twogirls
join:2009-08-08
Poolville, TX
|  WISP interference-or equipment?
After only having dial-up out here in the boonies, 4 years ago I got WildBlue service. It worked wonderfully for about 8 months, then they installed packet schedulers and my latency went thru the roof. My husband and I play a MMORPG, and even though they use a really small amount of bandwidth, lag is a killer for gaming.
Doing a search for Anyone around who offered high-speed, I discovered WISPs, and that there was one who would come out and check availability. Willow Creek Computer Systems installed a radio on my roof, and all was well with the world, lol.
Fast forward to last fall, and Partnership Broadband Wireless bought out a number of smaller WISPs, including mine. The connection started having problems, periods of no connectivity, longer wait times to get back up, etc. When a tech would come out, it would work great for a few hours, or a day or two, and then go back to crappy again. Trying to get someone to deal with it is like pulling teeth. Service call 4 weeks ago-10am appt., no show, call to company, where is the tech, oh, just a mix-up, he'll be there by 6 pm. He finally shows up, works for an hour, gets a signal, but it has a lot of interference. He tells me maybe some trees on my back fenceline are creating it. So, my husband and brother get a chainsaw, and you can now drive a truck (or 4) thru the trees, lol. Call tech support, nope still a lot of interference. The tech tells me they cannot do anything about interference, maybe a competitor was screwing it up, but they couldn't do anything else.
Back to searching for a company-I find another small WISP about 15 miles from me, with a tower 5 miles away. They came out 3 days ago, their tower is in an entirely different direction, great LOS, but they, too, are getting a ton of interference, and can't get anything better than -84. (That poor man must have climbed up on my roof 30 times, adjusting, adjusting, etc., in 102 degree heat. I felt really bad for even asking him to come out, lol. I did make sure he had a drink with ice, and jacked the a/c colder in my computer room for when he came back in.)
Anyway, he said in the process of hooking the cable coming out of my wall to his equipment, he put a new 'end' on the cable, as he didn't trust theirs. I have no clue what that means, but when he left, apologizing for not being able to hook me up, he, of course, hooked the old system back up. My husband sat down and gave Google a shot, and amazingly, my connection was running and running blazing fast! It worked wonderfully, we gamed for a couple of hours, then he browsed while I watched UTube videos for a couple more hours. No problems at all. Later that night we had a thunderstorm, and the connection poofed and has not been back since...
After researching here for a couple of days, I am wondering if maybe I have a connection somewhere that is gathering moisture/water and that is causing the interference. I called Partnership today and suggested it to them, and they said nope, and no, they would not send another tech. When WCCS still owned the service, they upgraded at one point, and said to continue I had to buy the new equipment, so I did. The stuff is mine.
Since Partnership seems to have thrown me to the wolves, my brother said he could spray all the connection ends with WD 40, and siliconing any connection points, which doesn't sound very good to me-once they are siliconed, how do you get back in for repairs, etc? He is fairly knowledgeable about electrical stuff-my oldest brother is a Master Carpenter, and a contractor, and has built 3 of his own homes, and the brother who wants to do the connection work is the one who installs all the electric/gas/water in his homes. He just came back from a 4 month stay in Hawaii, after installing all the electric in the home my older brother is currently building. I know he knows electric, he is the one who built and installed all 4 meter boxes here on our property, but I am leery of him messing with the WISP stuff, to me they are not quite the same thing...
I know this was a long-winded story, but my frustration level has reached overflow. If anyone has any suggestions, good or bad, I would love to hear them. To me though, it sounds like I am doomed to trying to remember how to run 2 computers thru a switch to share dial-up again... |
