Digiweb Metro - Questions need answering - Please

RangeR

Hi,

I've been through a lot of broadband providers out there [Eircom, BT, IBB, clearwire, Chorus] have sweated blood with most of them and have become very hesitant to change, even though my current one [Chorus] is just not up to scratch. I won't go into the boring details about Chorus as it's all been said before.

I'm looking for information on how good Metro is. It has finally gone live in Naas within the past month or so.

Digiwebs prices are a little on the high side and their caps aren't that great either but if their service is good, then I don't mind paying a little extra.

• If I go for the 3Mb:512Kb service, do I get that most of the time?
• What are the penalties for going over the cap?
• Is the cap rigorously enforced?
• What are the penalties or going over cap?
• Do they shape or block ports?
• What is gaming like?
• Will I get at least 60ms ping to UK or EU games servers?
• Will my Firewall work with their device and give me full control over port forwarding etc?
• Do they suffer long downtimes / distruptions?
• Will Blueface work [near] perfectly?
• How long does it take from order to go-live?

I may have more questions later but these are the initial ones I have. I would rather not ring their sales department as I am warey of any sales pitches in the ISP domain at the moment. I'm also aware of the air contention in FWA and understand that there may be slow downs at times.

Any information would be appriciated.

RangeR

Couple more questions?

• Where in Naas is their high site?
• If I do have to ring Digiweb's support, how easy is it to get on with them?
• What codec does Metro Phone use? If not G.729, can it be configured so?
• Very interesting one. Can the phone ports [or even just one of them] be re-configured to use a different VoIP provider?

Sponge Bob

IrishTLR wrote:

• If I go for the 3Mb:512Kb service, do I get that most of the time?

yep

IrishTLR wrote:

• What are the penalties for going over the cap?

throttle to 64k or 128k until it rolls off at 30 days

IrishTLR wrote:

• Is the cap rigorously enforced?]

yep .

IrishTLR wrote:

• What are the penalties or going over cap?

other than throttling there is no penalty.

IrishTLR wrote:

• Do they shape or block ports?

don't think so, no _proof_ of systematic port shaping in recent times and the allegations made in the past concerned p2p only.

IrishTLR wrote:

• What is gaming like?

dunno, wait for a gamer or two to answer that.

IrishTLR wrote:

• Will I get at least 60ms ping to UK or EU games servers?

30-40 sounds right based on the ones I saw , again the gamers should oblige .

IrishTLR wrote:

• Will my Firewall work with their device and give me full control over port forwarding etc?

, they present all ports in to ethernet and then its all yours.
yep

IrishTLR wrote:

• Do they suffer long downtimes / distruptions?

nope, no log outage ever reported for metro .

IrishTLR wrote:

• Will Blueface work [near] perfectly?

yep, there is no mucking with VoIp traffic at all.

IrishTLR wrote:

• How long does it take from order to go-live?

before christmas I would say.

HTH

RangeR

Spongey Dude, as always.... You the man. Now to cancel Chorus.


*EDIT* Would still appreciate some feedback from gamers. Specifically Steam based games.

watty

I know two folks on Steam based games using Metro Ok.

The lads here and accros town on Metro complain that if they Skype AND game online at same time that Skype slows their frame rate due to CPU used up

What Sponge says sounds OK to me.

RangeR

watty wrote:

The lads here and accros town on Metro complain that if they Skype AND game online at same time that Skype slows their frame rate due to CPU used up

If that's the only complaint they have, I'll be a happy guy.

One last queston for the moment...

Do Digiweb have an online checker for Metro usage? Chorus don't.

Thanks Watty and SB. Between you, you have pretty much swayed me.

kc66

IrishTLR wrote:

One last queston for the moment...

Do Digiweb have an online checker for Metro usage? Chorus don't.

http://mytraffic.digiweb.ie

Sponge Bob

watty wrote:

The lads here and accros town on Metro complain that if they Skype AND game online at same time that Skype slows their frame rate due to CPU used up

Hmmm, has Skype gone supernode in their case because they are running a web server along with or within the game and have port 80 open ????

I normally tell people who 'need' BB (for business reasons) and cannot afford a leased line that having DSL and Metro is the most resilient failover option available to them at a reasonable cost. They can then configure a small router with 2 outside ethernet interfaces to fail over to one if the other stops working.

watty

No. Watch Skype CPU usage on an older 2Ghz machine while talking! Varies from 15% to 50% even on LAN to LAN with Internet down! (< 2mS ping)

A 300MHz PC running XP gets to 100%

Or two very very cheaps routers on different IP. Your Internet uses which ever one you enter the GW and DNS of. Make sure only one or none are doing DHCP though!

Sponge Bob

A fairly cack codec it must be so Watty

watty

Actually it uses so much CPU and in variable amounts possibly because it is a very clever adaptive codec. It WILL work on 28K dialup, it will work the 6% packet loss and and on Broadband it will cheerfully chew up over 100kbps before you turn on the video. Mind if you only have 128K, it may still use the same amount even with video. Even apart from a Helium like ability to work through NAT & Firewall (What the supernode is for), it is cunning stuff. Have you tried getting a SIP client with no ICE/TURN/STUN etc working via firewall.

Mind you if everyone forwarded the Magic number in Skype to their own IP and make sure 80 & 443 inward is closed then there would be no need for Supernode. Improves your speech and video & filetransfer no end to fix the port forwarding at each end.

Stokolan

IrishTLR wrote:

Spongey Dude, as always.... You the man. Now to cancel Chorus.


*EDIT* Would still appreciate some feedback from gamers. Specifically Steam based games.

Pinging 83.142.54.109 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 83.142.54.109: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=54
Reply from 83.142.54.109: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=54
Reply from 83.142.54.109: bytes=32 time=50ms TTL=54
Reply from 83.142.54.109: bytes=32 time=39ms TTL=54

Ping statistics for 83.142.54.109:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 39ms, Maximum = 56ms, Average = 46ms


Eve online was also downloading an update while i pinged that address. Its a cs:s server in the uk.

Jumpy

I am on the transmitter in the Annacotty direction of Limerick, it was great at the start, then turned absolutely brutal for a period of about 3-4 months.
56k speeds and impossible gaming as well as constant loss of DHCP. I now get a regular ping in WoW of about 180 and steam games are anywhere from 50-120 ping. So they have fixed their problems.
Downloads are about 240kbps on the 3mb service. I am happy with their service now, as long as the problems never come back.

RangeR

Jumpy wrote:

then turned absolutely brutal for a period of about 3-4 months.
...
So they have fixed their problems.

Roughly how long ago did these issues start to happen? If it was in or around the time that Metro went live, I could forgive that issue as it was only a new network.