Ipstar Vs. Dialup, Is It Better?

[stevehaigh]

i can't decide, i havn't used ipstar much but i know it can be just as slow and frustrating as dialup.

i occasionally see decent download speeds on ipstar but interactivity when hoping around from url to url doesn't seen much different to dialup.

anyone have any good or bad feeling about spending 1800bhat/mth for ipstar? also which isp is better, loxinfo or starconnect?

thx steve

[dive_mistress]

I have IP Star and have had it for about 3 or 4 months now. Very happy with it. There were a few bugs in the begning, but I called them up and all seems to be working fine. If its cloudy it doestn work. A few times it has been down and I have emailed them and they have called me back!! Amazing really.

My download speads are fine as well. Ill see how i feel at the end of the low season with lots of rain.

It does work sometimes during bad weather, i guess it just depends on the extent of it.

However people with ADSL seem to complain a lot aobut the customer service. Today i have no complaints! ANd i use P2p a lot, downloading like crazy!

They provide free dial up hours as well for the times when you cant connect.

IM in Phuket by the way.

[pgrin]

I have IP Star and have had it for about 3 or 4 months now. Very happy with it. There were a few bugs in the begning, but I called them up and all seems to be working fine. If its cloudy it doestn work. A few times it has been down and I have emailed them and they have called me back!! Amazing really.

My download speads are fine as well. Ill see how i feel at the end of the low season with lots of rain.

It does work sometimes during bad weather, i guess it just depends on the extent of it.

However people with ADSL seem to complain a lot aobut the customer service. Today i have no complaints! ANd i use P2p a lot, downloading like crazy!

They provide free dial up hours as well for the times when you cant connect.

IM in Phuket by the way.

Have you ever tried the speed check on the top of this tech forum.? What kind of numbers do you get?

P

[ianc66]

I hesitate to actually recommend IPSTAR anyway this is what I know:-

Bandwith from the top of this forum -- not really very useful measure I fear it tells you more about the server than the ISP.

Bandwith at much the same time from a meter on my PC -- lots of peer to peer

I've been making some measurements of reliability here

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=63246

Best advice, if you get IPSTAR the box they provide the IPX-5100, runs best cool and on clean electricity put it in an aircon room or at least a fan on it and on a UPS. Ideally eun the box on the ethernet connection rather than USB -- why add extra software?

Failures after that tend to be maintenance at the BKK end.

Rain or cloud does not actually seem to have that much effect here IPSTAR continues running long after UBC satellite has died.

The help desk is not very knowledgeable the advice is always turn off the IPX-5100 or 'gateway problems'.

[bquick]

Nobody answered if loxinfo or star connect was better with ipstar.

the tot ipstar is capped so forget it. uncapped for sme it costs i think 2,200 for the same package that loxinfo do for 1,800.

they all want year contracts too so them promotion prices will scree you for 2 months price cancelfee plus 3,000 uninstall fee. = about 4 months worth so if it is crap they screw you that way too.

It was such a big thing when launched with all the taksin superstitution for the peasants and assholing with neckties and big talk about how good it would be for thai people and bigger talk about the high bandwidth and then all people get is 512/256 which is nothing and even if worked at that speed would be frustratingly slow for people used to hi speed adsl.

still better than nothing and handy if outside of telephone/adsl reach.

[baba]

I am outside of Pattaya and got IPSTAR from Loxinfo (256/128) for 2 days now. So far it is so so....not that stable I expected it, the net latency sometimes is annoying. However this morning I downloaded some files at full speed. Anyway it is better than a dialup, but if you are strictly comparing performance vs. cost....dialup HBabout 350 TBH/month, I am paying now 1800 THB / month. For it is ok, I am just outside of the ADSL area, so there is no choice. Just went to IT City today and connected a WLAN Router to the IPStar Box.

Take care

[tuffy]

I just ordered Loxinfo satellite and it should be installed on Thursday or before. Hope fully not any later as a few extra days of dial up may kill me. I am looking forward to it though as I am just out side of the DSL area as well and this or an Air card was my last hope.

I will let you know what i think. I am going to go with the 256/128 at first for the price, I hope it will be fast enough for me...when I left Alaska I also left my 1Meg DSL line behind (sob).

Dive_Mistress....do you use skype at all? I wonder how that will work on this?

[Mobi]

If you can afford it and you cannot get fixed line broadband, then the only way to go is IPstar, with a dial up as back up.

I have the 256/128 Ipstar, and have endless problems. Sometimes it runs pretty good, and sometimes you want to throw it out of the window. It was fair for about 2 - 3 months but lately it has been playing up quite a lot. The main problem is that it is often so slow, I cannot connect to anything - I'm talking about bandwidths lower than dial up. It also crashes frequently, for just few seconds. During the bad times, I use my dial up and get by -not ideal, and Ipstar is a lot better than dial up when it is working at least reasonably well.

I have applied for an upgrade to 512/256 in a desperate attempt to get a better service. This will start from June - so I'll see how it goes.

[tuffy]

If you can afford it and you cannot get fixed line broadband, then the only way to go is IPstar, with a dial up as back up.

I have the 256/128 Ipstar, and have endless problems. Sometimes it runs pretty good, and sometimes you want to throw it out of the window. It was fair for about 2 - 3 months but lately it has been playing up quite a lot. The main problem is that it is often so slow, I cannot connect to anything - I'm talking about bandwidths lower than dial up. It also crashes frequently, for just few seconds. During the bad times, I use my dial up and get by -not ideal, and Ipstar is a lot better than dial up when it is working at least reasonably well.

I have applied for an upgrade to 512/256 in a desperate attempt to get a better service. This will start from June - so I'll see how it goes.

Mobi.... I will be interested to see what your opinion of the faster service is. I haven't even gotten my service installed yet but so far it is making certain parts of my body pucker worrying that I won't like it and am stuck with it.