Ice Broadband steadily becoming even more terrible

mrplop

Hello,

Just thought I share the results I've been getting from Speedtest.net for a supposed 3mb connection this morning.



And again:



And again:




No answer from support, in fact the automated message to say the lines are open from 10am to 6pm is still on at 11 o'clock so basically there's no-one there.

It's been like this for a week now and the last time I spoke to one of their support people I was told to ring back the next day if I still had the same problems.
In other words no attempt to fix it.

If you want reliable broadband or want to use Voip avoid this shower like the plague.

Does this kind of crap happen in other European countries?

This crowd is selling a service it can't provide - isn't this false advertising?
I don't see how a company can carry on like this without going out of business...

dub45

Have you checked your line stats?

Sponge Bob

its wireless Dub45 , ICE are busy emulating the old IBB I fear , should we ask for a sticky for them and another for Clearwire I wonder ??:p

dub45

Opps once I see 3Mbs my reflexes go line stats!:rolleyes:

watty

You can get 20Mbps Wireless (expensive).

Up to 8Mbps on Metro Wireless.

mrplop

It's actually Getting Worse...

Xennon

Is there any legal standing for this situation?.

I mean once you sign t&c are you really tied up to crap service for the min 12 month contract? There seems to be a load of these wISPs that cant provide a service, surely theres a legal standing on this?

Curious Dave

dub45

Xennon wrote:

Is there any legal standing for this situation?.

I mean once you sign t&c are you really tied up to crap service for the min 12 month contract? There seems to be a load of these wISPs that cant provide a service, surely theres a legal standing on this?

Curious Dave

For anyone dissatisfied with a service and intending to break a contract it would be very important to have a record that you reported the poor quality service to the isp concerned and gave them a chance to fix it - if you do not do this then you wont have a leg to stand on if it comes to breaking a contract. And by record I mean emails or memoed phone calls and a note of who you spoke with etc.

thebman

First divide your contention into your speeds to make sure they aren't just fully contending you. Of course if that's all the time then its unreasonable but I don't know if that will hold up.

Surely Irish law must be smart enough to see that if you pay for 3Mbps and you don't acheve anywhere near it in an entire month then they aren't providing you with a 3Mbps service.

Xennon

yeah...

/rant: but I'm thinking how can a company advertise a 3M connection, even though it may have a 30:1 contention, as a 3M Broadband connection. I do not care what companies say about contention ratios, that is a 100kb connection not a 3M connection.

And whats this bull about a 'fair usage policy', how the hell can you sell a 3M "ALWAYS ON", "BROADBAND" and then impose a 'fair usage policy'? If I buy a 3M connection then I should be allowed us it 24/7 at 3Mbps until I hit my cap.

And do not get me started on the companies that use wifi standards to deliver a product. rant/

RazielDoomgate

ice broadband dont have a cap :S.. have you ever thought that the majority of the ppl on ice's service arnt there by choice.. as for me and everyone around me ice are the only ones that can give use broadband.. ( i am .5 mile too far from the eircom switches.. and they wont upgrade)

so ther are tons of ppl only using ice.. they are downloading (be it accualy dling youtubing, or jsut browesing) and its puting a strain on the contention.

now im not trying to defend them .. but if did you get a choice of your isp? i didnt
try going on and doing your speed test in 2/3am and see whats its like then. ive found my most stable and fast connection is then.. while in the day.. i can have some probs..

but in the last weeks or so.. they have been upgrading or what ever they do.. to bring us that 3mb + connection see what happens on the coming weeks

btw.. i never signed a contract. we were never asked too :S

jsut did the test.. its 4.30pm
http://www.speedtest.net/result/148622582.png

mrplop

I didn't have a choice either hence my decision to go with Ice.
I'd heard about the upgrade too but I won't believe it until I see it to be honest with you - they used to use to line about transferring back hauls to improve the service.
Also a complete crock.

mrplop

I didn't have a choice either hence my decision to go with Ice.
I'd heard about the upgrade too but I won't believe it until I see it to be honest with you - they used to use to line about transferring back hauls to improve the service.
Also a complete crock.

Done a couple of minutes ago...

Marlow

If you currently are on eircom business dsl in Tuam (6m / 512k), you'll see speeds worse than that.

Sure, their own speedtest will tell you, that you get something like 4m, but speedtest.net will tell you 300kbit down and 384kbit up.

If ICE isn't up to provide the speed in your area, downgrade to a package, that is near the speed you get and save your money. Better practice would be not to offer the package you have in that area, if the backbone can't carry it.

/Martin

Marlow

Xennon wrote:

And do not get me started on the companies that use wifi standards to deliver a product.

Well, you should not buy any kind of fixed wireless broadband then (including WiMAX). It's all based on WiFi with maybe proprietary extensions and specialised drivers, that can handle the distance and timing needed to do so. WiMAX is nothing else than next generation WiFi.

/Martin

watty

Lots of Wireless products are nothing like WiFi, thankfully, as WiFi degrades badly with increasing users.

Some Wireless products are actually WiFi, which is not great. Wifi was designed for 3 to 8 users in a home or office. Not the great outdoors.

Wimax is not much like WiFi as it uses OFDM. 802.11n, the new high speed MIMO standard *IS* based on Wifi.

Xennon

wot watty said

Dave_W

Marlow

watty wrote:

Wimax is not much like WiFi as it uses OFDM. 802.11n, the new high speed MIMO standard *IS* based on Wifi.

Sorry ? WiFi is a term that describes 802.11a/b/g and maybe others and 802.11g and 802.11a are OFDM.

WiFi is not a standard, it's a general term for different wireless methods.

/Martin

Xennon

Wifi is a term that describes the 802.11 standards,
WiMax is a term for the 802.16d standard aka 802.16-2004.


Wifi: http://www.sss-mag.com/pdf/802_11tut.pdf
WiMax: http://www.intel.com/netcomms/technologies/wimax/304471.pdf

Comparison : http://searchmobilecomputing.techtarget.com/searchMobileComputing/downloads/Finneran.pdf

oscarBravo

Xennon wrote:

Wifi is a term that describes the 802.11 standards...

...including 11a and 11g, which use OFDM.

watty

But in practice if there is even one 802.11b device, then OFDM is not used.

802.11x are Domestic / Office standards not intended for WAN use.

Marlow

watty wrote:

But in practice if there is even one 802.11b device, then OFDM is not used.
802.11x are Domestic / Office standards not intended for WAN use.

That depends on the drivers in the routing platform you use. Beyond that, most WiFi routers allow you to specify 802.11g-only.

On top of that, this applies not to 802.11a, as it's OFDM only.

/Martin

oscarBravo

watty wrote:

802.11x are Domestic / Office standards not intended for WAN use.

...and DOCSIS is a cable modem standard not intended for wireless use. Sometimes clever people figure out how to make something work well in an environment for which it wasn't originally intended, watty.

Marlow

Well, matter of fact, the IEEE looked into the problems using 802.11 for outdoor/long distance and found only a slight degradation up to 6km. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=996922

The issues were timing related and that's exactly what advanced routing platforms for wireless take care of, with proprietary extensions without breaking the standard.

A standard is for compability, no matter what it is designed for. And sometimes a standard turns out to be better for other things, than what it actually was designed for originally.

For example, 802.11 sucks around a house due to shielding in the walls, etc., but as a fixed wireless connection outdoors with clear LoS, it's the most cost effective way for providing broadband. Matter of fact, if applied properly, it beats the latency of any ADSL line any day.

And in regards to interference, that can be dealt with in the network topology, by providing plenty of redundancy. And even fixed wireless providers in licensed frequency still use WiFi based protocols for transmission !!

So really, what do you prefer, when your choice is wireless ? A fixed microwave connection, that is cost effective and does provide, what you pay for, if applied correctly ? A non-fixed microwave connection, that is supposed to be non LoS, but really is a bit overhyped and costs hell of a lot more and performs poorly (ie. Rip-Wave, being pre-WiMAX or Clearwire) ? Or a fixed microwave connection, that just emulates your average NTL cable-tv broadband over the air and not symmetric because of that ? And then, there is the choice of mobile cellphone based broadband with near to no upstream ?

/Martin

bigpaddy2004

Digiweb use 5.8 in g mode for all their backhaul down in and around south Laois covering towns such as Mountrath, Abbeyleix, Ballacolla just to name a few.

Marlow

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

Digiweb use 5.8 in g mode for all their backhaul down in and around south Laois covering towns such as Mountrath, Abbeyleix, Ballacolla just to name a few.

802.11g is the best of the world of 802.11a (OFDM modulation) combined with the lower frequency of 802.11b.

So either it's 5.8 GHz, which is 802.11a or it's 802.11g, which would be 802.11b or g, but it's NEVER 5.8 in g mode

/Martin

bigpaddy2004

Marlow wrote:

802.11g is the best of the world of 802.11a (OFDM modulation) combined with the lower frequency of 802.11b.

So either it's 5.8 GHz, which is 802.11a or it's 802.11g, which would be 802.11b or g, but it's NEVER 5.8 in g mode

/Martin

Sorry, tiredness getting to me I guess

Xennon

My point about wifi as a basis for supplying a product to a customer is that it is unlicensed. What happens when more than one provider is trying to cover an area on 2.4 or 5.8?

One side starts pointing antennas at the other, trying to swamp their links with noise etc.

Who loses?...the people who are trying to use the service.

Commercial providers should be allocated frequencies to prevent this type of unprofessional behavior.

Dave_W

watty

oscarBravo wrote:

...and DOCSIS is a cable modem standard not intended for wireless use. Sometimes clever people figure out how to make something work well in an environment for which it wasn't originally intended, watty.

coax is just wireless waveguides for low frequency. Put a sharp kink in coax with 800Mhz + on it and the RF bounces back and leaks out. Not much goes past the kink!

DOCSIS on Microwave is getting popular worldwide as it actually works better than the average cable network (unless you have fibre to end of every street) if you have LOS. Great for Rural areas. No trenches to dig.

Xenon:
There ARE licensed bands, operators do apply for the licences and get them and are then protected.
As home / office WiFi become more prevalent, it becomes harder to use WiFi reliably for WAN services.

JohnnieM

mrplop wrote:

Hello,

Just thought I share the results I've been getting from Speedtest.net for a supposed 3mb connection this morning

Out of interest.... What area are you in?

TCollins

mrplop wrote:

Hello,

Just thought I share the results I've been getting from Speedtest.net for a supposed 3mb connection this morning.



And again:



And again:




No answer from support, in fact the automated message to say the lines are open from 10am to 6pm is still on at 11 o'clock so basically there's no-one there.

It's been like this for a week now and the last time I spoke to one of their support people I was told to ring back the next day if I still had the same problems.
In other words no attempt to fix it.

If you want reliable broadband or want to use Voip avoid this shower like the plague.

Does this kind of crap happen in other European countries?

This crowd is selling a service it can't provide - isn't this false advertising?
I don't see how a company can carry on like this without going out of business...

Ours is less than half your worst speed there, constantly.
We're on the 3Mb business package.
We're only with ICE because we cant get BB anywhere else.
I have complained and called them out on their bull so much now that they dont even answer my calls anymore.

I pray for the day another provider moves to my area.
ICE have absolutely no interest is providing the service you pay for. They know they have a captive market. There is no escape.

They are in fact worse than IBB ever were. I had IBB before and it seemed like heaven.

How about a sticky for ICE like there was for IBB. It seems it worked with IBB.

As for VOIP - remove it from your thought completely. ICE <> good VOIP (or good anything)