[Rant] IBB [end_rant]

Mutant_Fruit

[Start_Rant] I have been a customer of IBB's since about mid August. At first it was great, but then it got steadily worse. Starting about 2.5 months ago, I began getting packet losses of up to 60%, pings averaging over 2000 etc etc. Download speeds well below the 64kbps i am supposed to be guarenteed, and upload speeds were (on average) 0.0001kbps, also well below the 64kbps i'm supposed to be guarenteed. Browsing was a nightmare, posting here was next to impossible. Sending e-mails was something that should only be attempted if the e-mail was less than 1kb, or else it would never send.

After over two months of constant contact with IBB tech support, numerous unanswered e-mails, ten's of calls that were never returned i am extremely annoyed and angry at this treatment. About 2 weeks ago, I was switched to a new sector, and that has solved about 1/2 the problem. I now have resonably low pings, download speeds of over 450kbps, but upload speed is still non-existant. I can't send e-mails over about 3-4kb's, because they just time out. If i submit a post here, i usually end up hitting submit several times, as it times out.

I can;t do ANY of the following things anymore: use ftps to upload, p2p doesn;t work at all (i used to use bittorrent), Radmin (for remotely accessing my pc), Outlook express (this is just about usuable, so long as i dont send attachments or write too much), i can list more.

I was in contact with Chaz between 2 and 4 weeks ago, and i thought i was finally getting somewhere. I was informed i wasn't the only one suffering these problems, there were 3 or 4 others in my position. But he has moved elsewhere to do other IBB related work, and i can;t contact him anymore. Since then, i have managed to make NO progress whatsoever on my problems.

If this were an interference related problem, then i should be getting packetloss and high pings, just like i used to get. But, nowadays, i get no packet loss. So whats causing the problem? Anyone have any ideas? IBB themselves seem clueless.

Last week i was in contact with a manager (O connoll i think it was). Unfortunately i rang just after the huge IBB outage, and i was basically told (but in a nice way) f off til we get our network back up, then we'll get back to ya. I presume that they have the network all up andrunning by now, but guess what, still no callback. I rang up on thursday, and once again left my details, and once again was told that i'd get a call back soon, and guess what, NO CALL!

One last thing before i go... While i was talking to the manager, the first thing he suggested was that they would probably just take out the connection! (They havn;t even come out to check the equipment yet!!) Aren't IBB obligated to supply me with a decent connection? I did sign a 1 year contract. Also, i presume i am entitled to some compensation? What would be resonable to demand? IBB are unfortunately the only option for me, as i can;t get ADSL.

proteus

The problems I am having with IBB are almost identical to yours fruity. Im on the siac site btw. I have some success browsing but most other tcp stuff fails miserably (bt, ftp, ssh etc). I wonder could comreg cause them to change their support attitudes?

Mutant_Fruit

All i can say is that if you want to contact comreg, i'll happily give you my contact details, and you can say you're not the only one suffering from these problems.

about 1.5 months ago i was told that they could upgrade me to the business equipment, which could be done easily, and that would solve the problem. But i've been pushing them to carry out what they suggested, but i keep getting told "I'll have to speak to my supervisor before i can give the go ahead". Its madness. They just can't get anything organised.

I could sure use some of that business equipment

incubus

on the rte tower here, 1mb 8:1 contention, same problems as you mutant. Havent seen more then 12kb/s in 3 weeks, it has gone beyond a joke.

BKtje

sounds like an upload problem? if u dont have any upload you cant dload either.

Tho thats probably a too simplistic version. good luck getting it resolved

Mutant_Fruit

Yes, it is a bit simplistic calling it an upload problem, but that describes it best. Upload speed is practiaclly nonexistant, but there is still some there (as i am just about able to browse/post).

For those of you with thesame kind of problems, give IBB a ring and ask to talk to ray. He;s the guy now dealing with me. (Please don't say Mutant_Fruit sent ya, he'll think you're crazy ). If enough people call up with similar problems he might stop thinking its a software problem.

I rang at 8oclock to today, and afaik, an engineer type guy is gonna be sent out soon to fix my "software comflict". But i plan to send him up to check the antenne too.

if this is a software problem i'll be sooo embarressed, but i severly doubt it is.

One last question, was everyone suffering from these problems more than just a casual user, i.e. trtansfering at least 15gigs a month (or more)?

i would never transfer that much mutant. my dl speeds are okish, (35-45) but the pings are still mingin.

Mutant_Fruit

OK, they have (finally) agreed that there is nothing else they can try, and are now upgrading to the VL equipment.

I presume this only happened because it is so long since i origionally called in about the problem. So, it looks like i will have a fully working connection by the end of the week. Complaining non-stop for 2.5 months, about a definately dodgy connection actually works!

I'm surprised that it took so long, and equally surprised no-one came out to check the equipment first But i'm happy that finally something is being done. And now that they promised the VL equipment, there's no way their not going to put it up.

Lemming

A mate of mine was on the RTE tower (from around Bird Avenue), and for months and months he was getting fairly much what you lads are getting now. Eventually they figured out it was interference being run by UCD who also have some wireless networking going on on-campus as far as I'm aware. They swapped him to the business equipment which fairly sorted it out for him

mag

Im having similar problems to mutant on the Ballycoolin transmitter. Let us know how you get on with the new equipment.

Dr4gul4

damn i think im cursed, 1 month of blindin 100Kb\s speeds then on monday when to play COd online and me fookin ping was 350 ???


now me d/l speed are at about 15Kb\s max gonna rin them 2 day and see what the story,


Mutant what r they replacing 4 u ??


D.

By the way im in rathfarnham on 3rock 1 meg 8 to 1 cont

remoteboy

sound like the same crap i've been going through, except i'm on mountjoy square mast - might i speculate that they are having very general technical problems that they can't fix and are passing them off to us as specific problems with our connections?

Canaboid

I've been through the IBB mill (Breeze, Tallaght).
Firstly 2 different IBB engineers have told me the Breeze hardware is cheap crap.
They use the more expensive VL hardware for business customers and it is supposedly very good.

If you are unhappy with the service you are recieving, you have two options.

1. Get upgraded to VL equipment.

2. Get a refund and go with a different provider.

I was in perpetual contact with Mr. O'Connell who in fairness organised a site visit which lasted 4 hours. The engineers could not resolve the problem. They rang back to the office assuming they would be told to replace the breeze stuff with VL (30 mins work seeing as they were already on site) but instead they were told to remove all equipment and that was that. Contract terminated without so much as consulting me. I rang the office the following Monday to ask why this was done and was basically told they didn't want me as a customer anymore.
I got nearly all the money I paid to IBB refunded including the install fee and that was the end of that.

I was left with no option but to go with Eircom DSL and I have to say it's excellent compared to what IBB call broadband.

If you are having consistant trouble with your IBB conection INSIST on VL or a refund.
If you are paying them money for a service which does not work as advertised you don't have to put up with it.

Mutant_Fruit

If by "cheap crap" you mean bog standard wireless connections, then yes it is. I'm told by a "knowlegable" friend that all that is used is standard 802.11b wireless gear, except its piped through that antenne on the roof. That suffers from more interference issues than the better (more expensive) 5.8ghz gear.

I'd say the only reason i got the upgrade was that i have been a customer since August, and i have been in contact with them for over 10 weeks about this problem. At one stage i was told that they'll probably just take the connection out, at which point i got quite annoyed.

Hopefully i'll get the thing installed before the end of the week, but as i have yet to be contacted by the person in charge of sending out the installation teams, its unlikely now. But i'll try.

@Dr4gul4: They are replacing the standard breeze equipment with the more expensive (and better) 5.8ghz business equipment. The slow speeds could just be temporary for ya, who knows. Give it a few days, then call em, if that doesn't work, keep calling.

As i said already, its unlikely they want to upgrade everyone else to this equipment (as its more expensive for them), and the only i reason i got it was because of the history i had with the problem.

@remoteboy: It is a general problem, its interference. the 2.6ghz (or is it 2.4ghz) equipment is public, meaning everyone with a wireless setup uses that frequency, hence its quite poluted. If you get a wireless router, its quite possible that it will screw with your IBB connection (but not definate).

So when will you have the new equipment set up mutant? Im very interested in getting my hands on some of the same. I wanna see how it works out with you first tho.

Mutant_Fruit

i'll get it when they install it, thats all i know.:p When i get it, this thread will be (nearly) the first thing to find out.

I have so much edited video to ftp.

mag

Ive posted this on the other IBB thread so apologies -

I would definatley not recommend IBB.

Like many others my service was fine at the start except for falling over every second weekend, when theres no-one in IBB to resolve. That was for about 4-6 weeks, for the last 3 months its been very unstable - crappy speeds, problems with the high site, totally down, etc...

Basically they're a very small organisation which *imho* are cutting corners - no support out-of-hours, no backup on their backbone, etc...

Im on the Breezehome 512/512 service. I had to ring them again today for about the 25th time since i got it in cause my download speed was at dial-up rates - less than 5KB/Sec, for the past 3 days.

The guy i spoke to said that this was above the minimum level of service that they were required to provide to me. I dont have a copy of my contract with them but i asked him to send me an e-mail stating that & this is what he sent (a lot of its yada but ive highlighted the important part) -

==========================================================

We set a minimum amount of bandwidth (CIR) and maximum amount of bandwidth
(MIR) for each customer on the system. The system will balance the load across the high site sector based on the capacity and the CIR settings.

As the business customers have lower contention rates than residential customers, they will have ‘priority’ in that sense over residential customers during the day as they will have more minimum bandwidth assigned to them.

The sector you are connected to has a high level of business users on it. Hence it is probable that during the day, if all the business users are online, that you may receive slower download speeds.

The system operates as follows in balancing the load:

If a customer is online and using bandwidth, and another customer comes online and requires bandwidth, the system algorithm will ‘gracefully degrade’ the connection of the first user. This means it will slowly, after an initial waiting period, reduce the bandwidth to the first customer. The system will therefore always connect a customer at the lowest speed. If the customer requires more bandwidth, it will wait a period of time to determine whether this is simply a short burst of consistent requirement.
If it determines that it is a consistent requirement, it will then gracefully degrade the existing customers and assign more bandwidth to the new requirement. We have a number of high bandwidth residential customers on this sector who regularly use large amounts of bandwidth. You would therefore need to run a download for a few minutes before you would see the system ‘gracefully degrade’ their connections and increase you above your minimum speed.

If you were therefore to connect to servers at your minimum bandwidth of 25kbps, your initial download speed would be only 3.2KBps, until more bandwidth is made available to you. Dependant on settings and load, this can take a few minutes.

Research show that 80% of residential users use their connections after
18h00, when business users are largely offline.

We try to balance the connections on each high site with an equal load of residential and business customers as generally speaking business users require bandwidth during the day and residential users require it at night. If we were able to structure an optimal high site, business users would be happy during the day and residential users would be happy at night and week-ends. It does mean that during the day you would more often than not see a lower connection speed, with more bandwidth being available at night.

In general our business users seldom burst up to their maximum speeds, allowing more than enough capacity available during the day. However, there may be times when it will not be. In your case we also have other residential users who use their connection during the day, hence tending to ‘flat line’ the bandwidth available at times with huge downloads.

As a Breeze Home customer the current amount of bandwidth assigned to you is 512kbps(MIR) with 25kbps(CIR). You will notice your service fluctuate between these two parameters again this will depend on the time of day and the amount of users sharing your 512kbps connection.

==========================================================

Any other BreezeHome subscribers got a copy of their contract to check this ?

Anyway, im totally pissed off but afaics ive no comeback.

Mutant_Fruit

Hold on a second here, you're on breeze home PLUS. That means 8-1 contention! That also happens to mean your minimum is not 25kbps. the 25kbps min is for standard breeze access i.e. 512kbps at 20-1 contention.

You should be on 8-1 contention, so your minimum is 8-1. Thats your guarenteed minimum. Thats written on their site! and its in the contract, he gave you/ read the wrong contract.

The rest i do agree with though. If the other 7 people are downloading at full speed, it can take a min or 2 for you to steal back your fair share. Generally i find a download accelerator can help.

But, first thing tomorrow ring back and explain you're on breeze PLUS, and so on 8-1 contention, which guarentees you a minimum of 64kbps (i.e. 8kb/sec).

mag

fvck................sorry..............im on breeze home

Got confused there with the package terms for a moment, i thought breeze home was 40:1 contention & breeze home + 20:1.

Im on the 20:1 contention package - breeze home.

Ive edited my post to correct.

Mutant_Fruit

I'm just wondering now if its possible some f'in eejit stuck up a big antenne (not part of IBB) and is causing all this interference, a few people i talked to all seem to have suffered about the same time.

Whether we're all in the same area or not i don't know.

As it stands, you are getting the bare minimum the contract says, so just wait for it to drop below, and then ring up and moan loudly.:ninja:

Alternativly you could possibly upgrade to breeze+, and if its still really slow, then you can bitch some more.

mag

Originally posted by Mutant_Fruit
I'm just wondering now if its possible some f'in eejit stuck up a big antenne (not part of IBB) and is causing all this interference, a few people i talked to all seem to have suffered about the same time.

Whether we're all in the same area or not i don't know.

As it stands, you are getting the bare minimum the contract says, so just wait for it to drop below, and then ring up and moan loudly.:ninja:

Alternativly you could possibly upgrade to breeze+, and if its still really slow, then you can bitch some more.

Im in Blanch on the Ballycoolin transmitter, afaik you guys arent on it so i dont think its that.

I do moaning loudly down the phone but if evertime i do a speed test with them and its 5 - 7 KBps then theyll say that thats above the minimum. Im not happy with that & wonder is there any recourse?

Theres no way im upgrading to breeze+, going on their contention logic the min service requirement would be 6.4KBps & thatd be more than likely what id end up getting most of the time, as well as constant problems with the highsite, backhaul, no out-of-office hours support, etc....

No, i think its time to search for an alternative provider unless anyone has any better ideas.

pete

Originally posted by mag
Im in Blanch on the Ballycoolin transmitter
...
No, i think its time to search for an alternative provider unless anyone has any better ideas.

Alternative providers? Out here? Not bloody likely.

mag

Netsource, UTV ??

pete

Originally posted by mag
Netsource, UTV ??

And eircom and esat. All DSL - fail one, fail them all.

Unless you pass, of course heh.

mag

Who said anything about failing ? Id just rather not be constrained by gamy caps.

Mutant_Fruit

Unfortunately enough, the only viable uncapped offering is from IBB. So we can but hope that when 3.5ghz gets rolled out, all these problems are fixed. From what i'm told, theres a 95% liklihood that everyone experiencing problems with IBB at the moment would have much better service with 3.5ghz. The reason being is that IBB would be able to pump out watts of power without disturbing other people. That means stronger signals, less interference etc etc.

So, if you're thinking of getting IBB, wait til this comes out. Trust me, its not worth the hassle of the constant calling in about problems.

On that note: My new IBB equipment is getting installed on tuesday supposedly, so much for "the end of the week". Ah well, i can survive another few days of browsing agony.

HelterSkelter

Just saw this thread now.

Is everyone still having problems?

Mine started at the weekend (or maybe I just noticed then, haven't been using the 'puter that much lately).

I have 512kbps Breeze Home Plus and my download speeds are not much better that dial-up.....constantly. Ping rates are crap also.

From what I've read in this thread nobody is having any satisfaction in getting this problem solved. I'm gonna call them tomorrow and I'm not in the humour of them messing me around. For fúcks sake, they are owned by NCT who collect all the tolls from the West/East link bridges...gold mines and a disgrace how much money they make....but that's a story for another day!

Should I just tell them to take the equipment away? Would I be better off going with IOL or UTV (I'm not giving my money to Eircon under any circumatances.....well unless they offer me a 1Mbps connection for a fiver a month!!!)?

remoteboy

Still having problems (since November tbh) - finally got hold of someone high up and have been told that if they can't fix it today they'll take the gear away. Thanks for nothing guys. :mad:

Went with IBB in the first place because I couldn't get eircom bb (even though the exchange is enabled - summerhill). Any tips on how to pass an eircom line test? Did I read somewhere that you should unplug your isdn box?

Mutant_Fruit

Plug out everything, literally. Every phone, every fax machine etc. Then get them to test the line. Sometimes these appliances cause problems.

On a more on-topic note: IBB should arrive in my house within 4 hours to fix me up. I can;t wait, the idea of having working internet again is just great.

Mutant_Fruit

Ok, IBB just finished with my connection. and all i can say is i'm thrilled!

Heres the pings to boards.ie:
Ping statistics for 82.195.131.128:
Packets: Sent = 30, Received = 30, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 21ms, Average = 5ms
Control-Break
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=56

Average download speed is roughly 60kb/s

Upload speed is averaging about 60kb/sec.

Me so happy

EDIT: them pings are better than ANYTHING i've seen here before.