Ripwave™ any good or crap?

Pauly26

Ripwave™ any good or crap?


Was looking for something that didn't have a contract while i waiting for smart to win there court case and heard an ad on the radio for this ripwave crap just wanted to know am i wasting my time or?

sharingan

Well my experience with RipWave has not been positive. Its an impractical technology as the aerial really needs to be seperately mountable for the kind of frequency it is at.

Thie big thing about RipWave is that it *might* work for you. Your home may be in an area that can get a consistently good signal. In that case you will have a decent broadband that is cheap, and contractually flexible. However I don't think many people can get good signal with it. I am currently 200m from the mastpoint, and a semi is blocking the way, so my signal is atrocious (<dialup). I am going to try and get some height if possible.

The big deal is that there is no downside, you can try it and return it, it might work for you, but I suspect it will not be satisfactory for most people.

However you have to be able to do it without any customer service support (you won't get any phoneline support and you won't get any e-mail support), they won't even tell you where their mast points are, so find out in advance.

Ultimately even if you do get some satisfactory speeds, note that the QoS is not comparable to a wired BB. RipWave tends to have terrible ratios, and speed deteriorates rapidly with signal loss. In my experience, your U/L will disappear very quickly indeed. Your latency is going to be unusable for gaming, and possibly even VoIP unless your software is buffering.

Drapper

man there is oodles of ripwave threads !!

but they don't paint a pretty picture!

sharingan

Drapper wrote:

man there is oodles of ripwave threads !!

but they don't paint a pretty picture!

Well RipWave at its core is impractical - it needs LoS or bounced signals, yet the aerial is built into the unit which restricts your ability to position for signal. But its not that bad - its cheap and you can cancel at any time. For people like me for whom its the only real option for BB, thats very disappointing, but I and nobody else are being cheated on RipWave. Its just a type of product that has low potential to satisfy customers.

Its the users on Breeze locked into 12 month contract paying for 2M/2M connections and getting 300K/400K that are the source of most of the very genuine complaints around here.

*Angel*

It's not great, for instance yesterday it was off all day and only on at night, that was prob the worst but still. I'd say it disconnects about 10 times a week (when I'm in the house), usually only for a few minutes but sometimes hours.

Btw I live in Rathfarnham.

SkepticOne

One of the differences between Ripwave and other forms of broadband is that you do the test yourself to see if it will work. There is no line test. If it doesn't work early on (perhaps after a bit of experimenting with the location of the modem) then send it back. Do not stick with it. Consider it like you have failed your DSL line test.

I think IBB could possibly be more clear with this before they sell the product. It would eliminate a lot of the complaints that appear, imo.

Be aware also that pings are high with Ripwave.

SkepticOne

*Angel* wrote:

It's not great, for instance yesterday it was off all day and only on at night, that was prob the worst but still.

I'm off the Three Rock transmitter and had the same problem.

Sam Vimes

i got it from an irish broadband customer service rep that ripwave is crap. think thats settles it

Pauly26

Was not expecting all this feed back, thanks guys
Might give them a ring 2moro and and sure feck it if it doesn't i can just send it back

inigo

I just got it myself. Speeds are a joke, slow but they are. I'm able to use skype for phone calls, can listen to the radio, and browse the internet. Which is all I want the internet for. Of course, I could do with real broadband speed, but at that price, without a landline, and being able to cancel before 12 months, I don't think it's too bad. It also depends on what you want an internet connection for.

zuma

inigo wrote:

I just got it myself. Speeds are a joke, slow but they are. I'm able to use skype for phone calls, can listen to the radio, and browse the internet. Which is all I want the internet for. Of course, I could do with real broadband speed, but at that price, without a landline, and being able to cancel before 12 months, I don't think it's too bad. It also depends on what you want an internet connection for.

What type of result do you get on www.irishisptest.com speedtest with Ripwave??

inigo

zuma wrote:

What type of result do you get on www.irishisptest.com speedtest with Ripwave??

Download speed: 77.5 Mbps
Upload speed: 25.9 Mbps

.......... at work

Will try Ripwave tonight and let you know.

zuma

inigo wrote:

Download speed: 77.5 Mbps
Upload speed: 25.9 Mbps

.......... at work

Will try Ripwave tonight and let you know.

Wouldnt mind some of that myself....whats that cost a year???

Could you actually take a screenshot of that speedtest on your work comp tomorrow as I might use it to taunt a couple of yanks and say I'm from Sweden!!!

Adey2002

IBB as a Company is total crap. Breeze is oversubscribed and isn't worth the money. If IBB is your only option, I suggest you go buy yourself a 14,400 modem because it will be twice the speed.

As for ripwave, that's just worse.

4 months into problems, still no joy from their supposed "service" department. Total crap. Avoid like the plague.

inigo

With Ripwave I get a different result every time. From 15 to an amazing 132 for download speed!!!! Can any of you actually believe that??

sharingan

inigo wrote:

With Ripwave I get a different result every time. From 15 to an amazing 132 for download speed!!!! Can any of you actually believe that??

I once hit 290 kbps but signal quality is all over the place, the graph is like Apple's share price over the last 20 years. Whatever signal quality I am getting is being used to resend packets.

I have persisted with it this far because I might yet have a chance of setting it up upstairs.

I did a check in galway, with the interesting location of their equipment on the eircom mast (about 30m below the top of it), I won't even get LoS for anything like Breeze either.

beller b

In case it hasn't been said enough..........IBB ARE CRAP!

DemonOfTheFall

Well if it works for you, it's great from what I can see. I'd say get it, if its **** return it and get your money back. For all you know it could work great.

sharingan

Yes it *might* work for you. I would love to know the ratio of satisfied customers to customers who couldn't get a good signal. I have a sneaking suspicion that its not a good ratio.

Personally I would like to know of satisfied customers who have managed to get a good U/L. Even the best results that I have seen tend to be about 100/450+. Kinda spitting in the face of the 'Symmetric' claim.

beller b

sharingan wrote:

Yes it *might* work for you. I would love to know the ratio of satisfied customers to customers who couldn't get a good signal. I have a sneaking suspicion that its not a good ratio.

Personally I would like to know of satisfied customers who have managed to get a good U/L. Even the best results that I have seen tend to be about 100/450+. Kinda spitting in the face of the 'Symmetric' claim.

From reading posts here I would say the ratio unsadisfied:sadisfied customers would be around um.................1000:1

oneofakind32

According to a local newspapper add Ripwave just became availible in my area, but the website still says im not eligible. Im currently on €25 a month unlimited offpeak Dial up with BT (singed up back in the Esat days and better offer hasnt come along since). It sounds pritty crap but its the first form of Broadband availible in here. From what I hear it sound like I can forget about streaming videos or online gaming but atleast I wont be tied down to offpeak times and my phone line will be free.

SkepticOne

Definitely not for online gaming. ISDN would be better for that. I would get it in preference to dial up but your service must be reliable. Send it back otherwise.

sharingan

If you know people in your area who have signed up, ask them to bring their gear over to your house to see if you can get a good signal. I am doing it around my place, and I am getting particulalry envious of some of my friends.

One thing to note - the service can wax and wane during the day and night. My connection can improve drastically at certain times, and be almost unusable at others. Unusually late evenign and night time seem to be poor. For reference my signal strength is hovering around the boundary between the orange strength & the red strength.

brianw

im beside heuston station and was having 320kbps dls fairly consistently for 3 months!
then bang - its down to 40 or less! 24 hours a day for last 3 weeks

i'll try moving around modem, but signal is still quite good, as good as its ever been.
tech support say they can do f all, as the 40/1 contention covers it.
but 40:1 24 hours a day makes a mockery of the whole thing which surely is based on bandwidth being shared and decent average speeds on balance.
and with contention the speeds should be variable, not consistently low.
constant 40kbps is a f**king joke.
IBB are a very poor outfit, survivng and profiting in the short term only because in Ireland we have sh*te options available.

i was seriously considering the breeze connection but no way will i go into a 12 month contract after reading reports.
those customers are getting fu*ked even more than ripwave.

lampsie

I'm in _exactly_ the same boat, running off Guinness mast. Tho apparently they are in the process of putting up 2-4 new highsites to cater for city centre - this from support engineer so take with a splash of skepticism

- lamps

brianw wrote:

im beside heuston station and was having 320kbps dls fairly consistently for 3 months!
then bang - its down to 40 or less! 24 hours a day for last 3 weeks

i'll try moving around modem, but signal is still quite good, as good as its ever been.
tech support say they can do f all, as the 40/1 contention covers it.
but 40:1 24 hours a day makes a mockery of the whole thing which surely is based on bandwidth being shared and decent average speeds on balance.
and with contention the speeds should be variable, not consistently low.
constant 40kbps is a f**king joke.
IBB are a very poor outfit, survivng and profiting in the short term only because in Ireland we have sh*te options available.

i was seriously considering the breeze connection but no way will i go into a 12 month contract after reading reports.
those customers are getting fu*ked even more than ripwave.

edunon

brianw wrote:

im beside heuston station and was having 320kbps dls fairly consistently for 3 months!
then bang - its down to 40 or less! 24 hours a day for last 3 weeks

Same here, quite happy for months, sometimes downloading more than 1gb a day, last 3 weeks slower than 56k connection. Thinking now in moving to NTL or SmartTelecom. I live in donnybrook, so i dont think the area is the problem. Customer support said dont know what's wrong... and that's if they answer the phone.

the jew

Had ripwave about 6 weeks or so now. No major problems with it. All I use the net for is a bit of web surfing though, and not even that much at that, considering I have no phone line in the house, nothing else I could get. Usually signal is about half full, not that fast but, meh, does me grand.