North West Electronics/BlueBox

Yeah alot of sites aren't loading for today at all. Yahoo, mysql, countless others. They use different routes too so doesn't seem to be a routing issue, just NWE. I need the broadband for work so kind of sucks. Have 4G on the iPhone which I'm using at the minute.

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Same here couldn't maintain a 128Kbit/s internet radio stream for an hour or so there, had to swap to Three stick again. This is a farce.

edit: Imgur is inaccessible, along with isitrownrightnow.com(lol)
Tried using a different DNS but I couldn't resolve anything then.

Ha, yeah switched the DNS here aswell but no difference. Still the same this morning. Not certain if its NWE issue or routing issue, although there are no reports elsewhere online about Level3.net (part of the routing) having issues or anything. Needed to download software from mysql.com but couldn't access it all day, but I was able to watch Netflix though!

Phone lines constantly engaged. Got through once and I was the third in queue for about 15mins so had to hang up to get back to work.

I got through earlier, said they've raised the issue with the external provider where the requests are failing but I've seen the same provider work via a different ISP. They hadn't reported it before I rang even though it has been happening since early yesterday. Is everyone here having issues accessing sites? (example I gave before was mysql.com) I know some of you are.

I can access those sites now again.

Might stick some info in that RTE thread. Still getting nowhere with NWE and packet loss is at 20%-30% alot of the time during peak times, even late at night speeds are rubbish. Have a complaint reference so will bring comreg in to see if they can get any further.

How is everyone's connection these days? Still have issues here, no improvement. Very little information in the responses from them either, just a copy and paste response that is sent to everyone.

2.2 down here and 1.5 up, terrible but as you say, not bad compared to the usual. Still getting 10-20% packet loss. I was told they had an issue the other day that was resolved and asked if I had full service back again. They never seem to properly acknowledge that there are big issues with the network currently.

I do some streaming on Netflix, but its always around 11-12 at night when I watch an episode or two, even then it stops and starts or drops quality at times. There was on night it took me about an hour and a half to watch a 50minute episode.

Its pretty predictable, 4-5PM and the packet loss shoots up. Not sure if something is scheduled somewhere that's messing things up or what but its clear when it starts.

The more it goes on the more attractive Three becomes, as the times of day I want to use the web the speeds are more or less the same or faster, and with the speeds that low a download cap doesn't make much difference! Oh and of course 0% packet loss on Three anytime I've done tests, all during peak hours.

Are you far from the mast?

Ah I'm about just under 3km. Yeah issue isn't from house to mast at all. Going by my averages here from the 6th onwards the loss has been 10-20% between hours of 5pm and midnight. For midnight to 5pm its 1-5% and this is their internal network being tested. Before the 6th it was averaging 5-6% peak times which was still bad.

Yeah, speeds at this time of the morning are usually fine for me, but of no use to me as I'm at work Then by the time I get home it drops way off.

Yep! I don't even attempt gaming anymore, used to be on a few nights with a few mates but not worth the hassle anymore. Must try the Three connection again, higher ping but 0% loss so must give it a shot.

Weather shouldnt have any effect really. Gets bad for me, and many others on here, once peak time hits, easy to see the trend. If they restart something you might notice a very brief period of decent performance until other users reconnect.

Yeah I know what you're saying but I've never seen any drops in performance related to bad weather, they're always during the same time periods, good or bad weather. You're just on a lucky streak at the minute

chris_ie wrote: »

You guys notice an improvement? (I will add I wasnt using broadband much yesterday, just saw the info last night)

I did notice the ping settling far higher than it used to, used to get 9-10ms late at night but I got 28-30 last night. Wasn't actually watching the packet loss yesterday because the speed went to hell and I switched to the Three stick as usual. What did ye use to get those numbers? I'll leave it running this evening.

chris_ie wrote: »

Yeah, I must do some more checking later to see if that routing affects most of the servers I use. Hoping it doesnt. Few speed tests earlier came back at 25 down and 9 up. But, again, thats off peak time.

Numbers above are just from something I wrote myself that I leave running on the server. So anytime I do a speedtest or traceroute it gets logged so I have a record. Also pings throughout the day keeping track of the performance. Got fed up trying to write everything down to keep track.

I'd be happy enough with 30ms if the packet loss was low enough to game on myself, been gaming on 60ms on the Three for the past month or 2 so half of that would be nice. Will leave a ping command running to google starting now and post the loss tomorrow.

Still very little packet loss at the moment, testing twice per second.

Ping is very jittery in games, but not by a large variance (around 10-20ms in CoD4) but enough to rubberband and jitter slightly. I get up to 100ms of jitter on Three at peak.

Will be interesting to see what its like between 8 and 10 when it completely dies for me normally.

Downloading 4GBs of textures for Unreal Engine at 700KB/s and watching a 720p60 video on YouTube at the moment and not getting any loss so its safe to say I'm pushing my luck.

EDIT:
8:29 now, packet loss still floating around 1% or less, still getting 1.2MB/s on the download speed (been downloading steam games since the texture pack finished). I wonder if this is because I'm kicking everyone off the cell from downloading or its a quiet night or they actually fixed something for once. Time will tell.

Now nobody ever tell anybody else about this ISP EVER, and make sure nobody else ever joins it and we should be ok :P

Ping and packet loss grand all evening, sit down for a game of CS and the ping goes all over the place. Volvo pls.
Its not the CS servers, its the connection:

Look at the lagometer on CoD 4:
http://i.imgur.com/3nST9Qq.jpg
Spikier than Sanic, this is what it should be:
http://i.imgur.com/1rrJyUS.jpg

So packet loss is gone but I still cant game. FFS this ISP is gonna drive me up the wall.

0.7% loss from ¬4PM til 11:55PM
Had to cancel the ping to swap to the three connection to game.
aaaaaand the Three is ****e as well. Can't win lads.

chris_ie wrote: »

Strange that. Did you do pings to the CS servers when not gaming? Is it a case of when you start the game ping shoots up? I have seen that before.

Its happening on all different game servers I tested, Quake Live, CoD4, CS, BF4.
It came and went, presumably with the amount of bandwidth getting pushed through NWE.
One minute its flat and steady, the next spiking so hard that the game cant keep up.

Probably still QoS of some sort on their end letting media packets through before game ones and delaying them.
Every packet is a different ping from the last one. Doesn't show up in a normal ping command since its not testing frequently enough.

Well at least normal browsing is grand. Probably gonna have to settle for that till the national broadband plan starts up if it ever does.

Rapidsat wrote: »

IS YOUR BROADBAND SPEED FRUSTRATINGLY SLOW?

DO YOU LIVE IN A RURAL AREA OR A BROADBAND NOTSPOT?

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As someone who has 4meg copper line, I have always been on the lookout for faster broadband where I live, a quite rural location.

I got excited when I seen this sneeky advert for RapidSat;), but when I went to your site I was again disappointed as it seems satellite broadband hasn't got any cheaper since Niall Quinn launched it a few years back.

£190stg to get installed and activated.
Then £55 per month for 24 months (approx £1300).
And only offered a paltry download allowance of 25gb per month? In todays world of streaming and online content, this simply isn't enough. Even my basic package with VF is 40gb. Your 'unlimited' service is 30gb, which doesn't seem to make sense at all.

Think I'll be passing on this service too.

They it was their 1st post, and something along the lines of

ARE YOU HAVING SLOW INTERNET SPEEDS?
FED UP WITH A POOR RURAL SERVICE?

etc etc.

But if you check out their site it is generally shocking in terms of install, price, download allowance etc.