Net1 broadband

Adriatic

Im interested in getting Net1 broadband seaming as i live in a broadband blackspot. I can see the mountain in Cavan where their closest signal to me comes from. I think some trees might obscure the signal to my house though. Does anyone know how they set up their dish at your house? does it have to be near your PC, or can it be anywhere on your house? does it even go on your roof or a pole on your roof maybe, for a clear view of their mast? Plus a lot of people say it will be the next millenium by the time they set it up? Any answers to these questions will be great!

mossy74

I too live in a BB blackspot, Net1 was my only option which I was a bit concerned about but it appears so far that my concerns were unfounded as I'm getting decent throughput and low latency. I could see my closest base station which is only a few miles away but the engineers who came to install the antenna said that there were trees in the way so yes trees can be a problem. However they were able to see a different base station in Dundalk which is a good 40Kms away which they used! The antenna is a small box mounted on a sturdy (large) steel bracket bolted to the side of your house facing the base station. The antenna is powered over ethernet so basically you have a power lead coming from a socket going into a PoE adapter. One cable leaves the adapter going to the antenna and another to the NIC on your PC. so yes your PC will need to be relatively close to the antenna unless you don't mind an unsightly Cat 5 cable running through your house! What I have done is used a wireless router in my attic (you will need 2 power sockets - one for the PoE and one for the router). This works very well and I don't have any unsightly cables on show. They were a little slow in coming out - If you tell them that you have line of sight to the base station and that they therefore don't need to do a site survey it will speed things up significantly. Hope this helps.

DMC

I would mostly echo what mossy74 has said.

I got Net1 in 3 months ago, and I have to say its been very good. The time taken to get the installation organised was a bit of a pain, but its soon forgotten with the decent and synchronous download and upload speeds. As I'm in a deep dark blackspot, I had my antenna mounted on the side of a shed, on top of a 20ft scaffolding pole, with around 30-40 feet of cat5 running into where my router is. I made the point of entering the cable in the same spot as where the cables from my Sky dish comes in.

As for service, I was a bit concerned in high winds that my antenna would be exposed and prone to moving, but the best gales in November didn't move it. I had some DNS issues this morning, but these have cleared up. Otherwise, very good.

In all, I'm very happy with Net1.

admol

Out of interest how much is Net1??

DMC

Prices are on their website. The install price varies with the package you go for.

qwertplaywert

Awful company ,known from personal experience. Spent the last 18 months just trying to get them to do a line test, and after they finally did it, they sent out a contract, stating installiation would happen in 2 to 3 weeks. Its now about 2 months later,and despite alot of phone calls, no dice.
On the other hand though, do know people in area who have them, they say if you manage to actually get the broadband, its excellant, with consistant speeds, and the network hardly ever falls.

lodey

After about 2 years of trying to get NET1 to do a line of site I have given up hope on ever getting them. Thankfully the exchange has now been enabled near me so its UTV broadband. I would advise to stay away from net1

Adriatic

Told them a while back that there was a line of sight, without them having to check for it. Net1 installed the connection last Tuesday. Going absolutely great, on 3mb package. Heres my isp speed test;



Im very satisfied with the connection and have had no problems at all.

qwertplaywert

Well, got mine in today.Happy with the product, service leaves a whole planet full to be desired.

gingerGiant

Does anybody know where there highsites are, I can see a couple of hills with masts on them from my house, but dont know if there on them.

Mt Oriel would be the one with best L.O.S, totally clear but maybe a bit far away at 17 Km. Can anybody confirm they are on Mt Oriel and what is the maximum distance you can be from the highsite.

DMC

99.999% certain they are on Mount Oriel. I'm pretty sure this was their first mast.

lucernarian

There's one or two Net1 antennae pointing at Mt. Oriel where I live so yes they're based there. They're in Dundalk also on the chorus tower I believe. Not sure where else in Louth. There's one in Julianstown but that has poor coverage being based in a valley and all. They also ran a GBS in Clogherhead/Grangebellew so there's some sort of transmitter in that area also.

Digiweb's FWA product and Irish Broadband Breeze wireless is there, though the range of IBB is about 10km or less. The longest Digiweb FWA connection I've seen is my own at 8.9 km but I'm sure it can go longer than that.

And if I understand this thread correctly, 40 km can be achieved with Net1 (A phenomenal distance for wireless broadband) and they seem the sort of company who'll go to some lengths to get a connection, once they do call to your house.

They really should post up a list of their transmitters as it would be more informative than that hard-to-read coverage map.

Sponge Bob

They won't, one of their transmitters in Cavan has been vandalised at least twice by the Luddite Locals.

rav1410

There's one on Cavan Hill (Between Knockbridge and Dundalk) and yes they are defo on Mt Oriel as this is the mast I'm on, Im only half a Mile away from Cavan hill but cant see the mast cause of a hill. Im quite a good distance away from Mt Oriel so the speeds arn't that great,

gingerGiant

Thanks guys for the info, I'm too far from Mt. Oriel for IBB or Digiweb and had given up on Net1 due to thinking the distance would be too great for them also,in addition them not answering phone and never calling back gives a very poor impression.

Rav1410 when you say speeds are not great what do you mean, anyone else with them and about 15-20 km from the highsite care to share your expierences, also does anyone what make of equipment they use, someone told me it was alvarion like IBB but I don't think it works any further than 10km.

At this stage they look my only hope as even though my exchange is enabled the line still fails due to being almost 9 km in length.:mad:

rav1410

Hi Ginger.

Ok. I first got them in in the summer of 2005, Very bad start, for about 6 months they were very slow and most of the time it didn't work at all.

After that the reliability greatly improved but the speeds still stayed very slow. EG. Somewhere between 10-20Kbps when downloading a file.

Its taken this long for things to improve but finally they have. I'm now consistently getting 1.5MB (around 100-150Kbps depending on the site) down and 3MB up, I have a feeling I was put onto the higher package but still getting charged for the lower one. This is because of 2 years of complaining.

Basically when you get them in the product is quite good, But the service and support is non-existent.

sirpsycho

Net1 started off very good for me but as time went by their service went to the dogs. I've been trying to cancel my service with them for the last couple of months and cant even manage to do that! They never answer the phone any longer.

qwertplaywert

I find there download speeds through http or download manager are excellent, normally around 200kb/s on my 3mb connection, but is anyone else think Net 1 trottling torrent clients? I've tried different clients[Bit Torrent, Bit Torrento, Arenzus,although uTorrent seems to be the most consistant speeds] and different connection settings, but to no avail. If I'm lucky, it will download at around 60 kp/s , ocassionally staying at around 100 kp/s, but some torrents, it go's no higher than about 10 kp/s[basically dial up x2]. 2 friends of mine also having similar problems- any the rest of you?

Adriatic

I use eMule and have to say its the same but i dont think they throttle, as it still does appear quite fast considering what connection speed I used to have (dial up)

rav1410

qwertplaywert wrote: »

I find there download speeds through http or download manager are excellent, normally around 200kb/s on my 3mb connection, but is anyone else think Net 1 trottling torrent clients? I've tried different clients[Bit Torrent, Bit Torrento, Arenzus,although uTorrent seems to be the most consistant speeds] and different connection settings, but to no avail. If I'm lucky, it will download at around 60 kp/s , ocassionally staying at around 100 kp/s, but some torrents, it go's no higher than about 10 kp/s[basically dial up x2]. 2 friends of mine also having similar problems- any the rest of you?

I have only ever used Utorrent with Net1 and even at that not very much but I got pretty much the same speed, It went as fast as 180Kbps for about one day (on x-mas eve I think it was) but most of the time it stays aroung 60-100kbps, The upload speeds are very good though, Pity its not the other way round :rolleyes:

LFCFan

they have a mast in Kentstown near Navan too.

qwertplaywert

They defo trottle torrents. Friend of mine, who's service has been poor lately, rang up the office to ask about the poor speeds hes getting of late. They said they don't support customers who torrent, and trottle those customers speeds. Damn!

Net1

Eh ? - Not factual

LFCFan

Got Net1 installed yesterday. Decent speeds at the moment

Adriatic

qwertplaywert wrote: »

They defo trottle torrents. Friend of mine, who's service has been poor lately, rang up the office to ask about the poor speeds hes getting of late. They said they don't support customers who torrent, and trottle those customers speeds. Damn!

Just started using utorrent instead of the poor eMule and you must be wrong

Rudolph Claus

Im having an absolutey horrendous time with my Net1 service presently, i have been experiencing issues where it seems to time out for periods of 10-15 mins, as though it goes completely offline.

I aslo have painfull downloads speeds, its practically useless and so so frustrating. I use Limewire to download music and the rates are constantly under 10Kb/s lately,,, on average the rates are under 5kb/s. Im basically paying for web browsing, it never used be like this so something ahs obviously changed regards throttling downloads or something. Sometimes Limewire appears to be connected but yet when i search it pops up saying its currently trying to connect.

Im definitely not getting the service i was paying for 3months ago and will be taking this further. Absolute joke so it is.

Rudolph Claus

My download rates for the past few months never go over 10Kb/s and its constantly down at under 5kb/s a lot of the time. This wasnt the case until 3months ago. I also experience seriously frustrating timing out periods of 10-15mins.

This happens on 2 computers in my house.
There are suggestions that Net1 is limiting download speeds or torrents lately,,, which would appear to be the situation in my case, as when the time out issues arent happening websites till load fine but download speeds in Limewire/Utorrent are woefull.

Ive tried a few other programs jsut to check, and they have been giving the same slow speeds downloading.

So, if anyone else is having this trouble, please reply.

Moriarty

Threads merged.

rav1410

Sorry Nuttzy but the opposite happened to me, I have been getting a terrible service for over three years, Then in December last, it just got good all of a sudden, Getting 100-150Kbps down all the time now, Makes a nice change, I just wish DSL would be rolled out a lot quicker than it is.

qwertplaywert

Getting awful service as well, mainly in the evneings, where normal download speeds never peak 30kb/s on my 3mb connection, and sometimes drop to as much as 10kb/s. This seems to be the average speed from about 6pm till 1am. And yet I am getting speeds of a 7mb connection at 4.30am. Quiet strange.

Net1

Please run the tests on speedtest.net (Use Dublin, London and somewhere in mainland Europe) with no other applications running on your computer, or no other computers connected to your network - I have just run these tests at this time (23:30) - I use a standard home connection in Dundalk.





You, or anyone else may send these results to our support department by email and if they are below what they should be, we will cetrainly look at the problem.

nl

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Have to say the service has been excellent in Dundalk for a long time now. Zero complaints

ev612337

After 3 years of chasing Net1 in so many ways, I finally got them to come and do a REAL site test. (They had sent technicians to my house twice, but with no ladders and with no optimism!). In January they finally sent a guy with insurance to climb and do a test. SUCCESS was the result and we got signed up.

I get the impression that they just don't seem to have the manpower for the level of interest that's out there, Just shows you how backward Eircom and the Government everyone keeps re-electing are. Net1 should be a niche provider offering fill in service, but there seems to be whole towns throughout the North East who can not get alternative broadband services and have to seek a wireless provider. Shame on the powers that be.

It's been a gift here since we got it installed. I work from home full time and have gone from 300 Euro p/m ISDN bills to 47p/m to Net1 & 19.99 to freespeech.ie and have got rid of Eircom COMPLETELY.

Net1 service levels are very good and the up time is super. Also using a VoIP service results in call quality on a par with a fixed line, only far cheaper.

Happy days, after a LONG wait.

Anyone interested, PM me for details of a good contact at Net1 who can make things happen. You'll need it....

Net1

Im sorry that you feel to need to resort to the type of language used in your above post. You make no mention here of the other (preferred) ways you can get in touch with our support department - by SMS and Email.
As a result we have no means of checking up on your issue.
You seem to mash your words a bit on the attic issue - is it yes or no ?
Our installers are <B>NOT</B> insured to go into attics - period. This is not unique to your situation !! - furthermore we DO NOT give out ANY paperwork claiming to limit torrents
Once again - if your speeds were hammered the ONLY way this could happen is if you had hundreds of simultaneous peers open on your connection. The QOS on our base stations looks at this on a continuous basis and will slow down your TCP Ack packets.
If your ping times were really 200ms then there obviously was some sort of major problem, unarmed with any sort of real time information we are unable to take this matter further.


Tracing route to mail1.eircom.net [159.134.198.135]

over a maximum of 30 hops:



1 3 ms 1 ms 1 ms DD-WRT [192.168.4.1]

2 8 ms 12 ms 6 ms gw.dundalk1.net1.ie [80.249.243.1]

3 10 ms 7 ms 12 ms ge3-5.peering1.cwm.dublin.eircom.net [193.242.111.82]

4 18 ms 10 ms 8 ms mail1.eircom.net [159.134.198.135]



Trace complete.

swoonter

Wow! A response. It would appear that the language used in my previous report may have served a purpose after all. Kudos, on the grammatical correction you made to my previous message, i guess when i was typing, one of the other 30 complaints jumped into my head and i must have lost my way a little. Ok so, lets examine these findings then shall we.

Attic Installation Query: Im not pointing out that i was singled out, or the only one who had to fish wires through the attic, however no-one connected to the company or contract for that matter, mentioned this before the installation date.

Furthermore, the contract or website mentions little or no details/specs of the packages at all. Im sure many/everyone was unaware they could no longer use their pop3 email, or that the upload/download is shared. i.e. if your uploading at 1/3 of your package you now only have 2/3 of the capable download speed available.

A contract signature is required before installation, yet when the technician comes, im informed that ill never achieve the speeds i signed on for. Information that would have been more useful before id signed. Sure...you can mention the fact that an agreement could have been negotiated where upon i accepted the next package down, although pointless as it's the same as the package id previously had with eircom.

Ping Times: Sure you can get moderate pings (nowhere near comparable to standard dsl).......if your close enough! But the further away the worse it gets. Argue all you want on this on, but there there is not a person here who's ever played online gaming that would recommend your service for gaming.

I missinterpeted the port blocking in the previous post which actually related to your relay servers and the subsequent disabling of many's current email. However your QOS settings are unrealistic or unfair on the consumer. Everyone has complained about the current throttling, with torrents downloading at 56k modem speed. Why wasnt this mentioned in the contract or on the website anywhere? Almost every consumer is ordering broadband for peer to peer services, media downlad/transfer etc.. Eircom do not cap this, there is no throttling at all...why do you? Its not the same broadband service as offered by others, its RESTRICTED broadband as pointed out by both the QOS settings and the port 25 traffic blocking that prevent many from using their current email. Im no mathematician but dosent Less internet traffic for you = Less Expenditure........Coincidence????

A strange occurance has also been noted whilst using rapidshare or usenext which would not effect the QOS settings as they are not P2P based programs. If i downloaded a lot over a short period, the next day and perhaps for a few days or so my connection would be terribly slow. Perhaps to discourage any further download sprees. Am i Paranoid? Perhaps, but ive watched it happen every time for the duration of my contract so far, and im almost 10 months in.

Im not going to even bother elaborating on the customer service or lack there-of. Its a point that was evident on your customer support forums before you closed them. (maybe you didnt have the bandwidth on your servers to deal with the complaints) One quick look accross the the pages of boards.ie in relation to net1 and you'll discover that the consumer either loves or hats your service, BUT, the overall general consenous is that your customer service is rubbish. Lets take a look. Text service!!, 1.25/min customer support, email - useful for someone who's connection dosent work!!!.....lol.


In a period of just under 10 months ive also recieved no less that 16 emails (just checked) informing me, that the monthly invoice is still outstanding, or i owe installation fees (which were voided on account of the pro package). Each time i could be arsed to ring up, i was apologised to with regard to a mistake on your behalf. The last time the lady i spoke to apologised on behalf of the guy who keeps sending them. Even though he wouldnt speak to me personally she explained that he'd usually just send out another invoice reminder rather than actually look into it. That sounds like really great businnes ethics.

In conclusion net1 is an acceptable service if your like some who only use the internet for checking emails and such. But for me, i want more from my connection than just email etc.. and i dont feel that your service comes close to offering that level of service. Im also sure that many currently recieving your service feel the same as illustrated by the comments on this forum. The negative far outway the positive, a fact you should look into. (i wont hold my breath though)

kazoo106

Have had zero complaints of their service for the last 3 years in Co. Meath - My Dad uses them in West Cavan too. Speeds are normally between 4 and 5 meg down and about 3 up.
Latency is brilliant (especially to Irish servers which are often below 10ms)
On the one occasion when my antenna blew down in the high winds last year the guys had me back up and running again within 2 days.
My Eircom and IOL POP mail work fine - you cannot use eircom or BT's SMTP servers to send mail though as they do not allow Net1 users to use their servers to relay mail.
I also have an IPV6 subnet routed to my home router with an entire block of IPV6 addresses for myself.
Brill.....

marco murphy

Getting huge speeds with FlashGet Download Manager. Well recommended

Net1 Employee

I am an employee with Net1, and I'd like to let any forum contributors know what the situation is with regard to our boards.ie account.

We have always liked to contribute in an open manner on this forum, we felt it is another means for customers to access us regarding any problems they may have with our service. A post was recently left referring to our installers in an abusive manner. We asked for this post to be removed as we believe this isn't conducive to providing open discussion and we found it offensive. The boards.ie moderator has now barred our account.

This post is just being left to apologise for the fact that we will no longer be able to interact on this forum, whilst our account is barred, and that it is not it through choice of our own.

If anyone has any problems or grievances that they'd like to raise (without resorting to offensive and callous remarks!) they can still contact our support team at support@net1.ie or on the text line 00353 871365473.

Please bear in mind, we are a small company, attempting to provide a viable alternative in broadband internet (in areas where no other providers seem interested!). We won't get it right 100% of the time, but please remember, we do try!

marco murphy

Sounds very reasonable, well done.

skywalker_208

I have contacted Net1 several times in relation to getting their service. Dispite being told it is available in my area I was more or less told after several emails back and forth that they dont think they will be able to get a line of site test done as the engineer knows my location and I have no chance of getting service....

If this is the case I dont know why their documentation/maps show service is available as well as all the signs up around the area....

Also takes ages to get a response to anything. Severe lack of manpower methinks...

marco murphy

If this is the case I dont know why their documentation/maps show service is available as well as all the signs up around the area....

Those maps don't account for trees or such that would obstruct the line of site.