WiMax: yea or nay?

January 7, 2009 12:04 PM

Looking into potentially getting WiMax, specifically from a company called TowerStream, at my place of work. Has anyone here used a commercial WiMax provider (TowerStream or otherwise)?

Our primary goal is getting better upstream (we currently have 768Kb); all asymetric solutions cap out around 2Mb, and symmetric solutions are typically very expensive. We can get a WiMax symmetric connection of 8Mb for almost half the $/Mb of an equivalent bonded T1 or partial T3, which is why it's pretty darn appealing.

Trying to find anecdotes and/or potential pitfalls with migrating to WiMax providers, as I don't see any obvious drawbacks just by thinking about it (weather: apparently not a problem; connectivity: multiple potential antennas are available in our area so we get decent redundancy; otherwise comparable to T1/T3 in terms of SLAs, etc).

posted by cyrusdogstar to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I'm 7 days into home wimax usage with Clear. So far, all is pretty much wellish. The only things I could contribute besides that is make sure you'll be getting a static IP and confirm that the wimax modem will play nicely with your current LAN-side infrastructure.

With Clear all DHCP IPs are NAT'd. I presume that it would be a big problem if you weren't addressable from the open Internet.

Also, the home modem I got (Motorola CPEi-150 I think) doesn't seem to be able to put itself into bridging mode, so I had really re-jigger my home network to work around this.
posted by turbodog at 1:13 PM on January 7, 2009

There's a towerstream forum at dslreports.com but its pretty empty. There are a couple of reviews up already. You should also ask your question in their Wireless ISP forum.
posted by damn dirty ape at 1:21 PM on January 7, 2009

We used them (Towerstream) where I used to work (last there about two months ago). The 8Mb symmetrical was the nicest part, however it was spotty. It would go out I'd say once every couple days. My boss spent hours and hours with them on the phone, and was always very aggravated with them, so I'd say they didn't have very good customer support. Also, those promised speeds never seemed to be constant, it would regularly get very very slow (with only about 10 people on the connection).
posted by miscbuff at 1:32 PM on January 7, 2009

Response by poster: turbodog -- The ISP we're looking at is for businesses only so no worries about NAT or dynamic IPs or anything :) I verified everything I could think of while talking with them a short while back. Thanks though!

damn dirty ape -- yea, we already found the small handful of reviews there, which is why I'm trying to poke around for more info. I'll check out their forum, though, thanks for the idea.

miscbuff -- Thanks for the anecdote, good to know. What market was that in, New York or elsewhere? Do you have any idea if that setup was a rooftop sled or an inside (window mounted or whatever) antenna?
posted by cyrusdogstar at 3:43 PM on January 7, 2009

Bit of a late reply, but it was New York (Canal Street) and it was a what looked like a small satellite dish mounted to the building just outside the window.
posted by miscbuff at 12:27 AM on January 24, 2009