Netrunner by Cytanet
| company: | Cytanet |
|---|---|
| website: | www.cytanet.com.cy |
| support email: | no email support |
| support phone: | 8000-8080 |
| user rating: |
Cytanet, a department of the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CYTA), is one of the oldest Internet Service Providers in Cyprus offering a wide range of connectivity, hosting and other related products and services. The ADSL product of Cytanet is called Netrunner and is available on the i-choice (DSL Access) platform.
Netrunner is the most popular ADSL product in Cyprus because this service is offered to all clients applying for the i-choice ADSL platform and many of them do not know that they have an option for a different ISP.
On the positive side, the Netrunner service fee will be added to your phone bill and therefore you will not have to worry for one more thing to pay at the end of the month. Another benefit of this service is that you can enable it within minutes by calling Cytanet (provided that you already have i-choice installed) and disable it just as easily and you will be billed only for the days you had the service. So if you enable Netrunner and then disable it after two days, your next phone bill will include a small charge for those 2 days and not the whole monthly fee.
Cytanet ADSL packages
Cytanet offers packages for home and business users that correspond to the i-choice (DSL Access) packages.
| Package Name | Max Speed Down/Up | Required i-choice Connection | Static IPs | Setup Fee | Monthly Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netrunner Home512 | 512Kbps / 256kbps | Home512 | no | - | €6.90 |
| Netrunner Home1000 | 1Mbps / 384kbps | Home1000 | no | - | €8.60 |
| Netrunner Home2000 | 2Mbps / 512kbps | Home2000 | no | - | €10.81 |
| Netrunner Home3000 | 3Mbps / 512kbps | Home3000 | no | - | €13.23 |
| Netrunner Home4000 | 4Mbps / 512kbps | Home4000 | no | - | €18.40 |
| Netrunner Home8000 | 8Mbps / 768kbps | Home8000 | no | - | €28.10 |
| Netrunner Home12000 | 12Mbps / 768kbps | Home12000 | no | - | €39.60 |
| Netrunner Office2000 | 2Mbps / 768Kbps | Office2000 | 4 | €78.59 | €74.75 |
| Netrunner Office4000 | 4Mbps / 768Kbps | Office4000 | 4 | €78.59 | €86.25 |
| Netrunner Office8000 | 8Mbps / 1Mbps | Office8000 | 4 | €78.59 | €118 |
| Netrunner Office12000 | 12Mbps / 1Mbps | Office8000 | 4 | €78.59 | €150 |
| Netrunner Office4000 plus | 4Mbps / 2Mbps | Office4000 plus | 4 | €78.59 | €97.75 |
| Netrunner Office8000 plus | 8Mbps / 2Mbps | Office8000 plus | 4 | €78.59 | €141 |
Additional IP addresses are available at an extra cost for the business products.
Please see the i-choice platform page for the other fees you will have to pay in order to get ADSL connection. The ISP (Netrunner in this case) is just one of costs.
NETRUNNER (CYTANET) USER REVIEWS
If you have tried the broadband services of Cytanet please write a review about your positive and/or negative experiences.
If your review is based on past experiences please include the time period you have been using this ISP.
Please post reviews about Cytanet only, and not about any other ISP or service. However feel free to compare Cytanet with other Internet Service Providers offering similar products.
Don't forget to cast your vote with your rating for Cytanet.
reviewer: efrem
march 28 2009 08:46am
cyta suck big time. a friend of mine pays for 4Mbps from cyta and he doesn't get close to 3Mbps
reviewer: axenios
april 20 2009 03:18am
Probably the best ISP in Cyprus. The oldest actually. I have the Home4000 packet and Im very happy with it. They give me the correct speed. On COD4 and 5 always green connection and I can easily host a game. (PS3)
reviewer: efrem
june 16 2009 04:15am
Come on ! Are you kidding me? the best isp in Cyprus?
You must be joking right?
Everyone knows that Cyta most of the times suck
reviewer: falconcy
june 23 2009 03:37am
Having been online form the very early days, I've been around since when LogosNet jumped the gun and started the Internet ahead of Cyta and over the years have tried out most of the ISP's. I also work in a support role for VSAT's, so I see things from both sides.
I've gone full circle and always end up with Cyta as a provider. Sure, I've done my fair share of Cyta-Bashing in the past, yet I feel that there really isn't a viable alternative. For all the knee-jerk reactions we get in here, I still notice that the delay in delivering upgrades was due to the need for Primetel et al to get 1000 subscribers, looks like they are not as popular after all.
I've got the new Alcatel series router which actually has the hub and wifi enabled by default, a far cry from the ECI Bfocus models with everything disabled. I have a very stable connection which is used by myself and my partner wirelessly. Sure, there is the occasional problem once or twice a year, this happens with all providers and is often out of their control.
My partner compared it to UK providers - they take forever to get you connected, especially when switching providers - they are not stable at all, especially with the provided wifi enabled routers - they also do not deliver the promised speed, she was on an (up to) 16 mbit connection and never saw that speed (BBC iPlayer used to suck worse than youtube at peak times)
Here in Cyprus, things just work. On the current connection I needed to call their tech support once to confirm that there was indeed an issue. This required the modem resetting which I already knew how to do and the problem was solved. The only other problem was the time my partner accidentally switched the router off.
If Facebook or Youtube are really slow it is likely due to their over-popularity and this is noticeable most at peak times - usually when the Brits and the Yanks are awake and not at work.
P2P is not blocked, speed depends on who is seeding. If you are using P2P and your connection suddenly slows right down to the point that you can't even browse, kill the Bitorrent client and you might find it remarkably starts to work again. This is due to limitations in the TCPIP stack and has nothing to do with the ISP. Pulling up the Task Manager or a network monitoring program will enable anybody to see how much they are uploading/downloading at any given time. This is far more valuable than any bandwidth test which also has the addition of any network traffic between you and the test site into the equation.
If you're doing nothing and there is traffic showing, this can be due to antivirus or software updates being done in the background. If your uplink is totally saturated and nothing seems to work, check out whether you have any spyware or malware on your PC, I've seen computers unable to even connect to iChoice because of this. An antivirus, no matter how good you claim it is will not stop everything, Spybot and Adaware need to be run regularly to see if anything else managed to get onto your system. Even those two programs plus your antivirus will not keep you completely safe, some malware is a real pain to remove, even for a professional.
If your uplink is totally saturated - that means you have a high number of threads using it and not necessarily physically uploading as in a lot of torrents seeding, you will likely see a degradation of service.
Most of the issues that people have come from a lack of understanding of how things work than actual problems with the providers themselves.
One man's meat is another man's poison, Cyta are not all bad, my only beef is with their mobile offerings. We have very good pricing for calls and sms, the only expensive call charges are down to greedy providers in other countries, especially greek or uk mobile providers. The mobile internet packages however need to be brought into line with terrestrial packages and an always on, sensible fixed price package introduced without limitations in order to make it really useful.
reviewer: Loco
january 20 2010 04:40pm
Well I tend to agree with Falcon. I have had cyta for a couple of years now and certainly I have had issues but in the bottomline we need to evaluate their service compared to the next best thing.
Cyta is semi reliable. They will try to fix your problems, of course, not always managing.
Mostly I have had an issue with i-choice being logged out on me for no apparent reason at all. When that happened ten times in the same day I called again, fuming that I am being fooled. They promised to investigate and the next day they called me and admitted it was a known issue with some users. They are trying to upgrade/change the platform needed so as to have a more stable connection for cyta users. It will take a couple of months they told me and that I would have to be patient.
Yes, it is not the response anyone likes but at least they were decent enough to avoid lying, or feeding me all sorts of ridiculous excuses.
I had been monitoring and researching the service of Cablenet and it appears to be even more erratic, to the extent that some of its loyal supporters went 180 degrees around.
Cyta is not the best but honestly they are decent enough. Overpriced too, but such it the price to pay to have a useful connection to internet it seems...
In my opinion, if any other company promises much better speeds with significantly less money it probably IS too good to be true. Once they get their market share, they simply take you for granted (much like many people complain about cyta) and ignore your issues since you are already on their wagon 
reviewer: falconcy
january 23 2010 07:55am
Of late I've been getting some disconnects on a cytanet/dsl access setup. There's no obvious reason for it. These are different from anything else I've seen. Normally just opening up the dsl access page will allow me to log back in, now I can't even get to anything beyond the modem when it happens. Connecting to the modem allows me to connect from the interface there. Once done I'm able to get onto the dsl access page and re-connect.
Hard or soft resetting the modem does nothing. I was wondering whether P2P usage might be the issue, not because of anything Cyta is doing, more that the uplink connection gets saturated and causes a loss in sync.
Other possibilities include virus/spyware/malware activity, more likely on my partner's laptop. I must check this out on my next day off. Having seen what confiker can do to a VSAT connection, I know that it is highly probable that it is oversaturating the uplink if this is indeed the issue.
My experience in supporting VSAT's shows that in 99% of cases where there is not an issue with our network that there is an issue with the end user's setup.
It's way too easy to point the finger at any ISP and many users simply do not have the necessary expertise to troubleshoot a problem. When I do call Cyta's Support I have already gone through the most obvious issues and am able to give them a reasonable amount of info regarding the actual problem. This is usually sufficient to get the query escalated to the next level of support. Invariably the tech at that level is not working from a flowchart and actually understands what is happening.
reviewer: loiziasl
may 04 2010 08:34pm
why everybody blame cyta? do you know why we dont have faster internet? because of primetel and cablenet, shakolas and mr foulis cyta when they brought dsl to cyprus they brought servers of milions of pounds to provide up to 20mb to the price of 16euros but then primetel and cablenet cry to eu and they put in charge a persons to control the competition and because cyta is a goverment company whatever the person who cheque the competinio say they do it. because if cyta was aloud to upgrade there systems mr shakolas and foulis was going to loose there money so now we stuck in this situation cyta has servers in there storage for 4 years now and they are not aloud to use them because primetel and cablenet mustprovide first the 20mb lines so cyta can provide 19mb lines so mr shakolas can have the first hand on competition. SO STOP BLAMING CYTA and blame some fools that they take money on white envelops. cyta try to avoid the person who control the competition by applying to eu court but this cases take long periods even 10 years they won the first court case last year and it was about the hsda on mobile phones thats why now we have high speed internet. thats the true so get used to it to have 4mb internet and when primetel and cable net will be able to provide 20mb internet then cyta will be able to provide 19mb
reviewer: falconcy
september 30 2010 12:22am
The 4Mbit connection finally went in yesterday. I now have the newer dark grey Speedtouch modem and thus far everything is fine. As there seems to be quite a few other wireless connections in the neighborhood, the wireless channel was changed to 6 - this channel also seems to have the lowest ping times to the modem.
One thing that got me thinking when people are complaining about service interruptions, does this coincide with certain electrical appliances being in use? This can include cordless phones or video senders. Changing the channel could well help to cut down on interference.
YouTube plays OK, as does other video streaming with very little slowdown (unless somebody on the local network is hammering the crap out of P2P - easily solved with a few tweaks.
Looking forward to the speed increase by the end of the year 
reviewer:
november 21 2010 04:07am
are there any new upgrades in
january 2011 ??
i heard somthng is going to happend
reviewer: falconcy
november 21 2010 05:18am
There's no "official" confirmation concerning the upgrade with dates ranging from the beginning to the end of December being the most likely. From what I've managed to find out, things are still very much down to the regulator as to when and what Cyta are eventually allowed to do. In the meantime, the customer suffers due to the lack of competition. Perhaps the Competition Commissioner should look into the activities of the regulator as they seem to be solely responsible for the lack of any real competition on the island.