North West Electronics/BlueBox

kevinkenny · 23-12-2011 12:52am #1

Is there anyone else here using North West Electronic's WiMAX broadband service?

Do others have any experiences they'd like to share about this outfit, particularly if you're in north Donegal and using their Inishowen base station?

Cheers
Kev

donegal. · 09-01-2013 11:16am

kevinkenny wrote: »

Is there anyone else here using North West Electronic's WiMAX broadband service?

Do others have any experiences they'd like to share about this outfit, particularly if you're in north Donegal and using their Inishowen base station?

Cheers
Kev

are they any good ?

Tommy Lagahan · 10-01-2013 9:38pm

A friend of mine got NWE in the time I got National Broadband Scheme 3g in, in the same area. Back then NWE's prices were extortionate so my parents couldn't afford it. Apart from an outage for a week which was promptly sorted (3g went down for 3 weeks without a peep from three at the same time), his speeds regularly sat around 3mb down and 1mb up even at peak times, over the last 4 years. They upgraded to higher speeds at some time last year too, apparently with quite a noticeable jump in speed. I'll know for myself soon enough, put in an order in November but they're backlogged something fierce so it will be March when they get to my installation. Fingers crossed, Three is now completely dead in the area.

Stitch01 · 04-02-2013 4:24pm

Hi Tommy! Have you heard anything from Bluebox since this post?

I registered/applied October 2nd and still have no date set for an engineer visit.
I emailed them a couple of weeks ago asking for an update but all they would tell me is that due to the high demand the waiting list remains very long and that they'll contact me when they have a slot available.

If you hear anything from them could you let me know? It'd be much appreciated!

Thanks,
Richie.

Tommy Lagahan · 05-02-2013 3:19am

I still haven't heard from them, if I get no word by the end of this month I might take a trip up to their sales office in Derry to see whats going on. Need this broadband at home since Three has such high contention now its more or less dead most of the day.
Between that and the fact that they're officially supplying last mile broadband in the north I can understand the backlog.
If I get any word from them between now and then I'll post back here.

Stitch01 · 05-02-2013 12:07pm

Much appreciated Tommy, I'll do likewise.

Stitch01 · 12-03-2013 1:16pm

Hi Tommy,

Just to let you know that Bluebox called me on Saturday and arranged for an engineer visit yesterday (Monday). Unfortunately our power was out all day yesterday due to damaged power lines or something on our street, so Iain the engineer couldn't get set up on the day. Iain was dead on and was explaining how much demand there is for their services, leading to higher waiting times, just like you had said. They'll be back in my area again on the 29th so fingers crossed I'll get up and going then.

It has been roughly 5 and half months since I submitted my application.

Hopefully you'll get sorted a bit sooner.

Thanks Tommy,
Richie.

Tommy Lagahan · 14-03-2013 4:49pm

Same here, they've gotten back to us during the week also, been busy till today so I didn't get posting here.
Engineer is due to come on Friday to set up. Hopefully I'll be able to post some results during peak and quiet times in this thread if all goes well. I'm not sure how it will go to be honest, as I don't have line of sight to the tower in the area. The service must be decent if there is this much demand but we'll see anyway, can't wait to cancel Three after 5 years of useless service!

Tommy Lagahan · 15-03-2013 8:19pm

Well Richie, got it installed there, technician was dead on, speeds at the moment are fantastic!
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2576430120.png
This is some jump from the 0.4Mb down I was getting under Three!
Although I will note that I have line of sight with the mast up on the roof where the dish went up and yer man said we've 100% signal up here.

Anyway I'll keep an eye on it for a while, I won't be home long enough to do a few speedtests over the weekend but I'm sure mum will get on to me if there is trouble with her emails :pac:. Was relatively easy to set this up with a Netgear router, I just took the settings that the technician put in under IPv4 properties in the LAN connection on the laptop and put them straight into the routers internet page.

Connection constantly 10Mb thru the entire peak time, I should mention I'm on the next generation 10Mb residential package.

Tommy Lagahan · 25-03-2013 9:49pm

Right, I'm at home now with all my gear from college. There was an outage as soon as I got home (pure bad luck, according to my friend who also has these guys its the first time in a long time that its gone down completely), but it picked up again within an hour.

My problem is not speed now, its still the same 10Mb down 2 up, 10ms latency but now I'm stuck on NAT Type 3, excluding my own router as the issue as I plugged the PS3 straight into the ethernet coming from the dish and threw in the proper IP details. Going to ring them tomorrow and see if they can sort it. Ill report back here if I make any headway with them.

Tommy Lagahan · 29-03-2013 9:34pm

Sorry for the quadruple post here,:o but this more or less wraps up my opinion on these guys.

I rang up BlueBox / North West Electronics about the NAT issue. I was told straight away that it was due to routing on their end and I would need a static external IP address set up for the internet so they could do the routing right. This is not standard on a Residential account, but can be applied for with a 35 one off charge and an extra 4 euro a month on the bill.

In the interest of my own sanity (Three wrecked my head for 5 years) I just threw money at them and told them to sort it, which they got around to today. According to TUM NATAnalyzer I now have 100% ok NAT. Was playing CoD on ps3 all day (now NAT Open/2) and got host a fair bit with this tasty upload speed :cool:.

Was seeing some contention (could be due to that DDoS attack going on in Europe though, because my ping was steady when the speed dropped to 4Mb down). The lagometer network statistics on the pc version of CoD 4 is reporting the same kind of statistics as the Eircom connection down in Letterkenny.

In short: Delighted!

NIMAN · 29-03-2013 9:49pm

Can you tell us what you are paying for broadband with them? (PM if you prefer not to post).

Where is their Inishowen base station? I emailed them last week asking about possibly supplying broadband where I live, and still no reply from them.

Tommy Lagahan · 29-03-2013 9:51pm

No problem, €28.99 p/m since ordering a static IP. No line rental or phone to deal with, pretty good IMO.

NIMAN · 29-03-2013 10:56pm

Yeah that is a decent price.

I used to be a customer of theirs a few years back, but since moved house and am now paying VF €45 per month for 2.5meg BB and home phone.

I might be tempted to consider them when my contract is up with VF, as I rarely use the home phone.

Is their service still unlimited downloads?

Taboganist007 · 13-04-2013 8:06pm

NIMAN wrote: »

Yeah that is a decent price.

I used to be a customer of theirs a few years back, but since moved house and am now paying VF €45 per month for 2.5meg BB and home phone.

I might be tempted to consider them when my contract is up with VF, as I rarely use the home phone.

Is their service still unlimited downloads?

Bump this, I too am curious if there is any download allowance restrictions. I'm on Sky Connect's broadband at the minute which maxes out at a pitiful 6mb which would be fine if it was consistent but evening contention ratios are ridiculous. Anyways is there any download cap and is there any way to find out if I can get on their next generation network which has a possible speed of 50Mb which would be really sweet and it seems very reasonably well priced too. After my experiences with Sky I am quite sure I would like to check this out as a good alternative.

greeksville · 16-12-2013 2:04pm

I have been using northwest blue box service for around 6 months now.
I changed from eircom as it was about half the price as I did not need to pay line rental.
This was the main reason for going with them,

At the application stage I was told it would take at least 12 weeks, and I was given the option to pay an extra 90 euro to get it fast tracked which I did.

I kept on their backs which helped as I had heard complaints about late installs.

Originally I got the 50mb service, as I'm into gaming.

The average speed which I got was about 10mb off peak times. (Not very good)
Don't think I ever say it above 15mb

It was still difficult to play games as I could not set up a static ip address due to their settings. To get a static IP address I needed to get them to set it up at an extra charge of 5 euro / month (crazy) - should be free.

To keep the costs down I reduced my package to the 10mb service.

Sometimes its ok, but if it is windy, raining or on peak time the bandwidth drops dramatically. when I did some speed test on a Sunday afternoon, I was only getting between 0.25mb and 0.50mb.
This moved up to 5mb later on in the day.

I think one of the big issues with this company, is that, the more customers who move to them, then the slower the connection gets for everyone else on the service,

I went to school with one of the tech guys who works there and he says that they are working on upgrading the service at present, but that could be 6 months down the line.

This service is a better option if you live of the main line and have poor options from cable providers.

Im living in Greencastle area of donegal

Hugo Hackenbush · 25-12-2013 2:21pm

Right folks. Let me tell you the truth about NWE blue box broadband service. From someone who's been a customer for many years. It's AWFUL. So why am I still a customer? There's no alternative where I live. No Eircom phone line broadband, and satellite or GSM mobile broadband aren't really an option, but thank goodness for 3 network today. And on the odd occasion when NWE is working flawlessly, its superb, but you know in your heart it's gonna crash any second now - it's been failing most evenings recently. Intermittent and eventually - totally kaput.
It's Christmas day, and I'm posting this from my phone on the 3 network which - whilst it's slow - it works every day, all day. Their mast is right beside NWE's by the way. Any storm or lightning, any momentary power cut, and NWE is off air for hours, maybe days. I swear - I will stand over these statements anywhere any time.
NWE service in my area, St Johnston, is simply terrible. It's off today. It was off about three times this week already. Going by previous experience, I don't expect them to have the broadband service up and running here again until after the holidays. They simply don't do customer service after 5.00 pm or weekends. Or holidays :mad: When it is up and running normally, it drops out every ten minutes or so for a few minutes before i t comes back on. Today, its a serious fault again, and it hasn't come on for quite a few hours. And it isn't just me- all my neighbours have exactly the same non existent service. It's simply terrible, and we can't go elsewhere -Eircom don't do broadband in our area.

Ask NWE if they have customer service after 5.00 pm, or if there's any way to report a loss of service after hours, at weekends or at holiday periods. There isn't, they don't and if they say otherwise, its a damned lie. Ask them how often their Donegal service crashes per week, per month. Ask them if they give a refund for loss of service. They don't. CAVEAT EMPTOR. BUYER BEWARE.

My resolution for 2014 is to kick up hell about this extortionate and deceptive practice by NWE, and the shoddy way they treat their customers. I've had enough of their s**t

Tommy Lagahan · 25-12-2013 6:26pm

Same crap here Hugo. Up and down like a feckin yoyo here non stop this past month, pretty much since I moved home for Christmas.

God forbid a bit of weather wrecks their entire system???
Even before this storm it was up and down and me in the middle of a ton of college work needing it.
This is the first trouble I've had with them but the entire month its all over the place. Ive been frequently forced to fall back on the 3 sim card I had lying around, and every time I use that its cash out of my pocket.
Please encourage all your neighbors to call into them and give out, tell them to say that all of the Donegal customers will land up at their HQ in Derry if needs be. That's what I'm going to do anyway.

After 5 years of this crap on Three I'm not about to let another ISP shaft me and run.

Hugo Hackenbush · 25-12-2013 10:06pm

Amongst other projects such as a new mast in Galway, NWE have been rolling out a new wireless broadband service in the southern part of the six counties. I saw a report in the local media where the NI assembly minister for Enterprise trade and investment Arlene Foster was welcoming the launch of the new wireless broadband service being launched in her locality by NWE to serve people in remote districts. No doubt a bit of aid from the NI Assembly involved when the minister is popping up for a sound bite. At the same time, they are treating their existing customers in Donegal like second class citizens.
I' m pretty sure they wouldn't get away with the kind of service they are expecting their existing customers served by their Binnion repeater to pay for and just put up with it. They would be brought to account in very quick style by Stormont if their service north of the border was as unreliable as the service we're getting from the same company.
Although there is some kind of arrangement between Donegal Council or the Irish Government and NWE, I' m not at all sure what accountability if any there is, but expecting politicians here to get involved is usually a waste of time. So the Donegal customers might just have to take matters into their own hands unless something is done about this shoddy treatment.
For a start, we could organize a petition to be made to Highland Radio - who gave these people a free platform to promote their service and lavished all kinds of accolades on them just a few years back when the whole broadband scene was up for debate, around the time of the much fanfared launch of "project Kelvin" , including a live interview on a prime programme on Highland with very complimentary overtones for their investment in the sadly neglected Donegal broadband market, a platform which no doubt brought them to the attention of a lot of new customers in Donegal. I wonder if enough dissatisfied customers in Donegal were as frustrated as we are, and were prepared to raise their concerns, would Highland Radio consider doing an investigation into people's' complaints to gauge the extent of these long running unreliability problems,and maybe get Mr McClelland of NWE back into the studio to explain himself and answer to his customers?

In the interests of fairness, I should state that NWE succeeded in restoring broadband service just before teatime on Christmas day. Which goes to show that they ARE aware that there's clearly a problem, and that someone was on standby on Christmas day to deal with it. Usually, and I mean for the past five YEARS it just remains off air over the entire evening/weekend or holiday period. But the fact remains, whatever technical problems they are having, their service is utterly woefully unreliable, and has been breaking down every few hours at least in the past few months.

gctest50 · 25-12-2013 10:20pm

Instead of the pinko commie/whatever plans

- download something like this : http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html ( free for 30 days )

- gather as much as you can with it

- get your neighbours who are also affected to do the same

- now you have something to send them

Hugo Hackenbush · 25-12-2013 10:39pm

gctest50 wrote: »

Instead of the pinko commie/whatever plans

- download something like this : http://www.pingplotter.com/download.html ( free for 30 days )

- gather as much as you can with it

- get your neighbours who are also affected to do the same

- now you have something to send them

Thanks for that. When the service is up and running, it's excellent. Something like 3ms to 9ms ping time. No complaints there. The problem is - it just goes dead every few minutes. Gone. No nothing. And then a few minutes later, it's back on. Except some days - like 3 days a week at the minute - it goes dead for hours, or overnight. Can't get a ping then!
That's the symptoms I'm getting anyway, and a few of my neighbours too.

NIMAN · 25-12-2013 10:59pm

I used their service for a few years when living on the Derry/Donegal border, and to be fair for the most part I always found it decent enough. Rarely had outages. I used it maybe around 2005 - 2009.

However late in my contract, I started to have a lot of bother with interruptions in the service, to the extent that I got them to come and take it down.

I since moved deeper into Donegal, and ordered their service again, simply because it was far better priced than the likes of Eircom and Vodafone. After about 6 weeks late, a guy called to install. I was happy. Until he told me that the transmitter that I had a view of had no spare capacity. He was a bit annoyed himself that the office let him go to do an install when there was no way I could get up and running.

Anyway, had to put them on the backburner until they increase their capacity on my local transmitter, unfortunately thats something they cannot put a timeline on.

My brother recently got their 50mb service installed in Donegal too, must ask him for his feedback on it.

AlanS181824 · 27-12-2013 11:24am

Any update? How did this wireless broadband preform with the awful wind we've been having as of late?

Hugo Hackenbush · 27-12-2013 11:45pm

In fairness, it was out of service on Christmas day for about 4 or 5 hours. Someone was obviously available to reset the system and got it back up and running - to their credit. However, it still suffers from repeated stoppages for a few minutes then back on. Happens about 5 or 6 times per hour as far as I can gauge - its hard to tell if you downloaded something and you're reading it .As for streaming video its ok then pffft. Gone. As for the storms, they didn't seem t o have too much effect this time.

You know, if they had some kind of feedback to their customers, instead of treating us like a cash machine, they would create a much better rapport and better customer relations. For example, a noticeboard/news page explaining that there WAS a fault ( F*** these "issues" they keep mentioning! - the bloody system was off air and we had no broadband) And keeping their customers informed - that would be a major step forward ,and would cost very little. Also, if there was a NWE news page or forum that customers could post on, then they would be able to see when there was a problem with the system and perhaps act on it more quickly. At least they would be able to moderate it and have some control over it instead of people letting off steam on other forums or Facebook perhaps. Come to think of it, its a wonder that nobody has started a facebook page about Donegal broadband, and NWE in particular! Now that would make interesting reading......

Bresy · 28-12-2013 4:38pm

Ive had this internet in for the last 6 months and it is the worst service ive encountered . I wouldnt recommend it to anyone . Im supposedly paying for up to 50 meg broadband and my usual speed is 0.5 meg after 7pm , all weekend or holidays like today where my speed test takes 5 mins to run and gives me 0.10 meg download and 0.20 meg upload. During the week from 9am to 7pm i might get a decent 8meg and i think this is because people are at work or school at that time. This has been like this for 6 months and ive been in constant contact with them weekly with speed tests sent to them. I get the same response of our technical team will look into this . I had a voice conversation once in that time because i demanded it. within the hr my speed jumped to 19meg the most ive ever received . 2 hrs later it was back to 1 meg. I have demanded contact again and so far ive got none . My next port of call is to call down to their office and talk face to face. I understand that there are issues of late weather wise but this has been going on 6 months and has the worst customer support ever. DO NOT BUY THIS SERVICE FROM THEM.

Hugo Hackenbush · 29-12-2013 6:22pm

Whilst I'm kind of glad to hear that somebody else is having the same problems as me, if only to reassure myself that it's not just me, I have to commisserate with you. It's terrible to be paying good money for something and not getting what you're paying for, and to add insult to injury, we're being taken for granted.

I'd love to hear more reports from around the region about problems with NWE broadband. Perhaps if enough people get together on this, we could get something done about it. Get your friends and neighbours with similar experiences to sign up and tell us about it.

pawddy · 01-01-2014 6:53pm

Hi folks, i've been with bluebox / NWE for around 3 years. I'm on the 10mb Next Gen service, and I live just outside Carrigans, co. Donegal. Being a big gamer, i was interested in the 50mb service. I waited for weeks for a technician to come out and tell me that upgrading was pointless. To be fair, my download speeds have been pretty good. I only wanted to upgrade to see if my ping, jitter, and packet loss decreased. When I download a game on Steam, its usually at 1.0-1.2Mbps. However, during the past two weeks i've been experiencing inconsistent speeds and pings, especially upload speed. Perhaps it's the weather, maybe too many people connected to the one mast? i don't know.

I also had the NAT issue that was previously mentioned on my old Xbox 360, but when I rang and asked, they simply said they don't support gaming... So i just lived with it. As of recent however, the main problem for me seems to be the packet loss. I get OKish pings, usually lower than 100, and sometimes if i'm lucky under 60, but the games are completely unplayable due to the huge amounts of rubberbanding (lag). I did a few tests to only find out that it must be down to packet loss. I tested my home network, powerline kit, router, wireless adapters, and all were working perfectly. So i can only blame NWE.

I can understand that the quality of connection will degrade during peak times, but its never usually THIS bad. I think I'll wait a week or so to see if anything improves. If not, I guess i'll have to ring up and speak to them.

Hugo Hackenbush · 01-01-2014 10:14pm

True to form for NWE at weekends and holiday periods, their broadband service from the Binnion repeater (serving the Lifford / St.Johnston/ Raphoe areas and no doubt further afield) has gone off air YET AGAIN for most of the afternoon and evening of New Years day. No broadband whatsoever, except for my mobile phone on 3. There's no way to report it to NWE, they don't have any staff covering customer service or or breakdowns , they only do 9 to 5 Monday to friday. Just when you're not at work or school, at home and need it most....:mad:

There's no doubt they know full well that this is constantly happening. No doubt it'll be back on air before 10.00 AM tomorrow ( if they return to work on the 2nd January, but I wouldn't like to be depending on them....)

I just wonder what kind of <snip> they are when the know full well they're taking good money from people for a service that they clearly aren't providing. There really should be some governing body that they're answerable to???

pawddy · 01-01-2014 10:45pm

Yup, after doing a speedtest to Derry, I'm now getting 0.14Mbps download, and 0.02Mbps up. 272ms ping. Lets just hope they return to work tomorrow!

Update: As of 10pm, seems everything's working again. Well, my connection is definitely faster - 61 ping, 9.87Mbps down, and 1.22Mbps up.#

Update 2: 20 minutes later....

This is frying my head.

Mr. G · 01-01-2014 11:41pm

You need to switch provider. Those fluctuations make it unreliable and not of "merchantable quality". A contract can no longer be continued with that sort of service

pawddy · 01-01-2014 11:47pm

I'd love to switch provider, but unfortunately, its either NWE or mobile broadband.. Don't get me wrong, when NWE is fully functioning its great, but as of recent it doesn't seem to be working very often.

Hugo Hackenbush · 02-01-2014 11:39am

Mr. G wrote: »

You need to switch provider. Those fluctuations make it unreliable and not of "merchantable quality". A contract can no longer be continued with that sort of service

How I wish........Where I live in Donegal, its now 2014 yet Eircom haven't bothered to make even basic ADSL broadband enabled at the St Johnston exchange. So many of us are stuck with these <snip>

10.30 on 2nd January. Still not back on. "Technical support" at NWE (there's a contradiction in terms if there ever was one!) are swamped with enquiries from exasperated customers yet the service is still off air and they can only offer the lame response that they are experiencing "ISSUES" at the repeater and that "an engineer has been sent to deal with it"

Hands up who's all heard that from NWE before!

I can tell them what the issues are. We're paying for broadband and it's either running erratically or off air altogether.

Sent via 3 network.

NIMAN · 02-01-2014 11:46am

Reading some of the posts on here, I'm nearly glad they couldn't get me up and running when they called out!

A steady, reliable 2mb with the old phoneline sounds like a decent compromise to having a 20mb or 50mb service that is constantly up and down.

I think a call needs to be made to Highland Radio or Joe Duffy to get some movement on this.

Hugo Hackenbush · 02-01-2014 11:56am

NIMAN wrote: »

Reading some of the posts on here, I'm nearly glad they couldn't get me up and running when they called out!

A steady, reliable 2mb with the old phoneline sounds like a decent compromise to having a 20mb or 50mb service that is constantly up and down.

I think a call needs to be made to Highland Radio or Joe Duffy to get some movement on this.

Exactly what's needed. But none of them will listen unless there's some evidence that there's a significant enough problem. People need to post with their bad experiences so that they can see there's a widespread recurring problem. <snip>

pawddy · 02-01-2014 12:27pm

It seems they've done something. I'm getting the usual morning speeds that I'm used to. Last night it was just plain broke.

The ping test is quite poor, but it's always like that. Jitter is always quite high, and i'm lucky not to experience packet loss.

Hugo Hackenbush · 02-01-2014 12:39pm

As predicted, it's back on air around 10.00 am. Which tells you that they can fix it in a few minutes, probably by going out to their remote repeater and resetting the system. Clock in, 15 minutes at base then 30 minutes leisurely drive from Skeoge to Binnion and 10 minutes at the repeater site. If they gave a toss at all, they would have a guy monitoring the service outside business hours (when most homes want internet) and ready to go out and restore service as soon as it went off air. Obviously they don't care about probably hundreds of customers frequently left with no internet, despite paying faithfully for it. They reckon customers will just put up with it when their service goes off air at night and MOST weekends and absolutely every holiday period recently, and we should all just patiently wait until they could be arsed to go out and put it back on. From what I'm hearing here and locally, I think people have had enough of this shoddy treatment.

Come to think of it, if they had the right equipment and backup system, it wouldn't be so damned unreliable in the first place.

Bresy · 02-01-2014 2:35pm

I am glad to see that im not crazy and that im not the only one having these issues ... I am currently looking at internet deals elsewhere and if i can get anything decent im going to take it , 3meg or not. as at least im guaranteed a continuous service. But if i do switch I will not be letting this lay with NWE, They have not honoured their side of the contract for the last 6 months and i have the speed tests to prove it. They are giving me no option but to pay for another service, after giving them hundreds of pounds for this sham of a service that only works until 7pm. I and any others who plan to leave this service should be asking for a reimbursement

pawddy · 02-01-2014 3:13pm

Its actually starting to baffle me at how inconsistent the service is. Just did a ping test, here are my results:

those are actually quite amazing.. but only five minutes beforehand i was getting 2% packet loss, ~150ms ping and ~100ms jitter.

results from the speedtest:

Those are really good results, but its a shame that it'll last for a total of 5 minutes and then go back to the usual sh*t.

Update, 2:25pm:

as expected...

Update 2, 2:34pm:

NIMAN · 02-01-2014 4:09pm

Why not contact some of the local papers, see if they want to do a bit of investigation into it? Local papers still do investigative work don't they?

Perhaps if NWE got a call from the media saying "we are doing a piece on the quality of your service after we received several complaints, would you like to comment", might shake them up a bit.

Bresy · 02-01-2014 4:14pm

As we are sharing heres mine

pawddy · 02-01-2014 6:35pm

Jesus Bresy, those results are painfully slow. Does your dish have clear sight of the mast you're connected to? What package are you on? Regardless, those results are concerning.

I've clear sight of the mast, although only two bars connection on my dish (NanoStation M5). It just hit 5:30 and i can already notice connection degrading..

Update: OK. Almost 7pm:

Hugo Hackenbush · 02-01-2014 8:29pm

All the good people who couldn't get online over the new year break are no doubt online this evening trying to catch up on missed surfing

pawddy · 02-01-2014 8:45pm

I played with my network settings for hours today, and had no luck. Its definitely on their side.

Here's the results of three tests, one after another.

It is so inconsistent.

Mr. G · 02-01-2014 9:01pm

Your wasting your time. Surely mobile broadband would be better than what your getting?

Do you have a contention radio?

pawddy · 02-01-2014 9:11pm

I had O2 mobile broadband before, and it wasn't great in my area. I think most people in my area use 3 mobile broadband so I can't imagine it'd be fast either.

According to the NWE website, the contention ratio is 48/1.

Mr. G · 02-01-2014 9:30pm

If you are in the NBS area (3) you can get mobile broadband for €20.33. If it is not sufficient they may put up an aerial and if that doesn't work they can get Qsat to put in satellite broadband, which would be better than what your getting, although the pings may be a bit high.

Tommy Lagahan · 02-01-2014 10:22pm

Just an update on my end, service returned to normal speed as soon as the storm stopped last week. Ping's doubled however, sitting around 30ms and jittering 10ms either way severely effecting gaming. I'm expecting it to go down tomorrow again though if the weather kicks up.
I just wish they'd reinforce their system against some feckin wind because the three service here is useless in all weather conditions including good.

Hugo Hackenbush · 02-01-2014 11:39pm

pawddy wrote: »

I had O2 mobile broadband before, and it wasn't great in my area. I think most people in my area use 3 mobile broadband so I can't imagine it'd be fast either.

According to the NWE website, the contention ratio is 48/1.

I have 3 mobile broadband as well. 3 Ireland. It's slow but usually always available.

Mr. G · 03-01-2014 12:34am

Hugo Hackenbush wrote: »

I have 3 mobile broadband as well. 3 Ireland. It's slow but usually always available.

That's the thing. Its better in towns though where you have 3G.

pawddy · 03-01-2014 1:38am

I had O2 3G, but I didn't think it was great to be honest. NWE was a noticeable upgrade. I couldn't get satellite, the pings are way too high for gaming, and that's mostly what I use the Internet for.

I'm beginning to maybe that if I upgrade to the 50mb package, I might get better results during peak because less people are on that package.. would it share the same contention ratio as the 10mb service??

It's pretty poor from NWE though, I suppose you can expect speeds to slow during peak, but for the quality of the connection to degrade to a point when your experiencing lots of ping, jitter and packet loss is unacceptable. I've seen 1/2mb eircom packages with consistent jitter and zero packet loss all throughout the day. Maybe it's because it's wireless... I don't know.. but it's making my new ps4 useless!!

It seems that if you do a speedtest to cork, the ping is always lower. And when I type my external IP address into google, it either comes up letterkenny, or cork.. anyone got any idea on what's going on there?

Bresy · 04-01-2014 11:26am

pawddy wrote: »

Jesus Bresy, those results are painfully slow. Does your dish have clear sight of the mast you're connected to? What package are you on? Regardless, those results are concerning.

I've clear sight of the mast, although only two bars connection on my dish (NanoStation M5). It just hit 5:30 and i can already notice connection degrading..

Update: OK. Almost 7pm:

Im not sure on whether it has a clear view of the mast or not , aparently its Beacon hill its pointed too . Im on the 50meg package which is laughable with the speeds I get . it is back to normal now great speeds during the day but zero to 0.5 meg at night .which is no good as im normally working till the evening time .....
Current test

This is normal until 7pm for me then I get similar results as i posted yesterday almost on the button at 7pm its just disappears

North West Electronics/BlueBox

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