Yet another Vodafone rant

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'That VDSL Cat'
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#1529222 9-Apr-2016 20:45

Its an expensive outlay, but what im getting at is going with a provider who maybe is willing to look into a signal issue alot more than your current provider seems to.

Depending on where your located, it could be worth seeing if fraser cant take a look for you anyway. Hes a certified installer and atleast personally, ild trust him a lot more than many.

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mattwnz

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#1529227 9-Apr-2016 20:50

IMO you should be getting the company you are paying, to look after you. They can't just say that it is a problem with their supplier, they should be following up that supplier for you, as if you were buying directly from them yourself.

Jase2985

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#1529228 9-Apr-2016 20:50

have you asked Ray Taylor if he can look at it for you, he seem very knowledgeable on this type of topic and is local

DarkShadow

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#1529246 9-Apr-2016 21:14

Rikkitic:

And this is what really incenses me: Thanks to the idiot policy of our government, which as I understand it (maybe incorrectly) has compounded their stupidity by making exactly the same dumb mistake that was made in the past with Telecom by creating protected monopolies and allocating bits of territory exclusively to those monopolies, I no longer have any effing choice to go anywhere else. Yes, I can change ISPs, but I will still be getting my RBI from bloody useless Vodafone because they have the only masts that serve my area because they have been given exclusive rights to that coverage. So how does it come about, that a company that systematically craps on its customers is permitted to be the only provider of RBI services to big chunks of the country? Or do I have this wrong?

Anyway, that is my rant. If I am being unfair to VF, I will be happy to apologise. But I am still paying way too much money for way too little service. RBI in our area, which used to be good, has now become crap. Why should this be? I haven’t used up our 80 gig data cap in months. I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But we are still being charged for it. Why can’t Spark, or 2 degrees, or anyone else put up an RBI mast for our area so there is a little competition and maybe even a little free choice?

It is true Vodafone is the only network supplier for RBI wireless, but it's not correct to say they are the only game in town. There are many rural wireless providers as well. Spark is the big one, and there are many small providers as well. Have you checked out the Broadband Map?

tdgeek

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#1529260 9-Apr-2016 21:41

kornflake: Does your LOS to the tower have trees in the path? I have seen negative effects when wet trees hamper the rx levels, furr trees are pitucularly bad.

Sorry to call out your spelling, gave me a chuckle!

NZFINEST

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#1529267 9-Apr-2016 21:59

When this was installed it was installed with 1 antenna. Since the install you have put a 2nd antenna in place. Has your firmware been updated to work 2 antennas ?. If you log into the router are given the options to select external antenna 1 & 2. I think your ISP needs to look at the set up you have as well as the firmware you are using.

PS I also PM'd you as we talked about your connection in December

Anything I suggest or say is my own thoughts and not provided by anyone else unless stated

Rikkitic

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#1529284 9-Apr-2016 22:37

My ISP knows I installed the second antenna but they never said anything about updating the firmware or changing any settings. I just plugged the antenna in and started using it. There is definitely a marked difference with it. I don't have any comparative signal strength stats but when everything else is working correctly my download speed is about 30 mbps with one antenna and about 50 mbps with two. There is no question that the second one makes a big difference.

There is no option I have seen to select one or two antennas when I log in. I have never tried to update the firmware because I wasn't sure what I was doing and I didn't want to make things worse. I figured my ISP would tell me if that was necessary.

I will reply to your PM tomorrow. I can't go into the room with the router at this hour.

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coffeebaron

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#1529287 9-Apr-2016 22:42

There is no special firmware for two antennas.

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grant_k

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#1529298 9-Apr-2016 23:41

Rikkitic:

...
Then it all went to hell. Since December our speeds have plummeted and our connection has become completely unreliable. For two months we couldn’t stream at all. Our connection started jumping around between different distant masts instead of the one we were supposed to be getting our signal from. The signal was usually very weak, but occasionally it would jump up for brief periods. Sometimes the connection would disappear altogether. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Occasionally I received updates on this from my ISP. VF was having a problem with this. VF had stuffed up that. VF was doing maintenance. Etcetera, etcetera. The connection didn’t go down every day, but the average was probably about once a week. The thing is, it seemed to go down every time I needed to use it. I am only a private consumer, but if I had a business that was dependent on this service, I would be out of business by now.

For the last month or so it has been better again, almost back to how it used to be. I started to think that maybe the worst was over. Then today (Saturday, of course, that also seems to be part of the pattern) I noticed that pages were taking an awful long time to load. I ...

A friend of mine who is also on RBI had a similar problem last week. He terminated the antenna cables with SMA connectors by himself and made a mistake with the internal foil causing an intermittent signal, which was sometimes very weak. At this point his router was falling back to the internal antenna. What was normally a 5-bar signal was dropping back to just 1 or 2 bars with the speed suffering greatly as a result. He has now re-terminated the cables leaving the foil intact this time and all is well.

It would be worth your while trying a new cable, just on the antenna connected to Port 1 (the left-hand port) and see if that makes a difference. If it does then replace the other cable too.

NZFINEST

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#1529309 10-Apr-2016 06:59

coffeebaron: There is no special firmware for two antennas.

The firmware that these devices are sent out with don't allow for frequency locking nor does it let you change antenna settings. There is a later firmware for these devices that allows you to change both

Anything I suggest or say is my own thoughts and not provided by anyone else unless stated

Rikkitic

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#1529321 10-Apr-2016 09:09

NZFINEST:

coffeebaron: There is no special firmware for two antennas.

The firmware that these devices are sent out with don't allow for frequency locking nor does it let you change antenna settings. There is a later firmware for these devices that allows you to change both

If that is true I certainly wouldn't mind having it. My connection seems to have stopped jumping around at this time but it was certainly one of multiple issues previously.

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NZFINEST

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#1529329 10-Apr-2016 09:36

Rikkitic:

NZFINEST:

coffeebaron: There is no special firmware for two antennas.

The firmware that these devices are sent out with don't allow for frequency locking nor does it let you change antenna settings. There is a later firmware for these devices that allows you to change both

If that is true I certainly wouldn't mind having it. My connection seems to have stopped jumping around at this time but it was certainly one of multiple issues previously.

I suspect your issue recently on a Saturday would of been either interference on the radio network. Or a site brought down for planned work. The firmware is given to customers who meet a few different issues where by their connection has to be locked down to get a usable service

I take it you have logged faults with your ISP who in return log a job with VFNZ. Has anyone from VFNZ or Downers called you when you have logged a fault with your ISP

Anything I suggest or say is my own thoughts and not provided by anyone else unless stated

Rikkitic

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#1529330 10-Apr-2016 09:40

grant_k:

It would be worth your while trying a new cable, just on the antenna connected to Port 1 (the left-hand port) and see if that makes a difference. If it does then replace the other cable too.

Both cables are properly terminated. I didn't try to do any connectors myself. The first cable was supplied by the installer. The second I bought from a reputable company coffeebaron linked me to. I didn't try swapping them because removing the weatherproofing gunk is a real hassle but I did do extensive tests swapping the antennas at the router end. I don't get the sense that the cables are causing the problem, but of course you could be right. I may end up there again at some point

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gwh

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#1529352 10-Apr-2016 10:30

Rikkitic:

grant_k:

It would be worth your while trying a new cable, just on the antenna connected to Port 1 (the left-hand port) and see if that makes a difference. If it does then replace the other cable too.

Both cables are properly terminated. I didn't try to do any connectors myself. The first cable was supplied by the installer. The second I bought from a reputable company coffeebaron linked me to. I didn't try swapping them because removing the weatherproofing gunk is a real hassle but I did do extensive tests swapping the antennas at the router end. I don't get the sense that the cables are causing the problem, but of course you could be right. I may end up there again at some point

I'd expect Netspeed to be doing this for you, not you having to do it yourself. Leave the second cable and antenna out of the equation for the purposes of fault finding. It's a supported configuration but not all that main stream at the moment. What happens when you use the 2nd antenna in place of the 1st one- ie plugged into the LHS antenna connector?

In cases like this our company would expect to do a site visit with a spare modem, cable and antenna. The great thing about this gear is you can get beside the antenna with a modem powered off a battery and a short RF cable and connect into the antenna like with the temporary kit. if this is done and the service is still no-go then the problem points back toward VF without doubt.

Usual on-site faults would include termination problems with the cable at either end, antenna way off target including the possibility of having been tuned to a reflection at installation(which I have done myself). The pitch of the antenna is as important as the setting of the other co-ordinates. The B315 modems have proven to be reliable but you can;t exclude them from the problem. You could still be cell-hopping which is a known problem that has been represented to VF by all RSPs on many occasions and there is no easy fix for that. You won't be contacted by VF or Downer, this is Netspeed's problem to sort for you. Downer only deal with VF's own retail customers and the cellsites, not other RSP's customers. In any case the local Netspeed installer or coffeebaron will very likely have considerably more experience in RBI customer site works than the local overworked Downer tech who has to work on RBI because he's directed to.

Rikkitic

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#1529384 10-Apr-2016 11:11

I did try swapping the antennas around and using each as a sole antenna when I was testing. When the problems first started in December, I was told here it was probably just holiday congestion so I waited through January before making too much noise about it. I didn't think I should have to abandon a service I was paying for throughout the summer holidays just because a lot of people were using it, but I felt I had to eliminate that as a possibility before I could pursue the matter further. After January the problems continued through February and even into March, but they did seem to get better. There were periods, usually during the day, when the service seemed 'normal' (like it used to be). When I actually wanted to use it, usually in the evenings, it often turned to crap but I was never able to establish an actual time of day pattern. This was when I made repeated complaints to my ISP. They did try to help, with a number of tests. I don't remember exactly what we did at the time, but we went through my router settings and I tried different things that were suggested to me.

The service continued to improve over time and was almost back to normal over the last few weeks, until it all fell apart again on Saturday. At the moment it seems okay again. The intermittent nature of this has made it very hard to pinpoint any causes. I could get the installer to come out again, but it is a long way to come and I can never know if the service is going to be working normally or not when he gets here. If he comes all the way out here and can't find anything wrong, it does nothing to help my credibility and it gets expensive. That is also why I have tried to solve this myself, or at least pinpoint the source of the problems.

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