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On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 20:47, Joseph Gibbs wrote:

Looking at getting wireless internet and phone package from wired country, through ihug. Will probably get the 1 or 2mbit deal. Has anyone had any experiences with them? I checked the wlug pages, not much info about them though. I'm interested in the quality of service they provide, and any other experinces you could share for/against getting this service.

I use wired country at home. No problems. I only have the 256 kbs service but it seems pretty reliable. Had one issue only about a month after getting it due to a fault at the server end but that was fixed pretty quickly.

Only concern is that Wired Country don't seem to have any after-hours support so if something goes out on weekends or in the evening you're pretty much stuffed if your ISP can't fix it remotely - have to wait for a wired country tech to come in on the next business day it seems.

But no real problems really.

James.

- -- James Pluck ShadoFax Systems +64-21-236 6900

I have a 1 mbit wired country through another isp.. Seems good, although the reliability of the wireless gear isnt the greatest.. But its still seems a pretty good connection for a home user really. But get used to outages.. Theres been quite a few really.

-----Original Message----- From: Joseph Gibbs [mailto:joefish@myrealbox.com] Sent: Monday, September 13, 2004 8:47 PM To: Waikato Linux Users Group Subject: [wlug] iHug / Wired Country

Hi,

Looking at getting wireless internet and phone package from wired country, through ihug. Will probably get the 1 or 2mbit deal. Has anyone had any experiences with them? I checked the wlug pages, not much info about them though. I'm interested in the quality of service they provide, and any other experinces you could share for/against getting this service.

thanks, Joseph.

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To be honest, I'm a bit wary of broadband wireless in densely populated areas. From my experience with this, I've seen a classic example of "technology frog leaping" between technolgical advances with the broadband wireless vendors such as Proxim, Trango, etc and this ongoing issue with the users constantly competing for bandwidth (as it is a shared medium) and ongoing issues with interference which not only comes from rival providers but also from private networks trying to link their buildings together. All this seems to be going in viscous circles - I've been watching this space for just over ten years now.

With sparsely populated areas - different story. CRCnet has been very successful there.

While I am all for seeing VoIP being the technology for the future, I firmly believe that in the residential and SOHO market, the primary phone line should be on an end a twisted pair cable with a phone that works when you have a power failure and/or when your equipment fails. The reality is that things may suck when your internet stops, but with having no phone, that means you have no ability of dialing 111 which obviously is considered life threatning.

Personally, I would sit back and wait. This iHUG package hasn't been out very long.

Joseph Gibbs wrote:

Hi,

Looking at getting wireless internet and phone package from wired country, through ihug. Will probably get the 1 or 2mbit deal. Has anyone had any experiences with them? I checked the wlug pages, not much info about them though. I'm interested in the quality of service they provide, and any other experinces you could share for/against getting this service.

thanks, Joseph.

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CPE - Client premises equipment, i.e. the radio and kit at the clients end.

POP - Point of presence, i.e. the radio all the clients point to, in Hamilton it's on top of the Hosptal.

I've been with WC since early days in the Hamilton. I've also been involved with it since before I had a connection myself, as I worked for Wave and we offered it to our customers. My first connection was with Wave, staff deal and it was also helpful for diagnosing problems with other customers etc.

My connection is through Ihug now, they are fine as long as _you_ know what your doing, do not expect their support team to be of any use if you run into trouble. You'll get the standard "Reboot your CPE", "We'll just take a look at your network settings, right click your Network Neighbour...." the usual stuff, mention Linux and you'll get silence. Ihug use PPPoe and it works beautifully. I chose Ihug because they offer the cheapest deal I could find at the time.

Wired Country have more outages than they would care to publicise. Sometimes you'll need to power cycle the CPE, this is fairly common after WC push out firmware updates for the CPE (supposed to be seamless, but you know how things are). Failing that you just need to wait until they fix whatever is wrong at the POP (or their backhaul) most of their outages affect everyone hanging of the POP, sometimes the outages just affect the people further away from the POP, depending on what is wrong with said POP. Lately service has been fairly good in Hamilton but there have been periods where it has been really bad, ebs and flows...

Faulty CPEs aren't overly common however it can be very painful diagnosing one, especially if your ISP's support people are not up with the play (there is a little more to it than a windows dialup connection). Persistence is key.

Your best method for troubleshooting a problem would actually be to contact another person that uses the service and points to the same POP, if your both down it's likely the POP (if it's not your ISP doing something silly).

When there are problems clients need to call their ISP in the first instance, do not call WC directly - THEY DO NOT LIKE IT.

When the service is going well it ROCKS, when it's not it is incredibly frustrating. Just make sure you have a el cheapo dial up connection or something available if you can't live without the Internet for a few hours every other month or two.

If you can get it, do.

Cheers, James.