Looking for feedback from Magnet (ADSL2+) customers

Steffano2002

Hi there,

Just subscribed to Magnet Lite today (ADSL2+ ~ 4Mb Down/512Kbps Up ~ Contention Ratio 1:1).

Just wondering if any of you with a similar Magnet package are happy with the service? I got it mostly to play online (Call of Duty 2) and was wondering if pings were low and steady?

Thank you in advance for your feedback!

Battlejuice

Hey Steffano,
I've been with Magnet for the past 7 months and find they have been fairly solid and the tech support is good (I appreciated that aspect after an unfortunate stint with IBB). Only problem was I asked for an ADSL2+ option with an 8MB download speed but they could only manage a 4MB download speed in the end due to a faulty line connection and their exchange server being in Summerhill whereas i'm based in Clontarf. It's still not bad and they only bill me for 4mb down. All in all they're a pretty decent operation.
Battlejuice

JNive

i got the 4mb Lite option also, and get a solid 5mbps down and 1mbps up, pings are pretty good internationally with them peering with GLobalCrossing in dublin travelling direct to the US, and with Cogent travelling to LINX and then beyond. Also i think Telia is there somewhere.

Pings to the first hop tend to be about 25ms-30ms from the looks of things so interleaving is medium, which it would probably want to be as the bandwidth requriement is higher than youyr average 3mb/384k service.

Steffano2002

Thank you for your replies JNive and Battlejuice!

I'm glad to hear you are both happy with the service and with the Magnet staff! And I am delighted to hear pings are decent!
BTW Battlejuice, do you play Call of Duty online by any chance? If so, what kind of pings do you get on UK and European (Germany, France) servers?

I can't wait to get this connection going... I've suffered so much at the hands of IBB that I really need something that works now!

Battlejuice

Haven't played online yet witht his connection but hope to give COD2 a whack all right. Reckon it'd be pretty hot!

Steffano2002

Battlejuice wrote:

Haven't played online yet witht his connection but hope to give COD2 a whack all right. Reckon it'd be pretty hot!

When you give this wonderful game a go could you please let me know what kind of pings your getting on various servers in Europe?

Thanks a million!

Fanfan

Can you get this package being currently a ntl customer or do you have to be eircom to get this deal?

Fanfan

Also i herd the telephones are free with this any truth?

Steffano2002

Magnet works via phone lines. NTL works via TV cable. You need to have an Eircom phone line before switching to Magnet.

coady

the prblem is eircom control all the exchanges and lines in the contry and they are not very helpfull when a customer wants to leave them, . the best thing about magnet is the contention ratio, its 1:1 , where are Eircom usally has 48:1 or 24 :1 . . not good in this day and age

Steffano2002

coady wrote:

the prblem is eircom control all the exchanges and lines in the contry and they are not very helpfull when a customer wants to leave them, . the best thing about magnet is the contention ratio, its 1:1 , where are Eircom usally has 48:1 or 24 :1 . . not good in this day and age

Indeed Coady... That is why even though it took only 4 days for Magnet to set-up my account and send me the modem/router it will take another 2 weeks (if I'm lucky) for Eircom to switch my line over to the Magnet network... So annoying...

JNive

my line was switched over the day after the modem was dispatched, the entire process took about a week or so from ordering, they seem to have good techs down in dennehys cross, cause when i ordered eircom originally in 2003, it was setup in 3 days after ordering, and again, one day before receiving my modem.

Steffano2002

JNive wrote:

my line was switched over the day after the modem was dispatched, the entire process took about a week or so from ordering, they seem to have good techs down in dennehys cross, cause when i ordered eircom originally in 2003, it was setup in 3 days after ordering, and again, one day before receiving my modem.

You're a lucky man JNive! I got the modem within 4 days of placing the first call to Magnet which I thought was phenomenal, especially the week before Christmas! However, I think it's going to take a while for Eircom to switch me over to the Magnet network because of said holidays...

But I hope they prove me wrong by connecting me on Tuesday! Unfortunately, I don't think they were working between Christmas and New Years (wishful thinking on my part I know...).

kin9pin

Steffano2002 wrote:

You're a lucky man JNive! I got the modem within 4 days of placing the first call to Magnet which I thought was phenomenal, especially the week before Christmas! However, I think it's going to take a while for Eircom to switch me over to the Magnet network because of said holidays...

But I hope they prove me wrong by connecting me on Tuesday! Unfortunately, I don't think they were working between Christmas and New Years (wishful thinking on my part I know...).

Someone in Magnet is working. I sent 3 emails to customer service asking about line share unbundling options as I'm on sky multiroom. No replies so I put a read receipt on the last email yesterday........got this back:

Your message

To: Customer Service
Cc:
Subject: Sky Multiroom
Sent: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:33:29 -0000

was deleted without being read on Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:55:28 -0000

Steffano2002

kin9pin wrote:

Someone in Magnet is working. I sent 3 emails to customer service asking about line share unbundling options as I'm on sky multiroom. No replies so I put a read receipt on the last email yesterday........got this back:

Your message

To: Customer Service
Cc:
Subject: Sky Multiroom
Sent: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:33:29 -0000

was deleted without being read on Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:55:28 -0000

Hmmm... Could be that because companies such as Magnet probably don't have Agents looking into a common Outlook Mailbox but instead have special Contact Centre software (such as Genesys) that scans the e-mails to make sure they are not spam then sends them through the system queue for the Agents to work on through an interface on their desktop. I assume the e-mails are then deleted from the original Mailbox thus explaining why you received the above reply...

kin9pin

Steffano2002 wrote:

Hmmm... Could be that because companies such as Magnet probably don't have Agents looking into a common Outlook Mailbox but instead have special Contact Centre software (such as Genesys) that scans the e-mails to make sure they are not spam then sends them through the system queue for the Agents to work on through an interface on their desktop. I assume the e-mails are then deleted from the original Mailbox thus explaining why you received the above reply...

Maybe that's the case, but the fact that I haven't received one reply from any of the mails I sent is a bit annoying. I do of course also have the name on the read receipt email so I'll ring them next week.

Steffano2002

Oh My God! Oh My God! Oh My God! :eek:

First working day of the year and Eircom have made the switch! I apologise for saying bad things about them!

They authorised the switch over to Magnet on the day they were asked and connected me straight away! Phenomenal service me thinks! Well done!

JNive

yes, eircom authorised the transfer the day it was requested, which is also the day the modem was sent. the line was transferred the day after, and the modem arrived the day after that lol. Either they are getting faster or it hugely depends on the exchange you are connected to.

Also i suspect [ no offence to smart telecom ] that magnet are a tad more organised with paper work and computer systems.

cubix

IF you could put up some pings and speed Steff as I will be changing over to them next week

Cheers Cubix

Steffano2002

cubix wrote:

IF you could put up some pings and speed Steff as I will be changing over to them next week

Cheers Cubix

Speed > Good
Ping > Not so good

Ping is stable, which is, I guess, the main thing. I mean I couldn't play at all with IBB cos it was like a yoyo of death! But I'm averaging 100ms to French and UK servers...

I read on other threads that ping to UK servers was in the 30s/40s with Magnet ADSL2+ so I was expecting much better. I don't understand... My ping with BT Brodband on the very same line was in the 70s...

JNive

check the ping from you to the first hop, it shouldnt be more than 30ms, if it is, youre conenction is likely on high interleaving. from ireland to UK shouldnt be more than another 30ms, so maximum pings to UK shouldbe under 60ms in every case ideally, try and see if the problem is your line or somewhere along the way

Steffano2002

Can't do proper tracert/ping tests right now as I am downloading CS:S from Steam at (wait for it): 430KB/s!

Never downloaded that fast in my life!

As soon as download is completed I'll give it a go. I checked briefly yesterday evening and I think it was around 60ms to first hop

billy the squid

When I first got the 8mb package from magnet I was getting rock solid 9mb for about a week, and then it fell to 3.8 mb per second No explanation given whatsoever, nor was the issue resolved

When magnet is working it works sufficiently, but when something goes wrong it can take weeks for them to resolve the problem sometimes, however in some cases this can be down to the laziness of eircom and not necessarily magnets doing.

All that being said, they are looking after me well with the move of my magnet account from my old to my new address, they are taking care of all the bull**** with eircom which I would only end up effing and blinding down the phone at 1901 if I did it myself.

Steffano2002

Well, I have to say that so far I'm a happy customer. All the people I spoke to on the phone could actually speak english and they knew what they were talking about.

Got connected in 5 business days (Xmas & New Years in the middle). And the connection is really good (although I know it's only been a couple of days). Only thing I'm disappointed with is my ping. I need a proper connection for that and, although very stable, I find my ping a little too high at around 100ms...

Pity, would have been an A+ otherwise!

suppafly

I was wondering do u have to get the tv service as well or can u just get the BB?

Steffano2002

Right, here we go:

Tracing route to www.boards.ie [82.195.136.250]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    48 ms    47 ms    47 ms  87-198-16-1.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.16.1]
  2    47 ms    47 ms    47 ms  87-198-95-209.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.95.209]
  3    47 ms    47 ms    47 ms  d-clon-core1a.magnet.ie [85.91.0.129]
  4    48 ms    48 ms    48 ms  d-deg-core1a.magnet.ie [85.91.3.25]
  5    49 ms    48 ms    48 ms  d-deg-edge2.magnet.ie [85.91.2.42]
  6    52 ms    51 ms    49 ms  border2.hosting365.ie [193.242.111.23]
  7    51 ms    52 ms    52 ms  82.195.143.132
  8    50 ms    51 ms    52 ms  boards.ie [82.195.136.250]

Trace complete.

C:\Documents and Settings\God>ping 87.198.16.1 -n 50

Pinging 87.198.16.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=46ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=45ms TTL=255
Reply from 87.198.16.1: bytes=32 time=44ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for 87.198.16.1:
    Packets: Sent = 50, Received = 50, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 43ms, Maximum = 46ms, Average = 44ms

As you can see, impressively reliable connection which is great for gaming! But 44ms average to first hop!?!? :eek:

And 5 hops within the Magnet network before getting anywhere seems a bit much...

Could other Magnet ADSL2+ users do the above tests and post their results please? Thanks a million!

Steffano2002

suppafly wrote:

I was wondering do u have to get the tv service as well or can u just get the BB?

Visit their site to check out their different packages! I don't have the TV service. I don't even have a phone plugged in! Went with Magnet Intro...

Steffano2002

cubix wrote:

IF you could put up some pings and speed Steff as I will be changing over to them next week

Cheers Cubix

Hi Cubix,

Please give me some kind of FTP site with a big file to download to give you a proper idea of download speeds. Ping stats are above (to first hop only - if you want more stats to specific IPs, send them on!).

billy the squid

compare that with what I get with ripwave

1   277 ms     *        *     89.124.78.1
 2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 3     *      165 ms     *     83.245.126.65
 4     *        *      165 ms  82.195.143.131
 5     *        *      175 ms  boards.ie [82.195.136.250]

JNive

Tracing route to boards.ie [82.195.136.250]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 4 ms 5 ms 5 ms boards.ie [82.195.136.250]
2 36 ms 35 ms 35 ms 87-198-184-1.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.184.1]
3 35 ms 35 ms 36 ms 87-198-70-97.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.70.97]
4 36 ms 40 ms 36 ms c-esb-dist1b.magnet.ie [87.198.66.209]
5 36 ms 35 ms 36 ms wd-esb-dist1a.magnet.ie [87.198.66.211]
6 36 ms 34 ms 38 ms wd-esb-dist1b.magnet.ie [87.198.66.213]
7 42 ms 41 ms 35 ms 87-198-66-215.ptr.magnet.ie [87.198.66.215]
8 41 ms 42 ms 35 ms d-deg-core1b.magnet.ie [85.91.3.29]
9 41 ms 41 ms 41 ms d-deg-edge2.magnet.ie [85.91.2.44]
10 41 ms 42 ms 41 ms border2.hosting365.ie [193.242.111.23]
11 41 ms 42 ms 42 ms 82.195.143.4
12 43 ms 42 ms 40 ms boards.ie [82.195.136.250]

Not bad at all, however its pretty clear that any addition to the ping base level is a result of interleaving, might get on to them and see if there is any chance of getting interleaving turned on to low, which would shave about 15-20ms off the pings.

Route above goes Cork->waterford->dublin along the ESB network from the looks of things

Steffano2002

billy the squid wrote:

compare that with what I get with ripwave

1   277 ms     *        *     89.124.78.1
 2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 3     *      165 ms     *     83.245.126.65
 4     *        *      165 ms  82.195.143.131
 5     *        *      175 ms  boards.ie [82.195.136.250]

I've been there Billy... Well I had Breeze but is was pretty much the same as above...

Steffano2002

JNive wrote:

Route above goes Cork->waterford->dublin along the ESB network from the looks of things

You ping boards.ie faster from Cork than I do in Dublin! :eek:

JNive wrote:

Not bad at all, however its pretty clear that any addition to the ping base level is a result of interleaving, might get on to them and see if there is any chance of getting interleaving turned on to low, which would shave about 15-20ms off the pings.

I think I'll give them a ring this evening and ask them. I've got nothing to lose but some milliseconds!
I also have to ask them where's the letter they were supposed to send me so I can give them my bank details... unless they don't want to get paid!

JNive

well, if interleaving is reduced its liekly that the conenction speed may need to get reduced also or else it could result in very unstable speeds, but you'll find that out afterwards anyways lol.

Also i signed up with a credit card so no bank details :-)

Steffano2002

JNive wrote:

well, if interleaving is reduced its liekly that the conenction speed may need to get reduced also or else it could result in very unstable speeds, but you'll find that out afterwards anyways lol.

Well, rang them up and they told me it was not possible to do anything to reduce my ping...

JNive wrote:

Also i signed up with a credit card so no bank details :-)

I gave them my bank details over the phone. They said I'll receive a bill at the end of the month. They also said I'm being billed from the 9th January so it's all free at the moment!