Questions about my WISP service

It appears that your connection might need some help but you need to provide a little more info first.

What kind of connection is your PC using to connect to the box provided by your WISP? Is it using a Ethernet cable or wireless?

Do you have a WISP provided radio? Does it have it's own router included inside the same box as the radio?

What brand/model of radio and or router did your WISP install?

What is supplying the power to the radio? Most modern installations use Power over Ethernet or POE which means something at the home end of the Ethernet cable going up to the antenna is supplying the power. Sometimes it's a power injector module and a small transformer, others can get the power from a router port.

If you can log into the radio/router your WISP installed what are the statistics of the connection, signal to noise, received signal and the like. You may need to bypass your Cradlepoint router and hook a PC directly to the WISP Ethernet feed in order to gain access to radio/router provided by your WISP to get the statistics for your radio link.

You might also post your question in the forum located at

With luck someone who also is a WISP customer of your carrier will be able to assist you either here or at the above forum.

My computer is wired to the cradlepoint router. I do have wireless capability for my netbook.

Yes

No.

It's Motorola. I think it's "Canopy" or somthing like that. I don't know the model number, it it's important I can try to get the number but I have to go on the roof for that.

It does use POE. There is a small transformer in my computer room connected to the ethernet cable, Wiring is ethernet from the radio on my TV mast, to my room where that cable plugs into the transformer, then ethernet out of that box to my router, from there several connections to computers and wireless.

BTW, my tests were done with only my main computer using internet. I also tried bypassing the router by connecting my computer directly to the ethernet cable from the transformer, and got similar results.

I can try that later today possibly, and see if I can collect that information. What do I have to do to find that? I'm using Win 7 Pro on my main computer... but have Win 7 Home on my wife's and XP on another if it's easier to find on one of those. I also have Ubunto available, but don't really know much about it.

Good to know.... I might try that later.

That would be ideal. My neighbor does have the same WISP provider, but isn't really any help tech-wise. However he doesn't seem to have the same problem in viewing video.

The stats should be menu item(s) once you are logged into the radio/router up on the roof, provided your WISP even allows customers to contact those menu(s), as in having the Motorola's access password and such. Any modern browser should be able to access the menu items provided you have the proper username/password for the device.

If it was me I'd be calling the WISP help desk and have them check out your link from their end to start with since you are not seeing the link speeds you are expecting. They should be able remotely connect to your unit on the roof and test from there back to them. If all else fails request an on-site visit to see what is happening.

Request they bring their own laptop and test so that they can eliminate your internal home stuff, including your router. Many times these problems are caused by an alignment problem between the home receiver and the transmitter hub, but it might just be a setting in the box that they need to change to accommodate your situation.

From the numbers you posted, I would expect streaming video to be just fine. However, not all streaming video is created equal. Are you watching highly compressed H.264 or MPEG4, or are you watching uncompressed video? What application are you using to watch video? A web browser, VLC, Winamp, WMP, etc?? Try to be specific.

No. It's typical of Canopy wireless. Canopy uses a polling system, which polls the client radios for traffic. The result is short bursts of extremely fast traffic, with long delays in between. Comcast does the same thing with their 1MBit/sec cable modem service, where you get a 1 second burst of 10Mbits/sec followed by 10 seconds of nothing. If you don't have your unspecified video media player set with an adequately long buffer, it's going to stall.

Dunno. You didn't mention anything about your hardware.

Dunno. Let's test. Find a nice fast computah and plug it into an ethernet switch. Do the same with the computah you're using to watch the videos. Unplug the Canopy wireless thing.

Download and install JPerf on both machines.

Setup the nice fast computah as a server and your video computah as the test client. Run a benchmark, initially using TCP (not UDP). Are you getting decent performance? For a 100BaseT connection, you should see at least 60Mbits/sec. With some tuning, you can get it as high as

Now, try it with UDP, which is what all streaming video uses. It should be slightly faster due to less overhead. Some buffer tuning in Jperf may be needed.

If you download speeds is slow, erratic, unstable, or insane, you probably have a computah or configuration problem. If the speed seems fairly normal for an ethernet connection, it's not the computah.

Next, try watching a video with this arrangement. Put an MPEG4 video (or whatever you can find) on the nice fast computah server. Setup sharing, and watch the video on your computah. It should be just fine. If not, there's a problem with the computah or setup.

Incidentally, whenever I get the same complaint from my customers, it almost invariable is caused by additional traffic running in the background. Things like file sharing programs (BitTorrent), Windoze Update, and the kids in the house, are suitable culprits.

That's a good indication that it's not the computah or setup. Still I think it might be interesting to verify it. For example, it might be something as simple as a miswired or broken ethernet cable to the Canopy radio.

My old WISP, Silicon Valley, was $50/month for 1 Mbps symmetric.

My new WISP, same place, is $50/month for 2 Mbps down & 0.5 Mbps up.

You have a much better deal in Texas!

BTW, I use

By way of example, here's what I do to check my radio status:

1. I bring up a browser and type the address of my radio connected to my antenna
2. In 'my' case, for a Ubiquiti Bullet M2 radio, that default address is http://192.168.1.20
3. That brings up the login screen, where I type the default login (ubnt) and the default password (ubnt).
4. Then, as stated above, there are menus which show my signal status, particularly the "main" menu (for Ubiquiti equipment)
5. For example, this is a screenshot of my 'main' tab just now.
   formatting link
   I am not a WISP expert, but I'll try to sound like one to suggest you look first at your signal strength (notice mine is excellent, at -66 dBm) and at your CCQs (notice my transmit CCQs are only 84%, which isn't all that great).

Also notice my transmit:receive ratio is 1 Mbps to 11 Mbps (I'm not sure 'why' my TX is only 1 Mbps as I just noticed that discrepancy now).

This is, I believe, the kind of information GlowingBlueMist is asking you to find out if you can.

Either because that's the tier you're on, or because of the signal you're getting. Note that the M series can speak a proprietary TDMA protocol which is probably what your WISP is using.