Chile Forum

here is where you can buy the range extender.

http://www.wei.cl/catalogue/product.htm ... hulin05404

Hope this helps!

El pescado wrote:here is where you can buy the range extender.

http://www.wei.cl/catalogue/product.htm ... hulin05404

Hope this helps!

El pescado, wish you'd been around a couple years ago-this is exactly what I was trying to find

No longer relevant

zer0nz wrote:that will only work for home based wifi, your 2.4 ghz or 5ghz, not for the 800,850,900,1900 mhz networks run by the cell phone companies

Your Right! Sorry....I forgot about them having the cellphone modem. Back to the drawing board! Dont worry ericalynn...this site only sees solutions..not problems. We´ll come up with something.

The software you are using to connect with the 3g modem SHOULD have some hidden signal strength meter. Do the USB extension trick and see what happens. If you can get a better signal then you are set.

If you have some kind of signal, but not strong enough, and you like your place, then you can trade your current USB dongle for one that has an external antenna jack. Some do, but they are covered up or not identified as such. I have two different EVDO USB modems and both have an external jack, for what it's worth. Once you have an external antenna jack you can either buy an antenna online, make your own, or hire a technically inclined person to build one for you.

You mention that you are using Entel. I noticed that Entel does sell the E176 USB modem. That modem does have an external antenna jack.

Fighting a similar Movistar/Telefonica battle here. Already have one of the dongle thingys but it soooooo sloowwww might as well be back in 2001...that is when it pulls in a signal at all. So we're trying to get a broadband/phone line...oh my, talk about sloooowwwww... Won't bore you with the gory details about trips back and forth and calls and excuses ("your husband's RUT is too high a number", "just go to a kiosk and they'll tell you what documents you need")...finally today I talked to someone who "seems" to know, and she said the problem (at least for us here in this particular local on this particular day) is that we only have a temporary cedula because we've been here less than a year...and we need a cedula indefinido ... which means as a foreigner you've been here at least a year and gone through the next set of tramites.

SO, in the meantime she suggested we find a friend who will loan us his/her name, RUT & carnet (but supposedly they don't have to sign anything) and we do it in their name, and she'll switch it back to our name when we get the permanent cedula...

TBC. But I really want to try that modem-in-a-pot thing. Sounds so tech-y

movistar has a good wireless internet or you can take entel

She did say that Telefonica would be out by the end of next week

Ericalynn - did you guys ever get connected?

We did, a solid 10 weeks and 4 separate applications (no one once said "Oh, I see you already have an application in..."). Turns out the first problem was that my husband's RUT is not a permanent one ...so we had to "borrow" a friend's RUT (Chilean, with good credit). That was no problem for anyone, in fact, the Movistar rep suggested it. Then the NEXT problem was actually getting a Technician out here to look at the situation. My husband hijacked one who turned up at his place of business, and sent him over. He was the key. Turns out they didn't have to extend the line, we're close to the main hub AND the people who lived here before us already had it all installed...but the folks at the Movistar office couldn't figure that out (I don't think it's necessarily THEM, it's just that records are quite poor here). So he put us in contact with the 4th Movistar rep, and things finally started looking up. THEN came the earthquake and nothing ... nothing.
Until last night, I got a call...and Today, Broadband Internet (and a phone line) were CONNECTED. WOO HOO! YES!!! The speed is blowin' my mind!

related ISP problems in Chile. I want to know which ISP screwed up:
topic4108.html

I would advise whoever wants Banda Ancha Movil to AVOID Vomistar at all costs. Ever since they unified their business units (land line telephony/cellular communications/internet provision/others) with this "Marca Unica" last November, it was nothing but problems.

There is a router in the GPRS infrastructure that is failing and they are unable to recognize that fact. I don't know if they simply refuse to run the necessary diagnostics or what, but there is an ongoing problem which is obvious to users. It shows all the symptoms of overheated equipment, which during the day fail and reboot constantly. Because the nighttime temperatures allow the equipment to function within expected parameters, ie, it works. Connectivity is excellent during this time. Daytime is horrible. The GPRS signal can be excellent, and the local (ie between your modem and the router in the tower) connection is perfect, the next hop constantly fails.

Your computer will diagnose this as an inability to communicate with the DNS server. Even if you configure for an Open DNS server (like Google has at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) you will still not be able to communicate with a DNS server, which indicates a lack of connectivity within the network.

>nslookup
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
Default Server: UnKnown
Address: 200.28.4.130 // DNS server for Vomistar.

> facebook.com
Server: UnKnown
Address: 200.28.4.130

DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
DNS request timed out.
timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out

Here is a traceroute to Google's DNS:
Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 2087 ms 1589 ms 1499 ms 10.178.165.174
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 * * * Request timed out.
5 2526 ms 3356 ms 2808 ms 10.0.250.46
6 * * * Request timed out.
7 * * * Request timed out.
8 392 ms 199 ms * Xe0-3-0-0-grtmiabr7.red.telefonica-wholesale.net.124.142.94.in-addr.arpa [94.142.124.10]

To explain what is going on here: the second hop shows 2087ms (over two seconds) and the fifth hop shows 3356ms (over 3 seconds). The addresses 10.178.165.174 and 10.0.250.46 are part of the INTERNAL private network that Movistar uses. Networks that use 10.x.x.x are unrouteable from the outside, so this is a security feature. BUT, the problem is that response time is ten to twenty times greater than what is acceptable. The hops where the request times-out are perfectly normal, indicating equipment which will not respond to traceroute requests. This behaviour is a result of security measures. In the old days, you would see each hop with its address and response time.

Tracing route to entelpcs.cl [200.111.151.42]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 3428 ms 1109 ms 559 ms 10.178.165.190
3 * * *

Here we have the same problem. Equipment failure.

Tracing route to facebook.com [69.63.181.11]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 3776 ms 278 ms 759 ms 10.178.165.158
3 * * * Request timed out.
4 173 ms 199 ms 209 ms 201.220.232.2

Anyone see a pattern here?

What does Movistar do about the problem? DENY DENY DENY DENY.

As has been suggested, you might want to get the cellphone signal extender from WEI.cl but whatever you do, avoid Vomistar like the plague. Get ENTEL or CLARO. ENTEL is probably your best bet. If you have VOMISTAR already, demand that they FIX their system.

Also, see RECLAMOS.CL for more info about these problems. Here's an explanation

But don't take my word for it.

One problem with that recommendation. I agree that movistar has gone down hill (relatively speaking, not like they ever were that good) since they re-branded themselves again (seems the marketing department runs the company). The problem is that neither Entel nor Claro has national coverage, even in good size cities and towns. I have not been able to get a claro signal in downtown Santiago at times, and forget about the other 3/4 of the country. Rural areas no way. Entel on the other hand has better coverage, but I would say it is still has about 1/2 half of movistar's towers across the country. You might pick up an occasional single tower in a rural area for Entel, while having full 5 bars at the same point for Movistar because they have two or more towers in the area. South of Puerto Mont, it is movistar or nothing outside any population zone with less than 50,000 people.

Honestly, don't trust any of them. The solution is your own catching name server. It reduces the dns misses and the time for lookups, especially for your most visited sites outside the country that are likly not going to be cached locally by anyone anyway. I catch about 5,000 dns names locally, and another 5,000 names at our office downtown. When one router fails to provide it, it tries our downtown office before going upstream for anything. Essentially something like 99% of our surfing is resolved locally (then out to our own private DNS server in the States or Google's public resolving name server). The mess with Chile being routed through China confirmed my total lack of trust in the DNS system in Chile.

I definitely would agree that at least 70% of the problems I have had with connectivity and ISPs in Chile almost always revolves around problems with their DNS servers in some way, shape, or form.

Akshully, a caching name server would not help at all in the situation described above. Even if the average user knew how to configure BIND, it would not overcome the routing problem. Those two routers at 10.178.x.x are the devices that reduce connectivity on the Movistar network, and it seems that the "techs" don't have the least idea of what is happening, let alone the "service" agents.

I do agree with you that a caching DNS server is a tremendous idea, especially if you run a cyber cafe (which I have in the past). Take a POC 386/486/Pentium with 32MB RAM and a small disk, with a custom GNU/Linux kernel, say Debian, run it headless (no monitor) and a minimum of services. With a bit of luck and a compatible USB interface, you could even use it for a print server. A pair of NICs (one for the outside, one for the inside) and you have a very inexpensive true firewall with a multitude of possibilities. Have resolv.conf point to a few reliable name servers and you are in business. Of course, a properly configured DHCP daemon will go a long way in maintaining your internal network. My real-world solution at one time had a 2MB 486 with NO disk, running off a 1.7MB floppy. What an amazing recycling of obsolete hardware. This can also be done with an old CDROM drive instead. See floppyfw for more on that project.