What's wrong with this picture

[saintm]

Hiya

I have been struggling for a huge portion of the day to connect to my home machine from the office. Out of interest sake, I did a trace from a web based trace route service (office blocks tracert!) and found the following (some bits chopped off):

First run:

2 cisrb1.posix.co.za (160.124.2.1) 0.432 ms 1.747 ms 0.631 ms
3 168.209.89.53 (168.209.89.53) 0.645 ms 1.288 ms 0.868 ms
4 isl.nmszone.is.co.za (196.26.0.3) 91.587 ms 4.615 ms 19.895 ms
5 168.209.18.62 (168.209.18.62) 3.213 ms 2.638 ms 1.383 ms
6 gige-0-0-21.rtr-core4-stp.infosat.net (66.18.65.222) 9.966 ms 8.158 ms 8.775 ms
7 66.18.65.105 (66.18.65.105) 9.506 ms 10.362 ms 10.887 ms
8 myw-stp-66-18-83-120.sentechsa.net (66.18.83.120) 1268.825 ms 1119.560 ms 1234.229 ms
9 66.18.87.51 (66.18.87.51) 1380.262 ms 1406.822 ms 1623.994 ms

Another run:

2 cisrb1.posix.co.za (160.124.2.1) 0.536 ms 0.419 ms 0.888 ms
3 168.209.89.53 (168.209.89.53) 0.647 ms 0.592 ms 1.101 ms
4 isl.nmszone.is.co.za (196.26.0.3) 2.762 ms 3.338 ms 2.029 ms
5 168.209.18.62 (168.209.18.62) 5.584 ms 4.070 ms 1.836 ms
6 gige-0-0-21.rtr-core4-stp.infosat.net (66.18.65.222) 21.575 ms 17.773 ms 14.964 ms
7 66.18.65.105 (66.18.65.105) 19.998 ms 8.287 ms 12.147 ms
8 myw-stp-66-18-83-120.sentechsa.net (66.18.83.120) 3191.442 ms 2640.737 ms 2345.466 ms
9 66.18.87.51 (66.18.87.51) 3409.145 ms * 4159.136 ms


The hop to Sentech seems a bit excessive doesn't it? Would that explain the timeouts I keep getting? Anyone know of any issues in Pretoria at the moment? I am connected to the Menlo Park tower on a 128 package.




Have a good one!

 

[gripen]

I did exactly the same thing with similar results. Theres definitely something going on (at least on our tower - 36 Sunnyside). My available speed is literally below modem speeds so please let me know if you are experiencing the same.

My conclusion is that there are issues but if you want the "official" word you better call the comedy club.

 

[Luke7777]

Seems like the Menlo tower has been having a bit of sex lately...., up and down this morning...although a bit more up than down Same tower, currently on the same nb(2) as your home pc

EDITED :
Pinging that sentech ip thru mysignal :

Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=467 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=459 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=257 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=257 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=196 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=203 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=802 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=273 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=238 ms
Reply from 66.18.83.120 : bytes=32 : time=197 ms
Min=196 : Max=802 : Ave=334 ms : Packetloss = 0%

 

[KemoSabi]

I recieved this Email today, I havent been online this weekend, as I spared myself the torture for one weekend, so I cant confirm this at all. I will be testing it out tonight, although I am 99.9999999999% sure that nothing will be different. But anyway, here is the Dillio.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">

Mon 2004/06/07 02:49 PM

Good day

Just want to confirm if you still experience slow speeds? Please let us
know, because Sentech has put in a temporary solution in place to up the
speeds until we find the real problem.

Regards
Kallie
Sentech Support
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

Would like to know how many people have recieved this email.

 

[privet]

Nope- I did not get an email like this (or any other) since Friday's little "wrong picture". One would think that they can simply get all my details on there system from my &lt;b&gt;[email protected]&lt;/b&gt; email address/username.

And no, they have not called me... yet...
And no, my speed has not improved... yet...

<hr noshade size="1">
From: Support account &lt;[email protected]&gt;
To: &lt;&lt;&lt;privet&gt;&gt;&gt;, Support account &lt;[email protected]&gt;
Subject: Re: Ref 4362 (Was: International Connectivity Issues)
Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 10:33:19 +0200

Good day
Your ticket is still in the finance department. Provide us with your contact number so that we can deal over the phone.
Regards
Kallie
Sentech support
<hr noshade size="1">

 

[malec]

greedyflyza, i'm still getting bad speeds on 36 as well

 

[gripen]

yeah. Its not really a good tower despite its size. I cap my speeds at night so I will get back to you tomorrow. I think its also going up and down the whole time. Its been sluggish half of today so far.

 

[malec]

No, I've officially decided that 36 is a crap ass tower. It bloody broke again this morning ... these damn things always brake when you seriously need to be online. So when I finnaly managed to get 66 again I tried some ping tests. On 36 with 39% signal I get ping times between 370ms to 2000ms and on 66 with 17% signal I get below 100ms constantly

 

[gripen]

yeah menlo park is one of the best and most stable. It seems to me that they do their training or carry out their experiments on sunnyside. I mean wtf? why did it go down at 1:45AM? Im to far to connect to menlo park successfully (no sector pointing this way) and the sunnyside megatower drowns out all the other towers anyway.

But it does seem to behaving now (who knows for how long) and Im (as always) on the 2506MHz sector. Perhaps you should try it? I find it works better most of the time (as compared to 2518MHz)

Problem is, if you decide its a crap ass tower, there aint much you can do about it.

 

[gripen]

In true sentech fashion, I was shifted to the network-workaround-backup-dialup-link-with-contention-ratio-100-to-1 not even 5 minutes after the last post.
To give you an idea, 5 min avg speed before about 11KB/sec after: 5 min avg speed 4KB/sec. It was like this 24 hours ago.. im sensing a pattern.

 

[KemoSabi]

How on earth do you get the different Freq? I am on 2518mhz all the bloody time, and have tried stuffing things into the cantenna....uhm...and pointing it into different directions, praying, sacrificing, paying, hanging upside down while holding it....Nada the damn thing only connects to 2518mhz.

 

[gripen]

Well I may be very lucky BUT it seems if you find a "cold" spot it is possible to change. It requires a lot of patience. It also depends where you are, if you are in the middle of the coverage footprint of 2518 it could be a mission. I get 20% from 2518 and 15% from 2506 usually.

Anyways.. while the modem is locked onto 2518 move it around (you will probably need USB extensions for this) until you find a "cold" spot where you only get &lt;= 1 light (this obviously means not on the ground or near your PC case etc and also dont cover the antenna to get 1 light..) with no antennas or cans or anything. Keep the normal antenna in normal position. Right.. now reboot the modem or put your can over the antenna until it loses signal.. then wait for it to lock on to a signal. Repeat process until you get 2506.. for me its usually worth the effort as long as I stay connected for days on end..

Tips:
- use the output hacks for the dialler provided by TheRoDent, this makes it a lot easier to read the frequency
- if it works, remember that spot carefully
- use at least 1x 1.5m extension to get far away from the PC
- once you have locked on to 2506 be very careful not to lose it or reset the modem by accident (I have done both)
- you should be able to move the modem back to its normal position and it will stay on 2506.

Mine will find 2518 almost 100% of the time but I spend most of my online time using 2506 so it is possible. Im quite far from the tower (3.5km) so this could be a factor.

 

[malec]

I'll try that ... though it sounds like a fuss, I think I might just die from too much lazyness lately

 

[gripen]

It is a mission but I think its worth it. Although, it seems that the whole tower is running over the backup dialup link workaround thingey right now. The speed is really sucking. So try switch anyways since you know you can always go back!

malec, mail me so we can keep in touch about the situation off-forum. Dont want to bother the rest with our tower issues.