ADSL vs WiMax

Drift

Hi all,

Firstly I debated if this should be in this forum or in "broadband." I chose here but mods please move if necessary. Thanks.

Background:
I work from home and broadband is essential to me. I use VOIP, have a VPN to the office (sharing fairly large files and printing) and use skype regularly. I'm lucky enough to be on a fibre connection at the moment and I get about 120Meg on a good day. The main office is only using ADSL though so my connection speeds are limited by their upload speeds.

The issue:
Looks like I might be moving to an area with "patchy" broadband coverage so I need to know for my house hunting if WiMax is a valid alternative to ADSL or do I absolutely have to have a house in an ADSL area? (edit: I'm certain cable will not be available and fairly sure efibre (VDSL) won't either)

Like I said my peak connection speeds to the office are restricted by ADSL upload limits on the office side so anything north of 8Meg on an ADSL connection should be enough for me. I know nothing about WiMax though so I don't know if it's a viable option. What speeds can be achieved? What is the latency like? Does contention make a balls of it? Is there another factor I'm missing?

All advice is very much appreciated!


Side issue:
How do I check broadband quality when house hunting? Am I at the mercy or eircom/wimax providers telling me on the phone "We definitely serve that area" (This will be out the country. Not in a town.)

ED E

Fixed wireless like WiMax has the potential for reliability issues and suffers heavily from load a peak times. I'd definitely require ADSL.

Best steps to take are to make sure one, the exchange is on the NGN network and two check with would be neighbours to see what their lines are capable of, that'll give a decent real world approximation of what you can.

witnessmenow

ED E wrote: »

Fixed wireless like WiMax has the potential for reliability issues and suffers heavily from load a peak times. I'd definitely require ADSL.

Best steps to take are to make sure one, the exchange is on the NGN network and two check with would be neighbours to see what their lines are capable of, that'll give a decent real world approximation of what you can.

As a side note to that, I understand this is just my experience and everyone elses will vary but I moved in September. In the old house ADSL was not available so I got Ripplecom. My internet with Ripplecom was rock solid, possibly as the service wasnt long available, but whatever the reason was it was perfect there was a limit of 70gb or something reasonbly low, but other than that is was great (ping, download upload any time of day).

After I moved house I got ADSL off eircom, I live roughly 1km from the exchange. Got the broadband in and seemed good, except when the evening comes. It is atrocious. During the day and night its perfect, evening time its just crap (I normally get 7Mb down during the day, i'm currently getting less than 0.5Mb and tbh its one of the better evenings)

I am actually tempted to try get a dongle in to subsidise the terrible internet in the evening.

My dad has Digiweb metro and its super, 17Mb down is what hes getting for €45 a month or something. My Mam has eircom BB in a different excahnge and hers is perfect.

Country living and broadband dont always go hand in hand unfortunatly

Drift

Thanks very much for the input lads. Looks like I'll be looking for ADSL. As it turns out there's a range of different standards of exchanges in the general area. They range from no broadband at all up to ADSL2.

I'd really appreciate some help with terminology from eircom wholesale. What do each of the following things mean?:

Ethernet (WEIL)
Ethernet (WEIL local)
Ethernet (WSEA)
Reach Nodes (WSEA)
APT Nodes (WSEA)
Broadband (BMB)

The various exchanges I'm looking at have various combinations of these enabled or not.

Thanks a mill.

its fukt

ED E wrote: »

Fixed wireless like WiMax has the potential for reliability issues and suffers heavily from load a peak times. I'd definitely require ADSL.

Best steps to take are to make sure one, the exchange is on the NGN network and two check with would be neighbours to see what their lines are capable of, that'll give a decent real world approximation of what you can.

Imagine WiMax isn't fixed wireless, it's mobile. Most users get a mobile dongle only those with terrible signals get a fixed install but this does not make it fixed wireless. The 3.6Ghz frequencies allocated for this is unsuitable for mobile where real fixed only WiMax on these frequencies works very well

Drift

I was specifically querying Fixed WiMax in my original post. I think there's different suppliers in different areas.

A dongle would definitely be of no use to me.

its fukt

Drift wrote: »

I was specifically querying Fixed WiMax in my original post. I think there's different suppliers in different areas.

A dongle would definitely be of no use to me.

I wasn't sure, Imagine WiMax is often referred to as just WiMax on here.

Drift

Thanks.

It's a pity all these various marketing departments feel the need to assign some fancy term to every product to confuse people!!

Don't get me started on the whole ... Next generation, super-fast, fibre (only to the cabinet), high speed, eircom fiasco!!!