Dataflex brings back that heyday feeling of dialup...

Just got my Dataflex 15G. Actually thought of not signing for it. But here goes...

It worked out of the box. Seriously. Power on, followed the instructions and pinged a site. Wow! Thought I would battle with this one.

OK, that was the fun part.

Now, can you believe that my DataFlex is actually slower than my Lite Telephone. With the Lite phoneI actually get data rates near its maximum.

But with this super duper Dataflex router I am battling to get speeds in excess of 5kbytes/s. I have DuMeter running checking what is happening. The scary thing is that DuMeter is also measuring the Ethernet overhead on my network. The average speed is 3kbytes/s.

So far I have moved a whopping 2.5MB.

But the router contains a built in feature. I have a 15G contract. I do not have to worry about going over my limit as the router(or system) will never allow me to go past 7GB at these speeds (and that is going 24/7/31).

I tried playing with the antennas and will move around in the garden as well. My area has 'good' coverage.

Lets see what happens next....

Tune in tomorrow for "The Bold and the Bandwidth-less"

VMS

Welcome to our world mate - not to put a damper on your new toy but it doesnt look like anything will get better anytime soon. I am in the same boat as you and so are alot of other people. Speeds on NeoFlex data are no where near what they claim and are pathetic around 70% of the time. I am not even going to get into stability of the connection.

Next in the saga....

I downloaded DAP9. The file size is 10.5MB. It took 1 hour and 15 minutes to download.

The average download speed was around 2300 bits/s. That is roughly 1300 times slower than what the device is capable of.

I then took the router and moved it around a bit. Eventually I lost signal moving into more open space. Then it disconnected.

I took it back to its original location. Switched it off, took out the battery, switched back on again, but still no connection. I left it for several minutes and suddenly it came on by itself.

RTFM. I read the manual. Checked the signal light. It is red, indicating low signal. Hmmm, good signal area.

So the logical thing now is to get more signal. Any suggestions?

VMS said:

Any suggestions?

Click to expand...

Get your money back

OK, did the walk of life. Hooked the WIFI on, with vicious security string. I found a corner of the house where the router reports a good signal.

Downloading Avast Free version.

Getting between 15kbyte/s to 30kb/s. Still jumping around at +- 18kbytes/s.

Definitely sensitive to human bodies. As my wife walks around I can see the signal dropping and gaining, something you don't see with 3G/HSDPA. Don't tell my wife I said she is blocking the signal. She is more sensitive than the router ;-)

So not yet at 90kbyte/s to 300kbyte/s but now I can at least download email and even watch a youtube clip (with a bit of waiting).

Still cannot send email. What is the damn smtp server?

Out of the total floor space of the house the best place is on the ironing board, right in the corner of my house. The green light must be solid on. Only then do I get 30kbytes/s.

But at least I am getting downloadable speeds. I remember in the starting cycle of 3G in 2005 just about nobody got 3G signal and had to be happy with GPRS. People bitched and moaned, but now you can pick up 3G just about anywhere. Hopefully the same will happen with Neotel.

Yes, sounds familiar, this speed-feature of neotel. Please tell us more about your adventures with the help desk while trying to figure out how much you're gonna pay and hoping Neotel don't multiply your usage by 10 based on their belief their network can't be that slow

Diabolus

Now you are scaring me !!!

The one thing I am going to do (as soon as I get the signal improved) is to hook the thing onto my permanent PC via USB. That way I can monitor the data as a dial-up modem and have daily reports. Then my attorney can compare apples to apples with their attorneys.

I want to figure out how I can boost the signal with an external amplifier and something like a Yagi or parabolic dish. I first need to make sure about those connectors and if they are 50ohm. 800MHz is close enough to DC to do something funky with hohahaha. I also need to figure out which is the strongest, namely my received signal or my transmitted signal. If my received signal is the weakest then I will build myself a yagi and boost the signal inside my house a few times. Have no idea if I will be introducing noise or echos or screwing with the neighbor's signal (or if ICASA will take me away in chains). Maybe I should just play nice and get a booster from Poynting.

Im running an Omni glass mount antenna with a wilson amplifier and getting a good connection. Without them, i get nothing. Id recommend an omni over a yagi as the results are the same (if not better) and u dont have to worry about directing the yagi.

Expect to pay a handful for the amplifier (R2000) cos ure going to have to import it. It is not sold any where in this country. Poynting should really start stocking these things, they would make a killing. I emailed them to tell them this but didnt get a response.

OK, went to Poynting ([email protected] helpful young lady) and bought Mr-mi_YAGI ;-) and VMS-son (for those who saw The Karate Kid) got onto the roof and installed it. R650 ex VAT

40bytes/s now for international website (www.altera.com) and 55 to 60kbyte/s for my local www.zerksus.com site.

...and I haven't even tuned it. Just aimed it into the horizon until I got a green signal light.

The system is now usable for what I need it for. 200kbyte/s would we great and I will work on that. Last week at the Seacom exhibition the Neotel dude told me that he is getting a constant 240kbyte/s download speed, so there is hope.

I still need to check upload speeds.

VMS

"The Chronicals of NeoTelia"...

Tuned the antenna a bit. Now getting 90kbytes/s average.

Enough for today. I am gonna sit back and watch a few Youtube videos.

Last night the speed started going down. Keep in mind that I now have a fixed antenna and very little changes.

Last night I got about 30kbytes/s. Irritating but workable. It is a shame that something that can deliver nearly 300kbytes/s works only at 10% capacity.


This morning I logged on. Took forever to download my emails. It felt like a 10 MB email. The email came in and it was only 2MB. Then I checked the speed. Jumping between 0 kbytes/s and 10kbytes/s.

So even with a yagi (that reached 100kbytes/s i.e. the 1 megabit range) it is now slowing down to what I got without the antenna. At this rate I should be back at 3kbytes/s by this evening. The only difference is that the signal LED is now solid green. So this is an exchange problem at Neotel themselves.

Today I am hooking the modem up via my primary PC as a modem. Why would I do such a thing??? Well, I have another wireless router, so the other clients can share the one PC's internet, but the primary reason is that I can then use DUmeter to accurately measure the dataflow (ex ethernet overhead) as well as getting a proper data usage (per day) in case Neotel (as Diabolus stated) wants to bill me for 10 times the usage.

For those who are interested, Neotel does not provide an online service nor software (even like Vodaphone's crappy Dashboard) that shows you your data usage. You have to call a number to get this kind of information.


But it seems that at this rate of speed decline that I will be back on Vodacom 3G by tomorrow.

Neotel, your system is NOT sorted out. I was one of the first Mweb subscribers, first ADSL subscribers and first Vodacom 3G subscribers (I was around number 1800 in SA) and none of these services had these kinds of troubles.

It now seems that to stay connected you have to constantly tweak the system. This is something I can do well, but what about the thousands of average users that has to install the modems by numbers and colours???


At this rate I will have to buy or build a bidirectional amplifier to boost the signal even more but I guess I will be far over the legal ICASA limit.

Neotel, I am getting fed-up now. The difference with me is that I can keep up with my daily commentaries to accurately inform people why they should OR SHOULD NOT get Neotel.

VMS

@ MVS
Did you not see all the speed degradation complaints posted on MBB BEFORE you decided to get Neotel ?
I feel sorry for you dude....cut your losses and cancel before you lose your hair.
It WON'T get better and you WON'T get any help from them.

Robocop

Yeah, sucker for punishment. Last month I got the Neotel Lite phone. When I checked it's internet it ran close to maximum speed, got good signal on it and reckon that this was a lucky area. Unfortunately I had to downgrade the PC to XP (software issues) and the Lite phone does not work on XP (no data interface drivers). So, if I was connected long enough I probably would have seen this winding down effect.

Now here is the feeling. It seems Neotel's equipment is fine. The problem is rather that they have limited bandwidth. So although the modem/router, their towers and servers can actually handle 3.1mbit/s they don't really have the bandwidth available for all the current users.

So what they do is that when you log on for the first time you have an allocated 30% to 40% of your max speed. This makes you happy-ish as you can surf reasonably well. But they have other first time customers to also keep happy so now they start to throttle your account to 10% (like was yesterday). But today is another story. I had my chance of "high Neotel speeds". So today it is running at 3% and going slower, because they have many more other first timers to keep happy.

If this is true then they have one party cake that they are trying to share between several parties.

As I typed this post my average speed dropped to between 4.4kbytes/s to 8.9kbytes/s. So my time is up. I am now almost officially back to dialup speeds. So far this morning I have been constantly online, downloading emails and a video a friend made for me over the weekend. From 9h00 to 10h10 I have downloaded a whopping 27mbyte!! The plan was to do all my updates on a new machine today, around 600mbytes.... At roughly 25mbyte per hour I am looking at 24 hours solid, but seeing as the speed is going down it might take several days.

What would be damning to Neotel is if I can get another subscriber (i.e. a new one) to come to my house in Wierdapark and plug in his/her new router into my antenna and then check speeds again. If the data speed is higher we will know that they start to throttle you the nearer you get to the end of your 7 day cool off period.

VMS

Top speed has now gone down to 7.4kbytes/s. The antenna is still in its 100kbytes/s position (as from Friday), the router shows a solid green signal LED and nothing has changed on any of the PCs in my lab.

I have switched the router off and on for a clean reconnection. Initial speeds shoot up to 60 to 70kbytes/s but quicking fizzles down to low speed.

I can only speculate that 12h10 the internet is busy and that Neotel's "best effort" can only carry this amount of data.

This feels like taking my dog out for "walkies". The first few meters he is so excited that usually pulls my arms out of my sockets, halfway I have to drag him and in the end I have to carry him.

VMS

VMS said:

Robocop

Yeah, sucker for punishment. Last month I got the Neotel Lite phone. When I checked it's internet it ran close to maximum speed, got good signal on it and reckon that this was a lucky area. Unfortunately I had to downgrade the PC to XP (software issues) and the Lite phone does not work on XP (no data interface drivers). So, if I was connected long enough I probably would have seen this winding down effect.

Now here is the feeling. It seems Neotel's equipment is fine. The problem is rather that they have limited bandwidth. So although the modem/router, their towers and servers can actually handle 3.1mbit/s they don't really have the bandwidth available for all the current users.

So what they do is that when you log on for the first time you have an allocated 30% to 40% of your max speed. This makes you happy-ish as you can surf reasonably well. But they have other first time customers to also keep happy so now they start to throttle your account to 10% (like was yesterday). But today is another story. I had my chance of "high Neotel speeds". So today it is running at 3% and going slower, because they have many more other first timers to keep happy.

If this is true then they have one party cake that they are trying to share between several parties.

As I typed this post my average speed dropped to between 4.4kbytes/s to 8.9kbytes/s. So my time is up. I am now almost officially back to dialup speeds. So far this morning I have been constantly online, downloading emails and a video a friend made for me over the weekend. From 9h00 to 10h10 I have downloaded a whopping 27mbyte!! The plan was to do all my updates on a new machine today, around 600mbytes.... At roughly 25mbyte per hour I am looking at 24 hours solid, but seeing as the speed is going down it might take several days.

What would be damning to Neotel is if I can get another subscriber (i.e. a new one) to come to my house in Wierdapark and plug in his/her new router into my antenna and then check speeds again. If the data speed is higher we will know that they start to throttle you the nearer you get to the end of your 7 day cool off period.

VMS

Click to expand...

Welcome to the wonder that is neotel. If you can just hand back the device and walk away. I will be doing that as soon as my telkom line is installed. I never signed the contract so I guess they can try to get me to pay for the device

Confusion reigned for a while. How much data is actually flowing?

Got out the USB cable and plugged it into my XP machine. Not cool. No software. Probably sitting on the router but XP cannot see it. So I went onto Neotel's site and downloaded it. Followed the manual's instructions.

OK, connect. More options. The software wsa setup for 1xEvDO and 1xRTT. Damn slow. RTT was sitting at -120dBm. That is in the league of strong GPS signals but not, to my knowledge, good enough for bi-directional comms. So I selected 1xEvDO only and restarted.

Definitely more speed. EvDO now sitting between -71dBm to -75dBm. Is that good? Don't know yet for this device. Later today I will get back onto the roof with the small 10.1inch laptop and tune the antenna.

Currently the EvDO singal is sitting mostly at -72dBm with the second one at max -89dBm and cutting out every so often. Not really part of the same team anymore. One interesting thing is that if I switch the antenna positions the signal strength goes down (well before I did the USB thing. Will have to check again) and it loses connection. The yagi is now plugged in on the righthand side. Might be a faulty connection. Will check it again later.


Did a few tests. Now minimum download speed is back upto 30kbytes/s, but doing the same tests as on Friday I actually achieved speeds of upto 150 kbytes/s. Keep in mind that I have done nothing apart from going from Ethernet/WIFI to USB (and sharing the connection). ... and forcing it to do EvDO only.

Didn't touch anything and did the same tests again. My own local site gives me 12kbytes/s download speed. Hmmmm. Where is my 150kbytes/s. Then I tried youtube.com. Max 17kbytes/s. Well, it is better than 3kbytes/s.

Another strange thing is that Windows reports the connection "link speed" at 230kbits/s max, but there are instances where both DUmeter and DAP9 reports speeds way faster than this link speed. An OS thing?
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I am atleast happy now to have the modem connected via USB. Now I have a single point of entry for all the computers and can fairly accurately meter my bandwidth.


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This yagi antenna option and the fact that there are 2 ports on the router opens up another possibility. I don't know if it is my imagination but when the second port goes as good as -89dBm then the download speed is faster. When it goes -90dBm (or off- does not report anymore) the speed is lower. Also, when I had the modem outside, with the yagi antenna plugged in the average speed was higher. So it appears that a better signal on the 'other' port increases speed. Will have to verify it. SO .... the option is.... to buy another yagi antenna and plug that into the second port. I will do that for the sake of experimentation but I have several problems with it. The first is the cost (which I had not planned to lay out), the eye-sore of yet another yagi (will be 4 them) on the roof and the fact that my wife will kick my butt if I spend more time and money chasing something that would have otherwise worked with Telkom ADSL.

But that still option remains. Here is the cheaper way if doing it. Crimp a RF connector on 50ohm coax cable and at the other end make yourselve a 1/4 wave antenna. That is about 9cm for 800MHz. Now many people think antennas are complex but only the real small ones are. My best GSM antenna is a 25cm whip antenna with a magnnetic base...and it costs R20. My most expensive one is a tiny ceramic 3D designed tri-band patch antenna wonder. That is when you worry about size, shape and fit (including how beautiful it is

As long as you stay away from even fractions like 1/2 waves and full waves then something simple as a 9cm (1/4 wave) or 27cm (3/4 wave) antenna should do the trick fairly well. You can probably make it very large, e.g. 189cm. There are other factors like VSWR, noise etc..., mechanical strength, how portable it is etc... to take into consideration but the option might just be a lot cheaper than R650 ex VAT per channel. Also, these type of antennas are fairly omni-directional which are easier to play with than yagis or dishes.

So, when I get the chance, I will play with cheap antenna options (seeing as these devices are not really portable) and post the results.

For those who are battling with their dataflex routers I suggest to get it connected to USB so you can view the status page.

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So am I happy? Not a chance. I bought an off the shelf solution that I have to hack to be able to connect. And even with these hacks I am still wayyyyyyyy below the promised specs, even the so-called average speeds, as advertised by Neotel. They should be ashamed.


VMS

Thanks for the updates VMS, I really appreciate it. And, you have my empathy.

P.S. : Posted 2 July 2009 = http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=2925667&postcount=4

The problem with Neotel is as follows:
- everything works fine initially
- membership grows
- the tower that you are connecting to becomes overloaded
- all the customers connecting to that tower suddenly experience bad network conditions
- it takes Neotel a long time to change infrastructure to handle the new load

This means that their service is ultimately unreliable, as a direct result of their own success.

If there was control at the tower level to prevent the addition of new users on an already maxed out tower, then I would not be posting this.

Click to expand...

VMS said:

I am still wayyyyyyyy below the promised specs, even the so-called average speeds, as advertised by Neotel. They should be ashamed.

Click to expand...

You should be ashamed to have signed a contract with Neohel - you should have KNOWN not to use them for internet by reading forums like this one.

they are not an internet company - they are more of a small phone company going agains telkom.

actually scratch that, i'm not sure what it is that they do.

Keeper, ahhahaha, that is funny....

NeoHel, Helkom, Vodahell, HellC, SinTech. Don't know what the people are calling iBurst and MTN but it sounds like an evil bunch ;-)

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I just found, after using smtp.neomail.co.za for less than a day, and sending +- 10 text emails that my IP is on the block list. Friggen awesome. What is next? Total IP block?


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Neotel rep... tell your people they suck. dammit....

VMS