views on wireless vs DSl bband

smythwj

I am moving to Dublin shortly and am interested in views on the available bband providers. I will be in the Booterstown area and so can get most of the DSL providers as well as Irish broadband wireless. I would be grateful for any views on the following questions (and any others I haven't thought of)

Some context: I am a freelance translator/journalist working at home and need a good but not super-fast connection. Up to now in UK using virgin which performs at a consistent 450K. Note I tend to use the Internet during normal working hours, this sometimes helps the speed as there are fewer leisure users playing games etc.

1. how does wireless (Irish bb.) stack up against regular DSL?

2. Irish bband offer several contention rates ; 48:1 and 20:1 would be the relevant ones for me. Does this make a significant diff.?

3. ditto for the DSL providers: do the contention rates make a significant diff.

4. any gopod/bad experiences with any of the providers.

All help much appreciated.

dieselfreak

This will prob get moved to the broadband forum.. but anyway.

I had a very bad expereince with Irishbroadband

Ping times were totally off the chart 1500ms round trip times to irish based servers eg www.boards.ie

download speeds were at times 'ok', but as a rule worse than dial-up.

The customer service was nearly as good as the 'broadband' service.

Tech support just constantly fobbed me off with excuses, eg I've reset the radio.. call back tomorrow if youre still having problems.

This went on for months.. I cancelled the service..

Try doing a search for ping times... I'd guess IBB are all over the results page.

Very unreliable service, if I were you I'd stick to DSL.

Moonbeam

I get about 15ms pings on average to boards.ie from my 1mb Ibb connection and about 30ms from the 512k Iol one.

smythwj

thanks dieselfreak, I've noted that. Moonbeam - can you clarify your point, presumably half the ping time from a 1MB IBB connection compared with a 512K IOL one is what you'd expect, ie it's nothing special?

HelterSkelter

Originally posted by smythwj
thanks dieselfreak, I've noted that. Moonbeam - can you clarify your point, presumably half the ping time from a 1MB IBB connection compared with a 512K IOL one is what you'd expect, ie it's nothing special?

Same experience as DIeselfreak here.

With IOLBB Plus now, excelent service so far.

Ripwave

Originally posted by smythwj
thanks dieselfreak, I've noted that. Moonbeam - can you clarify your point, presumably half the ping time from a 1MB IBB connection compared with a 512K IOL one is what you'd expect, ie it's nothing special?

No - ping times are not directly related to download speeds - ping is a measure of latency, not speed.

(You wouldn't expect a ping time of 70ms on a 33.6k dialup to drop to 5ms on a DSL connection, for example).

The improved ping times on the IBB connection are a result of a shorter network path to the destination - for a start, the "first hop" on a DSL link can add 20-40ms to pings for some people, but with the VL wireless gear, this is usually only a couple of ms.

Note that IBB offer two very different wireless technologies. The Line-of-Sight service, that requires a fixed antenna on your roof has low latencies. The non-Line-of-Sight Ripwave system that doesn't require any special installation has fairly high latency (and consequently bad pings).

smythwj

So is Irish broadband any good or not or is it better to go for adsl? I only care about download speed, isn't pinging something to do with gaming, which I am not interested in.

HelterSkelter

Originally posted by smythwj
So is Irish broadband any good or not or is it better to go for adsl? I only care about download speed, isn't pinging something to do with gaming, which I am not interested in.

I think if you do a search for irish broadband and IBB you will make your mind up fairly quickly about them!

Ripwave

Originally posted by smythwj
So is Irish broadband any good or not

IBB have two entirely different services, with very different characteristics. Whether either one will suit you depends on your needs. And you haven't told us what your needs are. If all you want is web browsing and access to e-mail, then IBBs RipWave product should be okay (assuming they improve the signal strength with the new equipment). If you are doing anything that is sensitive to latency (VPN, telnet, VoIP), then you'll need to look at their HomeBreeze product, which will require an antenna installed on your roof.

or is it better to go for adsl? I only care about download speed, isn't pinging something to do with gaming, which I am not interested in.

If you don't have a strong preference, just go with the flow, and get DSL.

CONMIKE12

steer clear of Ibb...d load speeds are terrible.action taken by company to rectify this was non existant.No replies to e mails or telephone calls

smythwj

thanks mate. That's a nice, clear answer. I think the evidence is overwheming then that IBB is crap.

spongebob

Leap operate in the Booterstown area and have a far better reputation than IBB .....and are a WISP to Boot.

Eircom is about to start enforcing its Cap next month . If your product has a 4Gb Cap per month and if you exceed this Cap, you will be charged €36 incl VAT for every Gb you go over the Cap.

IOL are different. If you bust the Cap you get throttled for the rest of that month IIRC , that makes the system unusable for days sometimes.

Netsource used to put the hogs in together . I dunno what they do now.

Keep an eye on NTL as well. They are building out again, having stopped for a while.


M

smythwj

I like caps. I have no interest in making huge downloads and I want people who want to do that to have to pay extra. So that is good news as far as I am concerned. The only thing I want/need is fast internet access in the sense of accessing web pages quickly.

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by smythwj
I like caps. I have no interest in making huge downloads and I want people who want to do that to have to pay extra. So that is good news as far as I am concerned. The only thing I want/need is fast internet access in the sense of accessing web pages quickly.

In that case, this is probably your best bet:
http://u.tv/utvclicksilver/

The first 4 months are free, and it is €29.99 after that. I think the cap is 8 GB, which should be more than enough.

Paddy20

Yep. UTV Clicksilver, bundled with their telephone call discount service sounds as though it would meet with your needs. Also, remember that UTV is part of ITV Media network