To Galway from USA

keno-daytrader

Hello,

I will be moving from the USA to Galway in January. Since I work out of home, my apt will have to have the ability for a dsl line. I will be living right in the City but am afraid of actually renting an apt and then having my phone line fail the test.

Any posters from Galway living in an Apt complex that has dsl hooked up or anyone else give me some advice on finding an apt that I can pass the line test?


Thanks

Ken

Asok

Afaik some apartment blocks are sticky about broadband i.e they might not want to put it in until all the apartments are getting it. Your best bet for dsl in galway or even ireland if you are going to be working from home i.e you can claim it as an expence would be esats business 512k dsl offering its pretty steep at 108 a month but you get what you pay for really.If you are'nt going to be transferring an awful lots there are cheaper packages with transfer caps in place i.e 4gb per month to 16gb per month with netsource, although netsource have stopped taking home customers i think. some more of the full time galwegians might be able to give you some more info.

Grom

I have the business dsl and it is ****ing mint Im well satisified with it.hope you get it going.your best bet would be to try and get a house to share and get broadband installed from there as apt owners are very tedious in coming around to allowing you to play with there fones

spongebob

An apartment is rented direct from the owner (the Landlord) or indirectly from an Estate Agent (a Realtor in yankee speak) .

Simply tell them that a precondition of your taking the place is that it passes the line test. In order to do so you tell the Landlord/Estate agent to find out what the current or previous telephone number was for the apartment . That number will be on a test database with a pass or fail indicator . If it is a fail then forgetaboutit and find somewhere else. Make the lease subject to your getting BB , if you can't get it there is no point living there.

DSL is not available in cartain parts of the City such as Western Knocknacarra or College Rd / Loygh Atalia where Eircom have installed concetrators. If you do not know the area you should get some advice in case you land in one of those places.

There may be a Wireless BB alternative by mid 2004 but most Landlords will not allow you to install an antenna externally so Wireless may as well not exist . Most of them will not allow you to install a Sat dish so that you can avail of crappy expensive Sat BB .

M

keno-daytrader

Thats great information, thanks folks!

I am thinking that I will need to go with Eircoms enhanced or ESAT corparate as I can't be limited by a download cap.

However I am a little worried to go with ESAT because Eircom seems to do everything they can to discourage this. Its extremely important for me to be up and running when I get to Ireland as I can't work without a broadband connection.

I guess Im worried about the bad stories posted about people waiting for months for someone besides eircom to install a dsl connection.

Ive heard great things about the reliability of Eircom with respect to pings and disconnects which I would be willing to "payup" for.

I will be connecting to servers in the USA , wondering if ESAT are as good as Eircom

Am I worrying to much?

po0k

Eircom have interleaving enabled, will increase the ping to a minimum of 60ms, and higher can be expected.
EsatBT Business don't have interleaving on their lines, so the ping can be as good as 15-20ms or even less.
Eircom are a pack of jokers, have been holding back broadband in this country to protect their profits from E1 lines to businesses to the detriment of our economy.
Esat aren't saints either, but they offer the single best wide-spread DSL package available in Ireland today.
Also, if you're working from home, would I be right in assuming you can claim back VAT/your employers can?
Would make the é108 a month about a sixth cheaper.

keno-daytrader

Thx SyxPak. Im on the ESAT website looking into availability, says the the following 2 exchanges are enabled for the Galway city area....

Galway HPO
Mervue

How to tell if a house or apt falls into one of these 2 exchanges?

Thanks for the tip on Interleaving, Im on a cable broadband connection here and its something that Ive never delt with. I've been on broadband now for the last 4 1/2 years here in different states (IDSL ADSL and cable) in America and have been just counting down the days when I could move to Galway with the widespread roll out of broadband. I cant wait!

Cheers
Ken

dubhthach

Esat website is abit dated to be honest, most of the exchanges that Eircom have dsl enabled esat can use (in galway anyway)
So you can add the Shantalla exchange to that list, i'm on it and i could have gotten esat, using eircom though.
This fairly widens the area that you can look for accomadation.

Galway HPO basically covers the entire city centre, Mervue out the east side covers Mervue, Renmore, ballyban, Doughuisce and i'm assuming ballybrit.
Don't know if it covers Terryland/Tirelian
Shantalla would cover shantalla, salthill, westside and parts of newcastle as well as parts of knocknacarra, but as Syxer said the western parts of knocknacarra are out of coverage.

Now i'm not all together sure about the above info. but it's basically alright,
syxpak can you clarify any of it?

When you moving to galway by the way ken?

Ripwave

Originally posted by dubhthach
Esat website is abit dated to be honest, most of the exchanges that Eircom have dsl enabled esat can use

Not so. EsatBT are reselling eircoms RADSL starter package under the IOLBB brand, but it has exactly the same technical characteristics as eircoms BB starter. The ESAT ADSL package referred to in the rest of the thread is only available from exchanges that ESAT have put their own hardware in. As far as I know, ESAT haven't bothered to extend that list beyond the initial 40 or so exchanges that they upgraded by the first quarter of this year.

keno-daytrader

Thx for all the info! Some really great information on this broadband board! Its been a huge help.

Dub, Im coming over for the 1st 2 weeks in Jan. and hope to find an apt, get a telephone line and start the ball rolling on DSL(prob from ESAT) because of the interleaving issue. I'll be pulling stock data from US servers and high pings will wreck my trading.

Im hoping ESAT wont take longer than 2 weeks once the Eircom line is live.

So am I correct in assuming that ESAT Business DSL is avail anywhere Eircom dsl reaches? I havent been able to find a link to check a phone# pass/fail for ESAT. The Salthill area would be perfect for me Im hoping ESAT can reach there.

Ken

Ripwave

Originally posted by keno-daytrader
So am I correct in assuming that ESAT Business DSL is avail anywhere Eircom dsl reaches? I havent been able to find a link to check a phone# pass/fail for ESAT.

No. ESAT Business DSL is only available in exchanges that ESAT have installed their own kit in.

dubhthach

In which case keno is restricted to the 2 exchanges that esat mention on their website (HPO and mervue)
HPO is the city centre while mervue covers a large chunk of the east side of the city.
I'd prolly tried and find somewhere in the city centre (HPO) @ keno, i mean it'll cost you bit more but you need decent dsl for work so it would be worth it.

Practical

Originally posted by SyxPak
Eircom have interleaving enabled, will increase the ping to a minimum of 60ms, and higher can be expected.

To a minimum of 60ms? Higher pings can be expected? I would agree that esats business deal is better than eircoms package but what you said is utter bullsh!t. I wouldn't say eircoms package is amazing (due to d/l cap) but it's better than most people make it out to be.

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from : bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=58
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=25ms TTL=58
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=58
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 82.195.131.128:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 23ms, Maximum = 25ms, Average = 24ms

On top of a mere perfect ping 90% of the time, I have yet to see a lower download speed of 51k on a good server.

spongebob

Originally posted by dubhthach
In which case keno is restricted to the 2 exchanges that esat mention on their website (HPO and mervue)
HPO is the city centre while mervue covers a large chunk of the east side of the city.
I'd prolly tried and find somewhere in the city centre (HPO) @ keno, i mean it'll cost you bit more but you need decent dsl for work so it would be worth it.

He better stay east of the river then, he could always go to live in Ballinasloe which also has the fast ESAT kit

M

dubhthach

I'm on the shantalla exchange (standard eircom package) here's my ping data

[paul@filer3-b paul]$ ping www.boards.ie
PING www.boards.ie (82.195.131.128) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=28.9 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=27.1 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=27.5 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=27.9 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=28.3 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=5 ttl=58 time=28.6 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=6 ttl=58 time=29.1 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=7 ttl=58 time=29.3 ms
64 bytes from boards.ie (82.195.131.128): icmp_seq=8 ttl=58 time=27.2 ms

--- www.boards.ie ping statistics ---
9 packets transmitted, 9 received, 0% packet loss, time 8074ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 27.166/28.257/29.348/0.794 ms, pipe 2

keno-daytrader

Practical and dub, what Eircom plan are you on? Your interleaving must be set to low?


All Im really am concerned about is good ping times back to the USA, seems if I get Eircom with an Uncaped plan the interleaving will be set to high according to

http://irelandoffline.org/home/staticpages/index.php?page=20030903212035303

and this seems to be where people are seeing higher pings (Eircoms 1mb/256 plan)
seems that when interleaving is set to low they are almost as good as ESAT


Still praying I can find ESAT around Salthill!

dubhthach

Well i'm in salthill myself
Eircom 512/128 has 4gb cap, i don't really do much downloading other then say doing a full Linux update every so often so i ain't pushed by the cap
i know i could have got the esat residential one which has an 8gb cap, but i'm stuck in a 12month contract.
havn't a clue about the other eircom plans though @ keno

if you give me a server address in the states i could give you my ping data for it

keno-daytrader

Awesome thanks dub!

can you try beacon.taltrade.com

I take esat residential is IOL BB?

dubhthach

[paul@filer3-b paul]$ ping beacon.taltrade.com
PING htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=0 ttl=115 time=144 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=1 ttl=115 time=144 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=2 ttl=115 time=144 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=3 ttl=115 time=144 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=4 ttl=115 time=145 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=5 ttl=115 time=145 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=6 ttl=115 time=141 ms
64 bytes from htmltrader1.taltrade.com (198.207.140.207): icmp_seq=7 ttl=115 time=144 ms

--- htmltrader1.taltrade.com ping statistics ---
8 packets transmitted, 8 received, 0% packet loss, time 7083ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 141.233/144.367/145.863/1.355 ms, pipe 2

yup IOL is owned by ESAT it's the brand name they use for residental offerings. They use ESAT BT for their business plans