Feb 14 2008
Evaluating Butterfly
As part of my search for a new provider, I tried a wifi isp(lets call them WISP) but that turned out to be another nasty experience on its own since I happen to be 1 kilometre away from their base station. I had invested in an outdoor access point which is sitting on a pole on the roof and it had been mostly idle till now.
The access point is a level one wap-1001. For some time I couldn’t get onto the Butterfly network despite their mast being ~70m away and in direct line of site. Someone at WISP had tried an unclean firmware upgrade on the wap-1001 which brought with it all sorts of strange behaviour. Downgrading to version 1.70 sorted things out. I can only use Butterfly if I have the ap in wireless client mode. Wireless repeater doesn’t work at all.
I’m sharing the connection on my network through a debian linux box with two network cards. One card is connected directly to ap, and the other to my lan. I have shorewall on the box and just plain old nat.
Firing up my browser takes me to the butterfly portal page where I’m logging in using scratch cards. 200/- gives me 12 hours of access. There are options for isp accounts and I’ve been told kdn are offering monthly subscription for 2,900/-.
Initial impressions are good. Speeds are in the 128Kb/s range, no page timeouts, ssh to servers in the uk is good and no choppy sounds on skype(actually the skype call quality is fantastic).
One problem I’ve identified so far is that I’m unable to sustain downloads for long. For instance, when pulling down a 3meg file, I get a timeout after a couple of minutes. I’m not sure whether this is a retarded AFOL-like move or just an artefact of the wifi.
I’ll like to evaluate it for a couple of weeks then post a more comprehensive review but so far, I can give it a thumbs up.
[...] See part one here. [...]
[...] See part one & two. [...]
I’m interested in finding out how Butterfly works as far as charging is concerned.
When you get to the login page after connecting to a hotspot and enter the scratch card or ISP account details, does KDN charge you according to the duration of connectivity or data traffic? Safaricom charge 12/- per Mb.
And as soon as you connect to the hotspot, the AP automatically redirects to a login page and as soon as you enter some credentials, you are automatically directed to the internet!
Is there a logout button that signals butterfly to disconnect you and hence stop charging?
So my view of how this works is as so:
WiFi client ——->AP——>ScratchcardDB——>validation——>if Ok—–>direct to google—–>start charging account
Hey Bernard,
Once you enter the scratch card(they’re not really safcom/celtel like scratchcards but plain old print outs with access codes) details there is no way to logout. So if I load up the 200/- 12hr access code, I have access for the next 12hrs only…
Does this mean that within those 12 hours , i can download data as much as I like or is there a limit on Mb or the bandwidth?
I haven’t tried really big downloads yet (p2p) but they say on their site that there are no download limits. I’ve been able to do a 200MB system update easy.
Thank bgm.
I tried to have a similar setting in my office where my colleagues will connect using there laptops to the wlan but first they should enter their logins which they enter to a default page.
The default page