Current state of Too-Way service?

I wonder if the various posters who have so far commented on the various issues over the last 3-4 weeks might just help me out here?

I have been on a trial bronze service with Too-Way through Micronet Broadband for 3 weeks since Fri 6/10/08 and have managed to use all of my 2Gb download, I must now make a decision as to whether I go for this service or not, this obviously entails a £400-500 installation fee which otherwise I can avoid if I decide not to go with this.

I can't say that the trial fills me with confidence about the product but I am in the situation where I have little else to choose from, I currently write this via my PDA phone using the data service which in my location is GPRS speed only, it is just about worth it. My contact at Micronet met with someone supposedly high up at the network end who assured him that they are well aware of the issues that we have all been experiencing and that it has something to do with an incorrectly configured/aligned (I work in I.T. myself but unfortunately technical details were not passed on to me) UPLOAD and that it should all be behind them by the end of the month (October).

I am going to be taking a bit of a punt on this if I trust in this promise and then still discover that it is patchy. There is no denying however that when it works, it works well.

I am also a little wary of the download limit, I am not downloading movies or any other chunky files but somehow through basic web browsing have used 2Gb in not quite 3 weeks! I installed "Net Monitor" onto my MAC the last few days to get an idea of what is going on and would certainly use this going forwards to work out what I have used. As others have stated, going into the FUP should still provide a reasonable speed but in my experience they might as well just have switched it off, 5 minutes just to get a google page up!

Incidentally, using the service through a VPN to my work network does not work well with this either, not sure if this is to do with latency issues or what but it was horrendously slow even though I have tried the connection on somebody elses traditional broadband connection which just happened to be a 2Mb link.

I have been in FUP since the middle of the week and was not really using it much for a few days prior to that, how has the service been recently?

Thanks in advance for any responses, thoughts, suggestions.

Cheers.

I am sorry that I have stated this before but the Tooway Fair Information Policy says:

6) The Fair Information Policy (FIP)
Information given to subscriber
• Instantaneous real time information (Push)
– Network congestion (FAP active or not)
– FAPed or not
– Punished or not
• Information on a web site (Pull)
– Account status
– Remaining Volume / Volume available
– FAP status   


They advertise it but don't give it. If they did we would all be able to monitor our usage and see if we were on the 'naughty step' or there was a problem with the system. I use MenuMeters to monitor my bandwith usage, but if the computer shuts down for any reason it zero's itself so then I am lost as to total usage. By law if you advertise something is available it MUST be available. That is the law. If it isn't, DONT advertise it!!

After 2 days of very slow upload speeds with good download though, tests today using ThinkBroadband show that things appear to be back to normal.

3 tests have shown similar figures to these :-

Date      26/10/08 12:57:49
Speed Down      1892.81 Kbps ( 1.8 Mbps )
Speed Up      177.92 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )
Port      8095
Server      speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

We have had some awful weather here at times (41mm. in the rain gauge in last 24 hrs.) perhaps that may have caused some problems but it is not the whole story.

Regards,

Tony

Hi,

Firstly with regards to the FUP:

We only sell the tooway service as the limits state, we do not sell it as a system that will still even work outside of the Quota's stated in the package, this is regardless of how you interprit the FUP document because the system works very well within these limits and outside FUP no service is assured so there is no need to give the customer a vague explanation, no service is assured outside FUP -
at least the Ka band system will be muchbetter for FUP restrictions once Ka-Sat is launched is 2010 with much more bandwidth

Random times you cannot connect when within FUP:

when the system works it works well our customers within FUP had solid fault free services for over a week until tonight ( 31/10/08 ), and these random times within the FUP when it takes 4mins to load google seems to be related to an upload bandwidth issue,  (the customer said it had 10kbits upload and 1.8mb download within FUP it should be at least 150kbits upload) Skylogic assured everyone that they are working to resolve this issue, with Ka band being such a new system to europe, they have had it a couple of years in the USA and they took a little time to iron some issues before the system was robust, it seems its a reoccurrance after a over a week of solid service and it may hopefully be due to Skylogic doing maintenance to  resolve the issue once and for all.

We have given it to a few customers on a trial basis in the last 2 weeks, becuase we are aware of the nature of new technology, but we are sure SkyLogic will resolve these issues already we have seen in the past week they made big steps to make the system robust compared with the week before that, now they just need to keep that way.

Will keep everyone posted.

Thanks

Kamran Moussa-Zadeh

Thanks for everybody's replies above, sorry for my late reply, things have been a little hectic at home with a new baby arriving over the last week!

I have taken the plunge and upgraded to the silver service signing up properly to the service now.

I started on Thursday 30/10/08 and
seemed to have a good connection, over this weekend however I would be racing along with web browsing, even youtube type streaming of video at a fast rate and then the next minute, nothing again. I had got out of the habit of looking at the LEDs on the purple modem box, I just realised that it was "ranging" again and flashing on the connection LED.

Has anybody else had any problems this weekend? Kamran (who posted above) assures me that a phone call to the network shows it as all up and running fine althrough they were working on correcting this problem that has been dogging them over the last month on Friday night (31st) - this was the start of the patchy service again for me.

Maybe I do still have an issue with my satellite dish orientation/installation though I can't believe that within 30 seconds I can have a great signal and 1800kb/s DOWNLOAD speed and then moments later nothing - surely a gust of wind cannot knock it one way and then back again to full service within seconds (it wasn't even windy outside, or raining, or snowing etc. etc...)

I have tried it with/without my Netgear router, I still have the same issues going directly into my Apple Mac, obviosuly I wouldn't want to do this for long anyway since there would be no firewall or NAT between me and the internet.

Has anybody noticed that DHCP to get an IP address does not work directly to Vista machines, I seem to remember this being an issue during the installation and was told that the service does not like Windows Vista, just XP and prior.

When it is ranging I lose my DHCPd IP address, I have tried configuring my router to use two different DNS servers instead of getting those by DHCP too, seems to make no difference.

Thanks in advance for any responses, will be interesting to know if anyone else had problems over the weekend.

I am now disconnected from tooway as the ISP has gone out of business (Tarriam) Nobody seems to be complaining about service right now is it all going smoothly?

Could someone please reccomend an ISP for Tooway ? Not sure who to go with from here.

aealden wrote
Quote:


I installed a new Tooway system around Oct 29th and I'm very pleased to say that by and large it has been performing just as I would expect - decent browsing speed, fast file downloads and nearly always available; sometimes it does appear to go 'offline' for a minute or two, but it comes back up again quickly (this isn't anything to to with the weather).

On the subject of the weather - only the very worst rain cuts it off. It works acceptably in bad weather, even when we are clouded in (installation is at 1000 ft). When the weather is poor, it can slow down a bit, presumably the poor thing is struggling with the uploads.
For instance, at the moment we have gales and squalls and it's hanging in there. It didn't like the severe hail storm we had an hour ago though!

I think I need to thank Eric to a certain extent - his insistence on taking the time to ensure an absolutely spot-on dish installation must go a long way to keeping the link in bad weather.

An interesting point - the Tooway dish is mounted about 5 feet off the ground onto the side of a big larch tree (the only available point with line of sight) which has a diameter of around 18". Even in the gales, there is no adverse effect. I wouldn't expect there to be as there is no discernable movement in the base of the tree in high winds, but it's nice to see the proof

It can be seen from my past postings that we were not happy with our first installation of a Tooway system, but I have to say that the reliability and speed of the system has improved a great deal and I would now recommend it.

I would also recommend Bentley Walker. I have found their previous reluctance to participate in the discussions on this forum frustrating, but I am very happy with the support and advice given if one speaks to them directly by telephone.
They are nice people!

BTW - the hail is banging against the windows, but still online as I send this!

That IS good service - well done BW!

Just to add that since I installed my system at the end of October, it has been performing really well - definitely much, much better than our installation earlier in the year.

Season Greeting to all!

Sean

aealden wrote
Quote:


After much research I eventually went with Bentley Walker and everything has been fine. Great service and there is always someone on the end of the phone.