Sentech details available

Ok you've really drawn me into this Sentech thing, getting quite excited at having uncapped broadband!!

But I..., as well as many other people who would be willing to invest in Sentechs new service should be a bit worried. If ping/response times are in the 80's then that just flattens the whole idea of getting this... I live in Cape Town, I got ADSL and i get a 40-50 ping stable. If I get 80 I won't be happy, I won't be able to frag like on my adsl and I will lag... IF its bad then Sentech will be losing a lot of its potential customers

So please, I know this isn't on the highly important list for many of the people here, you're just interested in the we can download as much as we want 24/7 and host servers.

What about the gamers? :P

Plz provide more info on latencies/pings etc etc
 
Oh yes, just adding on...

When u mentioned a 40-80 ping, you meaning that 512k would be 40 down to 128k being 80? Still not good...

I know I'm moaning a bit when the service hasnt even been released yet, but just want to get these questions off my mind...
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by grubman</i>
well, i run my own mail server at home. I can't stand using the "free" web mail services. This is ten fold more convenient and I have full control over email names etc, etc.

Then there's web servers, and opportunity to start some or other ebusiness with not a lot of huge capital outlay ...

If you have a static ip, it's easier to get hold of a person when using VoIP - haven't actually tried this, so i'm making an assumption here - and many more reasons why one would want a static ip.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

hahahaha ... and you want to do all this with a DSL line in South Africa, good luck ! ... if I buy webspace of you .... how many hours do I have to wait for my page to load [;)]

or if I want to call you ..... how many hours delay would there be [:D]

I have a static IP at the moment, but I don't really care .... why would you want a static IP just for surfing and email, thats what I meant
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Here is a simple question for the sentech ppl... How fast wil I be dling with the 128K pacakge+- ?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
hehe... thats a broad question [:)]
It like saying I have a motorcar than can do 128 mph - how fast can I drive my car ?
Well it depends if you are on the open road or in the center of town [:D]
But on a serious note at 128k 14 to 16 KB/sec but thats locally or where you have a good connection to over the borders.

Regarding pings - I just want to add to this and here I speak from my own experience and nothing to do with Sentech.

I too am a gamer (UT2003) and am also a ServerAdmin for Mweb UT2003 servers.
When I had ISDN + R7 Callplan and I dialed a local Pop my pings averaged 90 on most servers. If I however dialed a JHB Pop my pings averaged 45.
I then got ADSL and the wheels starting falling off.
Initially when we were routed directly to JHB my pings averaged 50 on Mweb and 40 on Saix servers which was great. Downloads averaged 52k and uploads about 30k.
Then all the grannys started moaning because the ADSLers were screwing their bandwidth up, Helscum re-routed all the Durban ADSL via PE to CT to JHB and man does this suck, my pings now to Mweb are 70 and 60 to Saix.
Like many of my mates here have now got ADSL and ISDN, one for downloading and surfing and the other for gaming and man does this suck.
Its also along time since I saw a download above 44k.
You guys in JHB with ADSL dont know how lucky you are.

The other thing many people dont consider or take into account is the copper "pipe" between your exchange and the Telkom backbone.
When I got my ISDN in 1998 there was a 1 mbit pipe here.
In Feb 1999 Telkom dug up 8 km of trench an replaced it with a 10 mbit pipe and this was great.
In August this year I got my ADSL and was the 29th installation in my area, things were still ok.
Today this has grown to 300 odd installations so far and boy am I feeling it as I'm again starting to get dropouts and all sorts of problems like I had in 1998 with my ISDN.
What happens when this reaches 1000's as Umhlanga Rocks and Gateway is one of the fastest growning property developements on the African continent atm.
At what point will this 8 km will ever get dug up and upgraded again... [|)]
 
Maybe ask some of the ex Megawan guys? I believe they were getting very good local ping times (~20ms?)... latencies will probably depend on a number of factors that affect RF and the cellular system.. your signal strength and quality, distance from the cell node, how busy that cell is, weather conditions between you and the cell node, and so on and so forth.

If anything I would recommend Sentech set up some gaming servers on their network, this would probably mean everyone could get the full ~3mbit/sec to that server (because it need not be rate limited) and the best possible latencies.

-jus
 
Well... setting up servers would be good for Sentech gamers, but the majority of the other gamers are still with Telkom land lines, but then again, I STRONGLY believe that if the service from Sentech is good enough, then many many gamers, possibly nearly all of them will go to Sentech...I know for sure that all ADSL users will swop over.

Lets just hope its good for gaming...
 
Please tell me why we can't be guranteed the minimum speed of what we purchase? i know with mweb isdn i have never ping'd is.co.za above 40. i download at the same great speed between 7-8k wherever unless obviously if i'm d/l from someone else on a line with less bandwidth. but i just want to know what makes it so difficult that a speed per user can't be guranteed. i'd rather be guranteed 512k than have the possibiltiy of going above and below that. if there is 1000 people on a single mast which has a 35mbit line which means 8bits = 1 byte therefore 4.375mbyte line / 1000 = 4.4k downloads? thats awesome hey? no... please can someone elaborate on the factors and prove to me that this contention **** is'nt going to happen, we knows its all possible as it looms above us and by what i can see here the sandton mast will be the first to be full with a huge majority of adsl users will love to switch over.

[^]
 
ProASM I apologise for asking such a stupid question,I just thought there would be a difference in speed with isdn(dl constant) and wireless(dl faster or same as ISDN). Guess I was wrong, I'm a bit dissappointed... wireless(can maybe achieve the speed of ISDN). Thats sad. Know that makes me wonder if adsl would be the better option... R680 line rental a month(ISP share with some1 a account).
And to avoid the cap I dl locally.There are alot of local sites to dl the same as what you would have wanted internationally. [|)]

Where as 256k wireless = R859.. no cap,24/7 etc but you have a chance of dling less than a ISDN 128k user? lol

I still have 2 weeks to decide which one I want to take :)

BTW the usb modem you get with MYwireless does it have ethernet support?

On sentech site they say you can dl upto 3mb/s... ermm.. that just confuses me. care to explain...any1?
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Please tell me why we can't be guranteed the minimum speed of what we purchase? i know with mweb isdn i have never ping'd is.co.za above 40.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Wow.. shame dude.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 196.4.160.2, timeout is 2 seconds: !!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 1/2/4 ms

Might want to look into that bad latency...

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Where as 256k wireless = R859.. no cap,24/7 etc but you have a chance of dling less than a ISDN 128k user?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

You know, I think Sentech should have done what telkom does and just not tell people contension ratios etc, because most of them are too stupid to understand it.

Telkom gurantees what, like 9600bps or something? You saying you have *never* downloaded at less than 128Kbps on your ISDN? Utter tripe if you ask me.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">BTW the usb modem you get with MYwireless does it have ethernet support.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Yes it does, it says so on the site actualy (I also missed it.)

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Where as 256k wireless = R859.. no cap,24/7 etc but you have a chance of dling less than a ISDN 128k user?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

There are many chances in life.

here are some examples

1) People who are confused by contension ratios may spontaneously combust
2) They may get a life
3) I might someday upgrade my router
4) One day if I walk out into the road, I could get
4 a) Stabed in the face
4 b) Hit by a buldoser
4 c) Abducted by aliens
5) Sentech MIGHT be like 100bps for 3seconds on every sunday night because everyone tries to read the Cartebalanch programs the missed.

<hr noshade size="1">iActive internet services
http://www.iactive.co.za
 
FRISKET, never be afraid of asking stupid questions as you call it.
Rather learn smartly by asking questions than azarding a guess when you are ill informed [:)]

You say with ADSL if you download locally you dont hit your Cap... hehe, you get nailed towards your Cap regardless of where you download from or upload to, and that is the biggest gripe we have, one of the reasons myadsl was started in the first place.

Depending on your signal and your location, number of hops, local downloads on MyWireless would be approx:
128k = 8 to 15 KB/sec
256k = 15 to 30 KB/sec
512k = 30 to 60 KB/sec

If however only a few peeps are downloading or not many are on, the above numbers could go up by as much as 5 times in each case - if limiting is not used by Sentech which I doubt it will be, but you never know.

Local pings should be 30 to 80 depending on the system you have, location and number of hops etc.
 
<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>
Local pings should be 30 to 80 depending on the system you have, location and number of hops etc.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Please expand on that a bit. Im in Cape Town.
 
<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>
You say with ADSL if you download locally you dont hit your Cap... hehe, you get nailed towards your Cap regardless of where you download from or upload to, and that is the biggest gripe we have, one of the reasons myadsl was started in the first place.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Proasm, we really appreciate your input, its really valuable, I wouldn't want to see something bad happen to you.
Since you are a sentech employee, certain people might see what u do on this site as some sort of advertising, and with this countrys half-assed laws, some Telskum advertising exec might just browse around here and decide this to be competitive advertising.

I don't know much about the laws, but I was nailed with something similiar a few years back.

I would recommend avoiding direct comparisons to named products (ie adsl, which is synonomous with telkom in this country).

Thankfully the rest of us can slander telkom as much as we like coz we aint affiliated with the opposition.
 
Doesnt look like he has ever mentioned a Telkom product or compared to a telkom service...

The fact that Telkom are the only ones that provide the service is entirely the fault of the government who makes the rules ;)

<hr noshade size="1">iActive internet services
http://www.iactive.co.za
 
dorris, I fully agree with you but although I'm a Sentech employee I still have the right to speak my own opinion as seeing I'm currently a ADSL user which btw I'm quite ok with most the time.

Personally in a way Telkom served me well with my ISDN which I had for over 5 years and sorry I gave up, but my wife needs Internet 24/7 for her business so we switched to ADSL, otherwise I would still have my ISDN as that was great.

It is also very difficult to answer a question when the only comparison one has is Telkom.
On the other hand I only give information as I find it and I have never praised or boosted a Sentech product, and like you, I'm also in the wait and see queue and cannot wait for some test results to surface [:)]

Now if anyone slams the opposition then go read tommys posts [:D]
 
Out of interest, would it be possible to share, lets say, a 256kbps account/connection with a friend, thus splitting the costs? That means you could both get 128kbps at a cheaper than 128kbps price.
ProAsm said multiple users per account like ADSL because of PPPoE.
Also, what about people hacking our account usernames/passwords and thus gaining access to our accounts? How will this be controlled?
Does it all actually work the same as normal dialup accounts or what? Are there U/P's?
Sounds wierd.
 
Just a side note re gaming and pings - as an ex-Megawan customer (and damn, Megawan were like that little girl in the story which goes 'when she was good she was very very good, but when she was bad, she was AWFUL) :)
Anyhow, average ping times to Jhb Quake 3 servers as I recall, from Melville, through SABC roof tower and onwards through MW network to where ever the hell the signal started, you'd get around 40 -60 ms ping, which isnt shoddy at all. Was always enough to kill people on :)
Once or twice I recall a 20ms ping..
Also, playing Q3 Weapons Factory Arena (which is like a large scale wilder version of Counterstrike) - I'd hurt and kill gamers in the UK and US, even with pingtimes up to 300ms and beyond. So its a little obsessive to worry about pingtimes too much.. If Im in Jhb, and want to log into a game server based in CT, yup, of course there's gonna be lag, it comes with the territory (anyone remember the early days of QuakeWorld and sliding lagged all over the place?) Pingtimes in the 40-60 range arent going to get you killed or put you at a disadvantage..
With wireless and sharing sig on a tower, the geek next door using download accelerator or some other multi-threading app to absorb as much bandwidth as possible, is a greater threat and cause of packet loss..
Anyhow, just my two cents worth :)
 
MegaWAN and MyWireless have practically nothing in common, however. And please don't compare WFA to Camper-Snipe... that's just degrading. [8D] As far as authentication goes, jus speculated that they may be using smart cards for that.

mithrandi
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> Please tell me why we can't be guranteed the minimum speed of what we purchase?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
The only way you'll get a guarantee anything like that is shelling out major cash for a leased line with a stunning SLA. As someone noted elsewhere, even leased lines aren't 1:1 contention in general. This is a shared internet service; hopefully, Sentech will keep up with the demand for bandwidth, unlike MegaWAN.

mithrandi
 
I'd suggest that everyone read the Contention Ratio's sticky post at the top of this forum.

Nowhere in the world do you get guaranteed bandwidth, unless you are willing to pay for it. This is known as a CIR, which is a committed rate from your ISP which generally costs a lot. Almost all bandwidth, from dial-up, to ISDN, to ADSL, Diginet, anything, is contended. This is necessary for ISP's to operate, make efficient use of their bandwidth, and remain in business. Most people are completely unaware of this fact, and how heavily contended their connections actually are. Nothing Sentech are doing are outside of internationally accepted norms and practices, and in fact MyWireless may even be better seeing as the contention policy is looser than common policies for say ADSL.

-jus
 
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