BIG problems with my NBS satellite BB

ToadVine

I've had satellite broadband on the NBS for over a year. My speed is always very steady ... usually bang on 3.5mb with a ping of 700ms. While not ideal, I'm able to work with this. Last week my speeds hit the floor. Effectively I have no broadband during the day ... I can't load a simple page like google or even run a speedtest.

I contacted Satellite BB Ireland (OnWave) who told me this is due to "congestion". They tell me that the minimum spec they are required to provide under the NBS is 1mb with a contention rate of 48:1. They say that this can happen, and that even when a 1mb connection is fully contended (i.e. is shared between 48 users ... giving me an effective speed of 1/48th of 1mb) its still broadband. In short, they are prepared to do nothing as they say I'm being provided with minimum spec under the NBS.

I don't believe my problem is contention for a few reasons. Firstly, when I was getting the satellite installed, Satellite BB Ireland specifically told me that I would always have a ping of 700ms and a speed of around 3mb ... irrespective of congestion. This has been true over the last year ... the connection has always been over 3mb with pings of 700ms ... ALWAYS. Secondly, as soon as 11pm comes, my speeds and pings are back to normal. They stay like this till the following morning, and then I'm back to having virtually nothing all day.

So what could be happening? I suspect I'm being hobbled somehow, but Satellite BB Ireland deny this. They say I'm on a running total of 9gb downloaded over the last 30 days (limit 10gb over 30 days). I'm very frustrated here, and I'm not sure what to do next.

Any opinions or advice on whats causing this and what action I should take would be very welcome.

ToadVine

This is the speedtest result I always get. It has not varied in any way over the last year. But since last week I'm not able to even load the speedtest page between early morning and 11pm. After 11pm, its all back to normal again.

Satellite BB Ireland blame "congestion" ... I don't think its that. Anyone any opinions on what is happening to me? And what I do next?

watty

It could be. But they are not measuring contention properly. Satellite hasn't enough capacity to be anything like as good as 48:1 at peak time.


These are only sample figures
The capacity varies about 2:1 between clear sky and rain. So during rain there might be a total of 30Mbps available for all of Ireland .

Say there are 2000 customers for all of Ireland. 48:1 contention means you pretend there are 41 Customers

30Mbps / 41 = 0.73Mbps

Working the other direction

41 users (2000 customers @ 48:1 contention) at 3Mbps needs 123Mbps. This I think is more than the capacity of Ka-Sat for Ireland during clear sky. During rain the capacity is drastically reduced

With only 260 simultaneous users you would get a maximum speed of 0.5Mbps

An old ADSL eircom exchange might have a "quoted" contention (due to lack of backhaul) of 48:1. But that might be 2000 customers just one exchange, not the whole of Ireland and the capacity won't go to half or worse when it rains. It's also likely that the real contention due to the real number of customers vs the real backhaul could be 30:1

It's hard to see how during rain that the contention on Ka-Sat won't be closer to 200:1

Satellite isn't a sensible mass market product, it's good for emergencies and backup. Yes Ka-Sat and Hylas1 are great step forward as Domestic satellite used to be about 2000:1 contention or worse.

Why do you think there is such a MENTAL CRAZY set of traffic limitations? Because 48:1 is a fantasy on satellite. They have to set stupidly low caps at peak times.

Equinista

ToadVine wrote: »

I've had satellite broadband on the NBS for over a year. My speed is always very steady ... usually bang on 3.5mb with a ping of 700ms. While not ideal, I'm able to work with this. Last week my speeds hit the floor. Effectively I have no broadband during the day ... I can't load a simple page like google or even run a speedtest.

I contacted Satellite BB Ireland (OnWave) who told me this is due to "congestion". They tell me that the minimum spec they are required to provide under the NBS is 1mb with a contention rate of 48:1. They say that this can happen, and that even when a 1mb connection is fully contended (i.e. is shared between 48 users ... giving me an effective speed of 1/48th of 1mb) its still broadband. In short, they are prepared to do nothing as they say I'm being provided with minimum spec under the NBS.

I don't believe my problem is contention for a few reasons. Firstly, when I was getting the satellite installed, Satellite BB Ireland specifically told me that I would always have a ping of 700ms and a speed of around 3mb ... irrespective of congestion. This has been true over the last year ... the connection has always been over 3mb with pings of 700ms ... ALWAYS. Secondly, as soon as 11pm comes, my speeds and pings are back to normal. They stay like this till the following morning, and then I'm back to having virtually nothing all day.

So what could be happening? I suspect I'm being hobbled somehow, but Satellite BB Ireland deny this. They say I'm on a running total of 9gb downloaded over the last 30 days (limit 10gb over 30 days). I'm very frustrated here, and I'm not sure what to do next.

Any opinions or advice on whats causing this and what action I should take would be very welcome.

I have been having exactly the same problem for the best part of two weeks and it is driving me demented as I work from home and cannot use the satellite system at all during the day. Where the technical support used to be easy to get through to and helpful, they now cannot be contacted at all (5 emails to help desk endless phone calls one snail mail letter, emails to every address I can find and still no call back from them) contacted the NBS communications director today. On the one random occasion I got through to them, I was told try again in an hour its a contention issue. There are more variables to pressure on bandwidth than just congestion so whatever is going on they need to sort it. After 11pm it frees up but even that I have noticed is much slower than usual. 7 minutes to load my home page and then cannot do a thing - Not acceptable. You can accept the odd slow down but this is no service at all. Let me know how you are progressing. Good luck I think we will need it.

mrs aol

me too. last week mine was as good as useless for several days. When I finally got through I was told the only thing he could think of was congestion and to keep an eye on it.

It's ok (ish) again now but I worry that it could happen again. It's hard to know where to get help/ complain to as a NBS customer.