Cyprus-Forum.com

[raymanuva]

dammit WHAT was i thinking!!!!! i never meant NETWAY.... i meant WAVESPEED....

[falconcy]

All I'm seeing is HYPE, pure unadulterated HYPE.

There is not one provider in Cyprus who has yet managed to deliver the speeds promised by ADSL, let alone ADSL2+ ....ADSL speeds are up to 8Mbit, I haven't seen anybody offering above this yet despite all the HYPE.

I'm currently using CytaNet's Business Lite Package and the QoS is OK, the speed is OK (~160k/sec on a 1 Mbit line) If you are not getting the speed, call them and ask them to check the line, tell them it is as slow as a weasel in treacle. A word of warning, don't have your ear too near the headset, the noise it can make when they clear the line can be a bit loud.

Cyta will be introducing SDSL services soon as well as higher speed packages. I'm guessing they will be launched around May when the State Fair is on.

In all honesty, the liberalization of the telecoms sector in Cyprus has delivered very little. If anything it has had the reverse effect and actually held back progress with the likes of OTE and Primetel crying foul when Cyta has wanted to offer better services.

Home packages will always suck, regardless of provider, mainly due to the contention ratio's (usually around 50:1) and traffic shaping which is always going to hit the heavy users hardest. If you do P2P, then you will fall foul of the traffic shaping pretty quickly.

Also be aware that with a 1Mbit connection and a 128k uplink, you will soon run into problems with P2P, not so much because your ISP sucks, but more that your uplink is saturated, restrict the sharing of your files and you'll find that things will get better. Try uploading a big file to somebody and then try to download simultaneously and you'll see what I mean. It will reduce your speed, often quite dramatically. Try and do your P2P when you are not at the computer and don't do it in the background.

The business packages have lower contention ratio's, normally around 10:1 and much less restrictive traffic shaping. At the end of the day, you do get what you pay for. What does piss me off is the fact that Cyta offer a business package in Hungary for around half of what I pay and they get 8Mbit. Why can't they offer it in Cyprus? Oh, I forgot, I already answered it, the other providers would scream foul to the regulator and get it stopped.

Satellite may seem like an option if you cannot get terrestrial, but trust me, it is not. I have worked in the industry and can assure you that the traffic shaping on home type packages is even more restrictive than terrestrial services. You can either get speed or capacity, but never both. Either way it will work out pretty expensive, only use it if you are desperate.

When you do check out another provider, make sure they do not have restrictive quota's. Giving you a faster connection is one thing, but restricting how much you can download kinda defeats the object. I have bad memories of Thunderworx bitching because I downloaded more than 4 gigs in a month on a 128k ISDN and talking about charging me extra for it. Primetel is just another manifestation of Thunderworx, so beware. Most of their sales staff were not around at that time and don't know what was going on. They will also not be totally honest about it, but it is there tucked away in the small print somewhere.

Another issue you need to take on board is the routing. Cyta's routing is actually not too bad with quite good EU and US connectivity. The only bitch I have with them is that their latency (ping times) can be a bit on the high side once you get off the island.

Cyprus has a lot of catching up to do, what with the low number of internet users when compared with the rest of Europe and also the slow and expensive connectivity. This year will see a few changes, especially when Cyta up the stakes on the speed side of things.