MyWireless is Okay

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StrongTurd

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I've been lurking on this forum for a long time and, because almost everything that I read here is negative and critical towards Sentech (often with just cause), I thought it time to share my ownexperience:

I've had MyWireless almost right from the beginning. I initially had signal issues but I got that sorted by buying a metal patch antenna thing from some guy (for more than R1000 IIRC) which sorted that out 100%. Since then my signal has sat at 3 or 4 lights almost all the time.

I can't remember when last I lost the signal. I normally reboot my PC about once a week and that is normally the only time that I terminate my connection. In fact, I can recall once being connected for more than two weeks before I rebooted!

Like everybody else, I also find the bandwidth profiling irritating and contrary to the terms of my original contract which promised me 128kbps. I'm also getting the normal 5K/s after a few hundred K. However, web pages (both local and international) still open snappy. Reliability is excellent too. Whenever I sit down in front of my PC its nice to see those two little LEDs still going haywire day or night.

What's more, according to my rough calculations I'm pulling about 9GB per month through my connection - for R650 per month. Sure, it's way overpriced compared to what true broadband costs overseas BUT IT IS STILL THE CHEAPEST 9GB YOU CAN BUY IN SA!!! Nothing else comes close.

ADSL is like a Porsche with a very small petrol tank: It can maintain one moer of a speed but it very quickly runs out of juice. In comparison, MyWireless is slow BUT IT DOES GO THREE TIMES THE DISTANCE FOR THE SAME MONEY.

So, unless iBurst or Telkom ADSL raise their caps significantly then Sentech still rules. In short, Sentech can basically call me a happy customer. Am I the only one?
 
Note:

1. noswal waits only 15 minutes....and then tries to declare victory!

2. StrongTurd ... please keep quiet before we get all those download kiddies
back on MyWireless again. Let then stay and suffer with Telkom or iBurst
and leave our bandwidth alone!!!!!! :)
 
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The one that "DOES THREE TIMES THE DISTANCE".
Is that why your face has gone all green.... with envy!!!!
 
heheh.

Seriously tho, MyWireless was great for that.
Those first two months I had it - April / May last year were truly awesome - averaging 14k per second !
I couldn't face seeing that wonderful service destroyed in the way it was and made into a sub par service for the "solitaire and email brigade", so I ditched it.

With ADSL I managed over 6gig international this month as a test - since I've had ADSL from end Nov, I've never actually gone past the cap, this month I decided to try it because I wanted some linux stuff.

It does suck a bit, I must admit, but I've made allowances for it (set myself up a proxy on my webspace) - I'm not a huge download type person usually, I just want stuff quick.

I can get by on 3gig and the speed is just great - when I want a 10meg file, I want it pronto, not in 1 hour.

10 meg file on 384 ADSL = 5 mins
10 meg file on Mywireless 128 = 30 mins

What would be nice would be to have both, but heck, that's freakin' expensive !

alas, bandwidth in this country is so sad ... :(
 
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My future with this MW product is going to be directly linked to the performance
of Skype and voip in general. So far (my fingers are crossed) MW is delivering an acceptable QOS for this type of application.

Luckily I'm not a big downloader or game buff as I don't believe that MW
currently is a product for them!
 
bb_matt, check my tcpIQ stats. Seems to be workable at the moment, but still not where it should be. When I first got MW last yr, I managed to use 87GB of bandwidth in a month. Not to bad for the 256 package. Anyway, now I seem to be coming up on 8.5GB for this month. Thats without really downloading anything big. Just updating my open source & freeware collections on a daily basis.
 
That's the thing JayT - if your not getting anywhere close to the service you expect or signed up for, it's pretty irritating.

A 128 connection is capable of 16k per second
I could live with 8k up to 11k per second - no problem.

But we've been through all this before :D

Fact is, I killed my Cap on purpose this month - next month I won't and for now, ADSL serves my needs - one of which is streaming radio, which a mywireless 128 is totally incapable of doing at acceptable quality - it can barely stream 28kbps
384DSL can stream at 192kbps and you can still surf at the same time.
 
yea, my average speed is just under 20K/sec but downloading and browsing normally starts off at 25 - 32K/sec. Both for local and international sites.

This is where MW 256 performs better than both ADSL and iBurst. I wouldnt be able to cope with the intl cap or being restricted to 64kbps after x amount of bandwidth.

yea, MW has a throttle which seems to have been increased to 60sec. So larger downloads start off at full speed and then drop to 8.5K/sec after 60sec. But thats why we have download managers with schedulers built in. *Pause 5 sec, restart*. Downloading locally seems to fly without any sort of throttle so I dont have a need to change to ADSL. Why would anyone want to gain a cap...

Listening to the 5fm streaming audio is only using 3.3K/sec which is nothing. Using Skype takes up 5 - 7K/sec and MSN webcams take up 11-14K/sec. All seem to be working pretty well.
 
This is where MW 256 performs better than both ADSL and iBurst. I wouldnt be able to cope with the intl cap or being restricted to 64kbps after x amount of bandwidth.
Click to expand...

Ah - ok - I was getting mixed up with the 512 Mywireless offering - my bad.
 
I had the 512k offering, was fun till they decided to "fix things" in august. Got worse than 128k speeds.

To the original author's comment. The reason why surfing your stupid websites are fast is because MyWi bursts those few secounds before it dies down..... why? Because a website isn't usually above 100kb (and if it is, it's probably designed by someone who still lives in the 90's)

So yes, web browsing may be nippy, but downloading @ 56k speeds isn't my cup of tea.

After Sentech blamed its users for using too much bandwidth (which was effecting their vsat offerings and the fact was that it was due to an open proxy server for adsl leechers) I started downloading EVERYTHING i can.

I pulled 96 gig in one month. After August, I could hardly do 1 gig because it was so slow.
 
JayT said:
yea, MW has a throttle which seems to have been increased to 60sec. So larger downloads start off at full speed and then drop to 8.5K/sec after 60sec. But thats why we have download managers with schedulers built in. *Pause 5 sec, restart*.
Click to expand...

Hi JayT
I've been wanting to do the same. What download manager do you use that has a scheduler?
 
Most have some form of scheduler. The best schedulers have the crappiest interface and functionality so its a mixed bag. I change between Net Transport and Free Download Manager.

Im also looking at writing a script to control NetVampire (http://www.netvampire.com) and messing around with nnCron, a custom little VB app and wget
 
JayT said:
Most have some form of scheduler. The best schedulers have the crappiest interface and functionality so its a mixed bag. I change between Net Transport and Free Download Manager.
Click to expand...
Thanks JayT,
I use DAP but I can't see how to finetune the scheduler to get around MW. I'll have a look at the others you mention.
 
Dont bother. They just as bad as DAP. FDM only schedules to 1 minute. NetVampire looks interesting though. Nothing fancy but might be able to put something together to get it working with MW's 60sec throttle
 
JayT said:
Dont bother. They just as bad as DAP. FDM only schedules to 1 minute. NetVampire looks interesting though. Nothing fancy but might be able to put something together to get it working with MW's 60sec throttle
Click to expand...
So what you're saying is nothing really works ATM. Let me know, please, if you get something working. I would be much appreciated and will beat the manual pause and resume.
 
So it seems like ol' StrongTurd is not the only one who can live with MyWireless. Does anybody know how many subscribers they've actually got at the moment? And maybe a breakdown per base station?
 
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