Ipstar (again)

[Xeque]

Hi,

I've been trawling through the comments made by those of you who are (or have been) using the Ipstar Satellite Internet system.

I've had mine for a fortnight and I've just told Wattana to take it away. They promised to refund what I paid for the first month - we'll see. Basically I told them to go away and come back to me when they know how to set the system up correctly. They took the box - the dish is still here.

My problems are:

Webpage acquisiton speed is no different to a 56K modem.

Peer to peer connectivity using Messenger or NetMeeting is a joke. Chat works but nothing else does. If you do manage to hold a webcam connection with the other oparty the refresh rates are no different from what you would expect using a 56K modem. Audio - forget it. I could hear myself (even using a headset so it wasn't feedback) but the other party got nothing.

Teamspeak and Roger Wilco will work but only if you are the client. If you want to be the server then it doesn't work because there are two IP addresses involved.

Interactive games with other players on the net - no chance. It seems to be the same problem. There are two IP addresses and most software does not know which one to deal with.

Check out the Ipstar website and they advertise "all Internet functions will work at broadband speeds". Absolute rubbish! Perhaps the nerds at Ipstar can make it work but the installation technicians certainly don't seem able to.

It has the potential to be a very good system particularly for those of us who live in areas that are not (and probably never will be) served with ADSL/ISDN. It just needs someone at Ipstar/Thaicom (whoever) to tell the installation guys what to do.

In the meantime I'm back to my 56K modem (actual 46.6 if I'm lucky) with Inet Speedy attached.

[george]

IPstar is great, but you must email the CEO of CS-Loxinfo, Khun Tachpong, to get the customer service to take your case seriously. After that you will see a difference in speed and performance!

[dingfishingtours]

Our ipstar has been excellent for the last 3 weeks or so since they changed everything except the plastic dish.Lovely high speed internet access and it doesnt crash every 15 minutes like before.We are moving house in 2 months and will definitely take ipstar with us.When the technicians were here they adjusted the position of the dish very slightly and signal strength and esno are steady now instead of bouncing around.Can this be why it is now working properly?

[monty]

Hi Dingfishing tours,

Is that the only thing they changed (Antenna line-up)?

Could you check what settings they put in (dns etc) and are they different from before?

The terrible thing with both satellite systems in Thailand (ipstar & iptv) is that they all seem to be installed so badly!

I've been using iptv for so many months now and just love the system! Friend of mine uses ipstar (in PTY) and is reasonably happy with it.

Only disadvantages are the greater ping times, causing latency (unavoidable with sat-links), the 5 minute outages which occur once or twice daily, and the imposibility to establish a VPN connection(which they should mention on their website, since VPN's are quite impossible over sattelite because of high latency).

It is a petty that people are throwing out systems which are perfectly capable of delivering as promised.

Any body have problems with IPTV, just ask, I have the system working perfect! The problem is a mix from outdated drivers Csloxinfo supplies, tunerboxes with outdated firmware and wrong dns settings! Can be solved in half hour!

[Xeque]

Thanks guys for the responses and the invaluable info.

The Wattana technicians spent more than two hours here trying to ping servers that were known to be up and running. Now I know why they were only getting about one response in 10. Why didn't they know that?

I have also had some feedback from the people who developed Teamspeak. It seems that you have to change a line of code in the .INI file to point the application to the second IP address. Then, when you are acting as a server, other users can see you. I don't yet know whether this is so for other comms programs and for interactive games.

By the way, I recommend Teamspeak. It's freeware and it provides very clear audio IP to IP. There are no charges for use other than the time you spend on line. Basically a free telephone service and a good one. Certainly beats PCPhone hands down.

"George" - Thanks for the advice to contact CS-Loxinfo CEO direct. I will do that.

"Dingfishingtours" - when you say that everything is working great now, do you include communications tools like Messenger and NetMeeting particularly audio/visual and all the other goodies those applications provide?

Once again, thanks everybody.