Anyone using a Wireless ISP? Info

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cocheese256

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Joined
Apr 23, 2005
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I live in rural area. My only option for high speed is through EMBARQ dsl right now which I have but do not like it (I found out that they over sold our local hub). Altel is adding a wireless network to our area. I only live 2-3 miles from the tower. I would like to hear some comments from anyone that accesses the internet through a wireless isp. How is it for gaming. Is the latency good or not. How reliable is it.
Thanx in advance.
 
For performance reviews like this, I suggest your head over to DSL Reports, and search on Altel wireless & your local town. Hopefully, there is someone from your area there that could give you some idea of performace...
 
I have tried Sprint. The speed is fine, but the latency is high. Which means, browsing and downloading is fine, but anything latency sensitive (gaming, VOIP) will not work.
 
Depends what kind of wireless. If you mean wireless like through cell phone service, it has high latency and is way worse than any type of broadband (even oversold DSL).

If you mean long range wireless (wifi), it can be good but is many times expensive. I know they offer it in my area, but it is about double the price for a 128/128 line that I am paying for my 512/128 line.
 
it really depends on the ISP. most wireless ( wifi) company use several wireless hops before you hit fiber.

a good question is to ask them how many wireless hops it takes until it hits a hard line and how many miles until a hard line for your connection.

i work for a wireless ISP, out longest chained connection is about 100miles 8 hops. pinging between routers on each end it is about 25ms. randomly get one around 150ms

we take over other WISP's at a rate of 2-3 a year and their networks are crap. a 100 mile connection on another isp might be 300-500ms.

another problem is they charge you few hundred for the equipment or get you with the contract so there is no way to just test it out first. if you call and complain about pings most of the time there isn't anything they can do to fix it because it is just how their network is.

i think over sold DSL might be better then an internet connection over cellphone signal.
 
I appreciate all your responses. I guess I will have to put up with what I have until Embarq gets off of their collective butts and upgrade our local hub. It is better than dial up so I guess I should not complain too much. Thanx for the info everyone.
 
What type of wireless? I have a strategic partner that provides some of my clients with Motorola Canopy. Most of them are on 2 meg pipes...think of it as a wireless T-1. Latency..not bad....30ms or so..under light loads (meaning..the entire office of 20 isn't online surfing when I've run tests).
 
The service would be from Alltel. I am not sure yet as to what type of wireless they use as an ISP.
 
There is no such thing as a hub in the DSL world. A DSLAM only has so many subscriber ports, once they are full, they are full.

The only real way they could have over sold the service is if they don't have enough bandwidth feeding their equipment. If it seems to get worse at peak times (6-11pm), then this is the likely cause.

With DSL, if their lines are not up to par, that could very well cause your speed issues.. If speed seems to be weather related, this could be the cause.

Sorry for the hijack! :)
 
Yea totally agree.. check your DSL sync stats maybe something is up with that..


I'd think that Alltell is going to be EV-DO which as others have said does have pretty "bad" latency. I'd say its better than satellite and worse than DSL. Don't expect to play games with that connection.
 
cocheese256 said:
I live in rural area. My only option for high speed is through EMBARQ dsl right now which I have but do not like it (I found out that they over sold our local hub). Altel is adding a wireless network to our area. I only live 2-3 miles from the tower. I would like to hear some comments from anyone that accesses the internet through a wireless isp. How is it for gaming. Is the latency good or not. How reliable is it.
Thanx in advance.
Click to expand...

Hi cocheese-
My name is Jenny R. and I am with Embarq Customer Support. I saw that you were talking about you HSI connection with Embarq being slow. I would like to look at it to make sure that everything is working properly. You can Email me directly at [email protected] or you can private message me anytime.
Thank you and I hope that all gets resolved for you

Jenny R.
[email protected]
 
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