Wireless Access?

uncle_sam_ie

I'v just found that a town very near me has been approved for the County and Group Broadband scheme. I live about five miles away and am pretty sure I have a line of sight to the tower( it's a wireless solution). Am I close enough to get a signal? and does the signal from the tower go in all directions or is it beamed in a certain area?

Thanks, Andrew

viking

If you are 5 miles away AND you have LOS then you should be fine. Call the ISP and they should be able to do a site survey.

The antenna is probably omnidirectional which means it transmits 360 degrees.

Where in the country are you based?

jwt

I'm almost 6 miles away from Kinnegad and still get a good* signal (better than Viking in fact )


If your sure you have LOS then you should be fine. Lastmile use Airspan gear which is very good and good for 10-15 miles.


John

*Mind you low flying aircraft are currently a serious hazard to the aerial and these latest winds have been an interesting experiment in Organ Pipe acoustics.

uncle_sam_ie

I'm living in Castletownroche County Cork and the tower would be based in kildorrey. I'm actually on higher ground then the tower and there is nothing but fields and maybe an odd house 5-6 miles in between. I did e-mail the ISP and they wrote back to say that they hoped to get their infrastructure rolled out by Christmas. The ISP is called County Broadband, but unfortunately they don't have a website up yet. How have you found Wireless broadband? How dose it compare to DSL? I just hope it works to were I can tell eircon to stick their ISDN.
Thanks, Andrew

jwt

Wireless has been fine so far, due to the technology used pings aren't fantastic typically

Pinging boards.ie [82.195.136.250] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=55
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=55
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=55
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=71ms TTL=55

Ping statistics for 82.195.136.250:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 60ms, Maximum = 71ms, Average = 67ms

but because Lastmile peer through packetexchange in London UK ping times are no different if anything slightly better.

Pinging jolt.co.uk [82.133.85.65] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=65ms TTL=48
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=48
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=48
Reply from 82.133.85.65: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 82.133.85.65:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 50ms, Maximum = 75ms, Average = 62ms

We have had a few outages with them, but only for a few hours at a time.

TBH if you have the choice, the order of preference for BB is...

Fibre
Cable
xDSL
Wireless
Satellite
Satellite AND Wireless (as some GBS schemes are running)

John

oscarBravo

jwt wrote:

TBH if you have the choice, the order of preference for BB is...

Fibre
Cable
xDSL
Wireless
Satellite
Satellite AND Wireless (as some GBS schemes are running)

That's a pretty arbitrary preference list, John. It doesn't take all the variables into account. If, for example, upload speed is important to you, then ADSL is automatically inferior to a symmetric wireless service. Also, for those who are happy to ditch their landline for VoIP, DSL is not particularly good value.

It depends, is all I'm saying.

jwt

oscarBravo wrote:

That's a pretty arbitrary preference list, John.

Yep it is, but I think you'll find that for most people it's a reasonable preference list. I like wireless, it does allow you to cut your landline but also it brings its own problems to the party (all of the BB technologies have issues even Fibre) depending on the technology used. (latency, packet loss, LOS as in trees growing putting on leaves etc.)

It's a question of trade offs and balances. Although I'm still trying to figure out where Satellite and FWA combo makes any sense

But I take your point, so lets say that xDSL and Wireless are interchangeable as regards pecking order.

John

oscarBravo

jwt wrote:

I like wireless, it does allow you to cut your landline but also it brings its own problems to the party (all of the BB technologies have issues even Fibre) depending on the technology used. (latency, packet loss, LOS as in trees growing putting on leaves etc.)

One last nitpick: "it may bring its own problems". There is an assumption that wireless has high latency, but I just ran a test ping across seven routers including several wireless hops and saw RTTs of 7ms on average - and we don't have packet loss.

Wireless is like anything else - it can be done well, and it can be done badly.

jwt wrote:

It's a question of trade offs and balances. Although I'm still trying to figure out where Satellite and FWA combo makes any sense