Is iBurst the right solution for you?
So you might be wondering what can you expect from Iburst, is it worth spending your money on? Well this should help make that decision earlier. First things first, what kind of speeds can you expect?
Tests were done with a iBurst UTD running through a Asus WL500g Router, an external antenna is pointed at the tower which is 10km away. The signal was optimized using Crash’s iConnect
The local Telkom speedtest will give us an idea of the maximum speeds possible;
To get an idea of international single thread speeds I went for the speakeasy test;
Maximum speeds can be reached on international download using multiple threads.
As you can see Iburst has no flaws when it comes to speed but things start to change when we look at latency, its definately not aimed at the gaming market. Ping times are excelent when compared to other wireless solutions but fall short when compared to wired options such as ADSL.
Local pings time are low but unstable;
As expected international pings are quite a bit slower and still unstable;
For gamers and online traders these pings are terrible however for everything else they will be good enough.
So now that you have read this far and are happy with the speeds what are the Pros & Cons?
Pros:
1) Its mobile, although not important for everybody it does carry some selling weight
2) Its fast, as you can see in the test results above.
3) Monthly fees are far cheaper than other 1Mbit solutions.
4) Once capped you will still receive 64K (unless WBS views you as an abuser)
5) They use UUNET & IS for international bandwidth which limits downtime on international links.
Cons:
1) Ports are shaped, anything besides http & mail is dropped to 64K
2) It takes a lot of tweaking to get it working perfectly
3) WBS customer service sucks
4) You are forced to use WBS smtp servers
5) The initial cost of the modem is high
There is no easy answer when it comes to choosing a broadband provider, in South Africa we have limited options and nothing faster than 1Mbit which makes things that much more complicated. You will be spending a large amount of your hard earned money and my honest advice is to get realistic comparisons of each product offering in relation to your circumstances and requirements. Hopefully this writeup will give you an idea of the good & bad when it comes to Iburst.