Experience with Tooway KA-SAT service

Hi,

I tested Tooway 6 speed FTP download through an independent site: www.thinkbroadband.net/download.html (there is a good speedtest program in main menu).

The results were:
20MB-58 sec; 353KB/s=2224 kbps;
50MB-2 min 37 sec; 326 KB/s = 2608kbps;
100MB-4 min 4 sec; 419 KB/s=3352 kbps.

Test was done under "green" spotbeam 39 in Sofia, Bulgaria.

We've activated the new service on 1-st of June 2011. For 50 days period experience we can say the new Tooway-on-KaSat is more delicate and unstable service comparing Pre-KaSat Tooway.  SNR varies between 11 and 13 dB in clear sky and if  cloudy appears  drops below 9 dB, and hence the connection disappears. We think that the situation in beam-center position is probably better (we heard about 17-19 dB over Athens, Greece), but at the end of the beam where are we is not so good as staibility. But speed compared with the old Tooway service is better.

BR

Mincho Pankov
Sofia, Bulgaria

I replaced the old Ka service with the new Ka-sat on July 1st.  In contrast with MPBG, I find the service much improved.  

We have had heavy rain, massive clouds, light rain, mizzle, drizzle.   The connection has hardly been affected.  On the old service, besides reliable fade in heavy rain I found very light vertical drizzle also knocked it out.   Windswept drizzle didn't, nor did falling snow.  Of course we haven't had snow yet with this system.

Speed has not been a problem, I'm happy that it reaches the expected speed for the kind of download I do, which tends to be files rather than streaming.

I am in the UK, on the blue spot.  At least, it was the blue spot during set-up.  At the moment there are heavy stormy-looking clouds, and the RX S/N has dropped to 12.7dB from it's normal around 14dB.   RX power is 39.1dB.  TX power is reported as 32.6dB.  (The fractions are spurious precision.)

I will be tweaking the pointing this week, which might improve S/N.  Not that it needs it, but I have to modify the mounting, so it is likely to get disturbed.  The mod is necessary because the disturbance produced by cross-winds on the new set is higher than on the more compact, lighter, old system.  It is mounted on a braced steel shed wall, but sadly there is a resonance now which builds to a good fraction of a cm in the horizontal at the Tria.


There were a few periods when there was no response despite the modem reporting two-way traffic, and it required a reboot each time to fix it.  This has not happened for well over one week.  However, I have noticed the modem firmware is now version UT_1.1.2.1.2, when at the time of the breaks it was UT_1.1.2.0.17.

In view of the improved fade resistance, I will say my expectations have been more than met.

Regards,  John

I have found it excellent compared to my old nordnet (ie astra) service, which was overloaded at all times of day except the early morning and often ground to a dead halt.

It has delivered the advertised speeds every time I have checked it (on speedtest.net) and has gamely worked through a large backlog of software updates, including OSX Lion at something over 4GB - with no loss of speed to follow. This is impossible under any interpretation of the tooway fair access policy, so I imagine that we are enjoying something of a honeymoon period while the satellite's capacity remains underused.

I should add that the satellite dish fine adjustment is far better engineered than on any other dish I have used or seen, and the "beeper" setup on the LNB works just as advertised on the installation video - subject to one large hitch. The modem interface would not open in internet explorer (or safari) but it did work in Chrome (as suggested by my supplier's helpful helpline person - another pleasant change from nordnet: no more €1 a minute for endless waits on hold).

Altogether a very satisfied customer, so far, after struggling for years now with every known form of internet access short of carrier pigeons (adsl, satellite, 3G, wimax, satellite, satellite). It remains to be seen how long the honeymoon will last.