What's IBB like these days?

rash

I know that IBB were slated here in the past, but what are they link at the moment. (Breeze product only)

If anybody is connected to their Tralee node on Mish please advise of your experiences.

Thanks

thebman

I'm connected in Maynooth via 2Mbps breeze and it is working great. Its been down about 2-3 times max in the past 6 months and usually the download speeds are running at uncontended speeds.

rash

Brim, thanks for that. Do you use VOIP and/or IM such as Yahoo Messenger, if so how do you find it.

Any other users of IBB out there.
Thinking of going with them until Eircom enable my exchange, the other wireless providers have an install change which I don't fancy

watty

Some may waive the install charge if you pay a year in advance. The credit card interest may be less than the install charge.

thebman

Hi Rash,

I play on Xbox Live with it and use a headset for voice while playing. It works great for Xbox Live and in general my pings are usuall about 50-150ms which I think should be acceptable for most voice programs.

I usually watch the latest episode of Heroes online in the afternoon after work when they come out and have not had a problem doing that.

There are 4 people in our house using it over a wireless network using a Linksys WRT54GS router which works perfectly with it but isn't supplied by IBB. One of the other guys in the house chats to his girlfriend in Australia over it and doesn't have any problems. Torrents don't utilise the full speed of the service from what my house mates say.

Overall we use it for downloading large files such as Linux distro's (Ubuntu), Xbox 360 demo's (about 1GB each), streaming tv and video for about 30 minutes a day by someone in the house and whatever torrents are going and we've never been limited or throttled for it except on torrents I think but I don't use them so I can't say a lot about them.

rash

Thanks for the replies,

Watty..don't fancy paying the 12mths in advance, as I'd have no stick to beat them with if the service was bad.

I think IBB in Kerry have improved their backhaul. Think they are using EBS Fibre POP in Tralee now rather than several wireless links to ESB POP in Cork.
Can someone confirm this?

Bambaata

If you use bittorrent you cannot on their setup i bleieve. Well i cannot and 3 friedns who are on different masts cannot and theres a massive thread on it here too.

thebman

You can use Bittorrent, its just limited.

rash

not too worried about torrents as I have good access @ work.

DrEvil

I think Breeze is IBBs best product. There's alot of benefits - No Cap, Fantastic Upload speeds, Static IP, No Eircom..

Thinking of going with them until Eircom enable my exchange

Trust me, if you can get IBB Breeze and there are no issues with the installation you won't have any reason to change to DSL.

thebman

Well I get 30KB/s on torrents anytime I try to use it which is rarely. That's a fine speed for torrents. Its a huge burden on their network and I can understand why they'd want to limit it given its only used by a limited number of people.

finkie_vandyke

I am a huge fan of wireless systems and I have a particular loathing for Eircom for all sorts of reasons (share issue, incompetence, arrogance, holding the state to ransom over local loop access and hence holding back the economy blah blah blah) and so I was delighted to have Irish Broad Band (Breeze 2MB) since mid 2005. Together with my mobile phone I had a complete wireless comms home - nice. BUT it was n't long before I noticed that IBB seem to suck. The first symptoms were of course the rising blood pressure and stress levels you encounter as you strive for google or whatever your favourite search engine might be. YouTube and other such sites were often a nightmare. During the daytime it would often work pretty well but in the evening oh sweet lord it was awful! Some ping studies quickly demonstrated that latency values had huge variation even though the average was often acceptable. But such jitter is what can really piss one off in terms of interacting with the web.
I should mention that I live in Inchicore - obviously an urban location with many IBB users judging by the number of masts around the place and perhaps that explains the poor performance.
In any case I kept with IBB hoping against hope that they might try to improve things but no. and today finally I had to get an Eircom BB product - it was ignoble failure!
So at the moment until I call IBB on Monday I have both connections available. So I have tested then side by side here in Inchicore (as location can be a factor) and I have to say that Eircom's 2MB product kicks ass compared to IBB. Below are the figures from a quick ensemble of tests from IrishISPtest for both connections and while the figures don't look that dramatic I can tell you the instant gratification of web page access one gets with Eircom is so so much better than the erratic (and that is the only word for it) performance of IBB.
BTW: Skype has always performed really erratically with IBB for me and most people I knew who had it.

Irish ISp Test.com Inchicore
Sat 1 Dec at 2pm
Irish Broad Band:
Download :1.17M
Upload 119k
Quality: 30%
RTT: 14ms
MAx: 1103 ms


Download :1.44M
Upload 58.8k
Quality: 71%
RTT: 16ms
MAx: 236 ms

Download :1.51M
Upload 299k
Quality: 66%
RTT: 17ms
MAx: 286 ms

Eircom - a few minutes later
Download :1.70M
Upload 170k
Quality: 91%
RTT: 18ms
MAx: 210 ms

Download :1.70M
Upload 168k
Quality: 87%
RTT: 15ms
MAx: 210 ms

Download :1.74M
Upload 140k
Quality: 98%
RTT: 16ms
MAx: 47 ms

DrEvil

In any case I kept with IBB hoping against hope that they might try to improve things but no.

finkie_vandyke did you ever contact IBB to get it fixed?

finkie_vandyke

Hi DrEvil,
Yes I did but of course there was nothing they could do - but we had a good laugh about it on the phone - seriously! I have some knowledge of this area and really its the nature of the beast (broadband over wireless) - I suppose there might be policies they could put in place to even out the performance but other things including their bottom line might suffer.
All I am really saying is that the IBB 2MB service as experienced in Inchicore is inferior to the corresponding Eircom product as experienced in Inchicore.
Anecdotally anyone that I know with IBB has had the same experience. Next generation fixed wireless might be better
~T

pedropumpalot

finkie_vandyke wrote: »

Hi DrEvil,
Yes I did but of course there was nothing they could do - but we had a good laugh about it on the phone - seriously! I have some knowledge of this area and really its the nature of the beast (broadband over wireless) - I suppose there might be policies they could put in place to even out the performance but other things including their bottom line might suffer.
All I am really saying is that the IBB 2MB service as experienced in Inchicore is inferior to the corresponding Eircom product as experienced in Inchicore.
Anecdotally anyone that I know with IBB has had the same experience. Next generation fixed wireless might be better
~T

What high site are you off in Inchicore? Are you using Breeze VL 5.4GHz or 5.8GHz?

finkie_vandyke

The SU (fixed) is on the roof 6ft off the top of a two storey house with a view to the spike on O'Connell st! I have never been up close to know anything about the Subscriber unit except that its alvarion. Alvarrion Breeze VL is in the 5.XGhz band alright but I know nothing more about it. Since it works well during the day and v. late at night I assume degradation in performance is primarily as a result of the number of users in the radio sector (and IBB usage policies!) - not sure what else. Peak times for even "local" websites is when it really lets you down say 6pm-12am .This is traditionally when there is heaviest usage I suppose.