Imagine launch Midband Ripwave Replacement - WiMAX

rh5555

Anyone knows what their actual DL limit is. I know it says unlimited but so does NTL an alot of other providers just to implement a hidden cap.

Is it about 250GB like NTL?

Anyone knows?

Thanks

P.S. Also just curious how is 7Mbit where you seem to get close to that speed midband and not broadband?

thebman

rh5555 wrote: »

Anyone knows what their actual DL limit is. I know it says unlimited but so does NTL an alot of other providers just to implement a hidden cap.

Is it about 250GB like NTL?

Anyone knows?

Thanks

250GB is unlikely. Someone posted earlier 60GB. I asked them and they wouldn't answer.

P.S. Also just curious how is 7Mbit where you seem to get close to that speed midband and not broadband?

7Mbps is the service ATM. The midband providers also provide this in the areas where they don't have many users. As this is a new service we won't know for a while I imagine if speeds will drop off. They do use upto speeds so as I said earlier, anyone that doesn't tell you what their contention ratio is shouldn't really be considered broadband as much products that consider themselves true broadband products will feature this. As mobile users will also be on imagines service, they can't guarantee any service level if the mobile products sell well.

BigMoose

Why is 250Gb unlikely? It's certainly more than 60Gb on Breeze... I'm not a constant heavy downloader, but have downloaded ~100Gb in a week over my breeze connection and never heard a thing from them. Cant see why heavy usage on WiMax would be worse than breeze - other than Imagine might be less generous in general than IBB were.

gingerGiant

Before Imagine, IBB were happy to allow 500GB for 4-5 of consecutive months before taking any action.

This usage level was rare as u would expect and the action was only a letter informing the customer of their usage and asking could they try to reduce for benefit of other customers.

If no reduction in usage occurred no further action was taken.

CiaranIRL

I had an Indoor WiMax Hub installed this afternoon. Previously I was getting Imagine/Irish Broadband from the Guinness Hob Store to an antennae on the roof. (I'm in Arbour Hill)... Anyways, the WiMax man couldn't get an acceptable signal in my upstairs back room (from where you can see the Guinness HS) so he installed the Hub in the attic conversion (from where it could get a 'new' signal from Park House NCRd... (I'm a techie nerd!!)... It works fine BUT he tried to connect the Hub to a PHONE wall socket so that I could connect my phone to a wall socket in the living room (i.e. to use the house's internal phone wiring...) It won't work because when I plug in a phone into any wall socket a get a recorded message from Eircom inviting me back to them !!! (I haven't been with Eircom for a landline for years)... Is there anything I can do?? I don't mind Eircom sending anything along their lines to my doorstep. All I want to do is use the internal wiring in the house which I paid a builder to install...

Sponge Bob

CiaranIRL wrote: »

a recorded message from Eircom inviting me back to them

That would be EXTERNAL wiring then my son :cool:

MrVestek

CiaranIRL wrote: »

It works fine BUT he tried to connect the Hub to a PHONE wall socket so that I could connect my phone to a wall socket in the living room (i.e. to use the house's internal phone wiring...) It won't work because when I plug in a phone into any wall socket a get a recorded message from Eircom inviting me back to them !!! (I haven't been with Eircom for a landline for years)... Is there anything I can do?? I don't mind Eircom sending anything along their lines to my doorstep. All I want to do is use the internal wiring in the house which I paid a builder to install...

Holy feck that's a bit dumb of him alright...

thebman

Played Team Fortress 2 on this all night with netstats up on the screen showing ping times and other network information.

Ping varies a lot at times. My ping went from 80ms on the server I was playing on to 190ms at times. Now when it went high it didn't stay there for long but it did interfere with game play.

I also played on 2 other servers and similarly even on half empty servers the ping times were fluctuating. One of them is the clan server and on digiweb I got a 40ms ping. On Imagine it is 100ms -150ms.

smelly sock

Achilles get rid of wimax now if you can. Eircom are offereing free line rental for 10 months for any landline that has not been connected for 12 months or longer. This means you can receive 7mb fixed line for 35 or so a month.

smelly sock

smelly sock wrote: »

Achilles get rid of wimax now if you can. Eircom are offereing free line rental for 10 months for any landline that has not been connected for 12 months or longer. This means you can receive 7mb fixed line for 35 or so a month.

Sorry that was for Ciaran.

smelly sock

Haven't posted any speeds yet apologies for that. Last night the higehst I was getting was 2.6 mbps. Hopefully this improves. Or they can stick their 12 month contract.

thebman

BigMoose wrote: »

Why is 250Gb unlikely? It's certainly more than 60Gb on Breeze... I'm not a constant heavy downloader, but have downloaded ~100Gb in a week over my breeze connection and never heard a thing from them. Cant see why heavy usage on WiMax would be worse than breeze - other than Imagine might be less generous in general than IBB were.

Because this is a midband product with mobile users. I imagine they don't have the capacity to let users download that much and retain the quality of the service.

smelly sock

Product they sell on website advertises 7mb package as unlimited download. Nothing in the contract either regarding download limits.

thebman

smelly sock wrote: »

Product they sell on website advertises 7mb package as unlimited download. Nothing in the contract either regarding download limits.

Its subject to fair usage as stated in the T&C on the website same as Breeze and pretty much every other unlimited BB package comes with this condition which means there is a cap but they won't tell you.

BigMoose

thebman wrote:

Because this is a midband product with mobile users. I imagine they don't have the capacity to let users download that much and retain the quality of the service.

That makes no sense. The fact that it has mobile users simply means they cannot guarantee any worst case contention and your speed at any given time might be useless. However the throughput capacity of each mast is no difference compared to Breeze, you're just sharing it with an unpredictable number of people. How much you let them do in a given month isn't relevant. Only that the chances are they will physically be able to do less each than you can on Breeze.

thebman

BigMoose wrote: »

That makes no sense. The fact that it has mobile users simply means they cannot guarantee any worst case contention and your speed at any given time might be useless. However the throughput capacity of each mast is no difference compared to Breeze, you're just sharing it with an unpredictable number of people. How much you let them do in a given month isn't relevant. Only that the chances are they will physically be able to do less each than you can on Breeze.

Well once someones torrenting starts effecting everyone elses service and they complain about it to Imagine, who do you think will be hit with the fair usage policy stick?

Anyway how do you know the throughput capacity of each mast is no different than what Breeze masts were capable of?

Not the guy checking his email.

BigMoose

All I'm saying is the argument that the hidden cap must be crapper than it is on breeze has no (yet proven) truth. It may well be lower due to Imagine being more miserable than IBB were, but from a technical perspective the arguement does not hold.

Of course if the network is unusable they will hit the torrent user with their fair usage stick first, but that's no different at all to breeze (or any other contended service) where so far they have let people go rather mad. I have no idea what the capacity of a WiMax mast is compared to a Breeze one, but that's hardly the point. Since they are upgrading existing sites for WiMax I assume the backhaul from each site is the same.

The problem with this product will be the number of people roaming onto your mast when you want to use it making your connection unusable (be they well within a mythical cap or heavy downloaders, at that moment in time it makes no difference), not the dude that's downloading bluray images over night when you couldn't care less.

thebman

BigMoose wrote: »

All I'm saying is the argument that the hidden cap must be crapper than it is on breeze has no (yet proven) truth. It may well be lower due to Imagine being more miserable than IBB were, but from a technical perspective the arguement does not hold.

Of course if the network is unusable they will hit the torrent user with their fair usage stick first, but that's no different at all to breeze (or any other contended service) where so far they have let people go rather mad. I have no idea what the capacity of a WiMax mast is compared to a Breeze one, but that's hardly the point. Since they are upgrading existing sites for WiMax I assume the backhaul from each site is the same.

The problem with this product will be the number of people roaming onto your mast when you want to use it making your connection unusable (be they well within a mythical cap or heavy downloaders, at that moment in time it makes no difference), not the dude that's downloading bluray images over night when you couldn't care less.

Oh I agree. I think the problem will first appear when latency or jitter creeps up as they are selling a phone service with it too.

CiaranIRL

Speeds were rubbish all day... Never reached 3Mb/s... My current Imagine/Irish Broadband is better than that!! Have just rang Imagine to cancel my WiMax...

gadgetman101

Im in Tallagh and have ased about when they will be up and running here they tell me 6-8 weeks so i just might give them a go as the phone lines to my house will only delever 2.4megs thanks for you help.

emergingwriter

How are you measuring your speed? Have you tuned your TCP/IP connection?

I'm seeing 6 to 8MG nearly all day.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php http://www.speedguide.net/tcpoptimizer.php#using

rebooted my outside aerial (and PC) after they made a change on the mast and it seems OK. Occassional higher ping rates but usually around 80-90ms

emergingwriter

Actually, do you get the same if you run wired to the router as apposed to running wireless?

daffy_duc

thebman wrote: »

Oh I agree. I think the problem will first appear when latency or jitter creeps up as they are selling a phone service with it too.

Should affect the voice calls. As far as I know, WiMAX has some pretty nifty prioritisation knobs that can be tweaked to classify and seperate traffic so that "Bulk" traffic won't affect higher priority traffic, like voice.

thebman

daffy_duc wrote: »

Should affect the voice calls. As far as I know, WiMAX has some pretty nifty prioritisation knobs that can be tweaked to classify and seperate traffic so that "Bulk" traffic won't affect higher priority traffic, like voice.

Well they need to turn it on for gaming :P

TF gets a lot of random lag spikes for me at the moment.

It runs fine at about 100ms ping times and then it will spike to 300ms and be unplayable for a second and then return to normal.

A bit more stuttering in the game too Vs Digiweb which suggests that despite the 100ms ping time, the service is still dropping packets in Maynooth given the way the Source engine works, stuttering like I'm seeing can be caused by lag.

emergingwriter

Himself wants to go on Second Life. Last night he managed to get on for a grant total of 20 minutes and after that, it just didn't work. No idea which of the problems it is that affects it. Lost packets? Not the download/upload speed anyway as that is good. Jitter? Don't think so. Intermittant slow downs that we can see on ping? Any suggestions? The Imagine helpdesk are no help at all. Not impressed with the customer service.

BigMoose

Surely if the ping time to the base station is high it doesn't matter what cunning priority tricks they have, voice will be crap. I say this as a concerned Breeze customer who's happy with my <20ms pings, practically unlimited downloads and Blueface account... Whenever I've had problems with my setup causing >100ms pings, VoIP has been crap. I am far more concerned about the unpredictable but always high pings than I am 3Mbit/s instead of 8Mbit/s during peak time downloading. That's assuming that at some point in time they will try and force me to move from breeze... Their phone prices are nothing compared to Blueface so wouldn't consider changing.

smelly sock

Anyone know why the service was so crap in maynooth last night? Im paying for the 7mb package. On speedtest.net last night I was only getting .60mbps at the best of times. Im getting a bit sick of it now. It's fine talking about download limtis etc but if the service is so bad then downloading goes out the window. If the service is this bad then I surely have a case if I want to get rid of it but am already tied into a 12 month contract.

smelly sock

emergingwriter wrote: »

How are you measuring your speed? Have you tuned your TCP/IP connection?

I'm seeing 6 to 8MG nearly all day.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php http://www.speedguide.net/tcpoptimizer.php#using

rebooted my outside aerial (and PC) after they made a change on the mast and it seems OK. Occassional higher ping rates but usually around 80-90ms

I wouldn't be the most technical of people so can you explain further?? If this fix would improve my speeds I'd like to give it a go.

Cheers.

thebman

smelly sock wrote: »

Anyone know why the service was so crap in maynooth last night? Im paying for the 7mb package. On speedtest.net last night I was only getting .60mbps at the best of times. Im getting a bit sick of it now. It's fine talking about download limtis etc but if the service is so bad then downloading goes out the window. If the service is this bad then I surely have a case if I want to get rid of it but am already tied into a 12 month contract.

Mine was fine last night in Maynooth, downloaded two games from steam and was playing TF2 most of the night.

Still having ping spikes but was getting constant 900KB/s on downloads.

Hoping they stabilise that ping. It will be awesome service if they can.

thebman

smelly sock wrote: »

I wouldn't be the most technical of people so can you explain further?? If this fix would improve my speeds I'd like to give it a go.

Cheers.

Its not a magical fix for all problems. Sometimes it can help. I've seen it improve things. I've never seen it make things worse.

I should add my vast experience is 3 uses :P