IBB Ripwave problems

Ripwave

ironside wrote:

Has anyone out there who is using IBB's RipWave got a green light. If so, will they please advise as to how they got it. It might also be a good idea to photograph it and send it to Irish Broadband as they "have never seen a green light on a RipWave modem".

I can top that - I've just taken a quicktime movie (7.2MB) of the signal strength light on my Ripwave unit switching from Green to Amber and back again as I move it back and forth past the kitchen window, where it has direct line of sight to the transmitter. The upstairs room where it normally sits has a tree in the way, but that's where the computer sits.

Unfortunately, Boards waited until it had uploaded the whole thing before it told me that it exceeded the 2MB limit on uploads. I'll try to post it on a website somewhere instead.

Ragewave

Ripwave wrote:

It doesn't "say on the tin" that you'll get a green light.

I tried to see what it says on the tin at http://www.navini.com/pages/press/videos.htm, but my Ripwave connection wasn't up to it. Perhaps those of you with amber/green lights can have a look.

Ripwave wrote:

The only thing that's "half-baked" is your understanding of the basic laws of physics. The further away you are from the tramsitter, the weaker the signal that you get is going to be.

Are Luas passengers to blame for the weak signal now?

Moojuice

i have a ripwave usb modem too. Posted about it before but in brtief it gets a signal (steady red light) and then starts flashing once it is plugged into the USB port. Waiting two weeks to get it picked up and exchanged for an Ethernet modem. Rang twice to see what the problem with getting it picked up was and still no call back as promised.

I hope the drivers or something are faulty and that if I do eventually get and ethernet modem that it works. Otherwise I am in Broadband limbo.

Moo

Mutant_Fruit

I've noticed an improvement on the 5.8ghz performance after last nights upgrades. Did ye ripwavers get any better signals?

Ragewave

I think I've discovered why my computer crashes when Ripwave goes on the blink. which it is still doing for me every few hours. This will only be relevant to those rare souls who still have Windows Millenium or before as their OS, and maybe also if you're using a notebook with that OS -
so if you have XP, Win2000, Linux etc, skip this.
I've at last managed a 'controlled crash' ie hit escape, then ctrl+alt+del . This revealed that Msgsrv32 was not responding.
Once I got the Ripwave connection going again, I googled the problem. The Microsoft Support refers to Win98, but ME
is a jazzed up version of same, or so I'm told. The gist of their solution is that it is a powermanagement issue ie, when a program or device
that msgsrv32 expects to be running stops running unexpectedly, it hangs. As this hasn't happened with any other program on my system, my guess - and I'm open to correction - is that when the usb port suddenly stops receiving the Ripwave signal the OS interprets this as the unexpected removal of USB device - verboten in ME at least. So Msgsrv32 hangs and the computer goes into flashing blue screen and eventually freezes.
If you're curious, the MS Support link on this issue is at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=169987. You have to alllow for different control panel design in ME.

damien

Ah crap, I thought Ragewave was someone that created an account to take a dig at the user Ripwave. Here was I finally thinking that Ripwave had reached the fame tipping point. You really have become a famous boards personality when someone loves/hates you so much that they create an account in your honour.

Next time rippy, next time.

Ragewave

damien.m wrote:

Ah crap, I thought Ragewave was someone that created an account to take a dig at the user Ripwave.

LOL No, I wasn't aware of the venerable Ripwave when I chose the moniker. As you've copped, I think, it was because of rage at my computer crashing every time the Ripwave signal went to zero (a LOT of times so far). When I reach amber/green nirvana, I will probably change to TranquilWave, or some such. Yup, I still believe in IBB heaven. Shame about the purgatory in between.

Ripwave

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I've noticed an improvement on the 5.8ghz performance after last nights upgrades. Did ye ripwavers get any better signals?

I'm back to a green signal again.

I've attached a photo for the sceptics :-)

Ragewave

Ripwave wrote:

I'm back to a green signal again.

I've attached a photo for the sceptics :-)

I'm green with envy. A truly beautiful sight. Perhaps you could send it to IBB, as some of the support people there have never heard of a customer with a green light, or so friends of mine have been told.

ironside

Yippie for the photo of the green light on the RipWave Modem. That's a first, pity the quality isn't better. It would be nice to give a copy of it to staff in IBB who have "never seen a green light".

Call me a bit "slow" call me "sluggish" but I don't understand my MHz from my Ghz. The RipWave box has me confused: It refers to 2.3, 2.4, 2.5, 2.5, 3.4 and 3.5GHz printed into the overall design of the box. Then there is a sticky label which says "RipWave 3.4 GHz .....".

As I understand it, CommReg issued licences for 3.5Ghz bands to IBB - what's with this 3.4Ghz and could the .1GHz difference be the cause of so few modems not showing the elusive green light.

One other thing: Have people seen the video on the Navine site where the "All American" guy says that all we have to do is bring our modems home, connect them to the PC. On comes the green light and its all go (not his exact words but they amount to the same thing). Does anyone know this guy? Wouldn't it be an idea to invite him to Dublin - maybe he knows something the rest of us don't.

For people interested in wishing to check out their modem speed - have a look at www.lancast.ie Click on ASDL and "give it a lash"

Ripwave

Ragewave wrote:

I'm green with envy. A truly beautiful sight. Perhaps you could send it to IBB, as some of the support people there have never heard of a customer with a green light, or so friends of mine have been told.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I would have said that you wouldn't get a green signal either. But I assume they can use a higher power signal on the 3.5GHz licensed spectrum than they were allowed to use in the 2.4GHz unlicensed spectrum.

Ripwave

Purely as a matter of interest, I brought my Ripwave modem into an office building on Leeson Street today. I normally connect to the 3 Rock transmitter, and I was interested to see whether I'd be able to pcik up a signal from the Digital Hub East transmitter - I've been told that Ripwave Modems are tied to a specific transmitter, but I thought it'd be interesting to see what happened.

So I stuck the modem on the windowsill, pointing in the general direction of the Digital Hub. Turned it on, and got a red signal, which was better than the flashing red signal I had been expecting.

When I plugged in a PC, and did a traceroute, to see which transmitter I was connected to, it turned out that I was going through 3 Rock after all! So even in the City Centre, just off Stephens Green, I could get a signal from 3 Rock!

I only stayed online for a couple of minutes (long enough to download a virus definition update and do a speed test). The AV files downloaded at 25KB/s, and the speed test reported about 20KB/s, which was pretty impressive under the circumstances, as far as I was concerned. Even a ping to www.irishbroadband was a fairly steady 120-140 ms. (a bit higher than normal for Ripwave, but I expected a lot more "jitter" than that).

Note that the Modem was in a window on the south side of Leeson street, facing north - in other words, the side of the building that faces away from 3 Rock! It was a 3rd storey window, so I don't know if it would work at ground level, but it was still an impressive result.

Ragewave

Five phonecalls later, I'm back online after 30 hours+ with zero Ripwave signal. Delighted to be back, of course, but when I asked if there was a process whereby we could get to a stage where I didn't have to keep looking at the red light in case it started blinking, I was told that the only solution was to have a courier take the modem back to IBB, without a replacement, to see if it was faulty. When I asked what I would do while it was being tested, it was suggested I fall back on dial-up. If the modem were to prove to be in good working order, then I'd get my money back, and we could discuss other options.
I don't think that's a runner, at least not unless I have a replacement while my present modem is being tested - but has anyone returned their modem to be tested, and if so what was their experience?
It seems to me that if I had a replacement modem, I could easily determine whether it was the modem or the signal which was at fault and save IBB technicians the bother.
On the question of support, though I had the same ticket (always ask for a ticket if you're not offered one) I spoke to four different people, the same person on two different days, which is okay except that there seemed to be a different approach in each case. One made sure I had a ticket, for example, while another never mentioned it. Each support person I've spoken to has been courteous. However, I was promised two phonecalls back but received neither. Incidentally, there was support available till 9.30pm tonight, and weekend support is expected soon. Maybe a system rather than the apparent ad hocery is coming together.

The new Ripwave coverage maps are at
http://www.irishbroadband.ie/htmdocs/coverage_maps/ripwave_areas_live.htm

G|N|T

i agree with nuttyboy. You people talking about green signals.i get a red signal (sometimes amber) and i achieve around the 45k-50k mark, maybe spiking up and down. But its a non line of site bb.The only real way i'd say you'd get a green signal is by sitting under the highsite.

Ardent

Ragewave - I'm having my USB Ripwave modem returned to IBB for testing. I had just received it last wednesday and the whole process of getting online with IBB has been one long nightmare after another.

I was a getting a strong signal (orange light) all Wednesday night and after much jigging around with XP I was finally able to stay connected for reasonable periods of time. Thursday morning was the same but the modem's ability to stay connected deteriorated to the point whereby from lunchtime on Thursday I was unable to pick any kind of signal whatsoever.

It's now Monday and still the red flight keeps flashing - no signal whatsover. Late last week, IBB customer support tried switching me from one transmitter to another and then, in desperation, setting me up on both transmitters in my area. No joy.

Personally, I don't think it's the modem. A modem doesn't work perfectly one night and then suddenly not work at all. I have a feeling an engineer from IBB has changed something and the support crew are too clueless to identify where the problem may lay.




(Also, don't get me started on IBB USB modems and Windows XP....!)

Ragewave

Ardent wrote:

Ragewave - I'm having my USB Ripwave modem returned to IBB for testing. I had just received it last wednesday and the whole process of getting online with IBB has been one long nightmare after another.

Thanks for that, Ardent. I've decided not to return my modem. The signal improved significantly for me over the weekend, having had a similar experience to you mid-week. It's not quite amber light yet, and it has gone on the blink, albeit briefly, twice, but at least on the Ripwave monitor it got to -99 strength and up to 17 quality, which it hadn't done before, so like you I've concluded that it's not the modem. Strength and quality are a little less as I write, on average, but it's far enough away from the danger zone. I suspect I was left on the Digital Hub West mast when I should have been moved to the DH East in the recent changes. If you think XP is bad, you should try Millenium!
Anyway, I've decided to stick it out in the hope that another engineering tweak will boost my signal. I think that's what it comes down to. Hope your modem doesn't get lost in a beaurocratic maze, as the support I spoke to was a little hazy as to procedure.

Moojuice

ardent, I am having major trouble with my Usb Ripwave modem and Xp home. What problems are you having? I am sending it back in exchange for an Ethernet modem if they ever come to collect it.

What services did you have to fiddle with on XP to get the modem to connect? I get a signal on mine but when I plug it into the USB port it starts flashing again and I have no signal. What can I do to get it sorted? Any help appreciated.

Moo

Ardent

Moojuice wrote:

ardent, I am having major trouble with my Usb Ripwave modem and Xp home. What problems are you having? I am sending it back in exchange for an Ethernet modem if they ever come to collect it.

Moo

Moo, I have XP home too, here's what was happening for me:

1) Strong signal on the modem near the window, red/orange continuous light. No problems there.

2) Install the drivers as per documentation and the Navini diagnostic software (i.e., where it shows PC <----> Modem <----> Antenna with the green ticks/red crosses)

3) Try to access the web or ping www.google.ie and the modem goes from steady orange light to flashing red, i.e., lost signal. Also, in the diagnostic tool you can see the green tick between the modem and antenna turn to a red cross, sometimes this happens between the PC and modem as well.

4) Turn off the modem and turn it back on again. Steady orange light again and green ticks in the software. Ping google, get a couple of responses and the modem goes to flashing red again and the pings time out. Red crosses appear.

5) Reboot the PC, load up the diagnostic software, reset the modem. Green ticks. Do nothing and watch the diagnoctic diagram for a while. After a minute or so, green ticks turn to red crosses all over the shop and the light on the modem flash red yet again.

6) Repeat the above until you're blue in the face.


A mate of mine came over with his laptop and hooks up my modem to it (he's running XP Pro) and installs the same drivers and diagnostic tool. The modem works like a dream and he gets amazing broadband speeds with no dropouts. Very frustrating for me to say the least.

Hours later, I was finally able to get the modem to stay on a steady orange light with my PC by doing the following:

1) Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to being up task manager
2) Kill all non essential processes such as ctfmon.exe, soundman.exe, anything with ati (e.g., ati2vid.exe) if you own a 9800 pro gfx card etc etc.
3) While still in task manager, click on the memory column and identify the instance of svchost.exe that's using the most memory (mine was consuming around 17 megabytes of memory) and kill it.
4) Click start--->run----> and type services.msc
5) In the resultant list of services, manually start up Shell Hardware Detection, DHCP Client and Wireless Zero Configuration (don't know if the latter is required)
6) Reset the modem

I was able to get stable broadband access by doing all of the above with no perceptable problems. Because it was in the early hours of the morning before I had nailed this process of getting it to work, I wasn't able to test it for much more than 20-30 minutes. It seemed to be finally working for me and I went to bed happy.

Woke up the next morning and the modem couldn't get any sort of signal and this is still the situation as I write this. So even though I think I was able to sort out the XP home + USB ripwave modem issues I can't comprehensively test it because IBB have f**ked something up and my modem can't get a signal anymore. Sod's law.

If anyone knows what the hell all of the above is about I'd appreciate an answer!!

Slydice

out of curiousity, why is the digital hub just east and west? Why not North and South aswell?

Moojuice

ardent, cheers for that. I have a XP pro on my desktop so Ill give it a bash tonight when I get home. I will also try everytjing you did. Hopefully when I exchange the modem for ethernet it will work.

At this stage though I am going to pay eircom 130 to get an engineer out to hook up my phone line and then go with Esat 3 month free trial. Hopefully Ntl will be then available in my area and I can go with them just as the free trial runs out. Then I can tell eircom to shove their line up their ass and disconnect it.

Ardent

Moo, let me know how you get on with the instructions I posted above. If it works for you too then we'll have narrowed it down a bit.

Dizz

i agree with nuttyboy. You people talking about green signals.i get a red signal (sometimes amber) and i achieve around the 45k-50k mark, maybe spiking up and down. But its a non line of site bb.The only real way i'd say you'd get a green signal is by sitting under the highsite.

Yep I'm the same here - red signal and achieve easily 50K and even 60-65k on faster hubs like heanet.ie. Rarely have signal drop off on me and when it does drop off connection is re-established quickly - coming from a 56k modem I've no complaints.

Dizz

Zaphod

Ardent wrote:

Because it was in the early hours of the morning before I had nailed this process of getting it to work, I wasn't able to test it for much more than 20-30 minutes. It seemed to be finally working for me and I went to bed happy.Woke up the next morning and the modem couldn't get any sort of signal and this is still the situation as I write this.

FWIW when I was initially trying to get Ripwave to work under W2K Pro, I found that it would only establish a connection after 12 midnight, but when it did it was perfectly stable. However, turning the modem off and trying again the following morning, no connection. Eventually I found that if I left the modem on continuously (24/7) I could maintain a stable connection. The PC can be turned off, but the modem needs to be left on.

Ardent

Zaphod wrote:

FWIW when I was initially trying to get Ripwave to work under W2K Pro, I found that it would only establish a connection after 12 midnight, but when it did it was perfectly stable. However, turning the modem off and trying again the following morning, no connection. Eventually I found that if I left the modem on continuously (24/7) I could maintain a stable connection. The PC can be turned off, but the modem needs to be left on.

Are you saying that that's what you have to do in order to get broadband access with IBB? Leave the modem on 24/7? That should not have to be the case.

Sounds like these Navini modems are a bit irksome. Anyway, I've just had mine picked up by Interlink literally five minutes ago. IBB should have it in the morning and, according to IBB, it'll take 3/4 days once they get it to test if there's a problem with it. Efficient. Which will probably mean I won't get another one for a couple of weeks.

Anyway, it had better be faulty.

Ripwave

Dizz wrote:

Yep I'm the same here - red signal and achieve easily 50K and even 60-65k on faster hubs like heanet.ie. Rarely have signal drop off on me and when it does drop off connection is re-established quickly - coming from a 56k modem I've no complaints.

I presume from your Location (De Mountains) that you're connected to 3 Rock?

How about you, G|N|T?

Ripwave

Ardent wrote:

Sounds like these Navini modems are a bit irksome. Anyway, I've just had mine picked up by Interlink literally five minutes ago. IBB should have it in the morning and, according to IBB, it'll take 3/4 days once they get it to test if there's a problem with it. Efficient. Which will probably mean I won't get another one for a couple of weeks.

I'm really surprised at how lame IBBs response to this is - it would actually be cheaper for them to send someone out with a laptop and a known working modem, check it in your premises, and, if there are signal problems in your premises, just take the unit back.

It would cost less than collecting and delivering the damn things by Interlink.

Ripwave

Ardent wrote:

Are you saying that that's what you have to do in order to get broadband access with IBB?

No, he's saying that that's what he did. It certainly isn't true for me, or any of the other Ripwave users I've talked to.

WaitingForIBB

Mine went back last week and I still haven't heard from them :mad:
I forgot to ask them what transmitter I was on. They never tried changing the transmitter, they just said "leave it on for a few hours" and when that didn't work (I don't know how that could possibly work. Probably just giving them time to fix their settings :rolleyes: ) they just said they'd collect it and do tests.

Ardent

Ripwave wrote:

I'm really surprised at how lame IBBs response to this is - it would actually be cheaper for them to send someone out with a laptop and a known working modem, check it in your premises, and, if there are signal problems in your premises, just take the unit back.

It would cost less than collecting and delivering the damn things by Interlink.

I agree. That would make much more sense. But I have to re-iterate again, there are no signal problems in my premises - it was all working dandy on Wednesday night of last week.

I live on Marrowbone Lane which, looking at the Ripwave coverage map, seems to slap bang in the middle of the coverage of the two Guinness transmitters. Aaron (very helpful dude at IBB support) put me onto both Guinness 1 (which I was originally on) AND Guinness 2 on Thursday evening. No joy.

(Yesterday evening, in an act of severe desperation, I went into the Guiness Storehouse and plugged in in there (very friendly staff there!) and that didn't work either.)

Ardent

Ripwave wrote:

No, he's saying that that's what he did. It certainly isn't true for me, or any of the other Ripwave users I've talked to.

Let's allow hm to answer the question shall we? He never stated he's not still doing that. But yeah, Ripwave users shouldn't have to do that.