Diary of a New Broadband User

alleepally

After 10+ years of being connected to the Internet via dialup, I have decided to take the plunge and get a Broadband Connection.

I am going to update this post regularly to give my experience of signing up with Digiweb.

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Day 1
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Ok, today is the day I signed up with Digiweb (dsl.digiweb.ie) . Why did I choose Digiweb?

1. Reading boards.ie did not inspire any confidence in IOL or UTV which were going to be my first 2 choices.

2. I do not want to give Eircom any more business than I have to

3. Digiweb only launched DSL within the last couple of weeks so I figure they won't have as many subscribers which should mean better speeds for me

4. The download cap on my chosen offering from Digiweb (Homejet) is 10gb which is generous.

Signing up with Digiweb

I called Digiweb today (Tuesday 6th April) to ask some questions about signing up. Phone was answered within 30 seconds. Person I spoke to was helpful and pleasant and did not give me a hard sell.

Signed up online at Digiweb to the Homejet package which is €38.99 per month (including VAT) and a signup charge of €89 (including VAT)

The online system confirmed my phone line was suitable for Broadband. I paid by Credit Card for the setup charge.

Received email from Digiweb with confirmation of the order and the following indication of the likely time I would need to wait for line activation...

* Assuming there is no problem your line will be activated within 10 days, and the connection fee and monthly service fee will be charged.
* You will receive your modem and installation instructions by courier delivery within 2 days of your line activation

Based on that, I would expect that by 20th/21st April I should have my line activated. (I'm assuming 10 days is business days)

Will post with further developments.

Cabaal

I had a look at Digiweb DSL package in particular this one http://dsl.digiweb.ie/bizjetenhanced.asp as its uncapped, but since then I've heard they cap your speed similar to netsource do. (not confirmed yet)
But it does have interleaving switched on.

Its a cheap enough package but I've decided to keep with Esat/BT Business 512K for €110 a month as its the very best package overall.

4. The download cap on my chosen offering from Digiweb (Homejet) is 10mb which is generous.

You might want to reconsider your dsl provider as 10MB ain't very much

cc

i'm new to bb, was going to wait "untill" all the utv issues i've read about on the boards were resolved before ordering the 30eur package.

Think i'll hold on again and see how you get on cabaal with digiweb.....my god damn consumerist principles are keeping me away from eircom and esat........(still havent forgiven esat over "no limits"....and eircom....well too many things, mainly how much they charge for the privilage of having a phone line!)

cc

just noticed its alleepally getting digiweb, not cabaal......;)

alleepally

Update : Friday 16th April

Received an email from Digiweb that line has been activated and a modem will be shipped within 2 days.

This is pretty good. Order placed on 6th April. Considering we had Easter holiday and that I assumed 10 days would be 10 working days, this is quick service and faster than I expected.

alleepally

Update : Monday 19th April

Received a Zyxel Prestige 600 Series Dual Link Router this morning from Digiweb. So far I've spent about 2 1/2 hours trying to get things up and running.

I followed all the instructions I had and basically what I have currently is a Win XP machine which has been allocated an IP address, default subnet, default gateway. My DSL link light is on. I try pinging a website (e.g. boards.ie) - I can see the activity light on the modem but I don't get any response. Phoned digiweb support, didn't get to talk to anyone but automated system kicked in after about 2 minutes requesting I leave details of the problem. I didn't first time I rang thinking I'd try a few more things and ring again. 2nd call - same thing. Got the automated reply. I left a message with a problem description and asked that they call me back to go through the settings.

Emailed digiweb just after calling with a bit more detail.Got a call back within an hour and the guy talked through the settings. I had stupidly put in the wrong user name. I wouldn't mind but I thought to myself that based on the symptoms it was a username/password problem (process of deduction) and had gone through entering it a few times but I just ignored a 01 at the end of the username (funny the way the brain works sometimes). 2 minutes later, right username put in. Surfing the web. No problemo!

Did a ping of boards.ie - 55ms.

I wouldn't like to be a complete PC novice trying to install everything based on the manual. It was about 6 photocopied pages. The pages weren't numbered or stapled together so there is no way to know a page is missing. Also, the pages don't run in sequence so you have to search for the next page of instructions. Not very helpful.

I would like to think that if I have to ring support again that I get an answer rather than the voicemail thing. Not a fan of that, but I guess it's better than holding ad-infinitum. The call was to the Dundalk number for Digiweb. There is no 1890 or anything like that set up.

So far my experience

Ordering process (10/10) - dsl enabled and router delivered quicker than I expected

Documentation (5/10) - gives enough for a techie to work with but not very user friendly - needs more work and pages could do with being numbered, stapled together and photocopied in sequence to save confusion

Support (7/10) - Quick reponse to voicemail/email enquiry but would have felt more assured if I had an answer by phone in the first instance BUT maybe callbacks and email is more efficient for the support team

Speed (TBD) - have only literally done a little bit of surfing. Compared with my dial up of course, it is amazing. Will try a few dsl speed tests and post here later.

cc

sounds promising.....could you do a speedtest with giganews to see how their fast they're going at the mo?

cheers.

alleepally

Hi cc,

I get 433 kbps on test to news-40.giganews.com and 434 kbps to news-60.giganews.com. Don't know if that's any good or not.

steve-hosting36

Can you tracert boards to see where the traffic goes?

carbsy

I see the competition are snooping about.

steve-hosting36

Anything wrong with a genuine interest ?

carbsy

Originally posted by steve-hosting36
Anything wrong with a genuine interest ?

None at all , I too am awaiting his trace.

alleepally

here's the tracert


Tracing route to www.boards.ie [82.195.131.128]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 2 ms 2 ms 2 ms 192.168.1.1
2 24 ms 22 ms 22 ms 83.147.130.254
3 25 ms 26 ms 25 ms 213.242.106.5
4 42 ms 41 ms 40 ms p2-2.londen3-cr3.bbnplanet.net [195.16.175.57]
5 40 ms 42 ms 42 ms ge-9-0.ipcolo1.London1.Level3.net [212.187.131.1
47]
6 60 ms 59 ms 61 ms 80.253.124.21
7 61 ms 62 ms 61 ms sneezy.hosting365.ie [82.195.128.8]
8 60 ms 59 ms 58 ms boards.ie [82.195.131.128]

Big Chief

Originally posted by alleepally

Did a ping of boards.ie - 55ms.

Pinging boards.ie [82.195.131.128] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time=10ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.131.128: bytes=32 time<10ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 82.195.131.128:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 10ms, Average = 2ms

bk

A freind of mine has gotten didweb also (the entry level product) and he is very happy with it. They set it up in one week and it has been working great since then.

alleepally

Thanks Bigchief. I'm presuming the reason you posted your pings is because you're using the same Digiweb package as I am? If not, well then there wasn't much point in posting....

steve-hosting36

Where you pinging from bigchief?

digitaldr

I don't know if you've seen this post

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154441&highlight=digiweb

- apparently Digiweb wireless are blocking p2p traffic on their wireless network - does the same apply to their DSL packages?

alleepally

Give me something to try it out for you... I looked at that bittorrent -bit dodgy looking.

Big Chief

Originally posted by steve-hosting36
Where you pinging from bigchief?

dublin

Big Chief

Originally posted by alleepally
Give me something to try it out for you... I looked at that bittorrent -bit dodgy looking.

www.winmx.com

kazaalite aswell, cant remember link though

if it blocks p2p then lol, what a worthless bb package

(btw im with €ircon, hate them as i do there dsl has been fantastic for me.. not one bit of down time in the time ive had it)

bk

Originally posted by Big Chief
www.winmx.com

kazaalite aswell, cant remember link though

if it blocks p2p then lol, what a worthless bb package

(btw im with €ircon, hate them as i do there dsl has been fantastic for me.. not one bit of down time in the time ive had it)

Trust me, they don't block P2P on DSL, I would have heard about it by now from my friend if they did.

alleepally

I'll give it a try later but for now I hope this thread has been of use to anyone considering Digiweb.

alleepally

One thing I can't get used to is the fact that I don't have to worry about the time in the same way as I would with dial up. I keep feeling I must hurry to complete a task or whatever!! I'm sure I'll get used to the 'always-on' mentality!

cc

know what you mean allepally....the first few weeks on BB is great after having dial up for years:) First thing i did when i got BB was look for a any type of 1 or 2 meg file and watch it download.......then looked for some BB streaming video........ah twas great;)......now i go mad if a 1 meg file takes more than 30 secs:ninja:

digitaldr

alleepally I use Kazaalite so if you could try it that'd be great.

alleepally

Is there a subscription for kazaalite? have you a link

I tried that winmx.Seems to work ok but tbh I'm not really comfortable with these type of apps and didn't spend a long time with it but it allowed me to search the network etc. I'm downloading the free version of kaaza now.

tuxy

only install kazza if you want loads of spyware on your pc

digitaldr

Sorry I should have warned you - only use Kazaalite as Kazaa is full of Spyware - I don't have a link to it as there are lots of programs purporting to be Kazaa lite out there that aren't. The makers of Kazaa have apparently been very aggressive in their pursuit of sites hosting kazaa lite which is spyware free. I could always send you it if you PM me.

vibe666

IIRC kazaalite was shut down by kazaa and rather sneakily kazaa put their own spyware filled client in it's place after seizing the website.

might be getting it wrong, but i think that's what happened. if someone could confirm or deny whether this is true or not though, that would be grand. can't be arsed at the minute tho coz 24's on, and Jack's in the sh1t again:D

Chaz

Just tried this giganews site for a speed test. Definately not accurate for my connection.