Have IBB Throttled my connection?

Samba

Well,

I will be the first to admit that I am a heavy downloader, but not just in the past month or two, for the past year, regardless of the amount of data i have downloaded my connection has been 60k up/down solid.

So on Monday i notice my connection is all over the place so i send IBB an email.

Here was the response i got.

"attached is your usage graph for the last 12 hours, it appears the
reason for you slow browsing times is the massive amount of bandwidth
passing in both directions.

If you need to purchase additional bandwidth then please contact *
* your sales agent,

Regards,"

Now hold up there a second, why does my large amount of downloading suddenly require that i should purchase more bandwidth??

It would appear to me that they have purposely throttled my connection and i can say I am rightly pissed off, I started out on the Business Connection 5.8ghz, paying Very expensive prices for the first 6 months, i then moved to the breeze home product and kept the 5.8g equipment.

This is advertised as uncapped, not kind of uncapped.

What i would like to know is has anyone else had such experiences with IBB, if so what was the short/long term outcome?

Did they ask you to Purchase extra bandwidth? This is outrageous

I smell a rat. as this is the first time this has happend all year, or are they simply in short supply of bandwidth at present?

Im on Tree Rock.

Any Comments/Suggestions/Personal Experiences would be very much apreciated,

Thanks,

Samba

luckat

My connection slows to dialup speeds on IBB at times too. (I'm on Breeze Home.) They've come out and fixed it twice, but it's still far from satisfactory. A visitor from England tried to download a funny movie clip and it took 15 minutes - it took him 30 seconds in England! He suggested that some "little b*d" was reassigning bandwidth to give it to himself, but I doubt this could be so.

uteotw

I'm not sure what the guy is trying to tell you. It could be that you're browsing is slow because something else is downloading and uploading like mad at the same time.

Or like you say, it could be that IBB is throttling your connection.

IBB once told me (in email) that they do network shapping (throttle) during business hours (Business hours = 6:00am to 6:00pm).
It's to ensure their business users have enough bandwidth during the day (I don't recall such thing in the contract) and the reason was because of my bandwidth usage.

At the time I had 3 issues with this:
1. the throttle was getting me well under my contention ratio
2. the throttle was happening well after 6:00pm
3. I signed with IBB because of the unlimited download, so I downloaded without limit !

Anyway, I don't have a problem anymore.

You should try to switch-off your PoE box for 10 minutes (if you have one) and your router as well (if you have one), but that's just quick fix.

- Stop any P2P or any other download
- Check your pings to DNS and Default Gateway
- Try to download a big file from MS Download Center
- Do 2 or 3 download at the same time to see if you can max out your connection
- If it's slow, check you download speed and see if it ever gets below you contention ratio or not.
- Check when is the throttle happening, business hours only ?

If you still have a problem, get back to them with all the info collected.

Keep us posted.

luckat

Well, I'm using a Mac. I mostly don't download huge files - I did try downloading a couple of films, but that was because I was writing about it. Took days and days, whereas apparently a film should normally take about 20 hours.

But what really annoys me is when my web and email are dead slow.

Lemming

luckat wrote:

My connection slows to dialup speeds on IBB at times too. (I'm on Breeze Home.) They've come out and fixed it twice, but it's still far from satisfactory. A visitor from England tried to download a funny movie clip and it took 15 minutes - it took him 30 seconds in England! He suggested that some "little b*d" was reassigning bandwidth to give it to himself, but I doubt this could be so.

Two things spring to mind:

1. You're on 2.4GHz kit (unless you're on the new 3.5GHz kit and are a jammy b*stard) so joe bloggs with his home-grown wireless kit can screw you up. I get it sometimes. Every so often I notice that something is causing my connection to spike badly and to get serious packet loss, but it always disappears mysteriously after about 9.30 if it is happening. This is not something IBB can really do anything about. THe eventual roll-out of thge 3.5GHz kit will see to this, since it operates inside a licensed spectrum, unlike 2.4

2. Someone on the same pipe as you is possibly sucking up bandwidth something awful.

I'd go with #1 tbh

Mutant_Fruit

Every now and again i get throttled, but only during the business type hours. And never less than 12kb/sec each way.

If i were you, i'd screenshot their website (the part saying you have unlimited unmeted access etc) and circle in red those parts of the page. Then e-mail that to them and tell them you want to buy more bandwidth as per advertised... i.e. FREE.

However if you are on ripwave, you DO have a "fair usage" policy attached, but it isn't a fixed amount.

Moonbeam

"Here was the response i got.

"attached is your usage graph for the last 12 hours, it appears the
reason for you slow browsing times is the massive amount of bandwidth
passing in both directions.

If you need to purchase additional bandwidth then please contact *
* your sales agent," "

Ok If I read this,this is how I would understand it -

Your browsing times are slow because you have so much traffic gonig over the connection and if you feel you have insufficent bandwidth please upgrade your connection.

Samba

Yeah Moonbeam,

That would be the most obvious one, however, when i contaced them i clearly stated, that my ping times/single download rate(clearly stating downloading one single file with no other traffic) was abysmal

So to come up with a response like that, did not indicate that, what I believe he was edging at was upgrade to a better contention ratio.(but my connection has been perfect year round and I pointed this out to him)

I sent them an email just before going out (quite an abrupt one) when i come home from footie, my connection is back to normal?

I suspect that they were indeed throttling the connection and when they saw my response, they promptly stopped it.

It had been maxing 30k dls 24/7 since Monday after the email, connection is perfect again.

Like i said, I smell a rat.

gsand

I must say I've half suspected similar things for a while but inspite of their unmetered, unthrottled malarchy promises its unlikely we are ever going to get an isp who will give you max speed up and down 24 hours a day and not do the odd bit of limiting...

I had dire speeds for 2 days but seems to be half decent again as of last night and today...

Blaster99

Certainly in my case, they seem to contend the bandwidth pretty much per spec so I'm not getting anything close to max speed most of the time. It's just a fact of life with a contended connection that sometimes it's slow. I'm sure IBB attracts a lot of warez monkeys too.

gsand

Perhaps, but what I don't understand is why numerous dsl packages can be 40 or 50:1 contention and the majorty of users will max out the whole time...When i was on netsource which was 25:1 I would hardly ever get less than 55-60k a sec and blatantly others were using the service at the same time...

I think most providers put a number of users on a larger pipe than the actual contention suggests-for instance there's no way eircom dsl cram 20 or more users onto a meg line or even a 512k line...

Contention is an all too convenient excuse for other problems I think...

Blaster99

True, contention is a convenient excuse which why I asked IBB to change it to make sure that was the problem.

I presume the top ADSL providers either have a lot lower contention than they advertise, i.e. lots of spare capacity, they apply the contention to a larger number of users and it evens out better, or the caps mean that the service performs better because the warez folks are using IBB or NTL. If you're sharing a connection with 20 users and a few of them download a lot of stuff, it goes without saying that the speed will not be the advertised speed. IBB is clearly one of the least generous companies with their bandwidth so contention hurts more. It incidently seems to hurt me more than most.

jesus_thats_gre

The way DSL providers and IBB determine the contention is different.. It caught me off gaurd until some fell explained it to me..

For example, their breeze service overs a contention of 8:1 and downloads/upload speeds of 512kbps.. Eircoms DSL service offers a contention of 48:1 with the same download speeds..

You look at this and immediately think the IBB service is better. But, and its a big but.. DSL providers content the backhaul I think, so it would be a contention of 48:1 on a 2mb pipe serving your DSLAM(or whatever) while with IBB it is 8:1 on the 512kbps..


So with Eircom you are gauranteed 42.66kbps, while with IBB you have 64kbps..

Moonbeam

Samba - I doubht it

To work out contention u divide ur bandwitdh so for example 1mb
by ur contention for example 4 to give ur minimum guaranteed download speed so in this case 256kb/s or 32KB/S

Ardent

Lemming wrote:

Two things spring to mind:

1. You're on 2.4GHz kit (unless you're on the new 3.5GHz kit and are a jammy b*stard) so joe bloggs with his home-grown wireless kit can screw you up. I get it sometimes. Every so often I notice that something is causing my connection to spike badly and to get serious packet loss, but it always disappears mysteriously after about 9.30 if it is happening. This is not something IBB can really do anything about. THe eventual roll-out of thge 3.5GHz kit will see to this, since it operates inside a licensed spectrum, unlike 2.4

I've been getting mad spiking with my Ripwave service over the last few days. How can you detect/rule out "joe bloggs with his home-grown wireless kit"?

gline

Throttling seems to be an issue with IBB alrite, i have heard numerous accounts of this happening and when people complain they fix the connection so that your download speeds are high again, happeens especially with heavy downloaders, its like they dont want to provide users with unlimited ull speed downloading , though it is advertised as that

lampsie

Ardent wrote:

I've been getting mad spiking with my Ripwave service over the last few days. How can you detect/rule out "joe bloggs with his home-grown wireless kit"?

Aha! So I'm not going mad - I've noticed on my ripwave in D8 over the last week or so, the signal quality has been spiking up and down quite erratically..up til that point, I had very solid quality and strength. Seems to be going in 20 second-ish cycles, so speeds ramp up to 40-50 for a few seconds, then cycle right back down again, which of course makes things like Skype fairly unusable. I had assumed interference from something very local, but if someone else is experiencing likewise, perhaps something IBB-wide is going on? Just a thought, what area are you in Ardent? I'm on esb mast according to tracert and BTS id

lamps

Ardent

lampsie wrote:

Aha! So I'm not going mad - I've noticed on my ripwave in D8 over the last week or so, the signal quality has been spiking up and down quite erratically..up til that point, I had very solid quality and strength. Seems to be going in 20 second-ish cycles, so speeds ramp up to 40-50 for a few seconds, then cycle right back down again, which of course makes things like Skype fairly unusable. I had assumed interference from something very local, but if someone else is experiencing likewise, perhaps something IBB-wide is going on? Just a thought, what area are you in Ardent? I'm on esb mast according to tracert and BTS id

lamps

Lampsie, it's not just you. I live near the Guinness Storehouse, not sure which mast I'm on, I believe it's one of the two Guinness masts. Last week my signal quality was very good, solid 55k/s. Since the weekend, the signal has been spiking up and down like crazy. I rang IBB yesterday for a good moan, the guy I was talking to said he'd get an engineer to investigate, I'll ring them back tomorrow if there's still no improvement.

Asked him if they were throttling me, he said no, if you were being throttled you'd see lower but steady bandwidth apparently, not spiking. He also ruled out the idea of someone leeching my bandwidth because the Ripwave modems are supposed to be pretty resistant to that kind of abuse?

lampsie

Ardent wrote:

Lampsie, it's not just you. I live near the Guinness Storehouse, not sure which mast I'm on, I believe it's one of the two Guinness masts. Last week my signal quality was very good, solid 55k/s. Since the weekend, the signal has been spiking up and down like crazy. I rang IBB yesterday for a good moan, the guy I was talking to said he'd get an engineer to investigate, I'll ring them back tomorrow if there's still no improvement.

Asked him if they were throttling me, he said no, if you were being throttled you'd see lower but steady bandwidth apparently, not spiking. He also ruled out the idea of someone leeching my bandwidth because the Ripwave modems are supposed to be pretty resistant to that kind of abuse?

Hmmmm, interesting - I think I'll give em a ring too, this doesnt seem to be a localised issue..have any other ripwave users noticed similar I wonder?

Ardent

Hey Lampsie

Has your connection sorted itself out since? Mine is still all over the place, last night was particularly bad.

lampsie

Ardent,

Its still knackered Tried ringing em yesterday but after spending a few quid from me mobile sitting on hold I gave up (I usually use Skype, doh). Will try again today..noticed in another thread others are having some ripwave problems too over the last week, so one would assume they're aware of the situation.

Just for info, my signal ramps from -88db to -97/-104 over a 20 second ish cycle, and no amount of repositioning or tilting is resolving this ramping problem. Let me know if you here anything from IBB

lamps

lampsie

Just as an update, I contacted IBB and spoke with a support rep ('Somone') who logged a ticket and asked me to call back tomorrow for an update..

Ardent

lampsie wrote:

Just as an update, I contacted IBB and spoke with a support rep ('Somone') who logged a ticket and asked me to call back tomorrow for an update..

Don't get me started on Somone, they can be quite ignorant on the phone.

Lampsie, how has your connection been since Saturday? I can't connect any more, haven't had internet access in a few days now.

lampsie

Ardent wrote:

Don't get me started on Somone, they can be quite ignorant on the phone.

Lampsie, how has your connection been since Saturday? I can't connect any more, haven't had internet access in a few days now.

My connection has improved considerably - in fact, its working better than it ever did, getting 55kbps+ on 'good' downloads, and this performance has been holding since Sat night. Using the ctrl+shift+f10 from another thread, I notice the mast I'm on is just over 1km away...whats yours like?

lamps

Ardent

Lamps

It's been awful, I can't connect whatsoever since the weekend. It connected briefly last night and I did the Shift + Ctrl +F10 thing on the Navini Diagnostic program, it seems I'm only a few hundred metres from the BST.

I'll see how it is tonight and if I still can't connect I'm going to get IBB to sort it out or I'm ditching their service altogether.

lampsie

Ardent wrote:

Lamps

It's been awful, I can't connect whatsoever since the weekend. It connected briefly last night and I did the Shift + Ctrl +F10 thing on the Navini Diagnostic program, it seems I'm only a few hundred metres from the BST.

I'll see how it is tonight and if I still can't connect I'm going to get IBB to sort it out or I'm ditching their service altogether.

Bugger
The only thing I can think of might be that your proximity, a bunch of strong bouncing signals might be confusing the modem and preventing it from locking on to one..but I dunno, defo get on IBB's case!

- lamps