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agentrfr
Executive Member
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2008
- Messages
- 5,303
Below will detail my experience with neotel's LTE service as a home user. I will post updates and hope others that use this service can chime in too.
Short version:
Pain in the arse to do the admin to get it started, but once in internet is bliss - so far.
Long version:
With gobsmacking awful service from telkom to provide us with internet faster than 2mbit and less than 20% packetloss (nonwithstading the fact that we live in the middle of Bryanston, supposedly one of the internet centres of SA), we decided to try out the Neotel LTE after seeing tests done on myBB a couple months ago.
Walked into the shop in Cedar square and tried to trial the 10meg option of it. Both my dad and I were checked for credit history and denied applying for the 10meg option since both of us have a "limited" credit history. Complete BS. Apparently a home loan doesn't count. The most they'd offer us is the 4meg option and possibly upgrade later. So we ordered it, waited 2 weeks and the guys came to install.
The setup consists of a fairly expensive Dlink wireless router with ac/n channels and broadcasts on both simultaneously so wifi strength pretty good throughout the house, a POE injector and an external modem with built in panel antenna. The modem sits on the already installed TV aerial pole outside (haven't used it in 10 years), is powered by POE from the injector and plugs into one of the ports on the router. Both the router and modem are accessible by their IPs from the house's network.
Here are some stats from the modem for comparison later
When testing the setup with the installer's SIM card, throughput of 20 mbit down and 9mbit up were confirmed by doing a test on speedtest to the joburg mweb server - not the joburg neotel. Stuck in our SIM and we have this performance:
Which is light years ahead of anything we have experienced from ADSL.
So there are 7 internet hungry users in this household. It will be interesting to see what happens when we hit the soft cap, or when I phone in Feb to try upgrade the speed to 10meg.
I can confirm that throughout the day there is an average of 0.03 % packetloss to a server in France which is amazing compared to what ADSL gave us. Video streaming works, and I can confirm that twitch.tv works on high without doing the livstreamer multi-threading "fix"
Pretty much anything I stream or download or throw at it goes at full speed. I tried a not very popular linux distro torrent (20 seeds) at 2PM today (a work week day) and was getting full speed, which is mighty impressive. Pings to joburg hosted games servers stayed between 15-20ms, MMOs like World of Tanks and Guildwars were a consistent 180ms, and to be honest I cant feel a difference playing on this as opposed to ADSL for battlefield / cod.
Oh goodness I hope it stays this good.
Short version:
Pain in the arse to do the admin to get it started, but once in internet is bliss - so far.
Long version:
With gobsmacking awful service from telkom to provide us with internet faster than 2mbit and less than 20% packetloss (nonwithstading the fact that we live in the middle of Bryanston, supposedly one of the internet centres of SA), we decided to try out the Neotel LTE after seeing tests done on myBB a couple months ago.
Walked into the shop in Cedar square and tried to trial the 10meg option of it. Both my dad and I were checked for credit history and denied applying for the 10meg option since both of us have a "limited" credit history. Complete BS. Apparently a home loan doesn't count. The most they'd offer us is the 4meg option and possibly upgrade later. So we ordered it, waited 2 weeks and the guys came to install.
The setup consists of a fairly expensive Dlink wireless router with ac/n channels and broadcasts on both simultaneously so wifi strength pretty good throughout the house, a POE injector and an external modem with built in panel antenna. The modem sits on the already installed TV aerial pole outside (haven't used it in 10 years), is powered by POE from the injector and plugs into one of the ports on the router. Both the router and modem are accessible by their IPs from the house's network.
Here are some stats from the modem for comparison later
Code:
Signal Strength(RSRP) -93 dBm
Signal Strength(RSRQ) -4 dB
LTE SINR 18 dB
LTE RSSI -69 dBmWhen testing the setup with the installer's SIM card, throughput of 20 mbit down and 9mbit up were confirmed by doing a test on speedtest to the joburg mweb server - not the joburg neotel. Stuck in our SIM and we have this performance:
Which is light years ahead of anything we have experienced from ADSL.
So there are 7 internet hungry users in this household. It will be interesting to see what happens when we hit the soft cap, or when I phone in Feb to try upgrade the speed to 10meg.
I can confirm that throughout the day there is an average of 0.03 % packetloss to a server in France which is amazing compared to what ADSL gave us. Video streaming works, and I can confirm that twitch.tv works on high without doing the livstreamer multi-threading "fix"
Pretty much anything I stream or download or throw at it goes at full speed. I tried a not very popular linux distro torrent (20 seeds) at 2PM today (a work week day) and was getting full speed, which is mighty impressive. Pings to joburg hosted games servers stayed between 15-20ms, MMOs like World of Tanks and Guildwars were a consistent 180ms, and to be honest I cant feel a difference playing on this as opposed to ADSL for battlefield / cod.
Oh goodness I hope it stays this good.
