If anyone here needs help setting up and finding good spots or fixing 
dead zones with their USI service please feel free to let me know. I can 
swing by, if you wish, to see what can be done. My day job involves 
doing a lot of PTP, PTPP, Mesh, AP/CPE (which is what the USI 
configuration is - CPE = customer premise equipment or your 
transceiver), etc.

Thanks,

Ryan

On 1/17/2013 11:56 AM, Erik Mitchell wrote:
> I used USI Wireless at my old house and was very happy with it. I had
> one of their "modems" with an external antenna, and always had strong
> signal strength. I had clear line of site to a node, however, and
> placed my antenna in a window so there was nothing obstructing the
> signal.
>
> One thing they mentioned at some point was that laptops typically are
> not transmitting as strong a signal as their stations, and this can
> lead to problems. Your laptop can receive their signal just fine, but
> sending packets is a different story, and your signal strength
> indicator doesn't show this.
>
> -Erik
>
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 11:47 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have CenturyLink service, again.  It was down for awhile and it was not
>> easy to get service when I had to deal with their call center in the
>> Philippines.  They seemed like really nice people and they spoke great
>> English, but when they ordered a service for me, it never happened. They'd
>> give me a tracking number, but the system would still have no record of my
>> order and no record of the tracking number!
>>
>> Anyway, while I had no CenturyLink, I used the USI Wireless internet system.
>> They charge $10 for one day, which is ridiculous, but they charge $18 for a
>> week and $25 for a month, or $20 for monthly recurring.
>>
>> I had huge problems with lots of disconnects and dropped packets, but I was
>> grateful that I could get something while my CenturyLink was down. When I
>> first signed up, I chose this WiFi connection...
>>
>> City of Minneapolis Public WiFi
>>
>> ...opened the web browser, got a username/password for login and ordered a
>> week of service.  After a few days, I realized that I had other options like
>> these:
>>
>> usiw_secure
>> usiw_secure_S06N139T1
>> USI Wireless
>> usiw_secure_S01N129T1
>>
>> I used usiw_secure with the username/password established above, and that
>> made things work a *lot* better.  I had been getting highly variable ping
>> times to my office machine, lots of dropped packets, lots of stalling of VNC
>> connection, but now I was getting 30 ms pings, good consistency, no dropped
>> packets, smooth operation of VNC -- everything better.  Now it could be some
>> confounder like the time of day, but I'm pretty convinced that the
>> usiw_secure just worked tons better.  A speed test showed 1 Mbps both up and
>> down.
>>
>> Another thing -- I tried to figure out where in my home I had the best
>> reception.  So I started pinging my office machine, once per second (the USI
>> WiFi router didn't respond to ping) and I walked around the house looking
>> for patterns.  It seemed best toward the southwest of my house. Is there a
>> better way to test signal strength?  Is there a better way to improve
>> reception?
>>
>> Anyway, thought I'd put that out there in case it helps anyone, but I also
>> wanted to hear if anyone has any ideas on how to deal better with some of
>> these issues.  Thanks.
>>
>> Mike
>> _______________________________________________
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>> tclug-list at mn-linux.org
>> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list
>
>