, Received = 17, Lost = 2 (10% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 433ms, Maximum = 1583ms, Average = 647ms
Control-C
 
If Latencys the big test for you guys, we ran some tests last year, comparing a Iburst with a Sentech, for current results, we'll need some Iburst testers.

If you want a continuous test running, there is a brilliant script called smokeping, but is only for linux users, if some users that run linux want to attempt it, go ahead and post your URL's, so we can all see the results.
For those that don't permanently run linux, but have a smoothwall running, I wrote a mod for smoothwall last year for this purpose, you can find it by searching the smoothwall forums http://community.smoothwall.org/forum for smokeping

To get the ball rolling, I reinstalled it on my smoothwall a few minutes ago
to view the results, http://dorris.no-ip.com:81/cgi-bin/smoke.cgi?target=South_Africa.Ananzi

I'm on MW 128, if you want my opinion, it still sux as much as last year!
latencys unstable, and speed is consistently mediocre in comparison to an isdn 64k.
Although I keep it as it permits me to download +10GB a month @R499
 
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Comparison of cr@p and cr@pper

In most developed countries in the world, competition works something like this: One service is marginally better that the other, giving slightly better speed at a slightly better price. With here and there something else thrown in to make the service better so to entice users to switch from one service to the other. And to obviously entice new users to join a particular service. This continual manuevering of service levels and pricing tends to drive prices lower and service levels up over time.

In good old SA competition works a bit differently. One service is cr@pper than the other, and the user tries to choose the one which is the least cr@ppiest of them all. Service companies don't improve services but rather spend their time sprouting lies and falsehoods such as blaming abusive users and other extraneous reasons for their bad service. Well any reason but their own blatant and rampant incompetence, cluelessness and ofcourse greed. And we the users just eat this up with resigned acceptance.

So what do you do.

Well I have the worst of both worlds. I'm a longtime MW128 subscriber and in the past week or so I've been using iBurst. These are my experiences so far for what it's worth.

1) MW128 is essentially no better than a halfway decent 56K Modem. MW says they implement user contention, but all they really do is throtlle your speed down to an average of about 5KB/s, which is about a third of the advertised speed. The advantage of MW128 above iBurst is that there is no hard data cap. So if you have a large appetite for downloading stuff from the internet, you can let this thing trickle down for days and nights, and if you exceed 10GB per month you might get a call from some Sucktech @sshole suggesting that you upgrade to the next higher package. At this this time you may tell the caller to go and f@ck themselves. This is known as the "soft" 10G cap.

2) IBurst seems to be very dependent on the number of download threads you have going. On one thread the speed also really sucks, but as you increase the number of threads the speed increases. For instance I've been downloading some training Quicktime .mov files from an international site. If I set the number of simultaneous downloads threads to about 30, I get a download speed that averages over 100KB/s, and sometimes even hits the 128KB/s limit (1Mb/s) for short whiles. With this however you hit your 3GB data cap within hours (shorter than 1 day). You can then buy additional data, but of course you use that up just as fast, and then your're stuck at the capped service again. Well one thing I've seen (but not really tested well) is that when iBurst is capped, it performs about as well as MW128. One thing about iBurst that is much worse than MW is that P2P such as Bittorrent is really useless with iBurst.

So for me at this point in time iBurst is slightly less cr@ppy than Sucktech MW128, but in general I would say that both services are very, very, very (well exceedingly) cr@ppy. I would not drop iBurst in favour of Sucktech MW as you are proposing. On the other hand iBurst have the exceedingly bad habit of cancelling your subscription just when they feel like it, no matter if they are breaching their own contract in the process. I haven't hit this problem yet, but it is still early days, so my perception of "least cr@ppy" might change.

my 2000 cents

PS: Whats wrong with this picture?

Dear iBurst Subscriber,

Your xxxx xxxxl account usage reflects the following:

Uploaded: 298.52MB
Downloaded: 7.81GB
Combined Total: 8.10GB

Remaining: 0.00GB

Should you reach the 3.00GB cap on the combined total, you will be redirected to a throttled service.

Regards,
WBS Helpdesk
 
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To answer the original question

Hi wushutiger,

- Reliability
Fore this year I have had total "downtime" of about 7 days.

- service
hmmmmmm a bit wide to answer in one centence... the call centre will still tell you just about anything, but I do think that they got better since last year.

- speed
I am on the 128k package: can download at near full speed all the time locally. At 5-7k international.

- shaping
This probably referers to the above "limited" international speed?

- prioritisation
I do not use other services like VOID and P2P, which is what is normally effected by this.

- complaints etc.
I have no complaints about the system service.

To see ping times:
http://stats.privet.co.za/boson.privet.co.za_ping.html

To see my download speed stats:
http://stats.privet.co.za/mrtg/privet/localhost_4.html

I do not considir 100ms to be high latency. Sure: compare that to 15ms on ADSL and it is big. The link is used to do all kinds of interactive development/support over SSH: it performs just fine.

I hope it answers the questions that you had... feel free to ask again, if it is still not clear to you...
 
This is your internal smoothwall IP address... no person except people on your LAN can view it.
Click to expand...
Thanks for that useful bit of info, and making one feel like a real idiot!
thats the result of posting at 01:52
fixed
 
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