Thursday, February 23, 2012

Imagine WiMax review

I have purchased Imagine WiMax 4g wireless broadband here in ireland. Here is a review of the service and product.

I ordered the 8mb down 512kb up package including home phone porting and free local and national calls it is very competitivly priced at €45pm including VAT with installation of €99

Installation:
Installers were quick to arrive on site and gave prior notice of arrival. Unfortunately it is Imagines policy that they must drill a new hole in the wall for access to the inside of the house. This is a big downside in my opinion, i understand why they would want to have a new clean install but i already have access for satelite and analogue dishes so now i have a third hole in my wall. Having said that the installers were quick and efficient and cleaned up when they completed the install

Usage:

I do get the full 8mb down and get 290kb up and they connection is consistant

The phone works well through the VOIP system but is expensive for calls to mobiles

Imagine telephone support is quick and helpful

Ping time is worse than fixed line broadband averaging 120ms with multiple users online at once this causes issues and also cause issues for online gaming

Imagine will not give you access to their router that is installed onsite, this means you have to call imagine for any port forwarding that is needed.

Imagine say they don't throttle torrents but i have heard differing opinions

I have installed it on a customers site for business usage and imagine seem to have throttled the connection speed i assume they monitor the amount of IP connections. To resolve the problem of slow speed i am running the network through a WAN router connected to the WiMax router as this fools Wimax into believing there is a single IP connected, this has resolved the speed issue.

Overall I find the service ok but am not happy with the lack of control of the router or the throttling when multiple IP's are connected

If i come accroos any other issues i'll let you know

Best Anti-Virus and Anti-Malware software

These days you dont have to pay for good quality AV and Malware protection. Some of the best free products that i use are:

Microsoft Security Essentials (Anti-Virus)
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/products/security-essentials

Malwarebytes (Anti Malware )
www.malwarebytes.org

and diagnostics for finding what is running on your computer:

HiJackthis
http://www.trendmicro.co.uk/products/free-tools-and-services/