Positive MyWireless Experiences

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">*runs for cover and flame-proof clothing*
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Keep on running LoneStar!!
He does raise a valid point, it all depends on whether the gods will shine favour upon you and give you a good tower.
Maybe those in waiting should wait until theLoneGunMan is happy, maybe one day he'll really be satisfied, with a news server too!
or take your chances with sentech, I hear the odds of winning on mywireless are higher than their new competitors current clients
1 in 10000000000000, but if you get their bonus scheme, those go to
1 in 100000000000
 
Why'd you have to bring up the news server issue? i'd forgotten about it...

Oh well, at least if they do sort out the current speed/network issues it will give us something to hassle them about in the future
 
EASY DUDE, I didn't mean the news server thing in a bad way, I was simply expressing that maybe one day, Sentech might offer the services expected of any regular ISP!
Did you read the 1st part of my post,
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">He does raise a valid point<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
No hard feelings , WE ALL ON THE SAME TEAM, a better yWireless for you is a more stable service for me and all the rest of the users, have I ever said anything against forum action to return their connections to their former glory? I understand that one day I too might not be getting what I paid for. If/WHEN that day comes, sentech will have to do nothing short of feel my wrath, maybe they'll even feel a bit of a bitchSlap

Is it just me or are people on this forum looking for reasons to fight each other, it used to be such a friendly neighborhood.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
I was simply expressing that maybe one day, Sentech might offer the services expected of any regular ISP!
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You mean like a news server, extra email & alias addresses, decent support, a web portal, FTP server, Games server, Subscriber web hosting...What are the chances???

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
Is it just me or are people on this forum looking for reasons to fight each other, it used to be such a friendly neighborhood.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

It must be just you!

/Borris hides his 18 hole doc martins & knuckle duster

This is a great neighbourhood
 
I think there are really three issues here.

Firstly some / many people are having immediate technical difficulties. Constantly dropped connections, massive local packet loss etc. Many of these people will get bad results on LOCAL speed tests such as Rodents. I am not (currently) one of these. I have very very few disconnects etc and consistently get very good results on local speed tests. Of course to counter this, I had a good few weeks of massive problems with disconnectes, remote comp did not respond etc. These however eem to have gone away.

Secondly, there is the question of International bandwidth. This I think is pretty much a shocker for everyone. There is clearly not enough international bandwidth available for the current userbase. Lots of us are fighting for a very small pipe. We are (all) getting sub par performance here with downloads being waaaay less than expected. Sometimes this gets obscured because of the transparent proxy in use and it may appear that better speeds are obtained, but that is because effectively a local download is being made. Why o why does broadband in SA have to mean tricklefeed?? To illustrate, today I started to update my Star Wars Galaxies. Estimated time to complete via Sentech : 20 Hours. Estimated time to complete via 64k ISDN : 5 Hours. You work it out.

Thirdly, Sentech customer Support is a total shocker. They won't tell you whats going on. They won't admit anything is wrong. They basically wouldn't piss on you if you were dying of thirst. Typical governement / oligopoly attitude. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Added to this is a bunch of small stuff. The fact that fileplanet / gamespy is BLOCKED etc. Overall I would say that the service is currently not what is advertised or expected. However it has great potential. This is why it's called the Bleeding edge. Those of us that have it are early adopters and many are bleeding right now. Doesn't mean it's right etc, but bear this in mind if you buy this. If you are conservative I'd say hold off a couple of months.

For me the difference with this is that I still believe the issues are a result of Sentech's own learning curve and eventually will get fixed. With ADSL, you have a snowball's chance in a blastfurnace of TelSkum ever fixing anything. Internet Connectivity? No you must be mistaken, ADSL isn't meant for internet connectivity. It's meant as a superfast Cothes Line. Now Diginet at $$$$$$$ a month, thats for Internet Connectivity. ;)
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">LoneGunman

..and its a pity they aren't maintaining 'quality of service across the network' - for everyone who's paying for that service..
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Yeah - that's the key problem. But think of the numbers, you've got from crap to brilliant.

The math is that if brilliant is 70% and over, you have a success. The reality is your falling short and it should be more like 95%, but it doesn't matter, this is Africa, 70% is a pass.
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">
This is Africa
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You think thats an excuse? We do have the facilities. We have the ADSL and wireless technology. We have access to a fiber backbone to the rest of the world. There is no excuse.

Saying "this is africa" is exactly what Telkom and friends want. By saying that and assuming users actually believe the africa excuse, they can slack on their services. By maintaining the monopoly, users are kept in the dark and continue to think because "this is africa" that the service must be crap for some reason. This is total BS. The services are bad because of a number of reasons. Mismanagement and corruption being some of them.

PS: this is not a flame. Just dont take any of the blame for poor service on our location. If we had to use analog networks exclusively then sure but we have a hell of a lot of unused fiber just lying around. I ask you why? Is it because we are not allowed to use Telkoms extensive fiber network in "Africa"?
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The fact that fileplanet / gamespy is BLOCKED etc.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Where you get this from.
Sentech dont block you from anywhere. I often visit Gamespy and download from Fileplanet.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
in the same light, ProAsm, can you confirm/deny the rumour that emule is being shaped/prioritised? I think its a load of rubbish since my emule runs pretty much the same as always ie. reasonable speeds depending on number of sources blah blah blah. I honestly dont think there is any kind of prioritisation or shaping being done (yet).

Did someone hear this from the all-knowing helpdesk? Or is it a made up story..
 
my opinion, i get what i paid for.

ease of use.
portability (use at work and at home)
full 30k capacity (cept one perdiod of 4 days that i noticed)
and i do get the impression sentech is working at improving
services. (if i compare my 1st call to the call center to the last one were they were very helpfull, and i had a faulty modem sorted out)

I still think it's a fantastic product, and most ppl here are wingers ;P
 
Greedy, at this stage nothing has been prioritized, shaped, capped or blocked in any form whatsoever and is not likely to either.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ProAsm</i>
<br /><blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">The fact that fileplanet / gamespy is BLOCKED etc.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Where you get this from.
Sentech dont block you from anywhere. I often visit Gamespy and download from Fileplanet.

<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

My appologies. It does seem to be working again, but for the last three weeks neither I nor two of my friends on MyWireless were able to access fileplanet, whilst it still worked fine over isdn. This was also confirmed by people on this forum. I guess it was just a glitch again.
 
MVH, you must have asbestos underpants....

People have the right to complain. And I think you'll find the so-called "wingers" will also compliment the service if and when it works properly. You are fortunate to have a good connection but that sorta proves a point: why are some people getting excellent service and others not? There is a problem with the Towers, no doubt. Like tonight, I tried to do Internet banking and don't tell me half of Standard Bank clients do their banking at 11pm. I couldn't even download a statement. Which pies me off. I admit I made a mistake when choosing Sentech over Telkom ADSL, but unfortunately, I signed up for three years and will have to hope and pray that the service gets better, otherwise I will have to get DSL in any case as I cannot work like this - yes, real work to a Terminal Server at my office which is impossible with Sentech.

Do yourself a favour and phone the helpdesk. BTW, send me your number as I would love to have more clients like you :-)

-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;

...and Gandalf stared into the distance with a faraway look of gold...
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ProAsm</i>
<br />Greedy, at this stage nothing has been prioritized, shaped, capped or blocked in any form whatsoever and is not likely to either.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

As I expected...
 
I have been extremely satisfied with MyWireless 128k. And no, I am not a Sentech employee.

I download regularly at over 15Kb/s at work from the North sector of Brixton tower, both local and international. Latency is not great though, averaging 150ms to 250ms with 10% packet loss (old firmware). My signal ranges from 44% to 51%, from about 1km from the tower, with perfect LOS without any obstacles, with the modem antenna alone.

I have however noticed the signal drop on various occasions to between 22% and 24%. I notice no change in bandwidth performance or latency when the signal drops this much, considering my proximity to the tower. I wonder how it would affect connections further afield.

At home, initially I had absolutely no signal, located approximately 5km from the Horizon View tower, SE sector. Sentech helpdesk said I would have no coverage, and to my frustration, they would not say when Floracliffe tower would come online to give me coverage at home. I went ahead anyway, because someone from Sentech unofficially told me Floracliffe had already been operational from Feb 18th, it hadn't.

However, after installing a 22dbi dish, and 10m LMR400, I managed to get three lights (haven't checked the signal yet - connected through Apple Airport access point on PPPoE). I receive excellent results with this setup, also often downloading at over 15kb/s, many times achieving 19k or 20k sustained throughput, also local and international. My latency to local servers is sub 100ms, with 2% or 3% packet loss.

Having used ISDN 64k previously, I expected only 24/7 from the service to convince myself to switch to MW, bandwidth was not too critical. However, I have received much more than I expected. I would have liked better latency for VNC, but it is still workable nevertheless.

There was a period of a few days where I could only achieve 4kb/s to 5kb/s bandwidth, but I managed to trace this to spyware which had been inadvertently been installed on my laptop. Downloads were back to normal after removal of the spyware.

I wonder where bandwidth problems are being experienced, whether this could not be put down to some local setup issue on the user's installation? I also feel that where the quality of signal suffers, a dish could make a world of difference?


In close to two months, I experienced one day where I would disconnect regularly from Horizon View tower, but MW would reconnect itself immediately afterwards. There was an early morning period where I could not connect for a couple of hours. Other than this, its been happy surfing for me.
 
Good for you...now pass some of that bandwidth this way please :-)

-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;-&lt;

...and Gandalf stared into the distance with a faraway look of gold...
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by ProAsm</i>
<br />Greedy, at this stage nothing has been prioritized, shaped, capped or blocked in any form whatsoever and is not likely to either.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

i have to disagree with you there. I do experience that i cannot connect to certain ports on servers AT ALL from my sentech connection. Normal ports like ssh, http, ftp, etc work fine to the same server though. Same pc, same everything, except on a dialup connection, i can connect fine. Its definately sentech.
 
We dont have the time to ass about with trivial stuff like that atm.
Maybe its IS thats killing you.
What ports you having hassels with.


<hr noshade size="1"><center><font color="blue">MyWireless Stuff</font id="blue">
<font size="1"><font color="black">The opinions expressed here are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of my employer</font id="size1"></font id="black"></center>
 
Its totally the wrong approach to use shaping etc to solve speed issues etc. The Sentech network is a scaling network and these kinds of stupid tactics wont work anyways. Buying more bandwidth is all that can be done to solve this situation (or sharing the current pool *way* more effieciently for all) but I guess it is being worked on so can we just STFU about prioritisation/shaping etc.

Please guys, stop posting rumours that you cannot validate. New users stop in once and read "shaping" and then spread the (false) rumour.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X