Supersonic & Frog Foot

[Chris333]

Hi All

I am looking at moving away from my wireless connection through Wibernet in the deep south of Cape Town.

Supersonic has some good deals on Frogfoot (my only fibre provider in the area) so just wanted to ask the community if anyone uses this combo and what the performance/up-time/support has been like before I pull the trigger.

Thanks in advance!

 

[belator]

Option A move to Frogfoot.
B B I chose B.

Seriously, I have another post here explaining the lengths I have gone to, to get one family member off Frogfoot. it doesn't matter which ISP you use, if the node you connect to has an issue - as some seem to have - you'll be in for a torrid time.

Wiber have a very decent network. Now that the fibre honeymoon is over, WISPs are slowly coming back into fashion. Have a word with Mathew. See if he can maybe move you over to LTU, the new Cambium APs or some other very up to date wireless tech that will provide you with fibre like connectivity.

 

[belator]

Can you please link to it, as I'm interested in reading about it (wasn't sure which it was in your post feeds).

Surely, though, it's easy enough to get away from Frogfoot if one hasn't signed up with the "wrong" ISP that has cancellation T's and C's a mile long ?

Openserve rollout question

In January a relative received a note in his mailbox that Openserve was rolling out fibre in the area and Nokia would be the contractor of record. Great excitement as this means they can get rid of Frogfoot. I'm the family tech guy, so will be one less person I have bleating every time their...

mybroadband.co.za

If the FNO's dodgy, the ISP doesn't matter. I went through the motions with a client in Polokwane. From two of the big boys, down to a local WISP who resells fibre. He warned us about the fibre being dodgy and gave us a backup wireless that we plugged into the firewall for failover. After three months we ended dumping the fibre, setting the wireless and primary with a MTN LTE through Afrihost as backup.

As I said, the fibre honeymoon's over.

OSI model - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

If layer 1 - the physical fibre - and layer 2 - how the FNO gets back to the data centre to connect to an ISP - are bad, it doesn't matter who the ISP is, the service will be bad.

If FNO X only has a 200Mb backhaul via Liquid into a small town and two people in that town have 200Mb connections, game over for the other 300 people connecting to the FNO.

This is why I am liking Openserve more and more. It may be "Telkom in disguise", but it's their network. There's no behind the scenes deals with DFA, Liquid, MTN, Vodacom, City owned networks, or even some ISPs who own their own fibre, to get the traffic back to the data centres where they connect with the ISPs. They use proper carrier grade kit and don't learn on live systems.

 

[belator]

Can you please link to it, as I'm interested in reading about it (wasn't sure which it was in your post feeds).

Surely, though, it's easy enough to get away from Frogfoot if one hasn't signed up with the "wrong" ISP that has cancellation T's and C's a mile long ?

I would not be surprised if FNOs have different contracts for different ISPs and the FNOs were quietly using constructive dismissal tactics to get rid of some of the ISPs on their network.

Just like a certain FNO bought a certain large WISP that also has quite a large closed fibre network and suddenly there appears to be much more network growth in the closed network than their open access network. It makes sense for a FNO to control OSI layers 1 - 3 through "their ISP" and to hell with customer choice. "If the customer wants choice, he can get another FNO to build over us,"

Make no mistake. Every FNO in this country has "their ISP". You can't tell me Vox gives Frogfoot a huge cheque each month. The same for Telkom Internet and Openserve etc.

The trick is to really read and understand the terms and conditions and make a copy of them before you sign. The ISP is probably only putting the terms that the FNO imposes on him. Chances are, if there's no penalty clauses, the FNO and ISP have a sweetheart deal. If you are expected to pay cancellation fees, the ISP is under the FNO's whip. The exception to this rule is the really bad ISPs who have to have those penalty clauses to stop their clients running away.

 

[belator]

I think what you described there is what we all want: A month to month service that works reliably and doesn't have stupid penalty clauses or massive setup / connection fees.

 

[blunt]

My parents are in deep south (Glencairn heights) on frogfoot with afrihost 60/30 and it seems quite stable compared to the "trouble areas" of frogfoot.

 

[PBCool]

I would say give the fibre a go, make sure there is no clawbacks (most ISPs have these)

 

[Chris333]

Thanks for the input all!

 

[novocainer]

Do a search for Supersonic on this forum and check their reviews on Google before deciding to sign with them.