Thumbs-up G-Connect

I too was having issues with international today - Youtube was a chore...
I also did the speedtest.net tests and came up with this:

G-Connect (Vodacom unshaped)
Joburg:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/549899796.png

New York:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/549900779.png

Telkom (shaped):
Joburg:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/549902631.png

New York:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/549903453.png

I was disappointed with the difference in local speeds, but accept that Telkom virtually own alot of the fibre and copper in this country. But to be honest, on the international side, it seems it's much of a muchness at this stage and I can only assume there is a SAT3 issue today cos 500k on a 4M line is poor...

I will wait a few days before I moan about the speed TBH. G-Connect's international latency is definitely a bit better than the shaped telkom bandwidth.
 
I tried the service and the login thing is a bit of a schlep.

The connection manager has some serious memory leak issues in Vista. Was using about 1.4gb of memory on my laptop which only has 2gb, so a big bug right there.
 
Cool just bought R25 worth of MB .... opened a web page on my always on media centre pc .. logged in and whoohooo happy surfing .,.

Oh P.S. i did not even use the connection manger .. and i have my G-connect account mapped into my lynksys router and utilizing "gatecrasher's splitting international and local script" it works nice i have been playing some online games and the wife was snooping around on guildwars.

Comment towards G-connect: Please can you also state on the overview / usage window under " my account " on the amount of MB left ?
 
DagegeN said:
Oh P.S. i did not even use the connection manger .. and i have my G-connect account mapped into my lynksys router and utilizing "gatecrasher's splitting international and local script" it works nice i have been playing some online games and the wife was snooping around on guildwars.
Click to expand...

Please elaborate - did you login using the landing page? I'm keen to use GC script as well... will consider that soon.
 
mbp said:
Please elaborate - did you login using the landing page? I'm keen to use GC script as well... will consider that soon.
Click to expand...

Yes in GC's scripts i had my international as
Username: [email protected]
Password: GConnect

then loaded it.

So i then proceeded to try and access an international site, where i then got to the landing page. typed in my registered user and pass in and off i went.

easy as that no hassles or hickups. but i must add then i have a Media PC running 24/7 so i opened the page on that logged in ..minimized and opened Media-portal over it.

No more logging in on landing page as long as my Media PC has that page open.

With the claims against the connection manager i have decided not to install it on any of my PCs' i have no need to swap between ADSL WIFI or 3G
 
Last edited:
G-Connect said:
With regards to connection speed, we have great pings locally and unshaped traffic internationally, hence the international latencies are great as well.

I hope you will try the service...
Click to expand...

OK an update....
I finally got connected - thank you Braam.

One thing I do not like is that I have to keep this web page of yours open to stay connected. I crashed 2x already! What if I am downloading (not through torrent etc...) and I crash..I will lose my download :(

As for speeds, not that great for me :( I had to wait a LONG time to access my webmail in the USA...and that because you have blocked port 25 which is the default Outlook SMTP port !!! You should TELL us these things! I now had to set up another port on the server in USA to send my mail from Outlook...You see, it is bad enough getting ripped off in SA by ISP's ...so I don't want to get ripped off by SA hosts as well hence I host in USA and Germany where it is much much cheaper!
 
Nutty Grandad said:
..and that because you have blocked port 25 which is the default Outlook SMTP port !!! You should TELL us these things! I now had to set up another port on the server in USA to send my mail from Outlook...You see, it is bad enough getting ripped off in SA by ISP's ...so I don't want to get ripped off by SA hosts as well hence I host in USA and Germany where it is much much cheaper!
Click to expand...

Not quite I had the same problem, so I called them. They dont block port 25. They redirect smtp (port 25) traffic to their own outbound mail server because other ISP like M-Web and SAIX block users from sending mail via their server from another source IP other than their own.

My problem was that my mail client was set to authenticate and that does not work as my requests then reaches the gconnect server with my other ISP's credentials.

So I removed the auth and bang working like charm. You can also use the gconnect server directly (smtp.gconnect.co.za)
 
Nutty Grandad said:
One thing I do not like is that I have to keep this web page of yours open to stay connected. I crashed 2x already! What if I am downloading (not through torrent etc...) and I crash..I will lose my download :(
Click to expand...

Yep, that's why I stopped using them. 400Mb of a 700Mb file... it disconnected for some reason, and I got a bunch of copies of the landing page appended to the file... so even after I reconnected I couldn't resume the download, I had to start again.

(this was before they implemented keep-alive - that may help now. I have enough other problems with their system to not make it worth trying again)
 
CathJ said:
Yep, that's why I stopped using them. 400Mb of a 700Mb file... it disconnected for some reason, and I got a bunch of copies of the landing page appended to the file... so even after I reconnected I couldn't resume the download, I had to start again.

(this was before they implemented keep-alive - that may help now. I have enough other problems with their system to not make it worth trying again)
Click to expand...

I am currently using them and I don't keep any web pages open. I just put the setting in my router. I logged into the page on one of my computers 3 days ago and have been surfing the web on 4 different computers and my iphone over the last 3 days without ever having to log in with any of the other machines or devices. Just the one time at the beginning. The computers are often turned off, though I have a stand-alone skype phone that is constantly connected that sends out a signal intermittently. I have been so impressed with these guys. Really have nothing to complain about, just can't wait until they get vodacom prepaid sim cards added.
 
jamezjunk said:
I am currently using them and I don't keep any web pages open. I just put the setting in my router. I logged into the page on one of my computers 3 days ago and have been surfing the web on 4 different computers and my iphone over the last 3 days without ever having to log in with any of the other machines or devices. Just the one time at the beginning. The computers are often turned off, though I have a stand-alone skype phone that is constantly connected that sends out a signal intermittently. I have been so impressed with these guys. Really have nothing to complain about, just can't wait until they get vodacom prepaid sim cards added.
Click to expand...

The problem is that I have now got 4 different ISP and need my router in bridge mode! I am constantly doing pings on one of my networked pcs and swop ISP when I find one giving a better conn..when it drops I change to the next best one at the time.

example...I was downloading the new game Aion via torrent. I ended up using Telkom when Axxess dropped to 1.2kb/s and got 27kb/s from Telkom. When Telkom dropped to 0kb/s I swopped back to Axxess at 79kb/s.
This download process took me 34 hours to complete!
My USA server downloaded this 5.8gig file in less than 1 hour without a torrent! If only we could have that speed in SA!!!
 
DagegeN said:
So i then proceeded to try and access an international site, where i then got to the landing page. typed in my registered user and pass in and off i went.
Click to expand...

Ok, I thought you got around that one... I had logged into the landing page last night and by the morning I had to reconnect. Pity as my server tried to do updates during the night...
 
CathJ said:
Yep, that's why I stopped using them. 400Mb of a 700Mb file... it disconnected for some reason, and I got a bunch of copies of the landing page appended to the file... so even after I reconnected I couldn't resume the download, I had to start again.

(this was before they implemented keep-alive - that may help now. I have enough other problems with their system to not make it worth trying again)
Click to expand...

I have decided... I will prolly go back to WA or perhaps even Telkom for my regular 10Gb allowance and then use GConnect for topup and mobile until the landing page is fixed / removed.

And I am still getting page not found errors intermittently - then a minute later back on...
 
mbp said:
Ok, I thought you got around that one... I had logged into the landing page last night and by the morning I had to reconnect. Pity as my server tried to do updates during the night...
Click to expand...

Weird. mine stayed connected.
Start Time Stop Time Bandwidth Time Billing Unit
27/08/2009 18:03:45 27/08/2009 19:00:56 35.31 MB 00:57:11 MB
27/08/2009 19:01:35 28/08/2009 05:51:59 80.18 MB 10:45:24 MB


10 hrs overnight with landing page open on my Media Centre PC and did not get "logged off"
 
DagegeN said:
Weird. mine stayed connected.
Start Time Stop Time Bandwidth Time Billing Unit
27/08/2009 18:03:45 27/08/2009 19:00:56 35.31 MB 00:57:11 MB
27/08/2009 19:01:35 28/08/2009 05:51:59 80.18 MB 10:45:24 MB


10 hrs overnight with landing page open on my Media Centre PC and did not get "logged off"
Click to expand...
Ja, landing page open... i.e. I need to remote into my server and get the landing page up every time I want it to stay connected.
 
Thing is - for less than 5gb per month and for the home user, g-connect is brilliant.... the best....

for me, it's better to get telkom do 3 which includes 5gb at R28 ish per gig. Then get additional 5gb account from telkom and get the benefit of 30gb local of the first capped 5gb account when it is capped.... if I need any more I'll go gig at a time through gconnect. Not the way I would want it but it makes sense.
 
mbp said:
Thing is - for less than 5gb per month and for the home user, g-connect is brilliant.... the best....

for me, it's better to get telkom do 3 which includes 5gb at R28 ish per gig. Then get additional 5gb account from telkom and get the benefit of 30gb local of the first capped 5gb account when it is capped.... if I need any more I'll go gig at a time through gconnect. Not the way I would want it but it makes sense.
Click to expand...

I have to agree with you on that point.
G-Connect will not be my permanent connection, I will only use it once my Do3 international cap has been used up. Then i will switch and use G-Connect for international and my capped Do3 for my 30gig local.
 
Does anyone have any idea how these guys are doing ito new users?
 
psst said:
Does anyone have any idea how these guys are doing ito new users?
Click to expand...

Heard they're doing quite well, apparently they have a big customer base already. Will try to find out how many customers...

I'm using the service and really enjoying the prices, even got my gran to use it.
 
boondog said:
Not quite I had the same problem, so I called them. They dont block port 25. They redirect smtp (port 25) traffic to their own outbound mail server because other ISP like M-Web and SAIX block users from sending mail via their server from another source IP other than their own.

My problem was that my mail client was set to authenticate and that does not work as my requests then reaches the gconnect server with my other ISP's credentials.

So I removed the auth and bang working like charm. You can also use the gconnect server directly (smtp.gconnect.co.za)
Click to expand...

Redirecting port 25 is as good as blocking it if you can't send mail through your own smtp server! Not everyone wants to use their ISP's smtp server to send mail and many tech-savy people have their own smtp servers.
 
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