Welcome to the self-proclaimed
Rural Ottawa High-Speed Internet Blog. High-speed Internet access is virtually
ubiquitous in the urban and suburban areas of Ottawa, but when I started this blog in 2005, only about 60% of the
rural areas of Ottawa have coverage.
However, even for rural citizens, high-speed Internet access is becoming as necessary as telephone service.
Happily, high-speed coverage for rural Ottawa has increased significantly, and not only is coverage
reportedly
above 90%, many rural residents and businesses now have more than one choice of high-speed ISP.
This purpose of this weblog is to track news and events related to high-speed (broadband) Internet access in the
rural areas of Ottawa and, to a lesser extent, in nearby townships.
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Postings & Moderation
I've opened up this blog to allow anyone to post to it. However, I continue to moderate and will remove any inappropriate content, e.g. anything not related to high-speed internet access in the rural Ottawa, the Ottawa Valley, Eastern Ontario, and the Outaouais.
Where is SimplySurf?
Over the last couple of days, I've been told by a couple of people on this blog that
SimplySurf no longer appears to be providing wireless service. From comments posted under my
Rogers Rocket Hub blog entry, it seems that the company
may be out-of-business. After doing a bit of searching on
Google, I wasn't able to confirm or deny whether or not SimplySurf was still operational. So I guess at this point, given the comments I've received, it is alleged that SimplySurf is gone.
From 'Firefox',
"...things were fine up until the end of May here, and the one day the towers started dropping off the network to the point where I had no connectivity for 4 or 5 days.
After leaving them [SimplySurf] numerous voice messages, I finally caved and and drove to their office location at lunch to find an emptied out office building with a nasty looking notice from Ottawa hydro stuck in the door. Not good.
Anyways - suffice it to say that I have not been able to contact them over email, phone or fax since the end of May..."
And from 'PA',
"I also live in West Carleton and use SimplySurf. Service is extremely unreliable and support/service is non existent. I can live with the occasional outage, but no service at all is not acceptable. One of my neighbours, who was also using SimplySurf, got feed up and dropped them. Problem is that he couldn’t contact them to tell them he had switched to Xplornet, he just had to cancel the monthly payments..."
If anyone has any other info about SimplySurf, I'm sure readers of this blog would like to hear it.
-Chris
Someone told me about
Rogers Rocket Hub offering, which allows to you to connect up to 10 PCs into a home network and, if you want, add in your home phone as well. There are flexible rate plans based on your data usage and whether or not you want to have voice services as well.
Although the above web page doesn't give maximum download and upload rates, if you poke around on Rogers' mobile Internet site, the maximum speeds seem to be 7.2 Mbps down and 5.7 Mbps up. It's on Rogers' HSPA 3.5G wireless network.
This all looks very good (e.g. faster peak speeds for less than I'm paying now).
Does anyone out there have any details on this service? I know a few people have told me that Rogers Rocket stick is quite good, and this offering seems to be built around the same service.
-Chris
39 Comments:
Posting this through my SimplySurf connection. (March Rd, West Carleton)
It's been working very well for the past couple months.Just received a billing statement from them on Friday.
We've had problems with their service since mid July but just checked with our neighbors and it is working fine for them.
I can confirm that the office near Carling & Moodie is completely empty of furniture, though the sign is still up.
Posting over the dial-up service I never got around to cancelling (never did get added to the service provided by Simply Surf).
March/Bearhill (Sierra Woods)location. I've had the same problems with SS lately. I did have their dialup for backup, but for the past several months, it no longer works (domain name problem). They never return my phone calls or emails, but have no problem processing my VISA payment! And they've upped the monthly fee with no advance notice.
Remembering the Arryba situation, where they simply shut down and left their customers hanging, I'm considering the Rogers Rocket Hub. The closest tower is Richardson Side Rd./417 vicinity but there's a massive wall of 60' pines across the street and I'm wondering how strong the signal would be. After all the $$ it cost me to hook up to SS, I'm leery of forking out more $$ for another antenna.
In the meantime, I'm thinking of going back to 295.ca dialup as a backup in case SS suddenly goes belly-up.
Apparently, Rogers sells a high-gain antenna for their Rocket Hub, but I don't know the cost. I keep meaning to wander into the Rogers store in Barhaven but haven't had a chance to do that so far.
Aside: When Arryba imploded, it was uncertain for a while. It took a month or so for Storm to step in. However, during that time, I don't recall having or hearing of service problems. But, as I understand it, Arryba fell due to in-fighting and disagreements among the partners rather than financial issues; I could be wrong, but that is what I heard.
-Chris
Whatever reason Arryba failed, the end result for the customer was the same. If Storm hadn't stepped in, they'd have been SOL.
In the meantime, SS's firing on all cylinders this am. My connection was down from Friday evening to Saturday pm, then again Saturday evening to early Sunday am. It's the increasing unreliability of the system plus the complete lack of communication/customer service that's so unsettling.
Anyone in Sierra Woods using Rogers Rocket Hub?
Sierra Woods resident & SS client here with an update. I've purchased the Rogers Rocket Hub. It's a new model(Nexcomm 3G10WVR), not the one shown on their website. As advertised, plugged it into wall and ethernet and shortly thereafter had a signal. I'm on the 3G network, but only getting a low signal. Doing Speedtest, my download is anywhere from 2-4mbs, upload usually 1.++, but the big difference is in the PING - SS is usually mid-40s, Rogers mid 100s but speedtest rates Rogers way better than SS. Supposedly an antenna would improve speed.
Bell Turbo Hub is on 10-14 day backorder, they're still selling the Ericsson unit so I can't try it out right now for comparison.
I'm probably not going to keep the Rocket right now, but it's good to know there's an option.
I have a family member waiting for the Bell unit; when she gets it, I'll borrow it and see what kind of connection I get. I'll post it here in case inquiring minds want to know.
Regarding SS closing their Ullswater office, I wonder if they've consolidated at 27 Auriga Dr. (Monicorp/Monisys). It's a family business. If anyone works in that area, it might be worth checking to see if they're still at Unit 33.
I subscribed to Simplysurf when they expanded their service out to Howie Rd/Manion/etc (Oct 2006). I just looked back at my email trail and they were very unresponsive even back then. Simplysurf (or Monicorp) was Shadi and Sharouk Hussein - a brother/sister team.
My throughput initially was 3.5 Mbps, then dropped to about 2.5 Mbps in late 2007 and then to about 1.5 Mbps in late 2008. The service was generally reliable although there were frequent, sporadic outages. I say generally reliable, because there were times when throughput would drop so low that dial-up would have been faster, plus their APs would go up and down like a yo-yo. Well, that's how it was...
We totally lost all connectivity with Simplysurf at 9:20 am on Tuesday Sep 14th. The AP actually has no power to it. I called Simplysurf numerous times with zero response, as per their usual business practice. (I do know the back story behind how the AP lost power, but I'm not willing to post it publicly.)
Today (Fri Sep 17) I drove to their new office location, "Suite 33, 27 Auriga Dr" hoping to get some answers. What I found at 27 Auriga Drive was a self-storage building that rents boxes - so "Suite" 33 is Box 33, which is rented to Monicorp. I took a printed copy of an email that said I withdrew my authorization to charge my Visa. I wrote "hand delivered" on it and asked one of the guys to put the email in their mailbox - which he did (the mailbox was not stuffed so I presume they pick up their mail). I commented that I hoped they were prepaid for the box rental. :)
I think there is zero hope of ever finding them in person again and effectively zero hope in them getting their act together to fix things up. That's too bad, as Simplysurf was the first to provide fixed wireless high speed to rural customers (and no data cap too!) and they could easily have been really successful. However, Shadi and Sharouk are obviously very poor at the technical end of things as well as on the business side, and frankly they deserve to go out of business. It's just unfortunate that we subscribers are the collateral damage.
Postscript: About the $ initial investment: Yes, I invested a lot in the equipment for SS too, but I consider to broken even compared to the alternatives. Even now, the Bell Turbo Hub/Rogers Rocket Hub costs $185 ($150 + $35 activation) and that's with a discount for a 2-year contract for a higher monthly bill and teeny tiny throughput cap.
Posted via 295.ca dial-up (none of the other alternate providers are applicable to me :(.)
Did you get my previous long comment about Simplysurf? I got an error message but i also got a message that it was pending moderation.
On LinkedIn, Shadi Hussein says he is Systems Engineer at InfoExpress since March 2010, concurrent with Network Engineer at SimplySurf since April 2004. http://ca.linkedin.com/in/shadih
The whois record for monisys says (same administrative contact):
Technical contact:
Name: Shadi Hussein
Job Title: President
Postal address: 1800 Bank Street Suite 307 Ottawa ON K1V 0W3 Canada
Phone: +1 613 688 1404
Fax: +1 613 688 1406
Email: shadi@monisys.ca
Shadi is also listed as the technical contact for the fogdoctor.com domain name/ The info is as above but with dom-reg@monisys.ca email address. The owner and administrative contact for fogdoctor.com is:
Administrative Contact:
Stephen Collins
Stephen Collins
11-4200 Riverside Dr
Ottawa, ON K`V 1C4
US
Phone: +1.6136922293
Email: amanak1@sympatico.ca
@Mark,
As stated in the intro blurb on my blog's mainpage, I moderate all comments on my blog. I used to leave it open, but got some really nasty comments as well as many irrelevant ones (I'm not sure what discounted knock-off viagra has to do with rural high-speed Internet access). It can take me more than a day to get around to reviewing and publishing comments.
-Chris
@Chris - no problem with the comment moderation, I just wasn't sure if you actually received it because of the error message I got when I submitted.
BTW, you should take the Look communications link off your list of ISPs. Look went bankrupt last year and the assets were bought out by Rogers and Bell.
Hi Chris,
I too visited the new SimplySurf "Office" when they charged my credit card for the 3rd time after sending them my cancellation letter. Luckily I had informed VISA at the same time to no longer accept charges from them, but after 3 chargebacks I was getting so tired of the dance. I finally printed out the various letters I had sent them and the copies I sent to the credit card company and sent it to them via registered mail with signature required. It was accepted and the cancellation finally seems to have taken. What a disaster.
I agree with Marks comment that on one hand it is sad to see them fall since they were the first ones to service the WestCarleton areas. But, to be honest, I think that the writing has been on the wall for SimplySurf for some time with the combination of customer service and Explornet winning the city initiative.
Im not far from Mark (Manion Heights) and I know that every SimplySurf subscriber I have talked to in the neighbourhood has bailed on them due to flakiness of the connection -- what good is an internet connection if its not working when you need it.
Fox
I haven't heard any more from Simplysurf, and am now hooked up with Xplornet. Am not too impressed with their "up to 5 Mbps" service because it seems to cap out around 1.1 to 1.5 Mbps - worse than SS for twice the price. Not unlike SS, I had an outage with Xplornet on Sunday morning for over an hour (the modem was saying scanning/ syncing/ registering...), and only "registered" when I was actually on the phone with Xplornet tech (something I never experienced with SS). That was my 2nd experience with Xplorenet support and I find the techs pretty rude, actually. The person I spoke with blamed my equipment (router/ether switch) for the troubles. Although she did acknowledge that my equipment would have no bearing on the modem not registering she said she was going to put a note on my account not to provide any tech support unless I changed my Xplornet connection to only connect to one computer. :(
But prior to getting Xplornet, I contacted the folks at goZoom about 2 wks ago and found they don't service this area. They did a quick survey and found that most of the SS customers had bailed and were locked into 2 or 3 year contracts with Bell, Rogers, or Xplornet, so there was no business case for them to expand here.
I had also suggested to goZoom that perhaps they might be able to buy up SS's assets and customers for pennies on the dollar - presumably Shadi would like to recover some money from his investment... But after reviewing the SS installations that they could find, they decided against it... Here's a quote "BTW We located 3 x SS AP's; only one had a 'good' location, and none were mounted close to industry spec - for example none of the 2.4 GHz Omni's are mounted at least 1/4 wavelength from the nearest vertical surface (the tower) So they would all suffer from tower coupling in the near field - I'm surprised it ever worked, and little wonder it was unstable."
I guess that explains a LOT of things... :(
@Mark...
Xplornet shouldn't be giving you any grief about having the modem connected to a router. I've been with them for 2+ years, and have had a router the whole time and they know about it. Heck, I even had a second-level tech spend 45 minutes helping me with my new router about 3 weeks ago (static IP was pointing to my old router's MAC address).
However, during troubleshooting, they may ask you to connect a PC directly to the modem, to rule out any chance of the router being the problem. This is pretty standard troubleshooting, regardless of ISP.
You mention that the 5 Mbps service is topping-out at 1-1.5 Mbps. I'm not sure if your situation is anything like mine, but one thing I've consistently noticed with Xplornet is that I get the best speeds on my 3 Mbps service during business hours and late evening, but it really drops off between ~4:30pm and 10pm -- I guess that's when kids get home from school and people get home from work and start surfing. Since the bandwidth on the towers is shared amongst all users, you may notice slow downs during primetime.
-Chris
@Chris - xplornet has been horrible, with huge connectivity and low xfer speeds. I've called the xplornet tech support every day since the service was installed. I agree that what the techs have told me is stupid - saying their service is for one computer only is ridiculous especially since their web site says setting up routers etc isn't included in the standard installation fee. Fortunately this evening I got a tech who was able to look at things and say my signal was very weak. He was going to send a message to the installer to come and check it out and maybe switch me to the 3.5 GHz radios.
I have no connectivity as I write this (9:35pm). Since about 2:45pm today,I have had 15 outages (including right now), totaling about 3:30 hours (in 7:10)... The most annoying thing is when it connects for a minute or 2 or 3, and then out for 10...
Now waiting for connectivity so I can Publish... (finally.. 10:57pm)
Writing from the Sierra Woods area using my 295.ca account. SimplySurf has been down since yesterday (Oct 16) morning. There is no wifi signal from the tower. Maybe this is the end. Looking at the alternatives, the download caps are a concern.
I'm going to look into the Bell Turbo Hub tomorrow.
Another Sierra Woods resident here. I still have my SS modem connected and also noticed it's been dead for the past two days but is back up tonight (Sunday). So now we're all waiting for the other shoe to drop and SS to finally pack it in.
I've been using the Bell Turbo Hub for the past month. Although I'm mostly getting two bars and 3G+, sometimes it takes a looong time to connect to the internet and it times out. Although the Bell tower is Shanna/Vaughn Rd. vicinity, I think it's all the trees in between that are the problem. I'm thinking of putting up an antenna if I can find someone to climb up on my roof to connect the thing.
If you're already a Bell customer, you qualify for the $5/mo bundle discount, but if you're a heavy You-tuber or have kids into gaming or downloading videos, you're going to have to drastically change your lifestyle or pay through the nose for anything over 10GB. Check one of the forums for Guitarmaniak's experience! And don't leave the unit connected to the internet when you're offline - put it on standby or you'll be running up the meter. 295.ca dialup, Rogers Rocket Hub or BTH, it's gonna be a big change.
In regards to the outage in Sierra Woods this week, I had left a voicemail message and sent an email (over dial-up). Much to my surprise, I actually received a response acknowledging the outage as related to a database server problem.
It's been working fine since Sunday night.
With regards to the outage last week-end, the outage appears to be to the complete SS network as we experienced the same outage in the Dunrobin area. I should note that the owners (Shadi & Sharouk) are from Montreal and spends their week ends there. There is nobody in Ottawa to maintain the SS network on week ends.
It's been almost a month since I signed up for Xplornet and thought I would drop by to give an update on my experience.
I was on the verge of canceling Xplornet as there were so many outages - would be disconnected for about 45% of the day and really bad throughput for a good chunk of the rest.
On my last call, the Xplornet tech (about a month ago) said he could see I had very poor signal strength which was the likely cause of the problem. The installer hadn't installed the reflector dish because he could easily see the tower and had good signal strength when he first connected us. After the reflector dish was installed, the extensive outages have disappeared. I do still get disconnected on occasion and the sluggish connection is always there on the weekends and evenings.
Overall, I'm satisfied with Xplornet. The speed is roughly equivalent to what I had with SimplySurf and it costs 2x as much, but at least there is tech support if there is an outage!!!
For those of you who still have SimplySurf for Wireless Internet Access, a number of things have happened over the past few days leading one to believe that SimplySurf no longer exists in its past incarnation.
Please note that these comments are solely based on my personal observations and experiences -- of course, :-( there has been no formal communication from SimplySurf.
Yesterday, I tried to ftp (file transfer protocol) access one of my web sites and discovered I couldn't access it. (It was fine a few days earlier). My remote security firewall only allowed ftp access to those web sites from address starting with: 204.225.249.* (SimplySurf's former address range) A quick check showed that my IP Address was now: 72.1.220.249 -- part of the Ottawa Telecom address range. Similarly, the SimplySurf mail server is now at 72.1.220.232, also no longer part of the SimplySurf network and part of the Ottawa Telecom Internet numbering hierarchy.
As you may know, Ottawa Telecom was the former City-owned company that covered the Ottawa Region with fibre-optic cable, and used by SimplySurf to connect its subscribers to the world.
About two years ago, Telecom Ottawa was bought out by Atria Networks (who have purchased an number of cities' local fibre networks). About a month ago, Rogers Communications announced its purchase of Atria, which means that SimplySurf is ultimately going to be subsumed by Rogers.
But without any former notification from anybody, who knows for sure... But that's my take as of Friday AM.
What a way to run a business...rbh
Basil123ON, what's the significance of this for us lay people? I was with SS but got fed up with the outages and no feedback from the owners. I cancelled my VISA debit in September and emailed SS notifying them of same. They still send me invoices and they haven't cancelled my service although I'm now using Bell Turbo Hub. Nice to have backup though ;}
Nov 16th - SS has been down for over 10 hours now, it died at around 11:30 AM. (using dial-up to write this)
This looks similar to the October outage, no signal from the AP. Of course their support line is as helpful as always :(
Just a note that SimplySurf or Monicorp is no longer providing wireless service. The service that disappeared recently probably won't be coming back. Too bad...
I ordered my Ericsson W35 Rocket Hub today -- with a $55 cap on top of the maximum quoted rate -- that means that data will never exceed $110/mo + taxes etc.
Only in Canada, you say...
Just another datapoint - we've been without service since Tuesday 11/17 in Torwood Estates (Greenland Rd b/w Vances and Armitage out past Dunrobin). Modem is just scanning....
Will be looking into alternatives immediately.
-Chris A
not quite dead yet...
On http://simplysurf.net/
November 18, 2010
We are currently experiencing an outage in our Dunrobin and Carp service areas. We are working hard with other local ISPs to bring our service back online as quickly as possible.
Anybody know what that means??
Tired,
They're probably scrambling to find someone to take over their dwindling client base. I was surprised to see the notice on their web site, that's got to be the first concession they've made to their customers in a long while, but if you couldn't connect, how would you know? I gave up calling or emailing them months ago as I never got any acknowledgement.
I notice the email server is back up today so maybe that signifies something.
Email received Nov 19, 12:16pm:
November 19, 2010
Dear SimplySurf Subscriber,
We are currently experiencing a network outage which started on Tuesday, November 16 at approximately 11:35 AM. This outage is related to our upstream provider, and we immediately started searching for alternate sources of connectivity.
We are working closely with another local ISP in hopes of re-establishing connectivity this weekend. We will provide updates throughout our progress, and we hope to have the network back online as soon as possible.
We truly apologize for this terrible inconvenience, and we would like to again thank each of you for your generous support over the years.
Thank you.
SimplySurf Support
I suspect that the network outage was due to SS being cut off by their upstream provider for non-payment. That's just a wild guess, of course.
Sunday Nov 21
There is a truck with a gozoom logo and a van with an Xplornet logo at the Jacob's Gate AP. A tech has been installing hardware near the top of the tower.
Apparently they're still trying to get a backhaul running with gozoom.
We considered assuming the SS-Corkery area.
I had 2 techs working on backhaul to the Carp Tower two days in November but We were unable to provide sufficient bandwidth to Jacob's gate. I suspect a Fresnel edge refraction at the peak of March road, near the golf course was the cause. None of our other towers are within range of Jacob's Gate and none of the other SS installations provide LOS to anywhere that we can hit.
xPlornet was at Jacob's gate to hook the homeowner up because I had told him that we would not likely be successful in establishing the backhaul.
Again Yesterday (Dec 4th) I spent 3 hours with a fellow who has significant knowledge of the SS network in that area and, unfortunately, none of it is to our standards or even close really.
Many AP's/backhauls are mounted to Trees. All appear to be bridged on Point to Multi Point connections (very bad). Passwords are unknown. Customer count, and/or location are unknown. A LOT of connections are on 2.4 GHz through heavy foliage, and most customers appear to be using Nortel 'Accumen' radios, which is a 4 year old architecture based on a x86 SBC. By my understanding the Accumen was a mesh topology designed for Campus type deployment. The fact that you have to run 120 VAC (yikes) to the radio itself indicates that it was meant for light posts, not tower deployment, and definitely not a rural mesh. Mind you a tree is mostly non-conductive so the 1/4 wave rule doesn't apply (LOL). As well Shadi has not responded to our requests for information.
The end conclusion is that none of the gear is reusable by us, and due to the very late 'notification' from SS as to the situation it's highly unlikely that there are any customers left. Also xPlornet has the NLOS frequency's in the area completely saturated and the 900MHz noise floor is -70 !!, making our NLOS gear useless.... We don't have Licensing for 3.65 GHz (WiMax) in the 'City of Ottawa' so the only option would be a repeat of what's there - and that's not how we build a reliable network.
Sorry, as much as I would like to help out, there's just no business case left for the Corkery area.
I do know that NorthWind Wireless has managed to connect the other half of SS (Dunrobin) to their backhaul so there may be options for SS customers on the North Side of the Carp ridge. Unfortunately Dunrobin cannot backhaul for Corkery.
Cheers,
Ian Fraser
CEO goZoom.ca Inc.
877.622.0093
info [@] gozoom[dot]ca
www.gozoom.ca
We're trying to obtain from Shadi, codes that will permit us to use the modems we bought from him and are now useless without said codes. 'we' being a group of neighhbours.
As well, we are exploring diligently (once bitten, twice shy), a unique solution with a consortium of neighbours.
I understand some former SS customers in Dunrobin are up in arms. Might any of them be on this list? Has anyone contacted the media on this?
Well finally, North Wind has come in and replaced the simply surf equipment on the tower on my house with their equipment. I now have High Speed Internet back up, after being down since Nov 18th. I know they are trying to reverse the back haul from the river to Dunrobin, I was the second leg on the journey from the river. Located at 3494 Greenland Road. Any former SimplySurf customers in the area should contact North Wind http://northwindwireless.com/
I am a resident of Torwood Estate near Dunrobin and also a former customer of SS. I have now been hooked up to Northwind Wireless for the better part of two weeks and the internet has run flawlessly, no interruptions or stoppages of any kind. Great service, good performance, and they actually answer the phone. I understand they will expand their services in Dunrobin and area within the next week or so.
Friday morning (10 Dec), two trucks from NorthWind Wireless and a crane arrived in Dunrobin Heights. NorthWind is replacing the obsolete/discontinued Nortel access points and other hardware with new equipment. It appears that the NorthWind Wireless has had a meeting of minds with SimplySurf, and have assumed responsibility for the part of the SS network in areas including Dunrobin Village, Dunrobin Heights, Eagle Creek and Torwood. If the weather cooperates, all the previous system components will be replaced by this coming Friday (17 Dec) or so. Currently, much of the system is powered up and is undergoing tests; some installations have begun.
NorthWind Wireless has been providing Internet for about seven years and currently serves both sides of the Ottawa River from about Fitzroy Harbour to Berry Side Road (near the south end of Constance Lake), plus an area of about a one-Km radius of Stonecrest E.S (Stonecrest Rd and Kinburn Side Road).
Rather than connect to the world using the Atria (formerly Ottawa Telecom) (soon to be Rogers) FOTS (fibre-optics transmission system) from near the West Carleton Secondary School (north of Dunrobin Village), NorthWind Wireless'routing is across the Ottawa River, connecting with FOTS on the Quebec side. This should provide an improved quality of service as greater bandwidth will be available.
Once the system is tested and working, Northwind will be offering old SimplySurf subscribers free installation with three available speed tiers of service: 1.5 Mbps (megabits per second), 2.5 Mbps and 3.5 Mbps. There are no usage caps and no traffic shaping.
The NorthWind web site has lots of additional information:
http://northwindwireless.com/
By the way, since losing SS in November, we tried:
* Our backup V.92 dial-up -- about 40 Kbps -- strictly a last resort.
* Rogers RocketHub -- half the speed of our dial-up, even with a strong signal -- Rogers' techs admit severe network congestion.
* XploreNet 3 Mbps service (using 900 Mhz from Torwood area) we have never had faster than about 2 Mbps down and 400 Kbps up -- typically, about half that. Overloaded, it seems. Also, we receive an average of 8000 stateless ICMP attacks daily from all over the Xplorenet system (blocked by our hardware firewall) -- perhaps the Smurf Denial of Service attack. When the problem was reported, Xplorenet agreed to have the issue fixed in less than a week, but so far, the problem still exists. Quality of service is typically less than 20%, commonly with interruptions or pauses (latency) of up to two seconds. Better than dial-up but it does throttle back a lot if one is trying to download a large file.
When it worked, the old SS service was far superior to all the others. I expect that the with more bandwidth, service from NorthWind should be better still.
To "kick the tires", bring your laptop to the Lighthouse Restaurant in Constance Bay, have a coffee and try the wireless service using the installed hot-spot.
We should be hooked up to NorthWind in a few days -- I'll report back then, including support aspects (which are very important) -- but they do answer their phone and return calls -- a great improvement!
Here in Sierra Woods I tried a Rogers Rockethub and found it worked well, but it's just not practical for me. It would cost at least $60 for the included 10GB plus the unpublished $50 max for $10/GB in excess. So $110 per month and the worry that the $50 max could disappear at any time for 15 GB/month doesn't add up. I returned it and am now using 3.5Ghz Enhanced 3Mb Xplornet service. As expected *sigh*, it has slower speed and higher latency for more money than SS. It looks like we're too far from Northwind's coverage footprint so sadly our only choices here are the 3G hubs and Xplornet.
Hi Chris,
Thanks again for running this blog so that we can hear interesting stories like the zoom.ca attempt to reconnect SS customers in the south carp region and the northwind wireless connections in the Durobin area.
In my area (Corkery) almost the previous SS customers I have chatted with have switched to Rogers Rocket hub or Xplornet. Seems that for most people they were happier with SS even with the non-existant support, with a major comment being that the new services are quite a bit pricier than the ~ $30 / month from SS.
I saw this disturbing report on Xplornet changing their network managment policies
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r25191677-Xplornet-is-adding-CAPS-to-their-traffic-management-policy-
which if this is true - would be a real downer for Xplornet customers.
Personally my Rogers connection is more reliable and for the most part faster then I had with SS, but I know I was on the fringe of the SS service area before and others in the neighbourhood had much better service. I still do hope that maybe some other ISP will bring service to the Corkery region, but after reading the summary from Ian @ Zoom.ca that doesnt appear likely.
Fox.
Hi Chris,
I spoke with Xplornet. Currently, the caps are for everything except 900 MHz services (at least at present).
My call was because that I'm concerned about my 1 GB or so of "Stateless ICMP packets" my firewall blocks daily from other sites on the Xplornet network -- with a 1-GB/day cap (with my 3-Mbps service, I'll be ending up paying for an expensive dial-up system!
Basil
Hi Chris,
We were wirelessly connected to NorthWind Wireless today (Monday, in Dunrobin Heights).
First impressions: With NorthWind Wireless, Average down speed between 3 to 4 Mbps solid -- up direction, a bit faster. Latency was low (good). Better than SS and XN.
I alternated testing between our "3 Mbps Xplornet service" and NorthWind -- Xplornet gave about 840 kbps down, and 220 Kbps up -- about 1/10th the speed as NorthWind for a similar price. The best latency/pauses measured on XN was nearly 2 seconds (bad).
I did tests all over North America using a variety of test agents. Tests to places like NYC, DC, Montreal etc. were great using NorthWind. Sometimes Xplornet was nearly like dialup...
Tech support: You call NWW's phone number, you get answered by a knowledgeable person (not a droid or machine). They are helpful, courteous and pleasant.
I did serious downloads, real-time video streaming with NWW and nary a hiccup or sputter -- with XN, even a trivial streaming video ALWAYS sputters.
A rhetorical question for XN -- XN are bragging to new customers that everything will be faster next year when they convert to "4G" (the next greatest wireless evolution). But then, why the bandwidth cap coming March 1st, Hmmm???
Later as experience dictates.
Basil
Update: NorthWind Wireless Performance (West Carleton area)
Overall, with nearly a month's experience, we are pleased with the performance from NWW. Most of the time, we have a near-symmetrical (similar bit rate up and down) service between 2-Mbps and 3-Mbps. At the same time, the QoS (quality of service) is generally >90% -- the system works flawlessly for VoIP (voice over Internet protocol). VoIP was mostly unusable on SS, the previous provider.
We have never had an instance when the service was not of "adequate" quality. There has been no sign of usage capping or speed throttling.
Regarding reliability, we have not had even a momentary blip with NWW whereas with SS, there was at least one short outage on a daily basis.
Also, their support seems to be good so far.
We still have (so-called "3 Mbps") Xplornet, but it's only there as a backup, it is better than V.92 dial-up for sending e-mail and light web surfing, but is pretty much hopeless (becomes very slow and/or has high latency) if one is trying to download a 200 MB software update from MS or stream video... Xplornet's forthcoming bandwidth caps on 1 March are also going to be an inconvenience for many -- they are imposing a major change to the service definition!
Cheers,
Basil
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