IKS is dead

**jedi** · 11-12-2017, 02:23 PM

Buying new receivers and cards and activating them is just part of the problem - you can no longer activate the old 301 receivers in continental USA that were easy to jTag to pull the keys to use for IKS. You'll have to use something like the 311 receivers and desolder the BGA chips from the motherboard, put them in a special programmer to read the keys and then solder them back onto the motherboard. The programmer is not cheap and the skill level to desolder, reball and resolder the BGA chips is advanced level and only a few people do it.
To buy a new receiver and card with the keys pulled is about $200 to $250 - so if you have 20 cards (that will do about 400 channels) you are looking at $4000. Dish kills the cards at least once a month and sometimes two times or on occasion 3 times - so just the cards and receivers alone is a monthly investment of $4000 to $12,000. O top of that you have the monthly programming subscription for the receivers - you will need 3 or 4 accounts for that many cards/receivers so that is another $1000 or more monthly if you buy some PPVs and adult channels. Then you have the expense of a VPN server and you better have DDOS protection on it and one or more backup servers ready to go.

After a card kill (I'm guessing it is still on Tuesdays around 2:00 PM) - all of those receivers/cards are worthless and have to be replaced. The better IKS services probably have some backup cards and receivers already to go - but if they stick these new cards back into the cards servers right away they have to worry about another card hit. The replacement card may work for a day or two and then all of a sudden - WHACK - it is also killed. So you pull it out and put in another backup replacement card and you pray that there isn't a third card hit that month.

After a card hit you may see only a few channels working - that is because they don't want to replace every card right away and have them killed. They are waiting to see if there is a second or third card hit - or they may not have backup cards/receivers on hand and have to buy more.

The better IKS servers use ECM/EMM feeders to keep the cards updated and to fill the cache with the control words - so you are going to need some Dreamboxes/DreamLinks and dishes for that.

You will need one or two guys to babysit the servers and feeders to check for leachers and to make sure the cache is running smoothly.

Then you have to put up with the whiners who can't understand why their receiver seems to be down all the time.

After getting hit month after month and spending thousands of dollars I can see why some of these south IKS guys are calling it quits.

If you don't like Bell IKS or can't get the Bell signal in your area - and if IKS is your only option because of internet requirements for IPTV - then you better have the patience of Job. You know you are going to be down every month for at least 2 or 3 days or even longer.
If you don't have the patience then Dish account sharing may be a better option for you.

**riverman** · 11-12-2017, 02:42 PM

"If you don't have the patience then Dish account sharing may be a better option for you". Correct me if I am wrong but aren't Dish fully capable of asking for the Location ids on accounts that have multiple receivers. A wrong answer gets a rather large bill.

**whooper16** · 11-12-2017, 03:07 PM

Originally Posted by buckeye144

lets face it here people, IKS is done. there really is no point in complaining about it. no one gives solid answers, all they say is to wait, go IPTV, or get a SUB. all indicators point to they dont want to deal with IKS anymore and focus on IPTV. so for all you out there that cant use IPTV thank your provider for the free money and remind them you wont be renewing anymore. maybe just maybe if enough people dont renew they will realize their mistake. one thing is for sure i wont be renewing till IKS comes back. for the one claiming to have IKS working their just a bunch of scammers trying to take peoples money so dont deal with them. if the head's dont have it working no one under them does either.

When u were busy typing this in I was watching tv

**tbird686** · 11-12-2017, 04:04 PM

Originally Posted by buckeye144

lets face it here people, IKS is done. there really is no point in complaining about it. no one gives solid answers, all they say is to wait, go IPTV, or get a SUB. all indicators point to they dont want to deal with IKS anymore and focus on IPTV. so for all you out there that cant use IPTV thank your provider for the free money and remind them you wont be renewing anymore. maybe just maybe if enough people dont renew they will realize their mistake. one thing is for sure i wont be renewing till IKS comes back. for the one claiming to have IKS working their just a bunch of scammers trying to take peoples money so dont deal with them. if the head's dont have it working no one under them does either.

i think when in doubt buy 3 or 6 months at a time...........then its not as much as a loss if it went down

**jedi** · 11-12-2017, 04:08 PM

Originally Posted by riverman

"If you don't have the patience then Dish account sharing may be a better option for you". Correct me if I am wrong but aren't Dish fully capable of asking for the Location ids on accounts that have multiple receivers. A wrong answer gets a rather large bill.

You are correct - they sometimes do location checks and it can be a pretty scary ordeal as they use gastapo like tactics during their call - they will generally leave you alone if you have 6 or fewer receivers on an account.

They don't send you a large bill - they will just reduce the number of receivers on your account to one receiver until you can satify to them that all receivers are in the same location.
They may want you to send them a utility bill showing the name and address of receiver location - that's not so easy to do if you just made up a name address for the dish account.

**tutumx** · 11-12-2017, 04:29 PM

IKS is not about patience or not is about lots of pp don't have the internet needed to use the IPTV for them there are no choice.

**jedi** · 11-12-2017, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by powerfta

Very bad information

It's not real

Do you mind pointing out what part is "very bad information" and "not real". I haven't done IKS for over a year now but was quite familiar with large 30 card setups. I can't believe there have been some major new advances made in IKS - if there was you would think the service would be getting better and not worse.

Maybe you have developed your own unique card server software that does not get hit monthly - I thought I read reports that your IKS service goes down occasionally - but maybe I am mistaken.
Maybe Raton has released some new CS software that only you possess?

Maybe you somehow figured out a way to pull more than 20 control words from a single card without causing delays - is that the bad info.

Maybe you are using easily jTagged 301 receivers as they can probably still be activated in offshore locations like Puerto Rico - but for the most part guys that I know are using 311s.

Maybe you don't use ECM/EMM feeders - is that the bad information I gave???

Maybe you don't babysit your card servers, FSLB/CSP load balancer or check for leachers - is that the bad info I gave?

Maybe the price of replacement cards/receivers is not $200/$250 - is that the bad info?

Maybe they don't do the card hits on Tuesdays now - is that the very bad info I gave?

Maybe your service is so good that you don't have any whiners or complainers - is that the very bad info?

Maybe after a card hit your service is back to 100% instantly and does not take a few days to get back to 100% - is that the very bad info I gave. If that is the case then I sincerely apologize to you for defaming your good name.

I love to learn new things - so please help me understand what "very bad" info I gave that is "not real".
You will not only be helping me - you'll be helping all IKS users understand how IKS works.

**jedi** · 11-12-2017, 04:55 PM

Originally Posted by powerfta

We have service for a long time, with the new configurations

We only ask to ban or expel suspicious people

Doesn't your load balancer show you who the cheaters are? FSLB will show you how many channels a client receiver is pulling the control words for and shows the number of connects and reconnects for each receiver. It also shows you if they are sitting on a particular channel all day and trying to fill their own cache. It will also show you the IP address for each client - so if you see more than 5 receivers connecting from the same IP then they are probably just filling their own IKS cache. The new FSLB will also block cache forwarding in case you are selling your cache to other IKS dealers.

So why do you have to rely on suspicion to ban or expel people - you can show them the proof that they are cheating. I hear some reports of people being automatically banned by IKS services. If the load balancer bans them it is a pretty easy task to pull the log files and show them why they are banned. They may have a good explanation or maybe the load balancer made a bad decision to ban them.

Why not contact these people and show them why they are under investigation and give them an opportunity to explain.

Just banning someone for being suspicious without showing them any proof or explanation - is just bad business in my opinion.

**harry3456** · 11-12-2017, 05:30 PM

Yup you can set it up to immediately drop the IP's in question forcing them to contact you. Lots of things can look like a reshare though, but may not actually be one.

Good, pretty accurate info in this thread so far.