PC Network/Wibire Review

[willsotaku]

Hey,

Thought i would do a transparent review of PC Network/Wibire since so little info can be found on Google about anyone using them and what their experiences are with this company.


Setup:
I requested a site survey Thursday and got it done Monday after the site survey the connection was installed the same day! i was very pleased with that the setup time took around 3 hours due to them having to put up a dish on the other side of the accesses tower to as they had no AP facing my way. The install team was friendly and answered what i asked professionally. After the Pole,Dish and Wire was done they proceeded to setup the RB750 they use for traffic management or so i was told.



Support:
Support is great..they are quick to get back to you with tickets and generally do solve the problem....if not the first time maybe the 3rd or 4th time but they seem to get back to you on a timely fashion and do well to put your mind at ease so far no problems with support at all!.



Equipment:
The equipment they put up for you is a 23dBi ubiquiti dish connected to a Mikrotik RB750 router for DCHP and traffic management..my install was done on my existing mast but asked them about what they normally use and the standard seems to be a 3-1m mast depending on the clients needs.



Internet & Overall Thoughts:
Now here is where things get really shaky and i find myself very disappointed...Pings are great if you are not downloading anything, uptime is near 100% i have yet to drop out of a game when not downloading and yes speeds are great when only downloading for 35seconds..I have a 10MBps Home package with them that gets queued down to 4(On 10MBps Packages)MBps after 500s of any sort of download use now this got me red to no extent as nothing was mentioned about it pre-sales and after sales i had to find out myself by watching Youtube @ 720p for a bit to start lagging causing me to investigate so tested a few more things including normal HTTP downloads and if you pull more then 400KB/s for 35s you get Queued to hell.

Latency tests can be done on request i will make sure to visit this thread now and then while i still have this connection even though i just got it recently i am really considering getting it removed due to so many things not being told upfont including that prices are excl vat on their site.



Update:
This is the answer they provide for a queued connection

You are on the 15:1 service we have tweaked it slightly. If you want dedicated bandwidth then you need to buy 1:1 bandwidth and that is R900 per mb/s which will be R9k monthly. We will beat any price nationally on this.

Update 2:

Note that your account gets contended at night once you use 4Mit per second download for longer than 300 Seconds. The account is moved to a contented pool where it stays for around 10 mins should the download continue. Once finished, it gets removed from this pool and speed would get restored. Generally, when watching a youtube video etc, this wouldn't happen as this is not how the streaming protocol works.

Update 3:

All Youtube content as well as updates etc should run fine from now on. Any torrents or international downloads would be hit by this queue, which kicks in at 7AM to 5PM.

Latency Tests:

Speedtest:

Speedtest 3pm-3/3/2015

Speedtest 7pm-3/3/15 [No Throttling as no Downloads]


Gaming:
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Intoxicated CT: 7-16ms
League of Legends: 159-162ms

Final Fantasy XIV:
North America Leviathan: 236-242ms (This is around the Ping for all servers as all servers are located in Canada with the exception of the Japanese Servers)


Non-Disclosed AUP:

Due to the metering and average usage on your account, we have detected that you are running continuous automated downloads, which is against our fair usage policy.

We will be limiting your day usage to a 15:1 contention ratio as described in our service offering. Should you continue with this abuse we can discuss a per gig billing method if you wish.

Another lovely reply for said company upon being unhappy with the AuP and refusing to pay per gig usage

Unfortunately we cannot spend more time answering tickets as this has now become unprofitable for us support with all the queries coming through.

Just to recap:
1) So far this month you have used 328.32838399895 gigs.
2) Day usage so far this month is 166.915123277344
3) We are only half way through the month.
4) Our cost recovery per gig is below cost for your link.
5) We will be throttling you during the day according to our 15:1 policy.

This is not in accordance to our fair usage policy as well as our service description on the website that you signed up with. Further illegal downloads can result in us reporting you.

Unfortunately we are too busy with corporate bigger customers than to deal with these issues of yours now on a daily basis.

Just of note 1 ticket was sent in to them this month..that they opened.

 

[Armizael]

Just had my Wibre installed this morning - also a 10mbps home package.
I'll give some feedback when I get home to do some testing.

 

[willsotaku]

Just had my Wibre installed this morning - also a 10mbps home package.
I'll give some feedback when I get home to do some testing.

Curious as to where you had your install done. For me it was Northen Subs. Hopefully your speeds are better then mine. So far i really regret dropping my old ISP for PC Network/Wibre

 

[Armizael]

Curious as to where you had your install done. For me it was Northen Subs. Hopefully your speeds are better then mine. So far i really regret dropping my old ISP for PC Network/Wibre

Was in Parklands - having some trouble switching some of my devices over to use the dish as a gateway (didn't take the mikrotik router) from work - will see if I can sort it out when I get home.

Edit: Ugh - without thinking, I asked the technician to disable NAT, so I can't get any connection tonight. Will have to test tomorrow.

 

[willsotaku]

That is very odd your connection should still be working as why would they disable NAT if they know it will brake your connection? have you tried calling them? on their FB it states 24 hours support

 

[Armizael]

I was fairly specific with my requirements for the dish set up, so that's probably why.

They don't have 24-hours support - only support from 08:30 - 17:00 (confirmed by calling their number).
Will have it sorted tomorrow.

 

[roxashe]

Hi there

I have enabled NAT on your dish.

Could you test?

I was fairly specific with my requirements for the dish set up, so that's probably why.

They don't have 24-hours support - only support from 08:30 - 17:00 (confirmed by calling their number).
Will have it sorted tomorrow.

 

[roxashe]

Curious as to where you had your install done. For me it was Northen Subs. Hopefully your speeds are better then mine. So far i really regret dropping my old ISP for PC Network/Wibre

Good Day

I have had a look at the link and all seems good from out end.

Have you run a speed test after 5PM to check the available speeds?

I do see on your profile that the speeds seem to be running quite well! Is there anyway you could confirm this for me?

 

[koeksGHT]

That FUP is terrible! 35s shaped? 1h at least on Bitco.

Tell them to beat Bitco's price on 1:1 (R1500 for 10mbps)

 

[willsotaku]

Good Day

I have had a look at the link and all seems good from out end.

Have you run a speed test after 5PM to check the available speeds?

I do see on your profile that the speeds seem to be running quite well! Is there anyway you could confirm this for me?

Hi,

It seems somewhat better now

@KoeksGHT to my error it is set @ 5minutes then you get throttled but it is still pretty bad i am kinda put off that the throttling was not mentioned before i signed into a year contract speed during the day is horrible but its to be expected as business during that time is getting top priority i am considering changing to 4MBps Business to avoid any throttling as it makes me drop packets like hell pending some question to support .

 

[Armizael]

Hi there

I have enabled NAT on your dish.

Could you test?

Working now - thanks!

Local speedtest:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4186094153.png

UK speedtest:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4186101704.png

Very weird that it's reporting 26ms from here to the UK - will have to enquire about that.

Will be running a few more tests and report back.

 

[willsotaku]

Working now - thanks!

Local speedtest:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4186094153.png

UK speedtest:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4186101704.png

Very weird that it's reporting 26ms from here to the UK - will have to enquire about that.

Will be running a few more tests and report back.

Your speeds seem about the same as mine. I had the ping problem with their DNS i changed it on my side and it reports the correct pings now . Would you mind doing a largeish download at your leisure want to see if your throttling is as bad as mine

Edit: Nope nevermind showing 8ms ping to UK lol

 

[Armizael]

Your speeds seem about the same as mine. I had the ping problem with their DNS i changed it on my side and it reports the correct pings now . Would you mind doing a largeish download at your leisure want to see if your throttling is as bad as mine

Edit: Nope nevermind showing 8ms ping to UK lol

Torrents: Did a download of one of the newer eps out on torrent with 20k + seeders - getting around 650kb/s for the last 10 mins, which I'm fine with.

Usenet: Using Astraweb, I downloaded some of an episode - was getting 500-600kb/s, sometimes spiking up to 850kb/s, which I'm also okay with.

PC Networks were fairly clear that the connection was going to be more contended in the day, while being less contended at night, so I'm not too bothered about the above speeds - I can live with it, coming from a *terrible* 3mbps ADSL with > 60 attenuation and < 6 SNR.

All my heavy usage (downloading) happens after hours and I'm at work during office hours, so as long as the weekends are regarded as "after hours", I'm fairly happy.

Twitch.tv: Can't seem to stream from Twitch.tv on Source quality, but I had the same problem previously at my previous residence with 10mbps business ADSL - the High quality seems to work without a hitch, which I can live with.

Youtube: 1080p streaming seems to be fine, but I'd expect that as I'd reckon PC Networks' peering agreements include the local Google cache. See attachment for some stats.

Putting performance aside - I'd like to take the opportunity to commend PC Networks for their awesome service - I had a billion questions about the service and they took the time to answer every single one of them, even outside of business hours.
They were courtious, efficient and a pleasure to deal with and before anyone starts suspecting that I work for them because of all the praise - I work for a prominent ADSL ISP and am in no way related to them.
I believe in reinforcing good service, even if it's for a another company in the same industry as mine.

Will be trying some gaming soon and I'll be testing some of the speeds in office hours tomorrow.

 

[willsotaku]

Torrents: Did a download of one of the newer eps out on torrent with 20k + seeders - getting around 650kb/s for the last 10 mins, which I'm fine with.

Usenet: Using Astraweb, I downloaded some of an episode - was getting 500-600kb/s, sometimes spiking up to 850kb/s, which I'm also okay with.

PC Networks were fairly clear that the connection was going to be more contended in the day, while being less contended at night, so I'm not too bothered about the above speeds - I can live with it, coming from a *terrible* 3mbps ADSL with > 60 attenuation and < 6 SNR.

All my heavy usage (downloading) happens after hours and I'm at work during office hours, so as long as the weekends are regarded as "after hours", I'm fairly happy.

Twitch.tv: Can't seem to stream from Twitch.tv on Source quality, but I had the same problem previously at my previous residence with 10mbps business ADSL - the High quality seems to work without a hitch, which I can live with.

Youtube: 1080p streaming seems to be fine, but I'd expect that as I'd reckon PC Networks' peering agreements include the local Google cache. See attachment for some stats.View attachment 196104

Putting performance aside - I'd like to take the opportunity to commend PC Networks for their awesome service - I had a billion questions about the service and they took the time to answer every single one of them, even outside of business hours.
They were courtious, efficient and a pleasure to deal with and before anyone starts suspecting that I work for them because of all the praise - I work for a prominent ADSL ISP and am in no way related to them.
I believe in reinforcing good service, even if it's for a another company in the same industry as mine.

Will be trying some gaming soon and I'll be testing some of the speeds in office hours tomorrow.

Nice review thanks for adding it to the thread, source is a no go for me too i suspect this is due to some streamers using very high bitrates to broadcast their streams and we are unable to keep up. Gaming is great at least from my side. Just do not try to game while downloading even limited to 200KB/s you will get a small amount of loss 1-2% on CS:GO.

 

[Armizael]

Nice review thanks for adding it to the thread, source is a no go for me too i suspect this is due to some streamers using very high bitrates to broadcast their streams and we are unable to keep up. Gaming is great at least from my side. Just do not try to game while downloading even limited to 200KB/s you will get a small amount of loss 1-2% on CS:GO.

Yeah - seeing the same thing, getting an average of 175ms when playing Diablo 3, but spikes up to 250ms - 400ms when doing usenet downloads at the same time, even when limited to 200kb/s. Am assuming we're being thrown into the "contended pool" you mentioned earlier.

However, when streaming from youtube at 1080p or from mixcloud, I saw no difference in my latency - was below 200ms, so I'm assuming it's just P2P that would affect our latency.

Will be doing more tests tomorrow - overall I'm a happy camper.

 

[PCNetwork]

Good Day,

Thank you for all the feedback that everyone have provided

We are constantly trying to improve our network to give everyone it the best experience possible. As such, with the two reports in this thread, we have made quite a few changes to hopefully improve everyone's speed for the better! Speeds throughout the day should be better than before, and we hope this works out all okay!

Please let us know with any feedback that you may have and we will do our best to help you to sort issues out!

Thanks again everyone!

PC Network.

 

[willsotaku]

Hi

Thanks for making the adjustment i am seeing major improvement on my side and that explains why Youtube is so snappy regardless if you are contended or not.

I have updated the main post with some more info i got this morning including some services that seem to remain at full speed. Would be nice if this includes local steam servers .

 

[Armizael]

Hi again,

Speedtest local:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4187561562.png

Speedtest UK:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4187559116.png

Not too bad - a bit lower on the international side, but still fairly okay since I was told from the get-go international would be more contended in office hours.

Getting an average of 23ms to www.myadsl.co.za, average of 235ms to telegraph.co.uk and an average of 150ms to bbc.co.uk.

Looks like they're peering locally at NAP in JHB and a few other places, which would probably explain the amazing Youtube speeds and using Cybersmart for their international link.

I won't be using the link much during the day - will provide some more test results tonight when I get home

 

[willsotaku]

Did a quick test with Twitch during contented time around 10:40am and the result was great

Twitch.tv - 230KB/s+ Stream:
http://i.imgur.com/3m55aXH.jpg

 

[PCNetwork]

Hi again,

Speedtest local:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4187561562.png

Speedtest UK:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/4187559116.png

Not too bad - a bit lower on the international side, but still fairly okay since I was told from the get-go international would be more contended in office hours.

Getting an average of 23ms to www.myadsl.co.za, average of 235ms to telegraph.co.uk and an average of 150ms to bbc.co.uk.

Looks like they're peering locally at NAP in JHB and a few other places, which would probably explain the amazing Youtube speeds and using Cybersmart for their international link.

I won't be using the link much during the day - will provide some more test results tonight when I get home

Did a quick test with Twitch during contented time around 10:40am and the result was great

Twitch.tv - 230KB/s+ Stream:
http://i.imgur.com/3m55aXH.jpg

Awesome! Thanks so much for the feedback guys. We really do hope that you are happy with the service and will do everything possible to ensure that you guys have the best possible experience!