Irish Broadband Ripwave still causing you problems??

Baz_

Hey all,

I was just wondering from the ripwave users if they are still having as torrid a time as last weekend? Ever since last Friday evening my internet access has been extremely hit and miss, with approximately 60 percent of the time actually being able to access the site I want to, this situation is obviously intolerable.

I've put in a service call, but too late to get any action on it until Monday, so I'm just gonna keep calling until I get satisfaction, or until I decide to give up on it altogether (I'm keeping my fingers crossed on the satisfaction). I wouldn't mind but before last Friday I was as happy as a pig in... well you know, and now I'm fuming (half because of my connection the other half because my g/f won't stop annoying me about it [its not my fault!]).

Anyway how is the ripwave crew doing?

Baz_

P.S. Did the maintenance last night make any difference to any ibb customers?

ballooba

My connection is pretty crap but I think its more to do with my wireless LAN. Getting about 7kB Down and about 12kB up.

Is the cable between the router and the wabbit just a normal Cat 5 cable?

Standard Toaster

I'm averaging 60k/s down no probs....though I'm always on orange...never green.
The maintenace hasn't affected me good or bad.

ballooba

This is depressing me. I'm maxing 3kB down on morpheus.

I think they might have me contended as a business user as it is fastr during the day.

Standard Toaster

You have to get onto them mate. You might as well be on dialup.

Here's a quick screen grab

gline

where ar u based ballooba? I know plenty of people that had to get rid of ripwave because it doesnt improve, myself for example, if possible i would highly recommend breeze 1 meg, i am getting 124k downloads from a microsoft site and p2p is running gr8, all together i get the full 1 meg

ballooba

I don't think it's a problem with my signal gline.

I had been getting 50kB when I first got Ripwave. I have been using it through a router now for a while and I presumed that the poor bandwidth I was getting was due to a bad connection to my router.

I've now hooked up directly to the modem again and I see that I am getting crappy speed still. I'm going to give them a call on monday and ask them what the hell they are at.

I won't be springing the extra 20 euro a month for Breeze. I'm just going to ride it out until BreezeMax is available.

gline

they will tell u wat they told me, they take ur modem back and test it, if it is working they refund u, if not they reeplace the modem

ballooba

Gline do you think per chance it's time you gave it a rest with the dodgy advice on Ripwave?

I have just said that it's not a problem with my signal. I'm averaging 17dBm TX Power and -90dB Signal Strength.

The problem is with my bandwidth which I'm fairly sure is to do with Network Shaping and IBB will hopefully confirm this on monday.

gline

Mayb eit is with u, but nearly everyone i know and a lot of people on boards are having problems with ripwave, and even the installation guys from IBB which i talked to said it is a crap product. If it works for you, you are one of the very few lucky ones. And if IBB were very quick to rfund me its obvious that they are used to people sending it back. As you know yourself most of the posts here are negative towards ripwave becsause it is crap. Let me know how u get on with it and what IBB say

Zaphod

Baz_ wrote:

I was just wondering from the ripwave users if they are still having as torrid a time as last weekend? Ever since last Friday evening my internet access has been extremely hit and miss, with approximately 60 percent of the time actually being able to access the site I want to, this situation is obviously intolerable.

For two months prior to last weekend, my Ripwave had been fine. After the w/e, I was lucky to be able to get it to connect at all. Ringing IBB was pretty much a waste of time - turn it off and back on seems to be their standard reply.

Eventually I found that by watching the signal meter and careful repositioning of the modem (rotated about 40 degrees off previous position) I was able to get reasonably stable connection again (BTS 130 - RTE high site) and decent download speeds again. I'm not sure what reconfiguring they did over the w/e, but there was no way I could get any sort of decent connection if I kept the modem in its original position.

Ardent

I've gone from being very happy with the service throughout October to being extremely unhappy and angry with it thoughout Novermber, so much so that I am considering demanding a full refund.

The weekend just gone was the second weekend in a row where I've been unable to get on the internet whatsoever. I rely on broadband to connect to work at the weekends and in the evenings so you can imagine how I'm feeling. Over the last three weeks my "always on" broadband connection has been off 75% of the time - when it HAS been on I'm lucky to get dial-up speeds. I felt like smashing the f*cking modem off the wall yesterday (flashing red in more ways than one). I've never experienced such poor value for money in my entire life and god knows I've been ripped off a few times.

I've made my feelings known to an IBB support tech and he's going to try something to see if it improves. Apparently, the reason my service has degraded so spectacularly is because of all the new customers they've got who are using the same mast (Guinness). At this moment in time, after what I've gone though, I'd strongly advise anyone thinking of going Ripwave not to do so, particularly if a decent, reliable internet connection is in anyway at all important to them.

I'll let you all know whether I'm still a customer or not in a couple of days after the support guy has made his proposed changes.

gline

I rest my case

Adey2002

There was another thread about how to improve your signal for Ripwave but I can't find it at the moment. Basically you make a shield for your modem using tin foil and a shallow bow/baking tray. Line the box/tray with the foil then place the breeze modem within the tray. The theory being that signals are reflected back giving a better signal. Not sure how well it works but its worth a try. (If you can find the original post, the poster actually uploaded pics of it).

Ardent

Adey2002 wrote:

There was another thread about how to improve your signal for Ripwave but I can't find it at the moment. Basically you make a shield for your modem using tin foil and a shallow bow/baking tray. Line the box/tray with the foil then place the breeze modem within the tray. The theory being that signals are reflected back giving a better signal. Not sure how well it works but its worth a try. (If you can find the original post, the poster actually uploaded pics of it).

I tried that. If anything, that just makes it worse.

ballooba

gline wrote:

I rest my case

I really wish you would...

gline

ballooba wrote:

I really wish you would...

LOL

GreeBo

Same problems here, was fine for the first 2/3 months and now it is unusable.
Started getting very bad about 3 weeks ago and has been coming and going in fits and starts ever since. This weekend I was dropping 30% of packets so browsing was impossible. D/L's were maxing out at 9KB/s.

I'm on the verge of pulling the plug on this one to be honest. :mad:

gline

What did IBB say to you ballooba?? did you manage to get it sorted???

ballooba

gline wrote:

What did IBB say to you ballooba?? did you manage to get it sorted???

In college until seven these evenings and my house is half taken apart by builders working on it. So haven't really been bothered to ring up yet, might ring them this evening if I'm home on time.

[edit] I starting to echo Greebo's sentiments and yours Gline. I gave it a chance if it's not working satisfactorily by the weekend then I'm pulling the plug.

IBB unfortunately is my only option at the moment though so it looks like I may have to fork out for Breeze which I don't really want to. [/edit]

gline

I will say one thing, the breeze is EXCELLENT, getting full speed upload and download all of the time. I would definitly recommend it. Although it is more expensive which is a bummer, but the 1meg is amazing speed and seems reliable after 2 weeks that i have it anyway, but i will give it more time before i start saying its REALLY reliable until i have had it awhile, Sorry to hear about ur ripwave, it sucks when u have it for awhile and get used to it then it stops working

ballooba

Well the way we had it working wasn't very aesthetically pleasing. It was hanging from the top of a window from string in an upstairs bedroom with a line going across to the wireless router.

Now that the whole house has been done up "It's not fair" on my mam to have it set up like that. Wanky set up by anyone's standards.

gline

LOL, sounds a bit mad alrite

Ardent

Just to provide an update:

It's been three days since my rant on this thread and all is well again with the world! I didn't get the name of the IBB support guy I was talking to on Monday but whatever he did (he spotted it straight away whatever it was) has resolved the issues I've been having with their Ripwave service. Over the last two days, from what I can tell, my modem has not dropped it's connection once and my bandwidth has pretty much returned to what it was at when I first joined IBB's service. The acid test is this weekend but the signs so far are very good.

I'm very grateful for the way the support guy on Monday listened to my grievance - I was fairly irate on Monday - and for spotting a way to improve my service. One his colleagues, who I had had several conversations with prior to Monday, kept fobbing me off in a very annoying way and either chose to ignore the obvious quick fix he implemeted or was simply not aware of it.

I don't know what the moral of this story is, maybe that some support staff care more about their customers than others and that you should you keep calling back until you get someone who actually gives a sh*t or knows what they're doing.

gline

In my experience "you keep calling back until you get someone who actually gives a sh*t or knows what they're doing" is exactly what i had to do to get breeze installed, it was only when i spoke to a supervisor that anything got done

Enigma365

What was the small fix? Our ripwave drops its connection all the time(every couple of hours) and can take up to 30 minutes to regain it. It is really frustrating.

Do I need to contact them for the fix?

GreeBo

I was just on to them, they have added me to a list and will ignore me as soon as they can.

ballooba

Figured out the dealio with my connection.

Three Rock is just plain knackered. I moved the modem to a different area of the house where I get the same kind of signal but from RTE. The speed went from 10kBs down to 50kBs down.

Baz_

hmmm that sounds like an idea, pity i live only 2 klicks from three rock, I don't think I could pick up rte if i wanted

Enigma365

Talked to them today on phone. They said my connection had been put on nomadic mode previously and so there was nothing else they could do.

I explained that my problem was not one of speed but of stability and that when connected, the speed was perfectly acceptable. I also explained that one of the big problems we are having is that when the connection drops, it takes a long time to reconnect. I suggested that we be taken off nomadic mode, as there is only one transmitter(110) we get a usuable signal from.

Hopefully this may make reconnecting to the service more speedy at times when we do lose connection.

GreeBo

Enigma365 wrote:

problem was not one of speed but of stability

This is the bit that I dont get. When mine works its great, its everything I could want or expect from a NLOS Broadband connection.
But it just wont work continuously and its nothing at my end that is changing. If anything there should be less interference as the trees have shed their leaves since I got it installed.
Ahwell, Im giving it until end of Dec and then Im gone.
Its a crying shame that they couldnt have made this a stable product. The modems would have walked out the door if the service was there.