What do you think about WISP vs RBI?

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#2262359 22-Jun-2019 10:58

You wont have any issues with VOIP - I run three VFX lines on my connection and have no issues. If you dont have a cell phone and are worried about loss of telecoms make sure you UPS your internet gear and your voip phone.

Rikkitic

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#2272296 9-Jul-2019 11:19

Yesterday the installer came to finish things up. We will have to see how this works out in practice over time, but first impressions just blew me away. With RBI, our speed graphs looked like a shark's mouth, up and down all over the place, even when conditions were 'favourable'. Evenings, weekends and school holidays, usually exactly the time we wanted to watch something, our speeds would drop to 1-2 Mbps and the streaming would go to hell. Constant buffering and freezing. Continuous blocky adaptive streaming shifts. Unwatchable.

Last night all this magically vanished! Streaming was perfect the entire evening, not one hint of disruption. Every speed test I ran was a solid smooth 29 Mbps down. Video crisp and clear 1080p. Up speeds and latency were also much, much better. If it carries on like this, and there is no reason to think it won't, my streaming frustrations are finally over! The difference with RBI is like the difference between night and day. The WISP is even cheaper, and there is no data cap. Based on my one day's experience, I can think of no reason you wouldn't prefer this over RBI. Of course I am in a fringe reception area and am dependent on a severely oversubscribed mast, but again, no data cap with the WISP. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

In fairness, I feel obliged to recall how thrilled I was with RBI when we first got it. The installation was expensive, far more than the WISP, and initially it was just 3G, later upgraded to 4G. But we had come straight off dial-up, 10 years too late, but that's how things are here in the countryside, and compared to that, RBI was a godsend. Even at its worst, it was incomparably better than that excruciating dial-up. And for awhile, especially after the 4G upgrade, it was excellent. But over time it seemed to get worse and worse, and of course our expectations had gone up. Now we didn't just want good Internet. We wanted to stream hi res TV, at any time, with no glitches. That became impossible with our RBI connection and all the old dial-up frustrations returned. As data demands go up with new video technology, and more and more people turn to streaming, RBI seems to be struggling to keep up.

Anyway, it sure looks like the AO NET WISP may be the answer to all our problems. I will continue to post updates here if and when there is a reason to do so.

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wratterus

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#2272302 9-Jul-2019 11:25

Sounds great. Did the cable run end up being over 100m from your house to the radio?

Rikkitic

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#2272323 9-Jul-2019 12:04

Exactly 80 meters.

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networkn

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#2272329 9-Jul-2019 12:19

Sounds like you got a really good result. Congrats. Good internet is one of those things like sex and oxygen, it's only really a problem, if you aren't getting enough :)

quickymart

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#2272563 9-Jul-2019 18:18

Awesome to hear Rikki, long may it continue. Is the signal just as strong as RBI, or worse, or better?

Rikkitic

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#2272580 9-Jul-2019 18:51

Depends on how you define 'strong'. RBI and WISP are different technologies and I'm not sure they can really be directly compared though they both use wireless signals. We have easy line of sight to the WISP relay tower, only a short distance away on a nearby hilltop so I imagine the signal is fairly strong, though the transmitter, at least at our end, is probably in the milliwatt range. Our new ISP doesn't like peasants getting their grubby fingers on the router so I can't read the signal levels. They were generally reasonable on RBI, though they varied a lot. But we usually had 4 bars if that tells you anything. After the last upgrade the problem wasn't strength, just bandwidth. The congestion was terrible.

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Rikkitic

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#2276275 14-Jul-2019 12:18

I have been asked to share my experiences with my new WISP provider AO Net so I will do that as things occur to me. It is still early days but so far I am very pleased with the service, which is excellent. I have no complaints at all, but I do have an observation.

The rural WISP I am on, and possibly AO Net overall, seems very much geared to farmer consumers. The provider seems to assume that customers have no understanding at all of things technical, and should be kept as far away from them as possible. Accordingly, the Microtek router is firewalled from me and I cannot access it at all, even for the most simple things like checking stats or changing DNS servers. For this reason, geeks might not be entirely happy with this service.

On the other hand, I have found the people at AO Net extremely helpful and willing to meet my needs. They gave me a static IP on request and they changed my DNS servers for me. But I’m not sure how far people who want to play with their router settings would get, even if they know what they are doing. AO Net seems extremely reluctant to let people do this kind of thing for themselves.

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Linux

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#2276281 14-Jul-2019 12:28

You should not be playing around with DNS settings this is the best way to break things!

cyril7

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#2276284 14-Jul-2019 12:40

Hi, something to consider (and I might well be wrong) is that smaller ISPs as compared to the big guys dont have massive and complex BNG routers, to firewall and protect to the same level, all their customers from each other, and therefore the wan side of the Mikrotik they provide might be very close and exposed to their entire network, hence they dont give you access, and rightfully so.

At the end of the day, as long as they are happy to give you some configuration options on request that are reasonable, then what more do you need?

Cyril

JeremyNzl

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#2276321 14-Jul-2019 13:55

wratterus:

dimsim:

I currently use AONET and they are fantastic. I've also over time migrated most of my clients onto their services. The standard plan speed is 30/10 and so far I havent seen any of my clients plans not consistently acheive advertised speeds. AONET uses 5Ghz Ubiquiti wireless radios and is proactive in making sure things are right. Unfortunately no one will guarantee you a speed as all standard plans on any ISP whether they be 3G/4G, Fibre, xDSL or Wireless are considered best effort and speeds are only a guide.

As long as you have clear line of sight you should get their advertised speeds. I suspect their installer is talking about an outdoor ethernet cable rather than an antenna cable as the client radio will be connected to your router via ethernet and the client radio powered with PoE, so the maximum distance for CAT5/6 cable run is 100m.

You can actually go several hundred meters with PoE midspan type devices, and still get gig links now - there are some cool new bits of equipment out there. Not that you would need a gigabit link for this purpose. If it was me, I'd rather the WISP over RBI, WISPs do have the potential to be a bit rubbish if they skimp on their own network or install in less than ideal conditions, but good comments from someone else who is with them already would be enough to sway me.

+1 on the Mikrotik GPER midspan units, I am running a gigabit powerbeam antenna at 200m , full gig sync with POE

Rikkitic

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#2276329 14-Jul-2019 14:14

cyril7:

Hi, something to consider (and I might well be wrong) is that smaller ISPs as compared to the big guys dont have massive and complex BNG routers, to firewall and protect to the same level, all their customers from each other, and therefore the wan side of the Mikrotik they provide might be very close and exposed to their entire network, hence they dont give you access, and rightfully so.

At the end of the day, as long as they are happy to give you some configuration options on request that are reasonable, then what more do you need?

Cyril

I'm not complaining, just pointing out that geeks who like to tweak their own settings may find this limiting. For my part, I am happy to let them do it as long as they are prepared to do it the way I want, which they are.

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scottydafreak

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#2285393 29-Jul-2019 21:22

WISP's are definitely the way to go now where you can get them, IMHO. +1 for AONET here too which we just had installed a week ago. RBI 4G on Spark had slowly got worse over the year and at times became unusable out past Paki Paki HB - they're obviously getting more congested. Tried to get Tay lor Broadband on site but they dropped the ball and stopped responding so we gave up on them and I've since heard similar feedback from others.

I reckon AONET have it right in that they won't install if the signal is not good enough - better than -75dBm I think. Doing so can affect other users sharing the tower too.

Our installer had told us we couldn't get it originally after a quick handheld survey, and then realized he wasn't pointing entirely in the right direction (in his defense the Te Mata hills were totally hidden by heavy morning fog) so in the end we got -60dBm which is great. In any case, I would think that any time they do install, you would easily get the 30Mb Down/10Mb Up max they cap you at given those signal strengths with the Ubiquiti Litebeam AC radios they use.

Now we get 30Mb down every time we've tested thus far, with no slow downs or drop-outs (one user uses VPN to work from home and would know about it). Kids aren't complaining about their youtube vids buffering any longer either.

And you can't beat the unlimited data cap for a mere $75 per month either. Money very well spent

Oh, and also pleasantly surprised by the coverage provided with the little Mikrotik wifi router RB951Ui-2HnD they used (we went for the more powerful offering they had); it's beaten every other more expensive router I've tried in this large house. No 5Ghz is a little peeve, but not really missed it so far. I will definitely look at using more Mikrotik APs in future.

dimsim

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#2285557 30-Jul-2019 09:42

scottydafreak:

WISP's are definitely the way to go now where you can get them, IMHO. +1 for AONET here too which we just had installed a week ago. RBI 4G on Spark had slowly got worse over the year and at times became unusable out past Paki Paki HB - they're obviously getting more congested. Tried to get Tay lor Broadband on site but they dropped the ball and stopped responding so we gave up on them and I've since heard similar feedback from others.

I reckon AONET have it right in that they won't install if the signal is not good enough - better than -75dBm I think. Doing so can affect other users sharing the tower too.

Our installer had told us we couldn't get it originally after a quick handheld survey, and then realized he wasn't pointing entirely in the right direction (in his defense the Te Mata hills were totally hidden by heavy morning fog) so in the end we got -60dBm which is great. In any case, I would think that any time they do install, you would easily get the 30Mb Down/10Mb Up max they cap you at given those signal strengths with the Ubiquiti Litebeam AC radios they use.

Now we get 30Mb down every time we've tested thus far, with no slow downs or drop-outs (one user uses VPN to work from home and would know about it). Kids aren't complaining about their youtube vids buffering any longer either.

And you can't beat the unlimited data cap for a mere $75 per month either. Money very well spent

Oh, and also pleasantly surprised by the coverage provided with the little Mikrotik wifi router RB951Ui-2HnD they used (we went for the more powerful offering they had); it's beaten every other more expensive router I've tried in this large house. No 5Ghz is a little peeve, but not really missed it so far. I will definitely look at using more Mikrotik APs in future.

You can't beat kids as network outage detectors..

cyril7

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#2285577 30-Jul-2019 09:55

dimsim:

scottydafreak:

WISP's are definitely the way to go now where you can get them, IMHO. +1 for AONET here too which we just had installed a week ago. RBI 4G on Spark had slowly got worse over the year and at times became unusable out past Paki Paki HB - they're obviously getting more congested. Tried to get Tay lor Broadband on site but they dropped the ball and stopped responding so we gave up on them and I've since heard similar feedback from others.

I reckon AONET have it right in that they won't install if the signal is not good enough - better than -75dBm I think. Doing so can affect other users sharing the tower too.

Our installer had told us we couldn't get it originally after a quick handheld survey, and then realized he wasn't pointing entirely in the right direction (in his defense the Te Mata hills were totally hidden by heavy morning fog) so in the end we got -60dBm which is great. In any case, I would think that any time they do install, you would easily get the 30Mb Down/10Mb Up max they cap you at given those signal strengths with the Ubiquiti Litebeam AC radios they use.

Now we get 30Mb down every time we've tested thus far, with no slow downs or drop-outs (one user uses VPN to work from home and would know about it). Kids aren't complaining about their youtube vids buffering any longer either.

And you can't beat the unlimited data cap for a mere $75 per month either. Money very well spent

Oh, and also pleasantly surprised by the coverage provided with the little Mikrotik wifi router RB951Ui-2HnD they used (we went for the more powerful offering they had); it's beaten every other more expensive router I've tried in this large house. No 5Ghz is a little peeve, but not really missed it so far. I will definitely look at using more Mikrotik APs in future.

You can beat kids as network outage detectors..

I should point out that in our politically correct day and age beating kids is not a good idea :)

Cyril

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