how-to block ads
|
|
Uniqs:
370 |
Share Topic
 |
 |
|
|
| Answering wireless complaints Let me quantify my qualification to answer this. I am a radio/network engineer and consult for cell phone companies, ISPs, fiber, and even telcos. I have been doing this for over 10 years.
The source of the complaint is quite simple that you are working on a wireless link. It is not a hardwire which doesn't have to contend with other traffic, weather, gravitational pull and even other radio waves. Wireless ISPs or WISPs came to be, to provide bandwidth to people who can not get or even have access to wired based technologies. Reference numerous sites on Last Mileage Internet. They are most adequate to supply bandwidth to the person who takes online classes, checks their email and other mild use behaviors. Most people who are unhappy with WISPs are either power users or abusers.
Let me reiterate...WISPs are too be used by casual users only. It is not designed to be a substitute for TV or Netflix movies by mail.
Wireless doesn't deal well with P2P traffic or streaming traffic.
You are dealing with a technology that is half-duplex in nature so it takes twice the amount of work to do the same thing as wire. Wireless sees over 1 dozen different type of control frames over that of wired technologies which causes even more work to be done. Hence why a 54M link is only capable of passing about 21Mb of data. Now imagine only being able to contend with a much smaller number of connections then a hardwire because of all this extra work being done.
A home wireless router is easily saturated at 15-20 simultaneous connections. Commercial APs get saturated after 100 or so simultaneous Connections. With over-subscription and other bandwidth, polling and QoS tricks you can squeak out 200-300 connections on a Single AP. In Wireless it is quite easy to have one single customer ruin it for the other people on that AP. (Not even going to discuss backhauls and the issues associated there as well...needless to say its a dominoes game in the air)
For example, today I had to assist in stopping a person who was ILLEGALLY using P2P to download Adobe Creative Suite 4. This one user had well over 110 simultaneous connections on P2P going on. Even though the user capped their bandwidth limit well below their max speed limit. They had no control over the number of peers connecting to them. Even if a single peer was only pulling 1Kbs it still counted as a full connection not unlike the one peer who has a 1Mbs connection. Both counted as a their own single connection.
Gamers, P2Pers, Streaming Media, mass downloaders are not taken to kindly too on wireless networks. They cause problems for the network not to unlike the person talking on their cellphone and realizing that in 100 feet they need to hit the off ramp by cutting acrossed 4 lanes of traffic.
Digis in this aspect is being MORE then generous offering a 1GB per day limit. National Statistics for ISPs (this is including wired networks as well) state an average user uses only 12.5GB a month when not rolling services (meaning phone and TV aren't included). So 250GB with a 1GB a day limit seems mighty generous to me. Anything else seems abusive and in actuallity semi illegal as I stream Hulu for several hours at a time over my cell phones connection (which only has a 4GB a month limit on an unlimited plan) and I never peak 1GB a day.
I have also sniffed traffic generated by many of the newest games and those don't pull huge amounts either. Netflix however is a different beast altogether and does pull quite a bit of additional data above the actual size of the movie.
My suggestion if you aren't misusing your connection is to check for viruses or any other malicious software. If you want go ahead and monitor your own traffic at home.
Your only complaint should be that Digis targets the wrong market in Utah. It shouldn't be trying to be in direct competition with the DSL and Cable companies out there. Digis has some high end backers and because of this needs to show a "quota" of installations a month to show company "progress."
When Digis first modeled themselves, they were just trying to build a business to be bought. They modeled everything for Clearwire to buy them out.
However Clearwire themselves are more or less owned by Sprint. Digis probably will never be bought out as Non-Licensed WiFi is a slow dead technology being replaced by much better (more expensive) systems. Digis makes most of their money (like cellphone companies)over contract periods over a long period of time; as the installation fee alone doesn't cover the cost of the customer premise equipment.
You only count to them when you first signup after that you are just a user until about 30 months of payments with no trouble tickets. After that they have regained their investment in you. If you break or stop using them before that point in time then they will just take the CPE and resell it to a new customer who will actually cost them less to connect. In some ways it almost behooves Digis to give crappy service so people will move off their network and they can resell the CPE to a new customer.
If you do NOT like the limitations being enforced then my suggestion is 3 part. 1) Switch off from wireless and go with hardwire. 2) Ask if Digis would offer you a dedicated Point to Point feed or 3) Buy a large pipe and set up your own neighborhood WISP. | |
| Digis is rather different from the traditional WISP because they advertise basically as a cheap replacement for cable or DSL. I know that you disagree with that, but that is the way they run. In fact, Digis encourages online gaming - "Digis is well suited for gaming as well as other services such as VPNs and Voice over IP (VOIP)."
Their FAQ even states "How reliable is Digis Internet service compared with wired services such as cable and DSL?
We have designed our wireless network to be as reliable as any wired network."
My complaints are compared to any reasonable high-speed connection. The way the have set up their marketing and internet service, I have a right to complain with those standards in mind.
Then again, I don't have the choice to go with hardwire even though my address is "Serviceable" by Comcast.
You said: "So 250GB with a 1GB a day limit seems mighty generous to me. Anything else seems abusive and in actuallity semi illegal as I stream Hulu for several hours at a time over my cell phones connection (which only has a 4GB a month limit on an unlimited plan) and I never peak 1GB a day."
I never mentioned that Digis had a monthly limit of 250GB a month. That was Comcast. We hardly do anything on our connection - 3 HD movies/TV shows a week (all legal, by the way), and we average around 1GB a day. Don't even think about streaming HD like YouTube as Digis can rarely support the 4mbps needed for that. I hope that you know that Hulu over cellular networks are extremely compressed. It depends on how fast your connection is, and I doubt that your cellular connection is 5mbps. | |
|
