Slow VM Data Speeds

ginggs said:
I got -77dBm from MTN and VM from the same tower, readings taken 12 minutes apart.
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So It looks like it there is definately a problem with the VM ISP:mad:

Get some more bandwidth.

Is there an allocation of bandwidth to different areas at differnt times. ie in a business district during office hours you get good speeds and in the residential area you get bad speeds and visa-versa out of office times.

Any thoughts or experiences on this???

Sean
 
Weird...
I've been having a fabulous week with VM! Not a single disconnect, slow speeds etc etc...
 
ld13 said:
Nice,my (international) segmented downloads run just under those speeds. What file & from where did you download it?
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Rosetta downloads from berkeley through boinc. Usually not very fast.
Syndyre said:
Don't really see your point, fact is Vodacom and MTN offer a better, faster service, namely 3G/HSDPA. So how can Cell C be the leading network when it doesn't even offer this?
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Never said Cell-C was the leading network, but it's clearly not Vodacom anymore if it ever was. Point is Vodacom and MTN decided to rather skip edge altogether and roll out 3G. 3G however requires a lot more base stations. Cell-C on the other hand rolls out edge which requires fewer base stations and covers a lot more people. With only a few base stations I have edge coverage most of the time where Vodacom's 3G coverage is very erratic. To top it all off they don't even provide half decent gprs where 3G is not available. If Vodacom wants to provide 3G that's all fine and well, but install some edge stations first as a fallback. The idea is to keep most of your users happy, not just a few privileged ones.
sean12 said:
So It looks like it there is definately a problem with the VM ISP:mad:

Get some more bandwidth.

Is there an allocation of bandwidth to different areas at differnt times. ie in a business district during office hours you get good speeds and in the residential area you get bad speeds and visa-versa out of office times.

Any thoughts or experiences on this???

Sean
Click to expand...
I don't think it makes any sense to do that. Yes there were such offerings (Megawan & Wisp) in the past which gave their business users priority during the day. With Virgin on the other hand they don't know what you use your connection for and to provide more bandwidth in one area and less in another would mean that they are wasting bandwidth on some links. It makes much more sense to use every pipe to its full capacity.

I have noticed however that the uplink is very slow and has a high latency. This causes some packets to get lost and requests to go through at a slower rate which slows down the downlink. They need to upgrade their uplinks.
 
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Last night Virgin just stopped on me for no reason. It is a pain to get it going again. Today it's fine again. There's no other way to describe such a service other than "UNRELIABLE!"
 
I'm on VMobile and my connection speed is fine and reasonably reliable (i.e. no worse than Vodacom's vlive! APN used to be, and remember it's 4 times cheaper)

Local bandwidth is extremely slow, though (almost non-existent at times), but I found a way to bypass this problem: use an international (non South African) proxy!

If you're using a VMobile connection with a desktop PC, a similar and more effective solution is to get Google Web Accelerator, which relays all pages you access through the Google servers. It really improved the speed of local pages for me.
 
Edwe said:
I'm on VMobile and my connection speed is fine and reasonably reliable (i.e. no worse than Vodacom's vlive! APN used to be, and remember it's 4 times cheaper)

Local bandwidth is extremely slow, though (almost non-existent at times), but I found a way to bypass this problem: use an international (non South African) proxy!

If you're using a VMobile connection with a desktop PC, a similar and more effective solution is to get Google Web Accelerator, which relays all pages you access through the Google servers. It really improved the speed of local pages for me.
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Yip - i've tryed this too and it works beutifully :D
 
sky.akash said:
When you say proxy are you refering to the dns settings?
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No, I'm not, I mean the HTTP proxy server settings. Also note that it only works for HTTP, not secure HTTPS or WML/WAP pages.

As far as I know (which isn't very far, I have to admit), the only thing the DNS (Domain Name Server) does is to receive a domain name requested by your browser and to connect the browser to the corresponding IP address (so you don't need to remember the IP address of every site you want to visit). In other words, the actual transfer of the web page is not relayed through the DNS (as far as I know).

By setting up the proxy server as described in my post above, all data transfer will be relayed through the Google server in the U.S., inexplicably speeding up local bandwidth. Why it's faster to relay data from a local server right around the globe rather than to retrieve it directly is beyond me though...
 
If you're looking for a nice fast international proxy, why not try those that Google Web Accelerator uses, which are designed for speeds of up to 2Mbps, which is way faster than you'll get pretty much anywhere in this country:

72.14.192.7 Port: 80
72.14.192.11 Port: 80
72.14.192.14 Port: 80

Please note that all of these are HTTP only and you have to use one of them, not ALL of them.

I don't think many people know about these. I suspect Google doesn't WANT many people to know about them, unless they're running the Google software.
 
Edwe said:
72.14.192.7 Port: 80
72.14.192.11 Port: 80
72.14.192.14 Port: 80

I don't think many people know about these. I suspect Google doesn't WANT many people to know about them, unless they're running the Google software.
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Many people know about those IP's. I found them in my search to find out how Google Accelerator works.

Word of warning to people that wants to use Google Accelerator:
Be careful with what you access with this program running. Especially when you access password protected areas like admin screens/control panels or even your webmail…..
You have been warned
 
ld13 said:
Word of warning to people that wants to use Google Accelerator:
Be careful with what you access with this program running. Especially when you access password protected areas like admin screens/control panels or even your webmail…..
You have been warned
Click to expand...

I assume you’re referring to the overzealous prefetch methods employed by Google Web Accelerator. This shouldn’t be dangerous on a well-designed site, since it only clicks on links with “GET” methods, which, according to the HTTP 1.1 specification, “should not have the significance of taking an action other than retrieval.”

But, of course, we’re not living in an ideal world where everything is done according to specifications and I agree, that, in the real world, GWA can be quite destructive and dangerous when randomly clicking on links that change or delete things. Scary thought… I wonder what Google was thinking.

But you can disable prefetching on the preferences menu. GWA can’t do any damage then, can it? Or am I missing something?

More on this at:

http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/the_google_web_accelerator_is_back_with_a_vengeance.php
 
Cant you just add one of those ip's into your browser, instead of using googles' accelerator?
 
sky.akash said:
I found the place in Opera :) to put in the ip and port settings but couldn't find it in IE :(
Click to expand...

Tools > Internet Options
On the Connections Tab...Select your connection and click Settings.
There is some settings under "Proxy Server".
 
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