Unifi at 2 and a Half Storey House

We just gotten ourselves into the so-called fast lane, virtually - the high speed broadband service, by Telekom as well. My streamyx is still on. Unifi is in together with streamyx - at least until they start charging the service or until we can decide which one we want to keep.

The installation, because it was the first time in our area and our house being the first one in the area getting this service, took hours to complete. They need to do a little bit of hacking at our ground floor to kind of connect to the Telekom port outside. Inside the house, it's just using the electrical line to distribute the signal (if I got this right). The team started work at 10am and didn't finish until 8pm! So many unforeseen and technical issues. They still have to come back another day to fix the IPTV issues.

The premise is 5MB with Unifi compared to 512kb that I am having with streamyx. But for a house as tall as ours: (it is supposed to 2.5 but it is almost like 3.5 storey with its high ceiling and all), was a challenge to get the performance at its peak. So, the main port is plugged in at the lowest end of the house, and then we have the adapter port with wifi router is placed at the boys room at the back side of the house on floor 3.

Verdict: Signal was mediocre and speed was acceptable. Speed test showed somewhere around 2.6-3K MB from the my bedroom - also at floor 3 and distributed evenly within the room on the top floor. If we put the adapter and router at the living room on 2nd floor, the signal is stronger and speed wise, you can get up to 4.8k MB for download speed and more than 5K MB for upload speed. That was awesome actually. The downside of it, signal and speed was much lower than streamyx at the boys and girls room at the back of 3rd floor. So, to be fair, the secondary port (adapter) was placed backed at the boys room. Sacrifice the speed a bit, it was still good though comparatively. Friends, when I watch the online korean drama at any channel, it is still real-time. I don't have to wait for it to load for hours. Just at a click, after few seconds the movie will run without a glitch. Of course, if the server hosting it is also ok-la. Youtube has an even better response. Downloading thing is very much time efficient.

So, the next thing to figure out is how we can place the secondary port to the 2nd floor, which is closer to the main line at the ground floor and have the router at 2nd floor talk to another signal device (which I have no idea what that is - all depends on dear hubby) so that it can boost the signals and performance at the 3rd floor. Oh, the service comes with IPTV. But so far, we haven't used that one yet. They hasn't resolve the small screen issues, plus it has to go with the router, so, that's troublesome. Astro is still the preferred provider for now. I think, higher chances, actually definitely we will stick with Unifi.

I am thankful that at least we have high speed services for the consumers now, even though at limited areas. I used to bitch about even China has high speed broadband - a friend of mine says at 8MB lagi. It was a good move the government made to promote and make this happen. I hope Telekom will not mess this up and continue to provide services with quality. I am glad that Shah Alam is one of the 4 areas that they (Unifi) started to cover. And I am glad that I live in Shah Alam to see that happen:) ha ha.. soon, I will say goodbye to streamyx - tak payah nyanyi potong lagi... the fiber optic is on!