Some Smart queries and a tip.

dub45

Just wondering now that Smart have more than a few customers out there how they are getting on? I would be interested to hear some comments on the following:

(1) speeds and pings

(2) has anyone had to get on to tech support and if so what was it like?

(3) General reliability - I know its very early days yet but any disconnections downtime etc so far?

(4) anyone using Smart with non adsl2 equipment how does it match?
I am thinking here of all in one wireless routers in particular.

And finally for anyone thinking of getting Smart and interested in a wireless network I notice that the Linksys wag54g is now around town in an adsl2 version for about 110 euros whereas I think Smart charge 140 euros for their version.

Anarchist

I am interested in the 1st 3 too

neon_glows

me to, iv been starting to wonder if any smart costumers have actually gotten broadband or are they still waiting.

Anarchist

Gotta say after 2 months of this "up and running" the Smart BB user is still very thin on the ground lol

Sponge Bob

Anarchist wrote:

Gotta say after 2 months of this "up and running"

3 Months, they first connected punters in Mid March

neon_glows

Can i take it then that nobody is with smart for broadband yet? Sure feck it maybe the service just doesnt work and thats why nobody is able to post, they are not able to get online.

beller b

I was waiting over 3 months . got fed up with thier lies. Signed for BT I'll wait & see how they go!

Narcom

There have been a few people who have posted since going live on Smart. Me for one, I know a few others have also posted pings etc.

I've been live off Dolphin's Barn since early-mid April and while I've a slightly better than normal connection, the pings are excellent.

They were originally:
heanet 22ms; boards 27ms; jolt.co.uk 32ms.

I had my settings enhanced (interleaving etc) as part of some trial feedback for Smart and pings are more in the region of:
heanet 7-8ms
boards 12-15ms
jolt 15-20ms

steve-o

Smart's Oisin Fanning was quoted in the Indo last Thursday as saying that they have 1,500 live broadband customers.

I've been on Dolphin's Barn since early May. My pings are similar to Narcom's original pings (I haven't had anything tweaked). http://www.irishisptest.com/myspeed/ usually returns 1.8Mb to 2Mb down and 128Kb up. It does what it says on the tin.

_Kaiser_

dub45 wrote:

And finally for anyone thinking of getting Smart and interested in a wireless network I notice that the Linksys wag54g is now around town in an adsl2 version for about 110 euros whereas I think Smart charge 140 euros for their version.

I had one of these for UTV and ended up getting rid of it in the end. It is VERY unstable if using it wirelessly. Will drop connectivity for no reason (even though it may still seem to be ok if you check the connection properties), it reset twice on me - for no reason and completely erasing all the settings, and the Wireless signal strength was never great. Tons of problems reported with it on the net.

Switched to an SMC Barricade 7804WBRA that I got on dsl-warehouse.ie and it's a MUCH better option with a lot more configuration options, better wreless signal strength etc .. hasn't given me a days trouble since I got it

machalla

I've been on the Dolphins Barn exchange since April. No significant problems so far apart from a dodgy phone cable that kept disconnecting me. I do notice that the router supplied seems to lock itself sometimes (once or twice a week) and I'm not sure why. Its either overheating or locking itself for security reasons.

Pretty happy considering my phone line according to Eircon "will never be able to support BB". Funny how that changed once smart moved into the BB market.

dub45

Kaiser2000 wrote:

I had one of these for UTV and ended up getting rid of it in the end. It is VERY unstable if using it wirelessly. Will drop connectivity for no reason (even though it may still seem to be ok if you check the connection properties), it reset twice on me - for no reason and completely erasing all the settings, and the Wireless signal strength was never great. Tons of problems reported with it on the net.

Switched to an SMC Barricade 7804WBRA that I got on dsl-warehouse.ie and it's a MUCH better option with a lot more configuration options, better wreless signal strength etc .. hasn't given me a days trouble since I got it

Wireless routers seem to be pretty erratic you can read bad stuff about virtually any of the brands on the net sad to say. I have used the Linksys now as has a friend of mine for quite some time no problems at all. Similarly another friend of mine has the netgear 834g and it works fine for him yet I have read some dire comments on it on the net so you pays your money and hopes for the best unfortunately.

pizzahead77

How's does one get interleaving turned off (I assume) to get lower pings on Smart?

I'm getting:
heanet.ie - 21ms, boards.ie - 33ms, jolt.co.uk - 31ms.

Can you just phone up tech support and ask them?

Also since I moved to Smart from Eircom I seem to have lost the ability to upload files to ftp servers (1 Irish based & 1 US based). Would anyone have any clue as to what the issue would be? I'm awaiting a callback from Smart tech support.

dub45

There was a bit of a debate bout this in one of the Smart threads. You have to email Garfield and request it. I think if you go to tech support they will tell you it is not available.

Splendid

Excuse my ignorance, but what is interleaving?

SkepticOne

Splendid wrote:

Excuse my ignorance, but what is interleaving?

It is a technique of improving the reliability of a connection at the expense of latency. Not really necessary in most cases. Eircom had high interleaving on their initial ADSL offering back in 2001. Their more recent RADSL (the current residential offerings) have low interleaving.

Splendid

Ah, now i get yis,
Thanks

odie

I noticed these questions on Smart Broadband FAQ page here

http://www.smarttelecom.ie/products/broadband/faq.htm

Do Smart Broadband have download or upload limits?

"There is no limits on the amount of data that can be downloaded or uploaded however users whose usage is deemed excessive on a regular basis will be contacted and restrictions will be used if the activity persists."

However I was wondering what is actually deemed excessive, as it would be impossible to to figure out if a client was using excessively.

Also I have noticed that Smart say that Contention ratios do not exist on the same page. Surely this would mean that it would not matter about excessive use as the person downloading would not be using up too much capacity as there is no contention.

What is the contention ratio on the Smart broadband product?

"Smart Broadband is not designed around the concept of contention. Smart Telecom owns and operates its own high-capacity fibre-optic network. As any link in the Smart network approaches capacity, it will be automatically be upgraded. Smart Broadband users will continue to enjoy the unrestricted high-speed Internet access"


Anyone any thoughts?

dub45

odie wrote:

I noticed these questions on Smart Broadband FAQ page here

http://www.smarttelecom.ie/products/broadband/faq.htm

Do Smart Broadband have download or upload limits?

......................

Anyone any thoughts?

You really are inviting a flood of abuse with those questions. There are Smart threads on those subjects that are longer thatn 'War and Peace'!

Have a look for them in the bb forum.

OfflerCrocGod

Narcom wrote:

I had my settings enhanced (interleaving etc) as part of some trial feedback for Smart and pings are more in the region of:
heanet 7-8ms
boards 12-15ms
jolt 15-20ms

They are very impressive figures if Smart were to allow changing interleaving as part of their package they would have very gamer in their catchment screaming for their attention.

Of course their catchment area is presently smaller then my left shoe.

jack_christie

odie wrote:

I noticed these questions on Smart Broadband FAQ page here

"There is no limits on the amount of data that can be downloaded or uploaded however users whose usage is deemed excessive on a regular basis will be contacted and restrictions will be used if the activity persists."

However I was wondering what is actually deemed excessive, as it would be impossible to to figure out if a client was using excessively.

You really would need a figure for what is considered excessive otherwise the whole thing could end up in a Surf No Limits style fiasco. Not really a contract you could trust with a hidden sledgehammer clause like that.

JC

Big Chief

im on smart broadband

2meg connection for 35 eurotasms per month, no line rental and had no connection charge...

had no problems so far with it apart from the routing to a friends swedish FTP, routing to sweden (mainly stockholm) seemed to go over 14 hops which im wondering a bit about..

download speeds generally around 200kb/s

apart from the swedish ftp where i get 15-20kb/s almost consistantly and i worry about that, as we store alot of info on there.

Maybe garfield can englighten/help me on this situation if possible. Ive done several tracerts but all seem to come back with what seems normal pings (generally 15-80) but going over 14 hops to get to the destination. Has anyone else noticed this??

Big Chief

Narcom wrote:

There have been a few people who have posted since going live on Smart. Me for one, I know a few others have also posted pings etc.

I've been live off Dolphin's Barn since early-mid April and while I've a slightly better than normal connection, the pings are excellent.

They were originally:
heanet 22ms; boards 27ms; jolt.co.uk 32ms.

I had my settings enhanced (interleaving etc) as part of some trial feedback for Smart and pings are more in the region of:
heanet 7-8ms
boards 12-15ms
jolt 15-20ms

hmm juicy pingtimes on the enhanced, how would one go about sorting that out then

GarfieldConnoll

Big Chief wrote:

hmm juicy pingtimes on the enhanced, how would one go about sorting that out then

Big Chief,

Tried to PM you, but it's failing. PM me and I'll see if your line will support interleaving being switched off (lower ping times).

Garfield.

Big Chief

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Big Chief,

Tried to PM you, but it's failing. PM me and I'll see if your line will support interleaving being switched off (lower ping times).

Garfield.

ah had 250 pm's stored, never quite got around to deleting those from decades ago.

Cleared them all out now, and sent you a pm

many thanks

Big Chief

SkepticOne wrote:

It is a technique of improving the reliability of a connection at the expense of latency. Not really necessary in most cases. Eircom had high interleaving on their initial ADSL offering back in 2001. Their more recent RADSL (the current residential offerings) have low interleaving.

hmm by reliability how much are we talking here, i can deal with an extra 20ms if it means its going to be unstable (i.e i download... alot)

Baud

pizzahead77 wrote:

Also since I moved to Smart from Eircom I seem to have lost the ability to upload files to ftp servers (1 Irish based & 1 US based). Would anyone have any clue as to what the issue would be? I'm awaiting a callback from Smart tech support.

One of two things most likely:
1) reverse DNS. Some FTP servers refuse connections from machines without a reverse DNS. You shouldn't see it on all FTP servers though.

2) Active FTP. FTP is a borked protocol, especially when you include NAT. If you don't have a NAT box that knows about FTP, then you can't usually use active FTP properly. Try using passive FTP to copy the file. There's an option in IE for it, if you're using a command line, type PASV and then try to upload.

After that, I'm not sure what would be blocking your uploads.

L.

edanto

I'm with Smart too. Before the modem arrived, I thought they were a crummy, forgetful, deceitful crowd... but then after two months of nagging them, broadband arrived. And it's just sweet. They're not such bad guys, just had a cart/horse order problem with advertising their product.

Can't beat 35e a month all in; great quality of service too. Very satisfying to get a Final Bill from eircon! Major caveat - I had to change my phone number to avail of Smart, but no worries, since I'd only gotten the line back recently for BB.

Up and down speeds as per steve-o. just perfect for the price. Customer support/tech have been great to deal with (only one query and they got right back with a fix).

pings
boards 36ms
bbc.co.uk 35ms
jolt.co.uk 34ms

Garfield, if that could be improved with this interleaving magic that would be great. cheers.

lardboy

Edanto: How was the switchover from eircom to Smart? What was your downtime for phone and BB services. I want to change, but being without BB for a couple of weeks would be like missing a limb!

edanto

lardboy wrote:

Edanto: How was the switchover from eircom to Smart? What was your downtime for phone and BB services.

Switchover was smooth and seamless. We were with eircon, waiting for the changeover to happen, then bang our phone number had changed. A day or two later, the new modem arrived and easy to setup. So, no downtime for phone.
First time I've had BB is with Smart, so can't answer that question about downtime for BB.

But so far, so good. no downtime since we've started & great speeds.

lardboy

Thanks for the info. Hopefully the BB switch will be equally smooth. We shall see...

the corpo

Have to say, that while I'm still waiting for my Smart order to be processed (they're waiting for Eircom to authorise something), they and particularly Garfield have been great. Definitely worth persevering with Customer Service, they do seem to try the best that they can to resolve things, certainly have for me.

half_life_man

the corpo wrote:

Have to say, that while I'm still waiting for my Smart order to be processed (they're waiting for Eircom to authorise something), they and particularly Garfield have been great. Definitely worth persevering with Customer Service, they do seem to try the best that they can to resolve things, certainly have for me.

hey corpo. i think i'm having the same problem but i have my modem set up and everything. did u get ur modem?

chorus techy

I'm meant to be getting my modem next week, yippee! I've gone through three months of crap having to change from smart, to eircon and back to smart. Four weeks to change from smart, and and another two weeks to get an eircon account number. Then I have to wait for LLU to go through. And eircon have the nerve to tell us they were voted the best customer care of 2004?!

odie

odie wrote:

"Smart Broadband is not designed around the concept of contention. Smart Telecom owns and operates its own high-capacity fibre-optic network. As any link in the Smart network approaches capacity, it will be automatically be upgraded. Smart Broadband users will continue to enjoy the unrestricted high-speed Internet access"


Anyone any thoughts?

Lie lies lies.

EVERY Isp on this green earth has contended access.

To be truely uncontended the ISP must have enough bandwidth to suppy all customers access to the net at the same time without any feeling a performance hit. This simply does not happen.

Equipment and infrastructure for the the fat pipes connecting ISPs to the internet are stupidly expensive.
If ISPs were to have totally uncontented broadband connections you would be paying leased line prices for your DSL (Think 15 grand a year for 512k/512k!!). Thats because with a leased line you are getting garanteed speeds, ie no contention.

Smart say they have no contention, this is true at the exchanges as they use different technology for sharing available bandwidth. However
they will still have contention at the final hop to the net.

</rant>

steve-hosting36

I htink the point is that the end user never feels that contention by smart simply always having more capacity than is being used. Same way every ISP in the world works.

magic roundabou

i am also waiting for smart to give me bb, my one worry was that i did not know anyone who has it but as i now know that some of yee do im ok , my one question is if there will be a problem getting my emails - im with iol at the moment so will i be able to send / receive them with smart ???
thanks

dub45

magic roundabou wrote:

i am also waiting for smart to give me bb, my one worry was that i did not know anyone who has it but as i now know that some of yee do im ok , my one question is if there will be a problem getting my emails - im with iol at the moment so will i be able to send / receive them with smart ???
thanks

Should be no problem just keep your old iol settings in whatever email prog you use and it should work.

Smart should by now though have got their act together and have a FAQ for the technical stuff on their web pages.

Sponge Bob

No. He will not be able to send without changing his outbound server to th eSmart one . He will continue to receive though.

iano

Sponge Bob wrote:

No. He will not be able to send without changing his outbound server to th eSmart one .

Have Smart now put the "normal" ISP services in place (SMTP/POP/WebPages/News etc.)?
Is there a Support area on their website yet?

Adey2002

GarfieldConnoll wrote:

Tried to PM you, but it's failing. .

I just tried to PM you with a question Garfield....

You must be too popular, you are over your storage quota so you won't be able to send or receive any PM's till you delete some of your old messages (sent and received).

LoBo

Also trying to PM you Garfield to get the transfer form - let us know when you've cleared out some space.

dub45

Sponge Bob wrote:

No. He will not be able to send without changing his outbound server to th eSmart one . He will continue to receive though.

Apologies for the wrong advice then - as Smart had said they would not be providing an email service I (wrongly!) assumed that they would 'fix' something up to allow email to be sent. Silly me!
:rolleyes:

Have Smart now put the "normal" ISP services in place (SMTP/POP/WebPages/News etc.)?
Is there a Support area on their website yet?

Garfield has stated previously that they will not be providing an email service and if I recally I think he recommended Gmail. Smart dont state in the literature that they send out that they will not be providing this service and I think they should.

There is no technical support yet on the web pages.

Sponge Bob

fine so, let him run his own smtp server on his own machine !

iano

dub45 wrote:

Garfield has stated previously that they will not be providing an email service and if I recally I think he recommended Gmail.

Garfield, surely this is not true?
I don't think that there is a reputable ISP in the world that fails to provide SMTP (outgoing e-mail) for its Customers.
It is kinda fundamental!

Also, what is it with the lack of technical support information? Is the service live or still in some half-assed trial mode?

beller b

I got a PM a while back from Garfield stating the email probs HAD been sorted... Mind you there have been some lies since then as well....

dub45

iano wrote:

Garfield, surely this is not true?
I don't think that there is a reputable ISP in the world that fails to provide SMTP (outgoing e-mail) for its Customers.
It is kinda fundamental!

Also, what is it with the lack of technical support information? Is the service live or still in some half-assed trial mode?

Half assed? Unfortunately Smart are not helping themselves at all in so many ways :rolleyes:

For instance they send out conflicting information with the inviatation to sign up. one leaflet states you dont have to change numbers another page states you do. This is such a fundamental issue that it requires absolute clarity and you would think that having given wrong advice to people about signing up to Smart to speed up things that they would do everything in their power to avoid any further confusion.

They make no mention of the fact that they will not be offering email (or presumably a news service) and their website is still saying 4 times faster than other bb providers!!

dub45

beller b wrote:

I got a PM a while back from Garfield stating the email probs HAD been sorted... Mind you there have been some lies since then as well....

Maybe some Smart customers could clarify what the email situation is then?

beller b

Considering thier web site still says this for Santry !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????
Congratulations, Broadband is available to you! It will be available in May.*
Would you like to avail of this amazing offer?

Come friday its July it doesn,t say much when an ISP can't even update thier own site!!!

MadsL

Just switched over to the triple-play SmartVision pack. Phone, BB and TV - 100 yoyos a month incl 25e worth of calls each month.

It rocks...

4.44 Mbps downstream (yep 4.44 rocksolid fuppin Mbps)
3.55 Mbps up stream
Ping to boards 14ms, jolt.co.uk 23-13ms, google.ie 42ms

Tech Guy told me that there is about 1Gb of bandwidth at the mo, happy days.

juliuspret

Bloody hell.....you have the fastest Broadband in Ireland(with the exception of Dungarvan).

That upload is incredible for a home service!!!

Lucky boy!!!