how-to block ads
|
»next review in page
Review by anthrorules 
UPDATED: 1.4 years ago
member for 6.2 years, 2081 visits, last login: 143 days ago
 Rollinsville,Gilpin,CO
 $84 per month
 about 10 days
 "reliable connection, attentive technical support, decent bandwidth allowance"
 "expensive"
 "Only TRUE high speed Internet provider in my area, better than Deadway Internet Satellite Service and Dialup!"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I spent 10 months with Deadway (I mean Direcway) from June 2003 - April 2004, and that service was horrible. It was worse than dialup (which in my neck of the woods, I only get about 24.4 kbps). Constant disconnects, constant downtimes, etc. When I found out that there was a Wireless Internet Service Provider providing service in my neck of the woods, I was thrilled (and still am for the most part). It was good timing as my Deadway receiver was dying and my one year contract with Earthlink (reseller of Direcway) was almost up.
I was a cautious consumer this time and spent several minutes on the phone and email with representatives from ionSKY. They sent out a technician who come to find out was a neighbor of mine and also used ionSKY. The technician was friendly and proficient. He spent quite a few minutes surveying the property, including the top of garage. He recommended minimally a ten-foot tower for placing the antenna on top of the garage (which now looks like a telecommunication hut, with a dishNETWORK dish, Direcway dish and WISP tower/antenna on it).
Two weeks after the site survey, they were scheduled to come out to do the installation, which was delayed about three days due to lack of proper equipment, including the tower materials.
But the day finally arrived for them to install the equipment (ten-foot tower, 900 Mhz antenna, cables, etc.), which was an adventure. After they installed the ten-foot tower, the two technicians (one of whom did the initial site survey) agreed that the LOS was not as good as they originally thought and could not get a reliable signal. They recommended that I needed to cut two large trees near the garage to gain a more clear LOS. I decided to break in the chainsaw that was given to me by my parents as a house warming present a couple years back. This was my first tree I was going to cut down. The two technicians were unable to physically assist me as it was a liability. But they did guide me during the process. All said and done, I cut down the two large trees, and the technicians were able to get a substantial signal with minimal packet loss.
The service ran well for the first few months, but then I started getting packet loss (some times 20%) and the connection would seem like it died. I dreaded the worst that I was getting screwed yet again. But ionSKY worked hard with me to fix the problem. They came out and installed an amplified antenna, a 2.4 Ghz antenna, which initially didn't seem to work any better. But then they flashed a new firmware in the antenna, and since then I've had limited outages and downtime.
I now consistently get 950 kbps downloads and 350 kbps uploads (paying for 1MB down and 384 kbps up). I am able to almost flawlessly work from home via Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection to my work network and computer, which with both Satellite and slow dialup, it was clunky. I am also able to SSH Tunnel and Remote Desktop to my home desktop computer, which was virtually impossible with the other Internet connection technologies I've used. So, I can stay better connected with my side clients, permanent work, family, and friends.
UPDATE (2008-07-06):
I am done with Wispertel who took over ionSKY. Their level of service has plumpeted due to over subscription and installation of newer and "better" equipment that now depends 100% LOS to work reliably.
QWEST DSL has made it into my mountain subdivision, which I've had installed for three days. It works pretty well, at least download speeds are consistent, working with technical support to rectify the upload speeds.
So, no more dealing with sub par technical support, having to worry about cutting trees down, usage caps (at 5.0 GB a month with the Wispertel), etc.
Again, if you can manage it and it's available, go for the following set of high speed options:
* Cable
* DSL
* Wireless
* ISDN
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of IonSKY |
 | »next review in page (previous review)
Review by BadIon
Posted: 3.8 years ago
member for 3.8 years, 0 visits, last login: 3.8 years ago
Nederland,Boulder,CO
$86 per month
about 12 days
"A tiny bit better than dialup"
"A tiny bit better than dialup"
"A tiny bit better than dialup"
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
Pretty similar experience as those that have already posted, except the service seems to continue to degrade. Frequent outages, slowdowns, currently speed testing at 26K!! For $85/Mo. I really expect MUCH, MUCH more! Service outages every time it snows, takes a week to get anything fixed, constant 3-30% packet loss with large frames (>1400bytes). Their provider must be the absolute worse on the planet, tons of problems that are obviously routing issues.
Save your money, frustration and time...find an alternative. I had heard that satellite was horrible before selecting Ionsky, but honestly, I cannot see it being any worse than this.
Oh, the guys who run it are really nice...for what that's worth...
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of IonSKY |
| »next review in page (previous review)
Review by bri3d
Posted: 3.8 years ago
member for 3.8 years, 5 visits, last login: 2.9 years ago
Golden,Jefferson,CO
$80 per month
about 10 days
"Fast; Flexible"
"Absurd port limitations; Somewhat unreliable."
"It's the only real option, and it's not bad at that."
| Pre Sales Information:
Install process:
Connection reliability:
Tech Support:
Services:
Value for money:
|
I got the IonSky.com 1mbit/384 account about 8-9 months ago, and I have some simple comments for anyone else who might be looking into them. I live in the Colorado foothills in a fairly wooded area.
The problems first:
1. This is nearly unavoidable, but snowy trees create 6-7% RF packet loss, therefore causing increased pings.
2. They won't forward port 80, 443, or 22 because they "need them for administration." They want you to buy a $5 extra IP.
3. They'll only forward 10 ports. They claim it's "too hard to manage" more forwards.
4. They won't give you access to modify settings on your external router/antenna and still provide tech support, even if you bought it.
5. Reliability. For myself the reliability has been fairly mediocre to poor, I'd call it low-to-mid 90% range. There have been outages due to: 1) An improper installation of nearby WISP equipment at their datacenter. (6 hours or so out) 2) Radio failures in the tower near me. (24 hours). 3) "Backbone failure(?)" ... I'm assuming it was a misconfigured router or a wireless link failure as they're 3-way peered. (2 hours) 4) Storms cause high packet loss.
5) They often (every few days) will have a short period in which upstream to the Internet drops to virtually 0, but accessing sites on their network (i.e. ionsky.com) still works. Downstream is still normal. It feels like a router send queue issue somewhere down the line at their datacenter.
6. Support. I've seen other users here praising the support provided by IonSky, but I'd call it neutral-to-weak at best. While they are fairly knowledgable, they don't seem to be around "24-7-365" as others have indicated (phone support is 8-5:30 local time and email time seems to be about the same), the policies above (port forwarding especially) kind of dull the whole experience.
There's also an incredibly low "extra bandwidth" limit (6GB down/month), but they've never charged or warned me for exceeding it (knock on wood).
Good stuff:
They were flexible with their service plan and we were able to negotiate a plan that met our needs (fast) without having to pay extra for the ISP services (email, 10mb webspace, etc.).
Despite its problems, IonSky is one of only two ISPs with broadband speeds available in my area. The other is a small group called the Magnolia Road Internet Co-op, who are attempting to share a T1 with about 40 people currently. It's not really an option for me because the speed would be (and according to my neighbors is) horrible.
Considering IonSky is the only real option it's not a bad choice, however if you're planning on running a server you'd better factor in the $5/month extra IP charge and hope you don't need more than 10 ports forwarded.
Followup comments: | Forums » comments on review of IonSKY |
|
|
IonSKY
·