Wireless internet

Subc

Hi, i would like to know if wireless internet is any good, is it stable? Do you get good latency in games? Are there a lot of spikes? Whats the average download speed?
I was looking into IBB. I called them last night, they said the monthly fee was 48euros and the installation fee is around 380 (not to sure).
Any of you have IBB or wireless broadband?
Thank you
Looking forward to your feedback

d0gb0y

I was with Irish wisp for a few months & then I made the mistake of signing up with netsource. I can't comment on IBB service but wireless & latency don't go well together. Weather also effects it, the download speeds are normally very good but latency is normally in 100ms range. I also had a lot of problems with teh VPN & a lot of the time it was down for most of the day. On a the whole i found wireless to be very inconsistent & stressful

Subc

More info please
Anybody here on the forum got IBB?
I'm asking this cause i recently moved and i used to have ntl cable only now i can't anymore. I checked Esat Bt and Eircom (only eircom is available) but its capped at 4gb and i use the internet a LOT, i download songs, surf, and play a lot of games online. I also checked UTV dsl but they also cap at 5gb.
Thats why i'm looking into wireless internet cause they don't cap but im not sure if its stable.
Hope somebody can help me here
Thanx in advance

Spud_Gun

I was looking to get IBB for online gaming and Xbox Live, until I discovered that wireless broadband will not work with Xbox Live. If you are not interested in Xbox Live, then IBB is good. One of the lads here plays Planetside successfully through IBB.

quozl

why wont wireless work with xbox live? if you get the ethernet modem option from IBB or leap it should work perfectly.

Spud_Gun

It should, but it doesn't always work. Apparently there are many varying factors, and you need consistantly low latency. It works well all the time for some people, not well for others. MS officially dont support satellite or wireless BB which isn't a good advertisment for it. I have been asking if anyone here plays XBL via IBB, and I have had no hands up as yet. I was going to try it myself, but for 320 Euro for an IBB installation, I want to be 100% sure it will work.

Serbian

Originally posted by d0gb0y
wireless & latency don't go well together

This isn't true at all. If you are thinking of sattelite then the latency is huge, 400ms+, but if Wireless is implemented properly you'll get far better latency than with ADSL.

However, in Ireland, that doesn't seem to be the case. IBB ping anywhere from 100 - 1000 to Irish Servers, Irish Wisp seem to have something resembling Interleaving on their service which pushes up the ping somewhat (into 80 range for Irish Servers as far as I am aware). That leaves Leap. Haven't heard a lot about leap's latency. Maybe quozl can shed some light on that?

Anyway, to Subc, from my personal experience I'd highly recommend that you don't touch IBB. Go with Leap if you can, or Netsource, as both have no cap on the service.

Sloth

The pings/download speed thread should give you all the information you need in comparing pings.

Subc

Thank you for all the answers but got a few more questions
Serbian, Leap is wireless internet also no?Prices?
I heard netsource was bad cause to many people have it and download speeds are terrible and unstable. Has this been fixed yet?
I used to download with ntl cable at an average of 72kb/sec and for pings in cs for example i had an average of 50 i would say. I could get 60 and also 25
So i'm looking for something similar to that.
Thank you

Subc

?

Sloth

Your not going to get 72k download speeds with current ADSL packages, you only got that because NTL's package is 600k.

Subc

before i had 512kb with ntl and i still had 72kb, and with 600 the same or not noticeable. Anyways cable should be downloading at 150kb/sec not 72kb/sec and dsl is around 85. So knowing that in ireland everything isn't completely up to date, i should be getting 70kb/sec with any dsl provider

TwoShedsJackson

I am looking at the IBB website and their wireless offering looks good as I'm in Ballinteer and they have a transmitter thingie in 3 Rock. I'm not bothered about games playing so the latency thing isn't important.

I have no idea what a contention ratio is, is 8:1 good or bad?

This ethernet card you have to have, what kind of cost are they?

quozl

TwoSheds, an ethernet card will cost about 15 euros. If you're not worried about latency then you'd probably be happy with IBB. Its uncapped, and cheap.

Canaboid

I got IBB installed two weeks ago, off the new Tallaght transmitter. Steady 52kb/s download and upload. They provide all the equipment you need bar a bog standard network card to plug the cable into. They install a rooftop aerial so if you are in an apartment block this could be a problem.

With regard to latency, it's either sublime or ridiculous. Sublime = 25-40ms pings to games.iol.ie. Ridiculous = Constant spikes up to 800ms making online gaming impossible.

€50 pm for 512/512, always on, uncapped with fixed IP is pretty good what ever way you look at it.

In another week or two I'll be phoning Eircom to disconnect my landline and then I shall be free.

The Fool

"I have no idea what a contention ratio is, is 8:1 good or bad?"

Contention ratio is how many users you share your broadband with, so the lower the better. Far as i know the best ratio you can get on adsl is with esat at 20:1 and eircom has 24:1, wireless tends to be much better.

Kevok

I'm on IBB's one megabit residential service. If you do a search for my posts on this forum with IBB, you'll see that sometimes I'm happy with the service and others not

Take right now for example.

Pinging www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 217.114.166.147:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 29ms, Average = 20ms


Pinging clarity.jolt.co.uk [195.149.21.11] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=62ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=35ms TTL=56
Reply from 195.149.21.11: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=56

Ping statistics for 195.149.21.11:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 33ms, Maximum = 62ms, Average = 41ms

Depending on what transmitter you're on, latency will either be mostly good, or mostly bad. 3-rock appears to be the former whereas RTÉ is the latter.

There is a 1 year contract lock in though. Mines up in October, at the moment i'd stick with it but there are times when you just want to say 'to hell with it.'

Download speeds are 100k - 130k a sec.

glimmerman

I've Irishwisp off three rock at the moment: the service was pretty good to start with, but lately then latency has been varying tremendously from 80ms (good for this service) to ocassionally 1 second pings. A few weeks ago it was possible to get 3 second pings! It seems some warez monkey is eating all the upstream bandwidth, messing it up for loads of other people.

Usually if the ping is a steady 80ms, its pretty good for gaming and excellent for download.

irishguy

its not the wireless end of the equiptment thats creating the bad pings [ the 802.11b/a part should ahve pings of <5ms] its wahteven there using to connect to the internet is the problem they should have a wireless antenna pointing to there ISP to provide net access then you would be getting very low internet pings [<10 or 15ms, it would be just a bit higher than having your own leased line]

quozl

there's a lot of interference in the 2.4 gig spectrum irishguy. So the wireless part of the connection can be pretty bad. IBB have a really superb upstream connection, whenever I had latency issues with them it was always the radio link, which is somewhat out of their control.

Greg

Sangre

For me off the sandyford tower I get great ping and great download rates.

I love them so much tbh, I really do.
Uncapped aswell.

But I do know peopl that do have problems with it with regard to lag spikes.
Weather does not effect ping.

This is on 512k.

Pinging www.boards.ie [217.114.166.147] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=13ms TTL=58
Reply from 217.114.166.147: bytes=32 time=15ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 217.114.166.147:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 13ms, Maximum = 19ms, Average = 15ms

glimmerman

Originally posted by irishguy
its not the wireless end of the equiptment thats creating the bad pings [ the 802.11b/a part should ahve pings of <5ms] its wahteven there using to connect to the internet is the problem they should have a wireless antenna pointing to there ISP to provide net access then you would be getting very low internet pings [<10 or 15ms, it would be just a bit higher than having your own leased line]

yeah, for irishwisp its definitely the backend contention thats a problem: not enough upstream bwidth /me suspects: only ocassionally is the problem up to the tower, the rest is down to the pipe into their provider.