New place, no phone line, need internet fast. help!

Cianos

Hi folks,
Im just about to move into a new place but it doesnt have any active phone line. Just rang Eircom to confirm, and they said it would take 4 weeks at a cost of €120 to get it set up.

I kinda need to get online asap, but I dont want to be ripped off for the next year aswell.

Any help would be great.

Cheers

Sponge Bob

an inactive line is fine , simply plug in a phone and dial 199000 and note the number spoken back

put that number into line tester database

get a new number on that line but use the pass against the old number when ordering BB

Blaster99

For the benefit of everyone, if looking for advice on broadband specify your location.

The fastest way to get broadband is Clearwire. All others will take weeks. Clearwire does a lot of traffic shaping which may or may not suit you. If you have cable already and you're in an NTL BB enabled area, they install quickly also.

I suppose there's Irish Broadband's Ripwave also, but you'd have to be truly desparate and have a very low expectations on what broadband means.

Cianos

Thanks very much for the help folks. Sorry, I meant to say that the place doesnt have a phone line whatsoever, not that it has one thats just inactive.

Whats traffic shaping?

Location is Rathmines

Sponge Bob

clearwire works (in Rathmines) for mail and web , it shapes p2p and 'other ' traffic .....throttles them in effect.

if you need mail and web pronto go to clearwire

Blaster99

You can most likely get Clearwire then.

Traffic shaping means traffic prioritisation and/or bandwidth limitation on certain traffic types. With Clearwire, this means that P2P doesn't perform, problems with streaming audio, problems with some gaming, problems with Skype, some restrictions on VoIP (but it works within those restrictions). If you're going to use it for web browsing and e-mail, it'll work fine. I'm not sure about VPN, but I think that works fine too.

Cianos

So even though they say its faster than DSL etc., you cant use it for streaming audio, P2P and gaming?! Doesnt really make sense

Also, is it possible to connect the Clearwire modem to a wireless router for 2 computers to use it at the same time?

Sponge Bob

Cianos wrote:

So even though they say its faster than DSL etc., you cant use it for streaming audio, P2P and gaming?! Doesnt really make sense

It does to Clearwire, anyway you admitted you needed 'something' and 'fast ' which it is .

Also, is it possible to connect the Clearwire modem to a wireless router for 2 computers to use it at the same time?

see threads on clearwire

Cianos

When you refer to the disadvantages with online gaming and P2P, are you saying that it doesnt support it at all, or its just not as good a performance as other BB packages?

My requirements wouldnt be very heavy, a bit of CSS the odd time but thats about it. Not a big P2P user either, although I would like to be able if I wanted to.

Blaster99

You can connect a wireless router to the Clearwire modem. With regards to P2P and gaming, I will defer to someone else as I haven't used either with Clearwire. It does work, but the performance will be very poor. For P2P that's probably not a big deal, but I would imagine for gaming that's fatal.

Clearwire is not faster than ADSL, particularly not since the Eircom speed upgrades. If you're willing to wait, ADSL is the way to go without a doubt.

eth0_

Don't get Clearwire if you want to do *ANYTHING* other than surf the web. It can't handle internet radio and it's useless for p2p, voip. Hell, even downloading innocuous files from the net get throttled so much its like being on isdn!

And Eircom..don't know what they're even selling!
FREE phone line connections, it's on their website: "FREE eircom phoneline connection - Save up to €49.99 (inc VAT). "

Cianos

Tch, I hate all this blatantly mis leading advertising. They should make people aware of these limitations. When they say they are faster than DSL are they just taking the pi$$? Is that not against the law?

CoolBoardr

Im in the same situation - have no phone line (for 4-6 weeks) and need the net. Metro was perfect for me but property management wouldnt let me put an antenna on the roof.

So it looks like I have to go with Clearwire for a couple of months then try and break the contract when I can get a phone line.

My question is - is it possible to play online poker w/ clearwire?

Duiske

Blaster99 wrote:

I suppose there's Irish Broadband's Ripwave also, but you'd have to be truly desparate and have a very low expectations on what broadband means.

Would probably do for a few weeks though. No contract, no set-up fee, etc.
Get eircom to install land-line, then dump IBB and go with BT for DSL.

Blaster99

eth0_ wrote:

And Eircom..don't know what they're even selling!
FREE phone line connections, it's on their website: "FREE eircom phoneline connection - Save up to €49.99 (inc VAT). "

Reconnections are free and very quick, a brand new line is not.

Cianos wrote:

Tch, I hate all this blatantly mis leading advertising. They should make people aware of these limitations. When they say they are faster than DSL are they just taking the pi$$? Is that not against the law?

Most of the wireless (and cable) players harp on about their contention being lower, this is probably what they might mean with it being faster than ADSL. In ADSL land, you can ignore contention in reality. For products with a total sector bandwidth being shared among the users (ie wireless and cable), access contention is an important indicator of the likely performance. This is why with ADSL you tend to get rock solid speeds and pings, whereas with wireless and cable it tends to jump quite a bit. Clearwire tries to work around this by prioritising traffic to give the users a consistent experience and it's probably a reasonable approach given the technical limitations of the service.

bk

Blaster99 wrote:

This is why with ADSL you tend to get rock solid speeds and pings, whereas with wireless and cable it tends to jump quite a bit.

Please don't lump cable in with wireless. While yes, it also is locally shared, I get rock solid speeds and pings with no downtime at all on cable. It has proven much more stable then DSL for me. And stability is all important for me as I telework and use VPN, VNC, SSH, so I will quickly notice any unstability.

Blaster99

There are IBB users who claim to have rock solid speeds and pings too. Wireless is not fundamentally flawed, any more than cable broadband isn't fundamentally flawed. Both work the same way and have much the same problems. ADSL has its share of problems too of course.

gordonnet

i had IBB for about 9 months, connection for the first six months was within expectations but the next 3months were crap, my 56k modem was actually faster. subsequently the contract was terminated. i would say DONT GET IRISH BROADBAND.

jor el

Cianos wrote:

When they say they are faster than DSL are they just taking the pi$$? Is that not against the law?

I can't see where clearwire claim to be faster than DSL. On the website, it says they are faster than dial-up, and the simplified little speed test shows this. There is no comparison to DSL, unless you can point me in the right direction.

My brother is in Rathmines too and was thinking about broadband, but being in a flat and having no phone line leaves him with few options. I was thinking of Clearwire for him, but after some of the comments here, it might not suit his needs either.

Cianos

"Just look at the time you’ll save downloading a 3.75MB video clip with Clearwire:
56Kbps dial-up modem: 9 minutes, 9 seconds
512Kbps DSL modem: 59 seconds
Clearwire’s 1.5Mbps: 20 seconds!"

link

jor el

Cianos wrote:

"Just look at the time you’ll save downloading a 3.75MB video clip with Clearwire:
56Kbps dial-up modem: 9 minutes, 9 seconds
512Kbps DSL modem: 59 seconds
Clearwire’s 1.5Mbps: 20 seconds!"

link

Ah, they're quoting a DSL service that no longer exists in this country. Straight from the McRedmond school of thinking I'd say, spin, spin and more spin.

clearwire faq wrote:

Clearwire lets you connect at broadband speeds of up to 1.5Mbps

So Clearwire's fastest speed is only 50% better than DSL's lowest available speed and is half the speed of other current DSL home products. It also doesn't mention that their introductory package is also only 512k (and no mention of upload on that one).

Sponge Bob

did you ring NTL ?

ganeagla

okay - help....

I am in the same situation, no phone line at new rental, no interest in waiting 4 weeks for a phone line installation when we hardly use our landline anyway.

However, even though we are in dublin 3 (east wall) there is apparently no NTL cable broadband service, and no Clearwire. Digiweb requires something on the roof, which I don't think our landlord would appreciate.

Sounds like IBB ripwave is my only option. So - for someone who just occasionally uses my internet for lite surfing, is it really that bad? Sounds perfect to me as no connection and no contract...

bk

ganeagla wrote:

Sounds like IBB ripwave is my only option. So - for someone who just occasionally uses my internet for lite surfing, is it really that bad? Sounds perfect to me as no connection and no contract...

Yes, it really is that bad. While also not great, a better option for you would be Clearwire.

ganeagla

nope - clearwire is not an option for me, I called them and they have no coverage. so you say just dial up with eircom is better than ripwave?

ganeagla

nope - clearwire is not an option for me, I called them and they have no coverage in my area. so you say just dial up with eircom is better than ripwave?

ethernet

Cianos wrote:

Hi folks,
Im just about to move into a new place but it doesnt have any active phone line. Just rang Eircom to confirm, and they said it would take 4 weeks at a cost of €120 to get it set up ...

Try waiting three years for a simple landline installation ... and still no ADSL available :mad: