Digiweb wireless distance

veXual

On the site it says the distance from the transmitter must be within 4km. Is this to ensure quality of service etc? The reason I ask is because Im 6-7 km out and would really like to avail of the service. Im just outside athlone btw and has anyone else out there got the wireless even though the were further out than recommend?

Any responses would be appreciated.

jor el

Is that Metro or the older Digiweb wireless product? I thought Metro had a range of up to 15km, but the older ones had a much lower range, like 4-5km.

veXual

Unfortunately the older one Metro isnt available in athlone yet does anyone have any idea where the broadcast mast is aswell? Is metro line of sight aswell what kind of latency are we talking about as its bound to be available all over the country eventually

jor el

Metro is LOS yes, and is in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and somewhere else. It may become available in other large towns, like Waterford, Kilkenny, and maybe Athlone, but I wouldn't hold me breath. These things tend to be slow to roll out.

Best thing to do would be to ring or email Digiweb and tell them your exact location and ask if you're covered.

fisab

My understanding is that Metro is coming to Athlone soon enough - I think the mast is planned to be on the ESB station near the middle of town (just off Garden Vale). You will need a direct LOS and to be probably within 10-12km depending on conditions.
I think the older digiweb wireless service may already be available in Athlone but that technology requires you to be within 4km I think.

Edit : LastMile and IBB are currently available in Athlone as an alternative to Digiweb. The feedback on the boards is more positive about Digiweb though.

Rovi

When the Digiweb engineers landed to set me up for (conventional old fashioned, not Metro) wireless, they tried to two nearest transmitters, at 5.6 and 6.5Km distances.
No luck, as LOS was obscured.

They did however, get LOS to a transmitter some 11.25Km away.
Been up and running for a couple of months now, all fine.

lucernarian

I'm online through a Digiweb ordinary FWA connection about 9 km long. I'm usually able to get the full 1 Mbit speeds too.

fisab

Interesting that their website says :
To achieve a connection under one of the standard service plans you must have clear line-of-sight from your planned transceiver location (i.e. rooftop) to a Digiweb central network transmitter, and not be more than 4km from same.

lucernarian

Yeah, I honestly don't know why they still have that 4 km figure there. I think it dates back to the time when they used 2.4 Ghz equipment.

Edit: changed frequency

Chaz

You are correct, most likely from 2.4GHz, needs to be corrected. On the 3.5GHz network, distances of 5-10kms (and more) are possible, depending on what the base station setup is.

fisab

Am I right in assuming that the non-metro service in Athlone comes from that ESB mast near the train station (in the centre of town)?

pointofnoreturn

About the Digiweb equipment.
The LOS and signal test on the digiweb equipment is he hardest to pass as it operates on 10.5Ghz and at those very high frequencies you have to be close (5-15km) and have absolute clear sight of the tower, even if your can see it and you are too high up or too low you will have difficulty picking it up. To make matter worse the Antenna is only a down converter that brings the 10.5 GHz down to around 400 MHz to the Cable modem (much the same as NTL stuff) so a long cable run will fail you too.

it's more like a forklift technology so cable ISP's can use it to provide broadband to there current MMDS customers, why didn't NTL do this?

It’s a good system for getting higher bandwidth as it works at 10.5Ghz there is enough space there to easily provider everyone up 30Mbit by just changing there modems and not the antennas.

veXual

Cheers for the feedback. I am currently with lastmile and the service is desperate that is why I am so motivated to get Digiweb because as you have said the feedback is very positive. I would like to use the connection primarily for gaming. Anyone have any idea of ping times etc, cheers

lucernarian

pointofnoreturn wrote:

About the Digiweb equipment.
The LOS and signal test on the digiweb equipment is he hardest to pass as it operates on 10.5Ghz and at those very high frequencies you have to be close (5-15km) and have absolute clear sight of the tower, even if your can see it and you are too high up or too low you will have difficulty picking it up. To make matter worse the Antenna is only a down converter that brings the 10.5 GHz down to around 400 MHz to the Cable modem (much the same as NTL stuff) so a long cable run will fail you too.

it's more like a forklift technology so cable ISP's can use it to provide broadband to there current MMDS customers, why didn't NTL do this?

It’s a good system for getting higher bandwidth as it works at 10.5Ghz there is enough space there to easily provider everyone up 30Mbit by just changing there modems and not the antennas.

That's for Digiweb Metro which is no good to the OP (for the moment anyway, until they launch in Athlone)

jwt

veXual wrote:

Cheers for the feedback. I am currently with lastmile and the service is desperate that is why I am so motivated to get Digiweb because as you have said the feedback is very positive. I would like to use the connection primarily for gaming. Anyone have any idea of ping times etc, cheers

Would vodafones new BB product work for you?

If you have a 3g video phone see if you can make a video call, to my phone if needs be*

What direction from Athlone are you?

Re Lastmile, seems to a recurrent theme

John

*It's on nearly every press release, and no, this is not an invitation to everyone in the world to call me

Chaz

veXual wrote:

Cheers for the feedback. I am currently with lastmile and the service is desperate that is why I am so motivated to get Digiweb because as you have said the feedback is very positive. I would like to use the connection primarily for gaming. Anyone have any idea of ping times etc, cheers

On the Traditional Wireless system (which I use at home) - ping to boards.

Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=59
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=59

C:\Documents and Settings\Chaz>ping 83.147.160.1 (DW Router)

Pinging 83.147.160.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 83.147.160.1: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=251
Reply from 83.147.160.1: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=251
Reply from 83.147.160.1: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=251
Reply from 83.147.160.1: bytes=32 time=84ms TTL=251

Ping statistics for 83.147.160.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 30ms, Maximum = 84ms, Average = 47ms

kaizersoze

fisab wrote:

Am I right in assuming that the non-metro service in Athlone comes from that ESB mast near the train station (in the centre of town)?

The big mast near the railway station is an Eircom mast (on top of the Roslevin exchange), not ESB. AFAIK, the ESB mast is on their engineering HQ in Bliary to the east near FAS.
They might have another one in the town center (maybe around where the old ESB shop used to be) but I don't know of it. Chaz might clarify.:)

crawler

Athlone is currently being upgraded to Metro - we are not taking any new orders on the exisitng system.

Best to be honest. Chaz, am I right here?

Chaz

crawler wrote:

Athlone is currently being upgraded to Metro - we are not taking any new orders on the exisitng system.

Best to be honest. Chaz, am I right here?

Yep, this is correct.

The ESB site is the one behind/near the Arramount Funiture shop near the bypass.

crawler

Had to post this so that we both have 790 posts on boards therefore ensuring that the flux capacitor keeps working at the correct 1.21Gw of power required to keep the beast alive!

Chaz

crawler wrote:

Had to post this so that we both have 790 posts on boards therefore ensuring that the flux capacitor keeps working at the correct 1.21Gw of power required to keep the beast alive!

Sicko ;p