Irish Broadband Ripwave Experience

darthjman

While alot of people here seem to have bad experience with Ripwave, i would like to post our experience of it here. I read through alot of peoples posts and their woes before getting it, but we decided to chance getting it and it didnt work out too bad.

What follows is a little tale of how customer service departments really do suck (skip 2 paragraphs for info on Ripwave):

We live in Teranure and had been waiting to get DSL for a month. At first we decided to go for Irish broadbands 3mb business breeze package, but everytime we called to see how it was going they said something had happened to the order, but its all right now. This happened a couple of times. At least 3 of the times we rang them they said they would check on the order and get back to us in 24hours, which they never did.

So eventually we had enough of that ****, cancelled and signed up to Imagine, who seemed somewhat more together, but they said it would take at least 2 weeks to get broadband. But, we later discovered it would take 2 weeks to swap our lines from Eircom to Imagine, and then *another* two weeks to get broadband installed. So we decided to try Ripwave in the meantime to tide us over (our phonebills were 70 a month for internet). But as it turned out, we got it in less than 3 total, so thats not too bad, and the quality is pretty good. Anyway, enough ranting, on with the review:


Peats do a deal where if you get Ripwave in their shop, and it doesnt work, you can return it for a full cash refund in 3 days, so we decided it wouldnt hurt to try it. When we brought it home, we ran around the house trying to get a signal. Ripwave claims to not need line of sight, but it really doesnt work through walls or other obstacles, so try it in your windows or somewhere really high. We put it in our attic where it worked pretty well.

On the Ripwave device it has an LCD screen with Signal Strength and Quality on it. We got pretty low on both these bars usually 1 or 2, sometimes 3 out of 6, but we were still able to get 50k/s consistently (its rated for 256KB/s == 64k/s), with ping times of 120 to 150 to ftp.heanet.ie, www.eircom.ie. Couldnt really play Quake 3 on it, but for 4 people web browsing and the odd download it was good. I dont know how far away we are from any transmission tower but on the coverage map for Ripwave were on the very edge. The connection only ever became intermittent one night, where it couldnt keep up a connection for a few hours (it was only pretty cold that night, not stormy or anything), but after those few hours it worked fine again.

For a stopgap measure, it worked pretty great. The downside of it is that it has a 6 month contract, which works out to total 100e - 120e. But for us, it beat the hell out of sharing a phone line and only being able to dial at night.

To summarise, Ripwave, when youve got the coverage, is technically a good product, and definitely worth checking out if your waiting to get broadband put in and need internet. Its a pity Irish BroadBand's customer relations really sucks.

watty

For a ISDN speed with flat rate charge. Your speeds don't qualify as broadband. The ping times are THREE times a suitable limit for VOIP/BB/Gaming. If there was real flat rate Internet and 15 Euro line rental like in mainline Europe they wouldn't be able to sell Ripwave.

IBB Breeze is a real Broadband product.

JNive

Broadband is universally accepted to mean 512kbps or greater of a download. when you say you got 50k/s constant, is that 50kb/sec or 50kBps ( the latter = 56k dial-up )

Snaga

JNive wrote:

Broadband is universally accepted to mean 512kbps or greater of a download. when you say you got 50k/s constant, is that 50kb/sec or 50kBps ( the latter = 56k dial-up )

No - the latter does not = 56k dial up, you have them mixed up. Small b = bits, big B = bytes.

JNive

sorry yeah, thats what i mean, 50kbps , like i wrote 512kbps lol :-)

watty

small b = bits
Big B = Bytes

56k dialup is typically 42kbps or less (bits per second)

Line speeds are measured in bps = bits per second

Download progress is Bps = Bytes per second.

There are 8 bits per Byte, but communcations links have overhead, so a ratio of 10:1 is a realistic view of line speed versus file Bytes.

Some kinds of file compress well with streaming compression some sites automatically us to very occasionally you will get a file Byte/s that translates to 2 or 3 times your real physical line speed.

DemonOfTheFall

darthjman wrote:

(its rated for 512Kb/s == 64kB/s)

Fixed that for you...