IBB for Business. Need some experiences.

Jumpy

Hi All,

A friend of mine may possibly be considering getting IBB for VPN traffic office to office for the company he works for, I asked him to wait until I got a bit more info before committing completely.
Judging by some of the replies on here this board about them this may possibly be unwise.
However most of the comments I have seen here are for Home connections, does anyone have any Business experiences?

Would appreciate

Macker1

Jumpy wrote:

Hi All,

A friend of mine may possibly be considering getting IBB for VPN traffic office to office for the company he works for, I asked him to wait until I got a bit more info before committing completely.
Judging by some of the replies on here this board about them this may possibly be unwise.
However most of the comments I have seen here are for Home connections, does anyone have any Business experiences?

Would appreciate

I'm sorry I can't provide the actual thread but I have seen business users posting before with similar complaints of poor service and lack of customer support. Its not acceptable for any customer to put up with such a shoddy ISP, but imagine how you would feel if as a high-paying business customer getting shafted. I seem to recall that the customer was paying in the region of 10k per annum and they still treated him like ****.

My experience was on the home front and I would definately advise to stay away from IBB.

Adey2002

I would also advise to stay well clear of IBB, especially if you're a business that relies on the connection.

"Some things don't work without lines" Irishbroadband is one of those things.

bk

If it most be wireless then your friend should take a look at:

www.leap.ie that offer business level products including SLA's and I've never heard a bad word spoken about them. They offer both wireless, ADSL and SDSL business products.

www.digiweb.ie have a wireless BB product called Metro that is also highly regarded.

In order to do office to office VPN, then you are going to need good upload speeds, preferably the same as the download speed.

Steffano2002

What do you mean by "Business Customer"? I am a "Businnes Customer" (with a service level agreement and all) but I still share my connection (contention ratio 24:1) and it's as poor as all the Home users...

Do you mean "Business Customer" as in "Leased Line"?

Jumpy

No, its a 1mb/1mb uncontended link.

Phibsboro

No actual IBB business users have responded I note. I am in a similar situation, currently looking at moving my father's connection from Eircom to something else. Moving mainly cos Eircom's pppoe connection is driving me nuts (needs to be re-dialled when it goes down, getting it back up appears to be a black art etc.). Also, I've turned on the fancy remote web workplace thingy in SBS 2003 so a faster uplink might be useful (not really sure about that, can't imagine RDP really needs that much uplink?).

Anyways, I'm on IBB myself at home and very happy with the service so I think I'm gonna move him to IBB - their 3 meg lite service is cheaper than his current Eircom service and has no caps and 3 megs up to boot. I've said before on this forum that with IBB it either works or it doesn't - just once you are up and running on a decent mast then it tends to just work away. Also, a lot of the issues on these threads are ripwave related and that obviously is a different kettle of fish altogether. So my plan is to move him to IBB 3 meg lite and keep the Eircom connection live for two months after the move as a backup. If IBB is fine after months, I'll cancel the Eircom connection.

C

Steffano2002

@ Phibsboro: I think you'll find that your connection with IBB will be perfect for a few days (a week or so) but then speeds will drop to below 1MB... That's what happened to me on both the Guinness mast and the Park House mast anyway...

Phibsboro

Steffano2002 wrote:

@ Phibsboro: I think you'll find that your connection with IBB will be perfect for a few days (a week or so) but then speeds will drop to below 1MB... That's what happened to me on both the Guinness mast and the Park House mast anyway...

Well I've been with them for a couple of years now, and apart from a mast switch caused by trees growing between me and guinness, the connection has been spot on. Admittedly I'm mainly a night time/weekend user - maybe things are different during the day?

Are you a particularly heavy user? Would you leave it on downloading all day for example? Not saying you shouldn't, just wondering what kind of use you made of the connection. Where area are you BTW?

C

RangeR

Ok, I had IBB in Clondalkin for about 7 or 8 months. For the first 2 or 3 months, everything went brilliantly. Slowly but surely it went to crap. I had a 1Mb up and down and I was the ONLY user on it. I was VPN'd into Boston USA and was doing VoIP mos tof the time. Towards the end, I had to dump VoIP in favour of landline or mobile phone. In the end, I was getting sub 10Kb speeds. I had to get rid of them as it was going to cost me my job.

I had to move back home and get 2 internet connections. One from BT and one from Clearwire. As it turned out, the Clearwire 2Mb:256Kb did all my needs almost perfectly. I was on G.711 H.323 on IBB but co-incidentally, my company moved to support SIP G.729 in or around the same time. Happy days with Clearwire and Blueface, excepting the odd hiccup.

BT/Eircom will be going soon.

I would seriously re-consider going with I BB. I have heard of so many business that have left them and so many BIG business who refuse to get them for their clients. Reliability is not their strong point.


Keith

LegacyUser

I am with Steffano2002 100% here.
The only time I have got my 2MB/2MB is when I have emailed comreg and half of the CEOs in IBB.

It gets increasingly worse .. and when you ring you are holding for 20 minutes +, when you email they delete the emails without reading (I put receipts on my emails in Outlook 2000).

I rang 4 times to try to get someone in billing to contact me. They have now - but only becuase I had to make an unholy fuss for them to take me seriously.

I couldn't believe it when one of their staff told me that I "had" to go through all this unnecessary troubleshooting every few weeks in order to get a service from them. In order to get a 2MB/2MB service consistently I would need to be onto them every week.

It wasn't always like that - the line was BRILLIANT when I first got IBB! Very Good! This poor service only started when they upgraded my line to 2MB from 1MB.

Steffano2002

Phibsboro wrote:

Well I've been with them for a couple of years now, and apart from a mast switch caused by trees growing between me and guinness, the connection has been spot on. Admittedly I'm mainly a night time/weekend user - maybe things are different during the day?

Are you a particularly heavy user? Would you leave it on downloading all day for example? Not saying you shouldn't, just wondering what kind of use you made of the connection. Where area are you BTW?

C

I am not a heavy user at all... I think I download around 3-4Gb a month in average. I also only use my connection in the evenings and week-ends for gaming.
I live in Stoneybatter and I was on the (cr@p) Guinness mast until last week. After 3 months of useless service, I finally stumbled upon a very professional IBB Rep. who realised switching me to the Park House mast would solve all my problems. I have been on that mast for only 10 days and my connection is already barely reaching 900Kb/s on IrishISPtest.com (download speeds off heanet.ie are <110Kb/s...).
I'm on the 2MB - 24:1 package and the first 3 days were great (1.9~2Mb/s on IrishISPtest.com and downloading off heanet.ie at 240Kb/s). And now, as expected, it's just getting slower and slower...

Steffano2002

bubby wrote:

It wasn't always like that - the line was BRILLIANT when I first got IBB! Very Good! This poor service only started when they upgraded my line to 2MB from 1MB.

EXACTLY the same for me! They upgraded me to 2Mb - 8:1 (from my beloved 1Mb - 8:1 that worked perfectly!) and that's when the problems started... And then, to make things even worse, they "upgraded" me again to 3Mb - 24:1 on the grounds that 1Mb/8 = 125Kb and 3Mb/24 = 125Kb also...
I had no choice in the matter. They didn't even tell me about it until I rang to find out what my connection was...
And when I asked them to "downgrade" me back down to 1Mb - 8:1 they said "this package no longer exists"... :mad:

IMO, a business is too important to go taking risks with IBB... I certainly wouldn't!

Phibsboro

Steffano2002 wrote:

I am not a heavy user at all... I think I download around 3-4Gb a month in average. I also only use my connection in the evenings and week-ends for gaming.
I live in Stoneybatter and I was on the (cr@p) Guinness mast until last week. After 3 months of useless service, I finally stumbled upon a very professional IBB Rep. who realised switching me to the Park House mast would solve all my problems. I have been on that mast for only 10 days and my connection is already barely reaching 900Kb/s on IrishISPtest.com (download speeds off heanet.ie are <110Kb/s...).
I'm on the 2MB - 24:1 package and the first 3 days were great (1.9~2Mb/s on IrishISPtest.com and downloading off heanet.ie at 240Kb/s). And now, as expected, it's just getting slower and slower...

Its just so strange that you are getting that type of experience - I wonder what is causing it? It sounds like maybe they are gradually filling up the cell you are on with more users so you are gradually feeling the contention. The problem is that ocassionally checking against the test site doesn't really prove anything. You need to leave on a continuous monitoring tool - I used this - http://www.xmission.com/~infix/pinggraph/pinggraph.htm - in a previous issue I had with IBB. Set it up to go to your gateway address and one other Irish site, maybe boards. Leave it run and see what you get over a few days. Can make for very interesting reading.

C

BTW - I have forwarded this thread onto the IBB sales guy I am dealing with re my father's place for his comment.

Macker1

Anyways, I'm on IBB myself at home and very happy with the service Also, a lot of the issues on these threads are ripwave related and that obviously is a different kettle of fish altogether.

C[/QUOTE]


Congrats on having a positive experience with IBB. You are one of the few. My 2 months of pain had nothing to do with the dismal Ripwave product. I was on the Breeze 2mb service which was costing €48 yoyos. It did'nt matter the performance/reliabilty was ****e and customer service was non-existent. The wider picture here is that business customers paying substantial fees have got shafted in the past despite paying large amounts. Under no circumstances could anyone seriously consider using IBB for a business venture. Mark my words it will only result in lost business and fustration.

Zena

Stay away from IBB!!!!!

Phibsboro

So, just to finish this thread off. I spoke with the sales guy about this thread and he basically accepted there had been issues over the last while but that things had improved. I asked for a reference in my Dad's industrial estate. He got me a name of a guy on the same street who I called. He'd been using it for a year, no probs. So I bit the bullet and applied.

Install was done during the week just gone and I hooked it all up today. Steady 3meg up and down to irish speed test and 17/19 ms pings to boards/jolt so all in all I'm happy. I take the point that it mightn't stay that way so I'll be keeping an eye on it. Interestingly, although the guy down the street is on ballymun (or is pointed in that direction), my dad was put on Botanic.

BTW, for those people who are constantly having issues i really recommend they try pinggraph to document their problems and start to post the results up here. At the very least it will provide documentation for getting out of the contract and away from a situation that must be very frustrating.

c

bhickey

Phibsboro wrote:

BTW, for those people who are constantly having issues i really recommend they try pinggraph to document their problems and start to post the results up here. At the very least it will provide documentation for getting out of the contract and away from a situation that must be very frustrating.

That's assuming that you're dealing with someone fair and reasonable. Until you've actually had a bad IBB connection it's hard to appreciate how really poor the service is. I've been chasing them for over 2 months now and got nowhere. They refuse to admit where the problem is even though they've had an engineer out and the signal has always been spot on. They know that they're oversubscribing their own network and you just have to hope that the particular mast you're connecting to is one of the better managed ones. Initially everything will be fine but unles IBB's attitude to customer changes then they'll overload the mast and you'll almost certainly return to dialup speeds before too long.

Steffano2002

@ Phibsboro:

Now that you're on IBB, could you please do Heanet download speed tests, irishISPtest and ping tests on a regular basis? I'm betting it will just keep getting slower and slower as you go...

Phibsboro

To Steffano and bhickey,

As I mentioned earlier, I've been on IBB at home for probably a couple of years now and except for one big issue where the trees grew too much last summer and I had to move off the guinness mast, the connection has been spot on. I had some issues getting them to take me seriously with the guinness issues but the pinggraph pictures really helped me there. Instead of suggesting that I monitor my connection, why don't both of you put up a few days worth of pinggraph stuff - I would imagine that would scare the bejasus out of IBB if your connection is as bad as you say.

C

cormac_byrne

Macker1 wrote:

Anyways, I'm on IBB myself at home and very happy with the service Also, a lot of the issues on these threads are ripwave related and that obviously is a different kettle of fish altogether.

No, most people on here are having problems with Breeze.

I think that it's understood that Ripwave isn't broadband, it's dialup for people who don't have phone lines and who like hanging out of windows trying to find the magical alignment that will activate the mystical green light (seldom seen)

My Breeze 2Mb latest speed 191 kbps download, 17.8 kbps upload :mad:

PowerHouseDan

cormac_byrne wrote:

My Breeze 2Mb latest speed 191 kbps download, 17.8 kbps upload :mad:

And even at that Cormac its prob the best speeds u've seen in a long time?

bhickey

Phibsboro wrote:

Instead of suggesting that I monitor my connection, why don't both of you put up a few days worth of pinggraph stuff - I would imagine that would scare the bejasus out of IBB if your connection is as bad as you say.

Take the advice or not. I know my connection is a disgrace, I don't need to do any more tests and you're kidding yourself if you think that IBB will pay any real heed to a customer. I've been trying to reolve this with IBB since early December but they're not interested. I hope you have better luck with them but you only have to browse this forum briefly to find that many others are getting a very poor product and service. Many will wait until the 12 month contract is up and then move on elsewhere, others will cancel payment and take their chances.

anoble66

i cancelled payment, connection was a joke and that was on a brand new mast..i am being called about cancelling but if they think 5-59% packet loss and 250ms latency is acceptable then they can think again..

Let me be blunt - Do NOT sign up with these jokers, you have about a 1 in 10chance of getting a decent connection, at just about every node in their network they are losing packets, thats something which really affects VoIP - in fact I found it impossible to hold a steady VoIP call, would keep getting disconnected.

Dont do it to yourself, if your only option is dialup or IBB stick with Dialup.

Phibsboro

bhickey wrote:

Take the advice or not. I know my connection is a disgrace, I don't need to do any more tests and you're kidding yourself if you think that IBB will pay any real heed to a customer.

But that must be such a frustrating situation to be in. Why don't you at least try to document the issue comprehensively so that we can all (especially IBB!) see the extent of the problem? As I said at the very least it will be evidence to back up cancelling the contract. And from my own personal experience with the trees thing last summer, I can tell that you can get them to pay some heed to you - you yourself have already had an engineer out for example? He mightn't have solved the problem but obviously some heed was taken to get him out in the first place.

I know some of the people who complain about IBB have since moved on and so can't contribute any concrete figures, but if those people who are still with them took some time to actually document there issues some progress might be made.

Cormac/bhickey/Steffano (and Dan if you're still with them?) - instead of posting one more post slagging off IBB, take a few days to do the pinggraph thing (leave it on 24/7, or 24/3 ) and post the results up here. That alone should shame IBB into moving you to another mast or releasing you. After that of course you can go back to slagging them

C

PowerHouseDan

Still with IBB are ya joking. Am with Digiweb Metro now that is a Good Wireless Service!Evidence.... Do you really want me to show you evidence......I ran tests 24/7 both ping and speeds tests 75% of the tests showed they were breaking the contract....Op search through the Broadband section there is about 5 % of ibb actually happy with the service....If that doesnt tell you something nothing will...Even looking at a recent review of the IBB support team getting slated should even ture you off. http://www.electricnews.net/news.html?code=9667057

Phibsboro wrote:

But that must be such a frustrating suggestion to be in. Why don't you at least try to document the issue comprehensively so that we can all (especially IBB!) see the extent of the problem? As I said at the very least it will be evidence to back up cancelling the contract. And from my own personal experience with the trees thing last summer, I can tell that you can get them to pay some heed to you - you yourself have already had an engineer out for example? He mightn't have solved the problem but obviously some heed was taken to get him out in the first place.

I know some of the people who complain about IBB have since moved on and so can't contribute any concrete figures, but if those people who are still with them took some time to actually document there issues some progress might be made.

Cormac/bhickey/Steffano (and Dan if you're still with them?) - instead of posting one more post slagging off IBB, take a few days to do the pinggraph thing (leave it on 24/7, or 24/3 ) and post the results up here. That alone should shame IBB into moving you to another mast or releasing you. After that of course you can go back to slagging them

C

bhickey

Phibsboro wrote:

That alone should shame IBB into moving you to another mast or releasing you.

"Shame IBB"????? Now I know you're dreaming!

Jumpy

Phibsboro wrote:

But that must be such a frustrating situation to be in. Why don't you at least try to document the issue comprehensively so that we can all (especially IBB!) see the extent of the problem? As I said at the very least it will be evidence to back up cancelling the contract. And from my own personal experience with the trees thing last summer, I can tell that you can get them to pay some heed to you - you yourself have already had an engineer out for example? He mightn't have solved the problem but obviously some heed was taken to get him out in the first place.

I know some of the people who complain about IBB have since moved on and so can't contribute any concrete figures, but if those people who are still with them took some time to actually document there issues some progress might be made.

Cormac/bhickey/Steffano (and Dan if you're still with them?) - instead of posting one more post slagging off IBB, take a few days to do the pinggraph thing (leave it on 24/7, or 24/3 ) and post the results up here. That alone should shame IBB into moving you to another mast or releasing you. After that of course you can go back to slagging them

C

A big red flashing light with a siren seems to be going off in my head and its asking the question "Does Phibsboro work for IBB?"

cormac_byrne

Jumpy wrote:

A big red flashing light with a siren seems to be going off in my head and its asking the question "Does Phibsboro work for IBB?"

No he's too optimistic for that, also any IBB employee would know that it's not possible to shame them.

P.S. keep an eye out for the next ASAI bulletin,
they will be named and shamed there
http://www.asai.ie/newsletter/index.tmpl

Steffano2002

Phibsboro wrote:

Cormac/bhickey/Steffano (and Dan if you're still with them?) - instead of posting one more post slagging off IBB, take a few days to do the pinggraph thing (leave it on 24/7, or 24/3 ) and post the results up here.

After 15 months with them I thing I've earned the right to slag them without having to post ping graphs... :rolleyes:

LegacyUser

Phibsboro, swallow this I send their support print screens, pings etc and they didn't even respond. They have this complete twit who can barely speak English working for them.

"Hello, I close your trouble ticket."

"Don't close it, the issue is not resolved".

"Hello, I get your email, trouble ticket is opened for 3 days. We close ticket now"

"Ehhh, hello, NO don't close it. The issue is not resolved"
I sent an email with ping plots etc, and no response.
Complete tool!! Whoever he is.