Ip Star Checkup - Please Share

[sillyfools]

Hi Broadband users,

Up till december of last year I have been quite happy with IP Star. Since then however there are a lot of times (maybe 8 times a week) when the internet just "freezes". Nothing comes in anymore. Sometimes for 5 minutes. Sometimes a coupl of hours. Highly annoying considering the cost. Connections to sites in europe is very slow as well. The sites I access are in Brussels on the main Level3 Internet Exchange node so should come in very fast. My Dumeter shows access to those sites most of the time at around 40 Kbps. VERY slow, since my dialup connection through Lox adds compression and generally boosts up to 80 Kpbs (on certain phone numbers, not all). Sometimes access to sites like cslox or loxonfo also crawls in at about 20 Kbps.

Support from cslox has been next to non-existing. Most emails are not even replied to. At the moment I have the 256/128 Kbps installed with 3Gbs transfer but I want to switch to 512/256 IF and only IF there is some decent speed and not like now 6 seconds+ pinging to a european site or even to loxinfo sites themselves.

I got the system installed by Wattana (opposite foodland). I wonder now if there is something wrong with the installation or is it the problems at CStox ?

Can anyone share his readings from the IP-Star control settings so we can check and maybe help each other out this way.

Here is my report, I hope to read yours.

Best regards,

SF

------- IP STAR RECEPTION REPORT AND SETTINGS ------

-

- Date : 25/02/2004

- Location : South Pattaya

- Current weather : daytime, bright, no clouds, no rain

-

- Config : IP STAR 256/128

- Link Quality : Poor *

- Signal strength : 78.54

- EsNO : 9.70

-

- DNS Servers : 203.192.33.34 **

- DNS Servers : 202.183.255.11

-

- Satellite TXGain : -21.5 dB ***

- MaxGain : -20.5 dB

- RxFrequency : 1888 Mhz

- TollID : 3

- LO BUQ Frequency : Ku Band 13.050 Ghz

-

- Problems reported : 1) Very slow on intl. connections. They kick in after

- Problems reported : sometimes 10 or 15 seconds but it looks like the lookup

- Problems reported : is extremely slow.

- Problems reported : 2) Problems with data sent along this connection to the

- Problems reported : office in Europe. Sometimes data appears to be not

- Problems reported : transmitted correctly, resulting in problems on the

- Problems reported : web based interface on the other side.

- Problems reported : 3) Caching problems. It seems to be that CSLox uses

- Problems reported : some kind of transparent caching but does not always

- Problems reported : refresh when you hit the refresh button. Anyone else has

- Problems reported : this problem?

-

------ END REPORT -----

The information is obtained from the webpage at

http://YOUR-SAT-IPNUMBER:8080/xWebGateway.cgi?page=satellite

* The link quality information is what you get if you hover over the left graphic in the uppper corner depicting a satellite and a 5 digit bar.

** The dns number you can obtain when you go to

http://YOUR-SAT-IPNUMBER:8080/xWebGateway....page=networking

and type in ADMIN, pass operator. Then switch to the tab 'dhcp'

!!!! You can look over there but don't change these setting unless you know what you're doing or you have written down exactly how they were. If in doubt, don't do it.

*** The satellite information you can obtain when you go to

http://YOUR-SAT-IPNUMBER:8080/xWebGateway.cgi?page=satellite

or siwtch to the tab satellite.

[mouse]

I have been with them for some time and although their email response is slow (they seem to need more staff there, especially staff that communicates in English) the quality of the service has been good. I also experience a low signal but find that I am getting a true 256/128 kbps when conducting a speed test at any time. I would have a professional check your computer instead

[sillyfools]

Hi mouse,

Thank you for your information. The speed itself does not seem to be much of a problems once it's going. The main problem seems to be it can take from between 5 to 10 seconds for a website to open. I don't even mean to complete the transfer, but util you see the url changes so the actual transfer begins.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the dns servers I use.

Best regards,

SF

[mouse]

You got me. I know system but I have to have the problem in front of me to understand and subsequently fix it. As for email I meant their responses to mine.

Just did a test and I get http://news.google.com/ in two seconds.

[george]

3) Caching problems. It seems to be that CSLox uses

- Problems reported : some kind of transparent caching but does not always

- Problems reported : refresh when you hit the refresh button. Anyone else has

- Problems reported : this problem?

Yes, all CS-Loxinfo IPstar traffic goes thru CAT's evil transparent proxy, to save international bandwidth. I have on several occations told them that I don't want my IPstar traffic going trough a bad, slow, bad maintenaced proxy. They have no idea what I am talking about. LOL.

Check by yourself here and you can see all proxies your traffic goes thru:

Seems that it goes thru *two* proxies, one Netcache in Thailand and one in Singapore., Idiot routing!

http://www.showmyip.com

---

Proxy IP Address: 203.208.155.154

Proxy Country: SG-Singapore

Proxy State/Province: 01

Proxy City: Tampines

Proxy Internet Service Provider (ISP): SingTel Internet Exchange

Proxy IP Address belongs to (Organization): SingTel Internet Exchange

Client-ip:208.147.1.2

Connection:close

Via:1.1 wc-bkksp122 (NetCache NetApp/5.3.1R2), 1.1 cache2

----

Learn more about this evil proxy things here:

http://www.broadband-help.com/cm_proxies.asp

I want fresh content, not canned content. It's a shame that CS-Loxinfo tunnel IPstar traffic via proxies!

/George

[george]

Anyone care to comment my last post?

[Guest The Judge]

I would wonder if they are using the proxies to lower load on the satellite.

Wonder if they use a satllite finder/meter when they set up?

[monty]

I think George is right in the "slow,bad maintained proxy" thing...

A well set up and good maintained proxy can improve your net experience, as long the ISP makes you aware of it's existance, and most of all give you the choice to use it or not!

I run a proxy between my sattelite link (IPTV) and the 15 PC's which are hooked up to it. First of all everybody chooses to use it or not, but most do! E.g. Pattaya Mail gets updated weekly, the first one to look it up gets it through the 256 kbps sat link, all the others get it from the proxy through a 100 mbps network link....

If you happen to get an old (canned) version of a webpage, it comes in instantly through the lan so you notice it immediate, you hit refresh and you get the latest version... Understandably this can be annoying if the proxy is behind a modem connection as it'll take up to a minute before anything shows on your browser and you notice you have an old and useless version.