Packet Loss on Irish Broadband

gothakane

After 2 months of waiting, phoning twice a week to check on the transmitter, and being fobbed off, I've FINALLY got Irish Broadband last Friday

The engy was up on the roof nearly 90 mins checking signal strengths, I'd love to know exactly how to do it, all I know is he telnetted to the transmitter and used his login and my customer ID to check the signal strength, pretty nifty. Once he was done with signal strength tests he conducted ping tests on the transmitter, they were all <10ms, and the usual ftp test, which came out with flying colours. So, after I made him a cuppa tea he was off to his next job.

Immediately I started Unreal 2004 for some gaming bliss, I had waited for this day, this pings were sweet, 60-100, but oh my God, the packet loss! :eek:
The pings didn't mean squat, packets were dropping like flies! So I started running pings on well known servers like crazy, and found out that there were often periods of ping timeouts, intermittantly, very random.
A similar problem seems to be experienced with the guy in this thread.

Often the periods of 'blackouts' have been so long that downloads have been aborted, and it causes havoc with bittorrent especially, getting disconnected and reconnected to clients all the time means no decent speed can be established. At the minute I'm on my NTL connection (heaven) in Belfast and pinging my IBB connection in Dublin... its not a pretty sight
Here's a sample :

Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=72ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=59ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=380ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=256ms TTL=48
Request timed out.
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=126ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=70ms TTL=48
Reply from 62.231.57.197: bytes=32 time=137ms TTL=48

Hmmm, must be having a good day, not as many timeouts as usual.
So, the question is - Is it dodgy equipment, or perhaps the antennae on my roof needs realigned, or is this normal everyday Irish Broadband crap that everyone has come to accept? :mad:
I think Tech support will be recieving a call on Monday. Feel free to ping that IP address and post your findings.

Ripwave

gothakane wrote:

So, the question is - Is it dodgy equipment, or perhaps the antennae on my roof needs realigned, or is this normal everyday Irish Broadband crap that everyone has come to accept?

As IBB has at least 2 technologies (not counting Ripwave), and you haven't told us which one you are using, it'd be a bit difficult for anyone to offer you useful advice.

Your symptoms are the sort of thing you'd expect if there was interference on a 2.4GHz signal.

gothakane

Sorry, my bad..

5.4 ghz 1 meg Breeze Home Plus.
There was 2 engys, the first antennae they put up was apparently faulty, they debated whether to use a 5.8ghz or 5.4, they opted for 5.4
Perhaps this one is faulty somehow too?

Update
=====
Been getting a constant "Request Timed Out" when pinging my machine for the past 20 mins, I think perhaps the antennae is faulty... Can ping the transmitter from here (Belfast) with lovely ping times...

Mutant_Fruit

gothakane wrote:

5.8ghz or 5.4, they opted for 5.4

If you're sure they opted for the non 5.8 one, what they gave you was 2.4ghz. Thats the ****e one. If thats what you have, get rid of it asap, as it will never get better. What that means is you have interference, and that is very hard to resolve.

Civilian_Target

Ahh right, gothakane, you told me 5.4ghz also, but remember that 2.4ghz is in the range of microwaves that resonate with water. Change it if you can. If you can't, take comfort that you're reception will improve over the next few months, because winter is coming which will make trees (the main source of interference) much smaller targets. And then, when March comes, we'll laugh at you

Mutant_Fruit

gothakane wrote:

Been getting a constant "Request Timed Out" when pinging my machine for the past 20 mins, I think perhaps the antennae is faulty... Can ping the transmitter from here (Belfast) with lovely ping times...

Could that be your firewall blocking incoming pings?