unclbill3108

Hi Explornet Canopy Customers.

I started this forum a while ago and for the last year, I have NOT been an explornet customer. However I do have some suggestions for those of you who are still using canopy for your high speed connection.

About 3 years ago a second canopy tower was installed 31/2 miles from my home. The old tower was over 15 miles away however since I live on the water I had direct line of sight to this tower as well as the new tower. The new tower was so much more powerful it would not allow me to connect at all with the old tower. So I got up on the roof and moved the dish to pick up the new tower. I phoned explornet afterwards to make sure that they would send the local installer (Decastris in Belleville) to check the new alignment. They were never sent.

For the next 2 years I lived with 500 k connections (I had been paying for 3 M), dropped service and really poor performance of my Vonage VOIP. The coup de grace occurred last August. I sent a paper for publication to an American company and got back a rather cryptic response that the paper made no sense and was wrong with its calculations. I sent it several times with the same response from the publisher. Finally I asked the publisher to send it back to me. The original 22 MB paper had been chopped by explornet to just 10 Megs. The paper did not make any sense to me either and I wrote the thing! I did many download tests from testmy.net and provided the data to explornet. They WANTED ME TO PROVE TO THEM THAT IT WAS THEIR SYSTEM THAT WAS AT FAULT!. I had had enough of explornet. What started our as a really good service company had degraded to a sick joke.

Serendipity intervened. My cell phone provider asked if I wanted to try their air card. Since I only have laptops, I thought this might be a good option. I got the air card and sent the paper with this and this time it went through. I then disconnected my explornet canopy service. I have not looked back.

What did I learn from this. DO NOT CALL EXPLORNET IF YOU HAVE A PROBLEM. Keep the phone number for your local system supplier and call them. They make a percentage from your monthly fees, so they may be more than happy to help you if you have a problem especially if you say that you are considering disconnecting your explornet canopy service.

I have learned much from this, Grasshopper and I hope that it will help all those who are still struggling with canopy problems.

I wish to state now that I am really sorry I had endorsed the explornet canopy option in this forum way back. I apologise to all of you for this.

Bill

Hi everyone

It has been a while since I posted on this site but the Windows Vista question is a good place to start again.

I suspect that M.S. has fixed many of the problems associated with Explorer that were identified with XP when they introduced the Vista platform, but I understand that this new system will not run many of the old programs that run well in XP. I know I have several expensive programs that I have purchased over the past several years that are designed for the NT platform that Windows XP runs in. Therefore I am reluctant to switch to the new platform for fear that these programs will not run. Perhaps there is some individual out there who can fill us in on the compatability issues associated with the conversion to Vista from NT.

With the introduction of new programs that run only in the Vista environment, I may partition my drive to run both XP and Vista down the road.

However for those of you who just don't want to change, I don't think that you will have to worry about M.S. support of your XP. The company I work for has been running NT for 12 years now and their programming is geared toward this architecture. They are just now upgrading to Windows XP from Windows 2000. With the thousands of computers in this company, there will be lots of support for XP for many years to come. I suspect that must commercial and industrial giants are running in the NT setup and will still run XP. Our company is not the only one.

Thanks to the guys at testmy for this forum

Bill

Maverick

After I posted to you I went to the main site to do a download test. This is

the result.

Download Stats ..:::

Download Connection is:: 11151 Kbps about 11.15 Mbps (tested with 12160 kB)

Download Speed is:: 1361 kB/s

Tested From:: https://testmy.net/ (Server 1)

Test Time:: 2006/09/14 - 7:49am

Bottom Line:: 194X faster than 56K 1MB Download in 0.75 sec

Tested from a 12160 kB file and took 8.933 seconds to complete

Download Diagnosis:: Awesome! 20% + : 49.04 % faster than the average for host (aol.com)

D-Validation Link:: https://testmy.net/stats/id-MTGKF32OZ

User Agent:: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 9.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; HbTools 4.8.0) [!]

the result.

Not too shabby for 3 mbs bandwidth. However it never lasts too long so I try to take advantage of it.

Bill

Hi Maverick

The only consistant loss in connection speed that I have experienced has been due to additions that I have made to my network. However, I do not get really consistant speed with this system like I did when I was on cable. As said elsewhere in this forum, I get anywhere from 1600 to 2400 kbs download speed at any given time.

Welcome to testmy Maverick.

Bill

Well bricklin. congrats. looks like you have this one licked. good luck to you when your ip connect number changes (if you have a floating ip). i usually get everything back in order by turning everything (including both modems) off and on. it usually takes several minutes to reaquire the ip.

Hah The Plot Thickens

The subscribers to xplornet canopy in my are have had a large circular dish installed on their homes. There is a large rectangular paddle like receiver in the focus.

When Decastris installed my dish they installed a small oval dish with a small modem in the focus. When questioned, the installer said that because of my location, I could use the high frequency receiver since the transmit tower (which is 10 miles away) has direct line of sight with no obstructions. It seems that the other subscribers have trees obstructing their view of the tower and the high frequency modem would not work.

The installer said that my service would have much more consistant speed because of this and continued use has proven him right.

The upshot is this. If You can see the lights of the tower where your transmitter is located, you might be better served with this updated receiver.

I wish to refute your aspersions cast at AOL. Despite having signed on with another ISP (Xplornet.ca) which has provided me with high speed access to the internet, I have maintained my account with AOL. For two years AOL has provided me with safe access to the internet, free from virus and ad-ware due to their antvirus software. My last isp (sympatico by bell telephone in Canada) had many problems including a probable dialer worm which ended billing me for almost $1000  billed to my phone (also Bell Canada) for calls that they claim my computer made to a small island in the Pacific.

AOL now provides my computers with continued protection which they include with their service. I have nothing but praise for this company.

Bill

Bricklin

I am afraid that I do not share your woes with explornet. Soon after my original post in this forum, my connection speed miraculously increased to almost its original speed. I am now back up to 1.8 meg download speed with a wireless modem and Vonage on my system. Both the wireless modem and vanage have proven to reduce bandwidth which we mustexpect. I have nothing to complain about with Xplornet Vonage or my local isp Decartes Communications in Belleville. I have had nothing but help from all 3 with my problem.

Your comm. problems may have something to do with your wireless modem which Vonage provided. The setup for this unit seems to be no ones problem lol. Decartis has been a great help with my setup and i thank them for that.

Bill

I get the same speeds when the phone is being used or not being used.

Bill

I have added Vonage Voip to a 3 Meg Motorola canopy wireless service provided by xplornet Canada. This has dropped my modem bandwidth by 2/3 (max. 800 K and min. 500K) as compared to the service I had before I installed Vonage. Does anyone else have this problem.

Bill

Mike

I believe my change in speed is due to the installation of Vonage Voip phone service. Before I had a Vonage wireless modem for my phone and internet, I had two other wireless modems which exhibited slow connect problems. My Trend net modem never did work properly despite repeated attempts to contact their service people. It ran only at around 60 k connect speed. My D-links wireless modem worked much better (up to 2.7 M on a 3M line) but only after the local isp for xplornet (Decastris in Belleville) came and set it up for me. My problem (I believe) is now due to my Vonage phone connection and the Linksys wireless modem which is in my 3 meg bandwidth.

In short, if you are not getting the speed that you expect you should talk to xlornet. Even though they say that they are not responsible for anything past the modem, they were able, after several calls, to set up my old D-link wireless to perform at optimum and the ONLY problem that I am having now is probably due to my Voice Over phone. Of course if I were to pay for more bandwdth It would probably improve my problem.

Hope this has been of some help.

Bill

I recently became an xplornet client (wireless canopy) and was extremely pleased with the bandwidth available. I enrolled at 3 meg and regularly tested at 2.3 meg or so through my wireless modem. I have added vonage Voip phone service to my connectionand have noted a 2/3 reduction in my connect speed even when the phone is not in use. I am wondering if this is a normal condition with voice over service.

Thank you Bill