ClockworkOrange
Active Member
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2005
- Messages
- 53
- Reaction score
- 0
Well, I have decided to go with iBurst after all.
When I first wrote on the forum couple of weeks ago, I was asking for the advice on Telkom's ADSL 192 package. Eventually, after several days of negotiations with a Telkom employee in Durban (sic!), who could not even locate my Johannesburg suburb in their system, I decided that it was not worth the effort and told them to shove it. So iBurst was the only other option, or so it seemed.
So far after 5 days of using iBurst, I must give it a measely C+, which is not much in terms of modern broadband services, but hopefully potential is there.
On the plus side:
+ The customer support was so far very good, my modem was (admittedly after a nudging phonecall) delivered to me very promptly;
+ no Telkom landline connection, which means even thunderstorms are not an obstacle to being on-line but ... [see the minus part];
+ so far definitely an improvement over my old dial-up connection, estimated at about 5 to 8 times faster than dial-up;
On the minus side:
- service is very erratic, sometimes it's flying, sometimes (like right now as I write this message I get a time out on every 10th-15th ping) it's just not there - dead for a few minutes at a time. During thunderstorms or bad weather signal is all over the place, which renders the abovementioned plus sign practically useless.
- speeds are nowhere near what was advertised - supposedly 1MB/s burst rate. On my best day, which was the second day after I installed iBurst, I had sometimes download speeds up to 50-60 kBytes/s, but only in download manager going through multiple streams. Browsing almost never got above 20-25kBytes/s. I have never seen speeds of 120+ kBytes, as some people mentioned on the forum, even though the modem shows full signal. Since then both downloads and browsing speeds have decreased dramatically, last couple of days I was battling to play online poker and Neveron - both not very high network intensity games, neither requires low latency too. I hate to see what happens when I try Blizzard game servers ...
- impending cap is also obviously a minus. For those who want to monitor their network usage, here is a nifty tool calculating all traffic - Magitime 6
http://www.geocities.com/magistone/
- lack of definite instructions on MTU/RWIN settings from supplier, again like most people on the forum I had to come up with my own calculation (MTU 1432, RWIN 64032 for those who keep scores
Bottom line, they still have a long way to go to achieve the advertised goals, although the good signs are there and there is room for improvement. Thanks for all other posters who supplied technical info and tips/tricks.
When I first wrote on the forum couple of weeks ago, I was asking for the advice on Telkom's ADSL 192 package. Eventually, after several days of negotiations with a Telkom employee in Durban (sic!), who could not even locate my Johannesburg suburb in their system, I decided that it was not worth the effort and told them to shove it. So iBurst was the only other option, or so it seemed.
So far after 5 days of using iBurst, I must give it a measely C+, which is not much in terms of modern broadband services, but hopefully potential is there.
On the plus side:
+ The customer support was so far very good, my modem was (admittedly after a nudging phonecall) delivered to me very promptly;
+ no Telkom landline connection, which means even thunderstorms are not an obstacle to being on-line but ... [see the minus part];
+ so far definitely an improvement over my old dial-up connection, estimated at about 5 to 8 times faster than dial-up;
On the minus side:
- service is very erratic, sometimes it's flying, sometimes (like right now as I write this message I get a time out on every 10th-15th ping) it's just not there - dead for a few minutes at a time. During thunderstorms or bad weather signal is all over the place, which renders the abovementioned plus sign practically useless.
- speeds are nowhere near what was advertised - supposedly 1MB/s burst rate. On my best day, which was the second day after I installed iBurst, I had sometimes download speeds up to 50-60 kBytes/s, but only in download manager going through multiple streams. Browsing almost never got above 20-25kBytes/s. I have never seen speeds of 120+ kBytes, as some people mentioned on the forum, even though the modem shows full signal. Since then both downloads and browsing speeds have decreased dramatically, last couple of days I was battling to play online poker and Neveron - both not very high network intensity games, neither requires low latency too. I hate to see what happens when I try Blizzard game servers ...
- impending cap is also obviously a minus. For those who want to monitor their network usage, here is a nifty tool calculating all traffic - Magitime 6
http://www.geocities.com/magistone/
- lack of definite instructions on MTU/RWIN settings from supplier, again like most people on the forum I had to come up with my own calculation (MTU 1432, RWIN 64032 for those who keep scores
Bottom line, they still have a long way to go to achieve the advertised goals, although the good signs are there and there is room for improvement. Thanks for all other posters who supplied technical info and tips/tricks.
