Help! Wireless and very confused

Extranjero

I really want Broadband and Digiweb are now offering wireless in my town, they are the only providers here for 34.95 a month 1mb and 36:1 ratio. Whatever the ratio bit means.

My current eircom dial up costs more than this because I've got a dedicated line and all the ensuing costs.

However, a friend told me that wireless is unreliable and things like clouds can effect it. Given that there has been nothing but cluds for the last few weeks, is digiweb wireless a good idea?

Dial up is just too slow to bare.

Thanks

Urban Weigl

Clouds might affect satellite Internet, but not wireless, though I suppose an extreme rainstorm could affect it. Digiweb has a good reputation as being a reliable provider.

watty

Even in the last week my satellite is OK. Only too small a dish or EXTREMELY heavy rain (seen once for 5 minutes in last 2 years) wipes out properly setup satellite. Many Sky dishes might lose reception more often due to poor alignment.

Generally the Wireless Internet is installed with a sufficient margin for very heavy rain or heavy fog.

The Satellites are 22,500 miles away, and Wireless internet rarely installed more than 8 or 10 miles distance. Some systmes have longer range, but are lower frequency thus less affected by rain.

bk

Well the general advice is that wired broadband (DSL, cable) is slightly more reliable then wireless.

However if you can't get wired BB, then wireless is far better then dial-up and Digiweb is by far the best wireless BB with a good reputation amongst users here on boards. Digiweb won't install unless they can get a good strong signal at your home.

Altreab

Extranjero wrote:

I really want Broadband and Digiweb are now offering wireless in my town, they are the only providers here for 34.95 a month 1mb and 36:1 ratio. Whatever the ratio bit means.

My current eircom dial up costs more than this because I've got a dedicated line and all the ensuing costs.

However, a friend told me that wireless is unreliable and things like clouds can effect it. Given that there has been nothing but cluds for the last few weeks, is digiweb wireless a good idea?

Dial up is just too slow to bare.

Thanks

Go for the wireless if at all possible.....IF you have to go for the satellite the best way to get around a LOT of the reception problems would be to buy the bigger dish (in this case size REALLY does matter) ... the standard size dish WILL have reception problems in very heavy rain but only in VERY extreme cloud cover. Im talking here of cloud starting at less than 1000 feet altitute and stacked 4-5000 feet above that.
"Normal" heavy rain does not effect sat too much if at all. But given the choice of Sat V Wireless ....go wireless for the following reasons. Its faster,cheaper,and much bigger download allowances.

The "Ratio bit" means the MAX potential number of people who could be sharing your link at any given time. for example Many packages sold today woutl have a 48:1 Ratio or "contention" on them. At 38:1 your a lot better off. You may see some slowing down of your connection download speed at certain times of the day. say at lunch time or early evening around 5-7 PM as people get home and go browsing for an hour or 2.
i usually just time my downloads for outside of those "slow times" where possible. But to put it in context my Max download speed is 108K per second ......slowest i have ever seen it is 75K or so due to the number of people online at any given time.

Altreab

watty wrote:

Even in the last week my satellite is OK. Only too small a dish or EXTREMELY heavy rain (seen once for 5 minutes in last 2 years) wipes out properly setup satellite. Many Sky dishes might lose reception more often due to poor alignment.

Generally the Wireless Internet is installed with a sufficient margin for very heavy rain or heavy fog.

The Satellites are 22,500 miles away, and Wireless internet rarely installed more than 8 or 10 miles distance. Some systmes have longer range, but are lower frequency thus less affected by rain.

Here in the wesht we get FAR heavier rain ......when i had satellite here the Sat and Sky dish were side by side .......only used to lose Sky signal a few times a year....... Sat i would lose for 10- 15 minutes at a time 2-3 times a day during rainy weeks. Have to say i did did lose Sky once or twice a day during the same peroid, but never for the same lenght of time.
My advice is always to go for a dish a size up from the minimun required
Another guy just a few miles away from me with an identical system insisted on a 1.2 Metre Dish and he NEVER had any problems
So Size matters in these matters!!!

wexfordman

No reason whatsoever why wireless cannot be as reliable as wired, as long as it is engineered correctly, and is run by a company that knows what it is about (and digiweb are about one of the best national wireless providers so far).

Weather should not affect wireless links that are engineered correctly and allow enough of a"fade margin" for heavy rain. To give an example, the main mobile network providers in Ireland connect most of thier cell sites back to exchanges over over wireless transmission links, and they are extremely reliable in even the heaviest of weather.

Wired is better if you can get it, aminly because speeds etc tend to be higher, but so is cost if you include line rental.

I have wireless BB, 1M download 512K Upload, for the last 12 months and have never once lost it due to weather also if that gives you any idea (its not provided by Digiweb though).

Wexfordman

watty

Altreab wrote:

Here in the wesht we get FAR heavier rain ......
So Size matters in these matters!!!

Well 9km west of Limerick city is quite wet.

Indeed a 75cm/ 80cm for Sky out west has significant advantage over the standard zone2 65cm dish. Which is already much bigger than the waste paper basket lids I've seen in London. But most systems I've seen in Limerick with rain trouble on Sky have poorly aligned dishes, or maladjusted LNB skew.

Altreab

watty wrote:

Well 9km west of Limerick city is quite wet.

Indeed a 75cm/ 80cm for Sky out west has significant advantage over the standard zone2 65cm dish. Which is already much bigger than the waste paper basket lids I've seen in London. But most systems I've seen in Limerick with rain trouble on Sky have poorly aligned dishes, or maladjusted LNB skew.

wesht in the rain sense is anywhere west of a north south line running through Athlone So yes West Limerick is whest too (and since Angelas Ashes we all know that Limerick is a wet wet WET place)

To Stay on topic ...where given a choice i would say that if all you need is a broadband connection then go with a
1) Wireless operator ...cheap reliable and decent speeds and download limits
2) Line adsl reliable and decent speeds and download limits depending on package you get
3) Satellite VERY expensive .....slow speeds....download limits range from lousy (1Gig a month) to "unlimited" where your daytime speeds can get throttled back to pathetic speeds not much faster than dial-up in some cases.

Another option would be say Vodafone why have a "broadband" product availible if you contact their customer service department (havent tried it myself but reasonable reports about it here)

crawler

Funny you should mention Athlone - It just went live with Metro - as did Kilkenny.

(mods - it's only a tiny tiny informational pimp!! )