what ISPs do internet caffees use?

CyberGhost

is it eircom or netsource? i asked the guy at internet caffee, he told me eircom and that they pay something like 200 euros a month and have 1 meg internet, isn't that expensive? i mean why can't they use SOHO internet for their caffee?

seamus

Internet cafes need to be connected to the net. If their connection goes down, they can't work.

So for this reason, most of them will go with proper dedicated services from the likes of eircom, with uptime guarantees. Plainly, they are priority customers. They agree a service level with eircom (30 mins downtime per year for example), and they pay for that service.

DSL lines, and standard SOHO offerings tend to be based upon 'best-effort' uptime. Meaning that while the provider will do everything in its power to have the line always-on, the provider is not liable for loss of business, or any damages, other than the cost of the service, for prolonged outages. Which is reasonable enough. If you want near-perfect uptimes and SLAs (Service level agreements) - as net cafes do - you have to pay for it.

muffen

he told me eircom and that they pay something like 200 euros a month and have 1 meg internet, isn't that expensive?

Yeah, it is expensive.
I am on an Eircom 1MBit line, uncapped, and it costs 204 euros a month, including VAT.
I would guess they are using the same line, as this is the best connection offered by Eircom (excluding leased lines etc).

To be honest, I have noticed improvements since moving to this 1MBit connection. My internet hardly ever goes down anymore. When I had the 512 line with the 4gig cap, I prolly had 30min downtime a week in average.

Anyways, the price is insanely high, but I wanted an uncapped 1MBit line, and this was unfortunately the best option I had.

The thing I have noticed with Eircom is that they are really expensive, but they do give you what you pay for, which sometimes can be worth the extra money.

elexes

but dont they have 1 meg upload also ?

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by elexes
but dont they have 1 meg upload also ?

No, it's 256k up.

Ripwave

Originally posted by CyberGhost
is it eircom or netsource? i asked the guy at internet caffee, he told me eircom and that they pay something like 200 euros a month and have 1 meg internet, isn't that expensive? i mean why can't they use SOHO internet for their caffee?

€200 a month for a cafe? That'd be about what, two or three cups of coffe a day? Doesn't sound like much of an investment to me.

BKtje

200 a month for a cafe? That'd be about what, two or three cups of coffe a day?

Was thinking the same thing. 1mb (depends on number of pc's but i assume 20 or above) is not that much. Its like haveing a 20:1 contention before even hitting the isp's contention

Then again i dont run a net cafe so it must be ok if hes still in business :

ozmo

Originally posted by B-K-DzR
Was thinking the same thing. 1mb (depends on number of pc's but i assume 20 or above) is not that much. Its like haveing a 20:1 contention before even hitting the isp's contention

Then again i dont run a net cafe so it must be ok if hes still in business :

Saw a report on english tv last year - a guy set up a mobile internet cafe. 6 macs in a van - and for the internet connection? - they all went through his mobile phone! I think it was some 2.5Generation mobile connection they have.
It was for schoolkids so the bandwidth demand probably wouldnt have been huge (and it was probably a decaf zone... ).

ps. looking forward to jan when Internet Cafes will be smoke free. A group of us tried it a few times for a lan session - but the thick smoky athmosphere drove us away.

ozmo.

Turner

204 euro's for a 1mb uncapped service with virtually no downtime. I had it in my house for about a year and experienced only minutes of downtime. The onmly problem is the ping at about 50ms to irish servers.

Compare that to the price of a 256k leased line and you'll see how cheap the dsl is.

Chief.

adnans

isn't there something in most terms & conditions documents from DSL providers in Ireland that mentions something about illegality reselling their product to other people. does that include internet cafes charging people to access the net?

anyway, the internet cafe in swords uses a leased line from NTL which offer something crazy for something crazy price. theres also isdn backup line in case something goes wrong with the main line! crazy.

adnans

Cake Fiend

Net House uses NTL for most of the cafes. NTL have given us the least trouble out of all the ISPs we've tried. If something does go wrong, it can be a nightmare to get it solved (they really don't seem to give a sh1t) but thankfully things rarely enough go wrong once the line is up and running (and it took long enough for the last line we started renting from them to get running - I was arguing with the b4stards for almost two weeks about their core router settings being wrong). The ISP we were using before NTL in that particular store were tragic - the line went down at least 10 times in a year and it could take up to two days to resolve the problem - unacceptable for an internet cafe, obviously. The only problem we've had so far with the new NTL line was when their primary DNS server went down for a bit.

LFCFan

Aren't Blueyonder offering 2Mbit connections now in the UK for something like £50? Another example of the Irish just accepting the ripoff as the norm.