North West Electronics/BlueBox

chris_ie · 30-11-2014 5:37pm

Yeah its to be expected that peak time will perform less that non-peak. I think its bad form though overloading. If they have hit the capacity on their node/hub or whatever then dont take on anymore customers on that node or else, as you say, add more hardware. I wouldn't be surprised if they got greedy and just kept adding customers. They should be reinvesting in their network.

They were doing upgrades not that long ago. Strangely enough, before that my connection wasn't that bad. So after upgrading its got worse.

ShowMeTheCash · 01-12-2014 12:03pm

Mine was completely off there from Saturday afternoon and came back on Sunday night.

It could be greed but I am going to say more along the lines of inexperienced!

I am not sure what they are pitching anymore, saying speeds up to 50Mb but only if the 200 people within your cluster are offline is missleading and they could run into hot water over that.

At the moment I am seeing speeds of under 1Mb at times which is breaking their contractual obligation.

Unfortunately I have little other options in my area, quinn sat I think are the only other provider.

chris_ie · 01-12-2014 12:44pm

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

Mine was completely off there from Saturday afternoon and came back on Sunday night.

It could be greed but I am going to say more along the lines of inexperienced!

I am not sure what they are pitching anymore, saying speeds up to 50Mb but only if the 200 people within your cluster are offline is missleading and they could run into hot water over that.

At the moment I am seeing speeds of under 1Mb at times which is breaking their contractual obligation.

Unfortunately I have little other options in my area, quinn sat I think are the only other provider.

My connection didnt go down at the weekend but it was poor. In the same boat with regards to other options. At times my 3G connection is faster than the broadband. But other than that no other choice. If they had a bit of competition they'd need to up their game, but I suppose thats the reason they exist, because of there being no options for people in rural areas.

Fair play to them. Its great that they are providing a service where others wont, but they need to make sure the service works and lives up to what people are paying. Or else drop their advertised speeds and drop the prices as they can't live up to it. Speeds dropping at peak time is one thing, dropping packets at a hight rate is another. Hopefully this new national broadband plan will be alot better this time around and we'll get some decent broadband options.

ShowMeTheCash · 01-12-2014 1:00pm

chris_ie wrote: »

My connection didnt go down at the weekend but it was poor. In the same boat with regards to other options. At times my 3G connection is faster than the broadband. But other than that no other choice. If they had a bit of competition they'd need to up their game, but I suppose thats the reason they exist, because of there being no options for people in rural areas.

Fair play to them. Its great that they are providing a service where others wont, but they need to make sure the service works and lives up to what people are paying. Or else drop their advertised speeds and drop the prices as they can't live up to it. Speeds dropping at peak time is one thing, dropping packets at a hight rate is another. Hopefully this new national broadband plan will be alot better this time around and we'll get some decent broadband options.

The national BB plan I don't expect to see anything out with me any times soon.

I remember asking eircom about BB a few years back, they told me never!

chris_ie · 01-12-2014 1:03pm

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

The national BB plan I don't expect to see anything out with me any times soon.

I remember asking eircom about BB a few years back, they told me never!

Ha! Nice

Have you checked out the new map? Apparently where I am its says due to start 2016 I think, and be available to 100% of the houses in the area. I think they messed up last time with the 3 option so hopefully dont want to do that again. And eircom's proposal for the NBP was pretty good.

chris_ie · 04-12-2014 10:55am

Bit of a surprise when I landed home yesterday. I had 4G on the phone. Did a speed test last night then to compare.

NWE : 4.78 down, 8.90 up (To their own speed test server in Derry - first image)
3 4G : 8.73 down, 14.40 up (To Dublin - second image)

Note : I did end up eventually getting around 8 down on NWE a short while later.

fooker! · 04-12-2014 6:39pm

what is the 3 broadband like for playing online? I have a mast pretty close to me!

Tommy Lagahan · 04-12-2014 6:56pm

fooker! wrote: »

what is the 3 broadband like for playing online? I have a mast pretty close to me!

Outside of the odd ping jitter every few seconds its better than the NWE for me at peak hours. Pings much better since HSUPA 3G became standard, around 50ms to Google, average 80ms on CS:GO matchmaking servers (too high for my liking, fine for CoD or casual play) Only the odd second or third day its just as bad as NWE but it HEAVILY depends on the contention in your area. Most people in my area switched from NBS Three connections to NWE so the contention has simply moved from one service to the other lol.
4G now, it has serious potential to kick NWE into some damn action. If I can show them my phone getting better speeds I'm pretty sure they're gonna have to do something.

chris_ie wrote: »

Bit of a surprise when I landed home yesterday. I had 4G on the phone. Did a speed test last night then to compare.

NWE : 4.78 down, 8.90 up (To their own speed test server in Derry - first image)
3 4G : 8.73 down, 14.40 up (To Dublin - second image)

Note : I did end up eventually getting around 8 down on NWE a short while later.

Whereabouts in Donegal are you Chris if ya don't mind me askin? I'll be having a 4G Mifi modem to use this old Three sim card with for gaming if I can get speeds like that outside Donegal Town. Keeping the NWE for its lack of bandwidth caps but gaming's utter dung on it when me mates all want to be on at peak hours.

fooker! · 04-12-2014 10:13pm

I'm going to get a lend of a friends one to try it out, anything is got to be better than what I have, I done a few ping tests earlier and got 52-56% packet loss... I mean seriously what the hell!?

one question though is the NAT the same as with NWE? as in always strict? I find that can be a pain when trying to play with others

Tommy Lagahan · 04-12-2014 11:20pm

fooker! wrote: »

I'm going to get a lend of a friends one to try it out, anything is got to be better than what I have, I done a few ping tests earlier and got 52-56% packet loss... I mean seriously what the hell!?

one question though is the NAT the same as with NWE? as in always strict? I find that can be a pain when trying to play with others

Nah its open provided you use the right APN, I think its 3internet.
You can get open NAT with NWE too but aye the packet loss is ass so there's no point for gaming.

chris_ie · 04-12-2014 11:30pm

I've never tried the 3G for gaming. I'm just outside Letterkenny Tommy, the Three site had Letterkenny on the 'coming soon' list but took it off. Not all places are listed. If you check the coverage map for 4G it shows live down around Cardonagh and Ardara I think. Speeds are pretty good on it again this evening.

I have an open NAT on NWE, took alot of messing about and trying different router firmwares (Tomato etc). Eventually got it open. Not sure if something happened there end or I got it sorted. I reset everything recently and got it open again after sorting port forwarding. Just a note, some ea games are hindered by uPnp for some reason. So if you have that on and dont need it or other devices dont might be worth turning off and seeing if it improves.

I used to have a decent gaming experience gaming on NWE until the start of this year. Really bad since.

Another speed check, again NWE test done using their own server (i.e. not onto the web). 3 using theirs in Dublin.

NWE :

3 4G:

fooker! · 05-12-2014 12:07am

I'm not too clued up on setting up routers and port forwarding, would there be any guides or reading you both could suggest id like to get mine open! I haven't got a great router though, a netgear wnr2000

ill try the uPnp thing though!

thebo · 05-12-2014 12:23am

Does everyone use the NWE dns servers or do some use the google or opendns servers instead. just wonderin if the google or opendns offer quicker page fetching than NWE own dns.

chris_ie · 05-12-2014 12:29am

thebo wrote: »

Does everyone use the NWE dns servers or do some use the google or opendns servers instead. just wonderin if the google or opendns offer quicker page fetching than NWE own dns.

I've tried alternatives. I ran a tool that tests you current one and alternatives and I think there wasn't much difference between NWE's and Google's, NWE just edging it I think.

chris_ie · 05-12-2014 12:30am

fooker! wrote: »

I'm not too clued up on setting up routers and port forwarding, would there be any guides or reading you both could suggest id like to get mine open! I haven't got a great router though, a netgear wnr2000

ill try the uPnp thing though!

Check out portforward.com Is it xbox?

Edit : http://portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/Netgear/WNR2000/

Tommy Lagahan · 05-12-2014 12:31am

I had to call them up about getting NAT 2, they said they had to put me on a static IP address to get the proper NAT setup on their end so I'm paying 4 quid a month extra for that.

chris_ie · 05-12-2014 12:40am

I used ea servers to test in the past. I was getting loss outside the network and was told as it was outside it wasnt their issue, more or less, and that packets are dropped.

Now see below. Latency is a bit higher but quite a difference in packet loss. The <edit> parts are just the ips in their own (NWE or Three) network.

Destination node, 1% loss with Three and 8% loss with NWE (Out of 100 packets). Alot of other nodes have quite a bit of loss though.

Three 4G :

NWE :

Both are using gtt.net, yet Three has the better performance (i.e less packet loss, although higher latency). So either NWE need to sort it, or they need to get in contact with gtt and sort it.

NIMAN · 05-12-2014 12:56am

ShowMeTheCash wrote: »

In fairness it is not the technology, fiber or fixed wireless the same issue can arise.
NWE are a small outfit that by the looks of it are not scaling well with increased numbers.

If you have 100 users with fiber all contected to the same hub and 100 Fixed wireless users connected to a similar hub they will be the same.

Each hub will only be able to handle a certain amount of users before you need a second hub etc....
You overload the hub then the their is only so much capacity it can handle. This is why it is fine during the day when most people are at work and kids are at school, then come 5 o'clock youtube and netflix are in full swing it begins to slow up...

afaik, they are a decent setup, but BB is a small part of their business.
They tend to work on bigger transmitter jobs, installs etc.
BB is a by-product of their business I think.

fooker! · 05-12-2014 2:04am

chris_ie wrote: »

Check out portforward.com Is it xbox?

no ps3, ill give that a read tomorrow!,

Tommy Lagahan · 05-12-2014 2:20pm

Three for reference:

Never thought I'd see the day that the NBS system would be faster than something.
My patience is growing thin now alright. This is off peak hours on a fecking Friday afternoon.

chris_ie · 05-12-2014 2:35pm

Ha, yeah I had the same one evening. Broadband slowed right down so I decieded to try the 3G on the phone, it was faster. I haven't heard from them now in a few days, was told I would but again, nothing.

chris_ie · 05-12-2014 9:21pm

I put on the Xbox there. The network tests always show 6-10% packet loss and download of about 7mb via NWE. I put the hotspot on the iphone and connected the Xbox to the 4G connection via the iPhone. Result was 0% packet loss and 9mb down.

pawddy · 06-12-2014 12:57pm

I've actually been tethering my 3G to play games for quite a while, the packet loss you get with NWE is shocking. And to whoever was talking about open NAT, yeah I also pay an extra £4 a month.. for something that should be free and is the standard with almost every other provider.

fooker! · 06-12-2014 8:53pm

it would sicken me to have to pay them another 4 euro the way things are! wouldn't mind if it was working all the time!

chris_ie · 10-12-2014 2:34pm

Are you guys getting packet loss via a similar route to what I had in one of my previous posts? (via gtt.net)

Tommy Lagahan · 10-12-2014 2:51pm

chris_ie wrote: »

Are you guys getting packet loss via a similar route to what I had in one of my previous posts? (via gtt.net)

I'm getting packet loss to all networks including NWE internal, I can ping an address for ya here though and check, which do I ping?

chris_ie · 10-12-2014 2:54pm

Do a traceroute to one of the external IP's you were pinging to. Just curious to see if its the same.

Tommy Lagahan · 10-12-2014 3:00pm

I'm on a static IP so I blanked out the IPs for my connection, the routing might be slightly different on static too because I had to get it to get NAT 2.

11 Hops within their network:

chris_ie · 10-12-2014 3:08pm

Ah right. That actually looks alright. Suppose it off peak yet aswell. UOTrace is useful for tests or PingPlotter (Enter IP, it runs a trace route then polls each instance to check for loss). Thats what I used above. I think they raised my issue with their provider, I hope. After all if their service is suffering as a result of something they're connected to they should be complaining.

Tommy Lagahan · 10-12-2014 3:14pm

chris_ie wrote: »

Ah right. That actually looks alright. Suppose it off peak yet aswell. UOTrace is useful for tests (Enter IP, it runs a trace route then polls each instance to check for loss). Thats what I used above. I think they raised my issue with their provider, I hope. After all if their service is suffering as a result of something they're connected to they should be complaining.

Didn't know about UOTrace! Well handy wee program this, will do the same tracert to google on it and see what kind of loss I get to all the IPs on route. Will edit this whenever it tests 100 packets.
Edit: whoops let it go over 100, anyway definitely off peak here as its actually working. Be a different story in 3 hours.

Host Name                        IP Address        Hop    Ping Time   Ping Avg   % Loss    Pkts r/s   Ping best/worst
my.router                        192.168.2.1      1      0ms         0ms        0%        126 / 126  0ms / 2ms
* Unknown Host *                 <snip>		  2      0ms         0ms        0%        126 / 126  0ms / 3ms
* Unknown Host *                 <snip>		  3      2ms         2ms        0%        126 / 126  1ms / 15ms
* Unknown Host *                 10.108.1.1        4      6ms         4ms        0%        126 / 126  1ms / 25ms
* Unknown Host *                 10.100.7.1        5      5ms                    100%      0 / 126
* Unknown Host *                 10.100.6.1        6      6ms                    100%      0 / 126
* Unknown Host *                 10.100.11.1       7      7ms                    100%      0 / 125
* Unknown Host *                 10.100.50.1       8      4ms                    100%      0 / 125
* Unknown Host *                 10.100.99.1       9      4ms                    100%      0 / 125
* Unknown Host *                 10.150.254.1      10     3ms         4ms        0%        125 / 125  3ms / 20ms
* Unknown Host *                 10.150.254.254    11     10ms        4ms        0%        125 / 125  2ms / 17ms
cust<snip>.nwewn.com             <snip>		   12     3ms         4ms        0%        125 / 125  3ms / 12ms
* Unknown Host *                 195.66.224.125    13     20ms        18ms       0%        125 / 125  16ms / 29ms
* Unknown Host *                 209.85.245.110    14     31ms        23ms       0%        125 / 125  17ms / 44ms
* Unknown Host *                 72.14.238.21      15     19ms                   100%      0 / 125
lhr14s23-in-f31.1e100.net        74.125.230.95     16     18ms        18ms       0%        124 / 125  17ms / 45ms (google.ie)

chris_ie · 10-12-2014 4:52pm

Even now I get packet loss when pinging 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS)

Tommy Lagahan · 10-12-2014 4:55pm

chris_ie wrote: »

Even now I get packet loss when pinging 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS)

Yep my speeds not effected yet (1.1MB on a Steam download here) but the packet loss is up to about 4%.

chris_ie · 15-12-2014 4:24pm

Broadband down at home for last hour or so and this just after I was told by eamil that they were closing my ticket because they didnt have any issues and I had downloaded quite a bit in the last while which might affect my connection, even though the majority of downloading of any large files is done in the middle of the night therefore not affecting other users and not against fair usage. Like banging your head against a brick wall. (Larger downloads recently because of work and a few games released, didnt realise I wasnt allowed!) ISPs should know now that most people are streaming from Netflix, buying and downloading games via Steam, XBox, Playstation etc these days.

excollier · 15-12-2014 5:41pm

Down here too and can't get through to them on the phone either.
Frustrating but nothing can be done

excollier · 15-12-2014 5:43pm

Down here too and can't get through to them on the phone either.
Frustrating but nothing can be done

Tommy Lagahan · 15-12-2014 6:12pm

Same here, down for an hour, back up now though.

chris_ie · 15-12-2014 6:21pm

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Same here, down for an hour, back up now though.

Yeah back up but got 0.22MB on a speed test there. Will check again after a while to see if it settles.

excollier · 15-12-2014 6:24pm

yep, back up now

fast for me post 5pm.

fooker! · 15-12-2014 6:48pm

You guys are lucky! I've been waiting a week for mine to come back online!

ITRules · 15-12-2014 6:53pm

They Fail so many times..........I have to find out how to get refund from them.They treat costumers at so poor level ! Disaster ! If someone could help how the protect us from treating like that.I'm sure there is many people who would like to get some moneys back for so poor services ! The contention of connection is not as they described 48 users for every 50mb/s.We gatered 12 local users of NWE and performed a speed test at the same time,result............0.22mb download 0.12 upload for EVERYONE ! They Upgarading their systems all year round !!!! Fine !!! But who pay the price for it ? Someone have to look closer to this buisness,people loosing moneys for services like ancient gsm network !

NIMAN · 15-12-2014 6:55pm

fooker! wrote: »

You guys are lucky! I've been waiting a week for mine to come back online!

Sorry, more fool you. If I was getting a service as bad as many on here are saying, I would have cancelled my DD and let them take me to court, cos they surely would lose.

ITRules · 15-12-2014 6:56pm

Fooker.Ask for refund,they fail deliver services you have paid for !!! Don't let them go away just like that.Ring Irish customer care line and ask for advise how to proceed to it.It's the law !

Tommy Lagahan · 15-12-2014 7:01pm

Packet loss is around 2%. Much higher speed than usual for this time of the evening BUT I expect it will **** itself within the hour. I was actually on my Three stick for the past 4 hours and it was grand (¬3Mb, 50ms ping) lol.

ITRules · 15-12-2014 7:02pm

Niman has right ! If we will gather together (so much as possible) take them to court and tell the story to every local paper in the country,they have to take action.At least,they will have some money to refund for so many unhappy customers.We have to do something.

Tommy Lagahan · 15-12-2014 7:04pm

ITRules wrote: »

Niman has right ! If we will gather together (so much as possible) take them to court and tell the story to every local paper in the country,they have to take action.At least,they will have some money to refund for so many unhappy customers.We have to do something.

Something needs to be done about it alright. I'd imagine if 50+ customers showed up to their office threatening legal action they'd start listening. Maybe a Facebook group is in order to organize something?

excollier · 15-12-2014 7:04pm

NIMAN wrote: »

Sorry, more fool you. If I was getting a service as bad as many on here are saying, I would have cancelled my DD and let them take me to court, cos they surely would lose.

Some of us have no alternative, realistically.

ITRules · 15-12-2014 7:12pm

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Something needs to be done about it alright. I'd imagine if 50+ customers showed up to their office threatening legal action they'd start listening. Maybe a Facebook group is in order to organize something?

Great Idea.I promise,I will spend 30min a day to warn every single person looking for broadband."Don't go that way" as a proof I will show every email I send to them with ignorant and absolutely unusefull help in reply.

If we will go to court,I'm first in line after all interruptions they owes me around 100 Euro easy ! 100.......some xmass prezent.

fooker! · 15-12-2014 7:18pm

NIMAN wrote: »

Sorry, more fool you. If I was getting a service as bad as many on here are saying, I would have cancelled my DD and let them take me to court, cos they surely would lose.

Yeah I know, but when I have no alternative what can I do? its not like I can just go to someone else cause there is no one else here unfortunately! There is 3 but I'm trying it out at the minute and its hit and miss connection wise so far!

ITRules wrote: »

Fooker.Ask for refund,they fail deliver services you have paid for !!! Don't let them go away just like that.Ring Irish customer care line and ask for advise how to proceed to it.It's the law !

ill have to look into that, I think there is a minimum time it has to be offline though ill give them a email to see!

ITRules · 15-12-2014 7:19pm

excollier wrote: »

Some of us have no alternative, realistically.

They have no choice ! If we all cancell our DD for treting like nobody they will lern or not.....but we cant forget,we are the 'customers' we pay for goods.If the goods are not delivered the refund is reguired !

NIMAN · 15-12-2014 7:25pm

If you are being charged for a service, the least you can expect is to have a decent level of supply. Well that's what I think anyway. Maybe you are more understanding?

I know if you are not getting 20meg when paying for 50meg, they can get out of it with an argument that their advertising says "up to 50meg", but if you are getting no service for a week, or 1meg or whatever, then I think you will win any court case hands down.

I would advise you to start keeping records and examples of the service you are getting from NWE, email them and tell them that you need to start getting a better service or else you will be contacting OFCOM or whoever the relevant body is. Even mention the papers, Joe Duffy, Shaun Doherty etc. I would mention whoever is needed to get this sorted out. They are taking the mickey with this service and getting paid handsomely for it.

I am not a FB'er and have no time for it, but I think a group on it would do no harm. If any of you know anyone in the local papers, get them to call the company and ask for an interview about the service, as they are hearing reports of terrible service.

My own brother recently cancelled his contract with them, I didn't know he was a customer. He said they were awful.

North West Electronics/BlueBox

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