Irishbroadband Query

Prime

Hi all,
I just got installed last Saturday a wireless connection into my house from http://www.irishbroadband.ie. The package I went for is called BreezeHome http://www.irishbroadband.ie/residential.html

This package cost me €150 for the installation and has additional monthly subscription / rental of €30.

This should give me a 512 kBps upload and download and with a contention of 20:1 and no cap on downloads, plus a fixed IP address.

The installation went as follows:

First Week (~30 Min): LOS (Line Of Sight) test
Following Week (Installation ~2 Hrs):
- Antenna fixed onto my chimney with 2m pool
- Wired down to my PC with some very tough shielded CAT5 cable to a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter to my Ethernet card.
- Setup static IP Address on Nic and two cups of coffee for the technicians and I was up and running.

Which leads me to the following; if any one can help or has any info on this product I would be very happy to hear any feedback.

Saturday: My friend has NTL broadband with 512 kBps downloads and 128 kBps uploads. So we set about comparing speeds. Firstly we tried www.bandwidthplace.com and their speed test. He scored around the 650 mark and I got 360. We tested again and he fell off to 580 and I stayed around 360.

We then set out to apply as many relevant tcp/ip optimisations to are Nics and OS, we both run WinXP Pro. These seemed to have little effect and then we tried removing spy ware with Ad Aware, by Lavasoft, made some difference.

Sunday: I stayed up until 0300 Hrs running more speed tests and looking on forums for advice about getting the most out of your connection. My speed went down to 116 around midnight and stayed that way. Me thinking traffic should be less at night on local networks and being the weekend and all that.

Monday: I got onto Irishbroadband today and asked them what was going on and as I guessed they told me a story about contention and the technician I was onto went though a couple of things with me asked if I had run TCP/IP optimisation and a few other things. He recommended that I should upgrade my package to the next one with an 8:1 contention and for €70 I could get a 1Mb connection with 4:1 contention, so it should never fall below 250 kBps. I said I would see how I get on first with what I have.

With furthering querying I managed to find out that the hardware is by Alvarion, www.alvarion.com and incorporates the 802.11 a/b/g standards but has frequency hopping also setup with some other stuff, nearly sounds like military standards of some kind.

After the call I went back onto the net to try and find out more. One thing that I am finding annoying is that no software came with the package to monitor my bandwidth or check the hardware or perform firmware upgrades, etc... Apparently all this is done by Irishbroadband. But I would like to have some control over my hardware, especially my internet connection. I didn’t like the way they say they monitor everything themselves, hmmm, what is that supposed to mean.

The hardware, I think, that is on my roof, from the PoE box by my computer which has "BreezeNet" on it and from what the technician told me, is a BreezeAccess II box with parabolic Mesh Antenna, running in the 2.4GHz range.

So finally, has anyone else bought this package from Irishbroadband. Should I be demanding my bandwidth from Irishbroadband or my money back. Can they sell something like this if it is barely going to run any faster than my 56K modem. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Sorry about the length, but I am a firm believer of getting in all or as much of the facts first.

Cheers

Prime

Ripwave

Originally posted by Prime
Which leads me to the following; if any one can help or has any info on this product I would be very happy to hear any feedback.

Saturday: My friend has NTL broadband with 512 kBps downloads and 128 kBps uploads. So we set about comparing speeds. Firstly we tried www.bandwidthplace.com and their speed test. He scored around the 650 mark and I got 360. We tested again and he fell off to 580 and I stayed around 360.

So you've got a good, consistent link.

Did you do a TraceRoute to that site, to see where the bottlenecks are?

We then set out to apply as many relevant tcp/ip optimisations to are Nics and OS, we both run WinXP Pro. These seemed to have little effect

Not too surprising, really - most of those optimizations have little or no relevance to your situation.

After the call I went back onto the net to try and find out more. One thing that I am finding annoying is that no software came with the package to monitor my bandwidth or check the hardware or perform firmware upgrades, etc... Apparently all this is done by Irishbroadband. But I would like to have some control over my hardware, especially my internet connection.

It's not your hardware. But apart from reporting the "signal strength", what sort of software do you want? Firmware upgrades are done by the provider, not by the customer, because of the encryption and signal quality issues involved.

I didn’t like the way they say they monitor everything themselves, hmmm, what is that supposed to mean.

It sounds pretty straighforward to me, and they're probably a bit more proactive about it than Eircom would be if you had a DSL line! Eircom won't tell you anything about the state of your connection if you go with DSL either.

So finally, has anyone else bought this package from Irishbroadband. Should I be demanding my bandwidth from Irishbroadband or my money back. Can they sell something like this if it is barely going to run any faster than my 56K modem. Any feedback would be appreciated.

When you're not wasting your time at www.bandwidthplace.com, what sort of speeds do you get? have you tried downloading software from
a local TUCOWS site to see what sort of throughput you get when you're not dragging packets across the Atlantic?

And remember that you're paying for a contended service - if everyone else is trying to measure their bandwidth at the same time, you'll all get crap results.

Prime

Thanks for the feedback ripwave.

Yeh, I have tried tracert and ping to www.bandwidthplace.com

The following are the results I am getting at the moment

######################################

Tracing route to bandwidthplace.com [209.61.187.19]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 57 ms 63 ms 14 ms 3rock-hu-vl-3.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.34.97]

2 15 ms 17 ms 15 ms rte-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.182]

3 26 ms 15 ms 14 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]

4 16 ms 14 ms 14 ms ibis-gw-fe-0-1-3-0.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.185]

5 127 ms 20 ms 18 ms yar1-serial5-1.Dublin.cw.net [208.175.247.81]

6 17 ms 11 ms 13 ms ycr2-ge-2-0-0.Dublin.cw.net [208.175.245.69]

7 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms bcr2-so-2-0-0.Thamesside.cw.net [166.63.209.197]

8 22 ms 21 ms 22 ms zcr2-loopback.Londonlnt.cw.net [166.63.210.19]

9 31 ms 34 ms 46 ms sl-bb21-lon-1-2.sprintlink.net [213.206.131.37]

10 100 ms 109 ms 118 ms sl-bb21-tuk-10-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.19.69]

11 119 ms 105 ms 128 ms sl-bb23-pen-10-3.sprintlink.net [144.232.20.118]

12 213 ms 193 ms 103 ms sl-bb22-pen-14-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.178]

13 144 ms 145 ms 153 ms sl-bb21-fw-15-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.9.31]

14 377 ms 198 ms 145 ms sl-gw40-fw-8-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.8.246]

15 145 ms 151 ms 159 ms sl-racks-2-0.sprintlink.net [144.232.204.10]

16 144 ms 176 ms 155 ms vl130.core1.sat.rackspace.com [64.39.2.33]

17 146 ms 150 ms 233 ms vl901.aggr1.sat.rackspace.com [64.39.2.66]

18 149 ms 145 ms 143 ms bandwidthplace.com [209.61.187.19]



Trace complete.

##########################################

Pinging bandwidthplace.com [209.61.187.19] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 209.61.187.19: bytes=32 time=142ms TTL=238
Reply from 209.61.187.19: bytes=32 time=141ms TTL=238
Reply from 209.61.187.19: bytes=32 time=142ms TTL=238
Reply from 209.61.187.19: bytes=32 time=146ms TTL=238

Ping statistics for 209.61.187.19:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 141ms, Maximum = 146ms, Average = 142ms

##########################################

My friend firmly believes in the test results form bandwidthplace but as you can see there are a number of hops and delays in my tracert results.

The fastest downloads to date that I have gotten have been up to 50 KBps and slowest down to 4 KBps, due to contention at peak time as you said.

What I think I was trying to get at from my post is to see if these rates are acceptable and is anyone else in Dublin is using this package from irishbroadband and how are they finding it. I certainly like the idea of having a fixed IP

with a dedicated line that is always on. Gone are the days of the 56K modem and the artronimical phone bills.

Cheers

Prime

cmdrpaddy

the rates sem fair enough, 4Kb/s is slow but its higher than the lowest gaurenteed speed and 50Kb/s is pretty fast although the maximum is 64Kb/s. but as you say it is faaaar cheaper than paying a phone bill for the same amount of time at far lower speeds.

PrecariousNuts

Our test server is located in Texas, USA

That could be a reason although it doesn't explain why your friend got higher, I got 400 with netsource

Ripwave

Originally posted by Prime
Yeh, I have tried tracert and ping to www.bandwidthplace.com

The following are the results I am getting at the moment

Tracing route to bandwidthplace.com [209.61.187.19]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 57 ms 63 ms 14 ms 3rock-hu-vl-3.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.34.97]
2 15 ms 17 ms 15 ms rte-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.182]
3 26 ms 15 ms 14 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]
4 16 ms 14 ms 14 ms ibis-gw-fe-0-1-3-0.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.185]
5 127 ms 20 ms 18 ms yar1-serial5-1.Dublin.cw.net [208.175.247.81]
6 17 ms 11 ms 13 ms ycr2-ge-2-0-0.Dublin.cw.net [208.175.245.69]
7 22 ms 22 ms 21 ms bcr2-so-2-0-0.Thamesside.cw.net [166.63.209.197]

Wow, they're excellent times! There's nothing wrong with your IBB link at that rate, at least from a latency point of view. And contention will usually have some impact on latency, so I'd assume that you're not seeing too much contention with those numbers.

18 149 ms 145 ms 143 ms bandwidthplace.com [209.61.187.19]

These are transatlantic numbers, and simply tell you that bandwidthplace isn't a good place for measuring your download speed.

My friend firmly believes in the test results form bandwidthplace but as you can see there are a number of hops and delays in my tracert results.

I used to know someone who firmly believed that he was Napoleon, but we didn't pay too much attention to him. I'd be interested to know if the bandwidth place results are "cacheable", and if NTL has a http proxy server that might be boosting the results your friend is seeing. But realistically, IBB are only responsible for the connection between your house and their transmitter, and if "local" downloads aren't terribly slow, then you don't have cause to complain.

The fastest downloads to date that I have gotten have been up to 50 KBps and slowest down to 4 KBps, due to contention at peak time as you said.

(I occassionally see really slow downloads on the 2MB circuit at work, but only from some sites - the problem isn't local).

Again, ping and traceroute esatnet.tucows.com and verify that it's a "local" source of large files (I'm fairly sure you don't go through London to get to it), and use it to benchmark your speed. Anything else is just noise.

What I think I was trying to get at from my post is to see if these rates are acceptable and is anyone else in Dublin is using this package from irishbroadband and how are they finding it.

If you were getting 110Kbits/s from everywhere, you'd be right to complain. If you're getting 110Kbits/s from one site in the US, and better results from other servers, it's not IBBs fault, and you don't really have any grounds for complaint. (I got RipWave, rather than HomeBreeze. I'd like your pings, but I'm happy enough with the RipWave product for now).

I certainly like the idea of having a fixed IP

Why? If anything, I'd prefer to know that someone couldn't target me with a DoS attack if they wanted to. The only time I'd care about knowing my IP address is if I was setting up a NetMeeting with someone, and with the current IM tools, I don't even need to send my IP address to do that any more.

Serbian

Arggh. Was just about to post a link to Irish Broadbands Speed Test page but they have gotten rid of it or moved it somewhere. It was a useful resource for testing the speed of your link, shame it's gone now

I'd be fairly happy with what you have got there, it's streets ahead of what I have here. I don't buy into the whole contention crap though, as my connection often drops to well below 28k throughput, and often after midnight. The minimum speed my connection should run at is 64k.

If it's 3am and your connection is crawling, I would be suprised if it was in any way related to contention. What is much more likely is something like network interference. All the wireless providers have had bad problems with this, I think IrishWisp being the worst affected.

Serb

Prime

I see what you mean by the tracert times, I though they were rathere good for the time of day ( ~1730 Hrs)

Going on your advide ripwave I checked reacert times for a closer server. tucows.ipsupport.co.uk at 2255Hrs, which is in Manchester

##########################################

Tracing route to tucows.ipsupport.co.uk [212.85.248.14]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 294 ms 130 ms 176 ms 3rock-hu-vl-3.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.34.97]

2 16 ms 43 ms 112 ms rte-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.182]

3 51 ms 95 ms 22 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]

4 18 ms 12 ms 10 ms ibis-gw-fe-0-1-3-0.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.185]

5 253 ms 52 ms 31 ms lvl3gw.thn.packetexchange.net [212.187.197.193]

6 192 ms 182 ms 286 ms ge0-1-0-0.er0.thlon.uk.easynet.net [195.66.224.43]

7 250 ms 310 ms 201 ms ge0-1-0-0.br1.thlon.uk.easynet.net [195.40.0.134]

8 104 ms 161 ms 352 ms so1-3-0-0.br0.sabir.uk.easynet.net [195.172.211.10]

9 137 ms 192 ms 123 ms ge0-2-0-3.br1.sabir.uk.easynet.net [195.172.211.62]

10 37 ms 47 ms 52 ms so0-0-0-0.br0.mimnc.uk.easynet.net [195.172.211.5]

11 45 ms 44 ms 65 ms pos1-0.ar0.tcman.uk.easynet.net [212.134.11.58]

12 84 ms 109 ms 83 ms cr0.tcman.uk.easynet.net [195.40.4.161]

13 73 ms 66 ms 83 ms 217.205.239.78

14 94 ms 110 ms 73 ms tucows.ipsupport.co.uk [212.85.248.14]



Trace complete.
##########################################

A bit slow to start off (294ms) but not too bad after. I then downloaded putty from there which gave me a transfer speed of 28.6 kbps on a 348KB file. I know I should check this on a larger file and see how the speeds rate.

So I guess I am happy enough with the connection and should have no real cause to worry. I always figure it is best to ask around the forums when I get any new hardware and see that all is checking out.

With regard to interferance on the network I did hear something mentioned about WiFi have problems with something called "the hidden node".

quick reference:

http://www.securitymagazine.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,5411,77206,00.html

Seems to be a big problem with WISP providers that the 802.11 people are trying to figure out and have come up with some solutions for it. Should hopefully cut down major problems faced with contention.

Interferance is greatly reduced with the 802.11g standard and I hear there is soon to be a new 802.11n at 54Mbps.

quick reference:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/networks/0,39020345,2136013,00.htm

So I guess we will all have to scrap are new 802.11g cards that just came on the shelf and get a new 802.11n card :rolleyes:


Anyway, I siad to Irishbroadband that I would try out the connection for a month and see how I get on with it and get back to them if I have any further questions, which I am sure I will.

Prime

Ripwave

Originally posted by Prime
Going on your advide ripwave I checked reacert times for a closer server. tucows.ipsupport.co.uk at 2255Hrs, which is in Manchester

What about the one I recommended, esatnet.tucows.com?

Prime

I tried earlier around 1800 Hrs and was getting no responce responce from that server, so I looked for the next best thing. Dublin being just across the water.

Since reading your post at 0152Hrs I tried again and got a responce at 0155Hrs. As expected much better results.

##########################################


Tracing route to tucows.mirrors.esat.net [193.120.14.243]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 22 ms 46 ms 19 ms 3rock-hu-vl-3.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.34.97]

2 11 ms 13 ms 77 ms rte-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.182]

3 169 ms 33 ms 38 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]

4 107 ms 51 ms 33 ms ibis-gw-fe-0-1-3-0.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.185]

5 219 ms 230 ms 271 ms fe-0-0-3.dub10.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.67.65]

6 217 ms 213 ms 42 ms so-6-3-0.lon20.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.82.73]

7 223 ms 102 ms 101 ms linx-gw.uk.esat.net [195.66.226.65]

8 96 ms 38 ms 40 ms pos2-2.core002.cwt.esat.net [193.95.131.17]

9 86 ms 47 ms 64 ms pos2-2.core002.bmt.esat.net [193.95.131.22]

10 80 ms 49 ms 97 ms vlan2.rt001.bmt.esat.net [193.95.140.3]

11 104 ms 83 ms 48 ms mirrors.esat.net [193.120.14.243]



Trace complete.

##########################################

Ping is alos looking good at this hour of the morning, just gone 0200Hrs

##########################################



Pinging tucows.mirrors.esat.net [193.120.14.243] with 32 bytes of data:



Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54

Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=166ms TTL=54

Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=166ms TTL=54

Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=54



Ping statistics for 193.120.14.243:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 277ms, Average = 164ms

##########################################

Might be interesting to see other peoples tracert times to the same suggested server for comparrison and to post the time of day when they ran the tracert. Just an idea, wouldn't mind seeing what other broadband or dialup connections are getting.

Cheers for the advice again

Prime

Ripwave

Originally posted by Prime

Tracing route to tucows.mirrors.esat.net [193.120.14.243]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 22 ms 46 ms 19 ms 3rock-hu-vl-3.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.34.97]
2 11 ms 13 ms 77 ms rte-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.182]
3 169 ms 33 ms 38 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]

There's a lot of variability there, that might indicate that there was a lot of contention at that time.

Ping is alos looking good at this hour of the morning, just gone 0200Hrs
Pinging tucows.mirrors.esat.net [193.120.14.243] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54
Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=166ms TTL=54
Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=166ms TTL=54
Reply from 193.120.14.243: bytes=32 time=277ms TTL=54
Ping statistics for 193.120.14.243:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 277ms, Average = 164ms

Actually, they're not good ping times at all. Based on the first traceroute you posted, I'd have expected ping times of 20-30 ms to the esatnet server. But then, I was surprised at those early ping times anyway.

The problem is that there's no easy way to tell whether there's a problem here. Contention because other people are using the network at the same time can cause delays, and that's not a problem, as such - the contention ratios are clearly posted. But if the delays are caused by retransmits because of signal dropout or interference, then you could describe that as a "problem", but it's not obvious whether it would be serious issue. The occassional dropped packet will have almost no impact on ordinary web browsing, file downloading, etc, though it might have more of an impact on VPN or remote desktop use. It's hard to say really.