Review of Ilox install in SW San Antonio

Install was great. Expect person to show up late my noon appointment was closer to two. They get backed up sometimes. His spanglish was great and he was a pro. Last step was showing me on his laptop the speed directly connected to the Ilox modem of 290. My WIFI running on 5000 band line of sight to modem was 50 to 100. Testing using normal 2400 WIFI was 40 to 60. WIFI results using my high power Access point with external antennae. To be frank the Ilox supplied WIFI is pretty low power and I tuned it off to avoid WIFI contention for bandwidth (button on side of FiberHome modem). The only negative other than the public IP issue. He was neat in running his wires, polite, clean and what you want in a tech installer. I tipped him 100 pesos as these folks work hard going up and down ladders avoiding my electric fence and such. This was a move from Los Salvias in Ajijic to the south east corner of San Antonio. FYI you move your own modem.

Good luck folks!!

I would like to add unless you are very close to the Ilox modem I would purchase a high quality Access point with SMA connectors for external Antennae. Ilox modem WIFI just does not go thru walls at all. It is also nice to move with an access point as you don't have to input all those numbers as nothing changes you just move the access point and connect it with wire to new modem.

I believe Ilox supplies a private IP address which messes with some streaming services. I requested mine to be changed to a public IP which solved some issues I was having testing a friends firestick. They changed it within a few hours of my email request.

If you move more than 6 feet away from an iLox ONT (modem), the WiFi drops substantially, so Zed's recommendation is an important one. Try as I might, I cannot even really find any specs on either of their modems that details the WiFi standard. I was able to discern that they use b/g/n, I believe. (n causes two adjacent wireless bands to link together for better throughput, but if your laptop doesn't have the n standard, it will revert to g, which is not as good.)

Oh my! Lots of technical talk here. For those of us who do not speak the language, I have the $599 package from Telmex which I would dearly love to get rid of since my internet goes down for days about every other week. What can I get from iLox for about the same money that will give me just phone and internet? What will the internet speed be? Is it less likely to go down? Can I keep my phone number? Are there any catches?

$599 will get you the 100mbps service which includes the phone. Ilox can port over your current Telmex phone number. Mine has only gone down 3 times and was prompty attended to. Way better than TelMex.

Be warned that, if you have a power failure, you will have no phone if you port your Telmex number over to iLox. That is why I will be keeping my landline with Telmex and getting a new number from iLox. I can plug an old fashioned idiot phone into the Telmex wall connection and dial if necessary. I also have a cell phone but I like options in disasters, lots of options. YMMV.

I live in Riberas a few blocks below Mirasol and was a prepay. Ilox called me last Friday and said they could install Saturday between 11 and 1. They called Saturday a little before 1 and said the installer had vehicle problems and so rescheduled for Monday.

The technician came on Monday and did the install. After installation the modem would not connect to the system and after a number of calls the technician said they would need to investigate further and someone would call me the next day. I emailed noc@mail.ilox.mx later the next day (Tue) after no call and they replied back within 10 min. and said they were still verifying the problem. On Wed. morning they did call and asked me to email them a photo of the sticker on the bottom of the modem which I did. Thursday morning they called again and said to try connecting. I was online!

Since then I have been getting a fairly consistent 90mbs down and 20mbs up both wired and wireless. That wireless speed is in the same room as the modem. Moving to another room which has to go through 2 walls drops to about 30mbs. I put a fairly old Apple airPort access point in that other room and connected wired to the Ilox modem, and connecting to it I still get 90mbs down and 20 up. I tried a very old Lynksys access point that I have and it will only do 20mbs down and up is the same. So I think it is so old that is its max capacity.

All in all I am very happy with the service now that I'm connected. Yes, it took a long time and things haven't always been clear, but dealing with ILox tech support has been great! Can you email Telmex? Nope! Will Telmex ever call you back? Never did me! All you can do is call the 800 number, go through the same steps to prove that your modem is plugged in and not getting a Telmex signal and/or dead, and then wait usually for 3 days. I don't know what the issue was, but they did follow through and were responsive.

I was able to upload many gigs of data to my cloud storage in a short amount of time. I had been putting this off for a very long time because at .5mbs it would take forever and with big uploads like that it would pretty much lock everything else out and any other browsing or anything would pretty much be at a standstill.

Time will tell of course and so I'm not canceling my Telmex quite yet, but if you are waiting to be connected I suggest that you try to stay patient. I was getting a bit impatient too, but glad I didn't cancel my contract!

Thanks to Canuck Bob and Oasis Cloud for nice clear and simple description.

ferret wrote:Be warned that, if you have a power failure, you will have no phone if you port your Telmex number over to iLox. That is why I will be keeping my landline with Telmex and getting a new number from iLox. I can plug an old fashioned idiot phone into the Telmex wall connection and dial if necessary. I also have a cell phone but I like options in disasters, lots of options. YMMV.

Well, instead of paying Telmex every month, why wouldn't a person just buy a decent UPS Unit?  The cost of a UPS adequate for powering a modem (and phone) is about $50USD.  It should give you about 30 minutes to an hour of power (modems and phones are very low watt devices).  Also, you could charge a dead cell phone and make your calls.

I don't know how much you pay for Telmex, but I'm guessing that it's more than $50 per year.

Yeah, right. And when the power is out for 12 hours, you suggest I do what?
How long have you lived here full time?

Well you could plug your modem into the UPS, make your phone call then unplug. It would last a whole day if used in short bursts. My power has been out maybe 10 times and no longer than 6 hours in 8 years. Usually brownouts more than total outage.

LOL. Wait until CFE upgrades the poles and the lines. Last summer was hell on wheels in Riberas with at least 7 days without any electricity for exactly 12 hours.
I like back ups to my back ups.
Cell phone with battery pack
Idiot phone to use with Telmex
4 rechargeable lights
1 rechargeable fan
1 Jackery recharging unit
4 large ice packs in the freezer
1 Tinaco which provides water
1 manual release on garage door

I am always prepared.

ferret wrote:LOL. Wait until CFE upgrades the poles and the lines. Last summer was hell on wheels in Riberas with at least 7 days without any electricity for exactly 12 hours.
I like back ups to my back ups.
Cell phone with battery pack
Idiot phone to use with Telmex
4 rechargeable lights
1 rechargeable fan
1 Jackery recharging unit
4 large ice packs in the freezer
1 Tinaco which provides water
1 manual release on garage door

I am always prepared.

Have the major upgrades CFE did about a month ago helped stabilize service?

SunFan

Things have been pretty stabilized in Riberas for a year now. Only three shorter (less than 3 hours) outages since last summer. Excellent, but I'm not letting my guard down.
edited to add: and there was a long one resulting from a bad storm when I was away from Sept 28th until Oct 12th... it appears to have affected Sept. 29th and 30th by the look of my online Solar report.

The great thing about the CFE work done, which continues all over, is not only that outages are fewer, but they are easier to repair, so it takes less time.

This all started a couple of years ago in Riberas, when I took photos of my CFE pole in to HQ. It was literally falling apart: crumbling cement, rebar sticking out all over. That got replaced immediately, as someone realized what a danger it was... to their workers, not to us poor plebs. Then all at once a renewal project began in earnest, after they'd surveyed the other poles in the area.

I imagine in Ajijic centro or Chapala centro with all the businesses they would have a different plan as these places can't be without power during business hours for that long.