Blame It On Barak
Blame it on Barak. Not the former Prime Minister of Israel, but the ISP. As I noted earlier after we had switched ISPs we began to experience packet loss and weren't able to stream the slingbox. We knew the problem was with our ISP because friends on different ISPs were able to stream the slingbox without problem.
After a couple of rounds of tech support we finally solved the problem. Barak assumes that most of its customers are Israeli and thus surf Israeli sites (in Hebrew) or occasionally some European sites. As such, the default account is optimized for accessing Israeli and European sites. Reaching US sites takes slightly longer as the request takes a more circuitous route. If people are surfing in Israel and Europe it doesn't really hurt, and Barak doesn't have to pay for more direct routes to the US. In our case, however, it did make a significant difference both for the slingbox and our normal web usage. Once tech support recognized the problem they were able to set us up on a specialized account optimized to the US. If you are having problems with Barak I suggest you call them and explain what the problem might be.
In the meantime we'll be watching our new favorite shows on the slingbox (Studio 60, Heroes, and Jericho). Now if only Scrubs would premier already.
3 Comments:
Keep an eye on the NBC website, Scrubs is coming soon. My hunch is one of the new comedies (Mike thinks 30 Rock) is going to get pulled soon and Scrubs will replace it. I can't wait either.
Where is this "at least once a week" post of which you spoke?
Thank you so much for posting that! We have been having problems with our VIOP phone and could not figure out what was wrong. We read your message and called Barak. 12 hours later they got back to us and the problem seems to be solved.
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