No Local Bandwidth - Read Here!

R

Ravilj

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Joined
Jan 21, 2005
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Location
Sandton, JHB, ZA
I am sure you all know what I am talking about when I say that I have no local nevermind international bandwidth. My pings are unstable. And so it goes on. This has been going on for about a week now.

My thoughs are all those who are experiencing the problem please post you suburb and which tower you suspect you are connecting to.

Aiming at getting a bit more info about this and who is affected and which areas.

Me:
Parkmore
Possibly connected to Sandton, Rosebank, Bryanston
 
I'm in Roodepoort - Wilro Park

Possibly using Northcliffe tower and others (Roodepoort)

Same problems being experienced
 
My UTD is conntected to nothing most of the time, and when it doesn't show me its red bullseye of connection death I assume it is trying to speak to the tower of Babel in Bryanston.
 
I'm in Quellerina. Connecting to Northcliff / Roodepoort? had very slow connections - sub 56Kbps until this morning. Suddenly speeding away at 650 Kbps. Thx Iburst
 
I'm in the Highlands North/Norwood area and I'm get 21k connection! now it seems to have moved past the 250 mark!
 
Roodepoort tower.
3 lights indicated on UTD - constant.
Now 4 days without connection. Not for 5 minutes. :(
 
I'm connecting to kempton, its beautifull, I can download consistently at about 100KBps with occasional 120KBps + speeds.
 
Norcliff tower is the sacks! been connected and disconnected from it for the past 2 weeks avr speeds of round 50Kbps .. i want to sue or m30r someone... i think i am just fedup with the whole "soft launch(R)(TM)" excuse.

i have between 4-5 bars of signal all the time.. so i cant see that the problem is with my connectivity? i think someone left his SCREW-driver in the basestation and now it is fekkedup :/

I love SA broadband.... i say "LET ME BE YOUR GUINEAPIG!!!!"
 
Roodepoort...... 90 - 100% signal strength.

Currently going like a boeing. (550 kbps) First time in three weeks.
 
After endless frustration, I went back to FawrIze's post, and read his other suggestions, So...

... I used a 20m length of ethernet cable and found the perfect spot for the modem upstairs on the opposite side of the house and fixed to a sheltered outside wall. I've now run the cables through the roof, and encased the modem in an old plastic lunchbox. The modem now has unimpeded LOS (not counting the lunchbox) across Sandton, Randburg, Midrand and the Magaliesburg. I now get 5 LEDs solid, with local latency of 50-60ms. And at last.... my internet is truly flying! (well, at least until the next inexplicable event occurs.)

I still can't explain how I got such great signal all of Thursday (coinciding with my reflector euphoria) and such horrible signal since. Totally befuddling! :confused:

Anyway, it's "Goodbye paraboilic reflector, Hello LOS."

I've returned the tin foil to my equally befuddled wife. :)
 
Last edited:
Just musing, but... The house I live in was built in 1930. It has very thick walls (+-30cm). I spoke to an architect friend of mine, and he is sure that it was customary in those days to put lead flashing in the space between the two outer bricks of each wall for damp-proofing. One thing I noticed, as I was looking for a good spot for the modem was how dramatically the signal faded as soon I went inside the house. The lead flashing might also explain why I'm battling to get a home wireless LAN working anything beyond about 25m.

Modern houses (in the last 20years) would probably not be constructed with lead flashing (it has become way too expensive).

One reason for the strong signal on Thursday may have been the very low cloud cover. But that's just a guess. Has anyone noticed signal improvements with low cload cover?
 
Be sure to check the temperature of the modem on a regular basis...closed-up boxes tend to act like hot-houses :eek: Modems wont like hot-houses :cool:
 
Broo said:
Be sure to check the temperature of the modem on a regular basis...closed-up boxes tend to act like hot-houses :eek: Modems wont like hot-houses :cool:
Click to expand...

Where I've put it, its always in shade, and there is some ventilation. When I had it indoors, I didn't notice the UTD heatng up at all - always seemed to run cool. But thanks for the tip, I will keep checking it.

On speed tests all last night I was getting 0.8-1.0 Mbps on local tests, and 300kbps - 400kbps on international tests. But multithreaded international downloads were often hitting the 1Mbps mark.

I sure hope things stay this way. :cool:
 
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