A little IBB experiment...

Scotty #

Hi, I have been getting a lot of packet loss with IBB (Drogheda) and was wondering was anyone else experiencing similar?? I have been in touch with them and they said my antenna may have moved slightly and are sending a tech out next week. I have been reading a few forums though and this seems to be a common problem but not that noticeable if your just browsing the net. It does cause major problems for online gaming or playing online poker though.

I tested by doing a constant ping to google.com. Go to START>RUN... then type cmd in the box. A black box will appear (Command Prompt). Type ping -t www.google.com and it will start pinging google continuously. The longer you leave it running the better but leave it for a minute at least. When you want to stop it press CTRL+C and it will display your results.

On the first line it will give how many packets were sent and received and how much was lost (if any). Below that, it will give the minimum, longest, and average echo time in milliseconds.

Please post below with your loss %, your avg time, and your location. oh and if your not with IBB state that also.

Thanks...

PS: while typing this I did the test....

Ping statistics for 208.69.34.231:
    Packets: Sent = 922, Received = 782, Lost = 140 (15% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 36ms, Maximum = 283ms, Average = 58ms

DIRE!!!!!

Barlow07

Scotty # wrote: »

Hi, I have been getting a lot of packet loss with IBB (Drogheda) and was wondering was anyone else experiencing similar?? I have been in touch with them and they said my antenna may have moved slightly and are sending a tech out next week. I have been reading a few forums though and this seems to be a common problem but not that noticeable if your just browsing the net. It does cause major problems for online gaming or playing online poker though.

I tested by doing a constant ping to google.com. Go to START>RUN... then type cmd in the box. A black box will appear (Command Prompt). Type ping -t www.google.com and it will start pinging google continuously. The longer you leave it running the better but leave it for a minute at least. When you want to stop it press CTRL+C and it will display your results.

On the first line it will give how many packets were sent and received and how much was lost (if any). Below that, it will give the minimum, longest, and average echo time in milliseconds.

Please post below with your loss %, your avg time, and your location. oh and if your not with IBB state that also.

Thanks...

PS: while typing this I did the test....

Ping statistics for 208.69.34.231:
    Packets: Sent = 922, Received = 782, Lost = 140 (15% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 36ms, Maximum = 283ms, Average = 58ms

DIRE!!!!!

ISP: Eircom - 1MB - Line Attenuation 41/20 dB

Ping statistics for 64.233.183.147:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 40ms, Maximum = 43ms, Average = 41ms

mickzer

Eircom 2Mb

Ping statistics for 66.249.91.147:
Packets: Sent = 72, Received = 65, Lost = 7 (9% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 38ms, Maximum = 283ms, Average = 108ms

mickzer.

Steffano2002

I had IBB when I wanted to play Call of Duty online and Paddy Power Poker. I nearly went on a killing spree in IBB it was so frustrating.

My advice, get proper (copper, cable) BB if available!

IBB: "Some things don't work without wires"
Me: "Yeah, you're the perfect example"

thebman

Steffano2002 wrote: »

I had IBB when I wanted to play Call of Duty online and Paddy Power Poker. I nearly went on a killing spree in IBB it was so frustrating.

My advice, get proper (copper, cable) BB if available!

IBB: "Some things don't work without wires"
Me: "Yeah, you're the perfect example"

IBB offer wired services, Fixed wireless and Ripwave wireless. I'm guessing your talking about Ripwave.

watty

Don't ping google. There are a lot of different servers.
For Irish users www.heanet.ie is a better place to ping. Very fast and connected direct to INEX.

Bros123

watty wrote: »

Don't ping google. There are a lot of different servers.
For Irish users www.heanet.ie is a better place to ping. Very fast and connected direct to INEX.

Tried that watty and this is what i got.Are these results good or bad?On 2mb Breeze connection Cork.

Ping statistics for 193.1.219.79
Packets : Sent = 138,Received = 138, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds :
Minimum = 55ms,Maximum = 138ms,Average = 80ms

watty

google is a bunch of different servers. Even on the same connection you are not always connecting to same place. With heanet you have a more stable reference that is same for everyone in Ireland, so differences are truely your own connection.

Steffano2002

brim4brim wrote: »

IBB offer wired services, Fixed wireless and Ripwave wireless. I'm guessing your talking about Ripwave.

I had Fixed Wireless (Breeze 2Mb then 3Mb). Piece of honk. Everything IBB offers is, IMO, a big pile of sh!te.

ntlbell

as watty said it's pointless trying this with google.

keep it irish.

ftp.esat.net

ftp.heanet.ie

IBB for the last year or so for me has been spot on.

Barlow07

Steffano2002 wrote: »

IBB: "Some things don't work without wires"
Me: "Yeah, you're the perfect example"

Classic lolol......:D

dingding

Pings for Smart Broadband and Model settings.


Smart 6Mb package. pinging www.heanet.ie

Minimum 30ms
Maximum 145ms
Average 34ms

NameValue Connected true Operational Mode G.Dmt.BisPlus State Showtime Tx Bit Rate 608000 Rx Bit Rate 7072000 Local SNRMargin 13.5 dB Local Line Attn 38.5 dB Local Tx Power 12.3 dB Remote Line Attn 19.5 dB Remote SNRMargin 17.5 dB

Bros123

Ping statistics for 193.1.219.79
Packets : Sent = 138,Received = 138, Lost = 0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds :
Minimum = 55ms,Maximum = 138ms,Average = 80ms[/QUOTE]

So are these results good or bad??

Nehaxak

If it turns out not to be IBB that are at fault (their side hardware wise or the antenna at your end) then it could well be that your MTU is too high for your connection.

Go here and download TCP Optimizer and use it to determine your maximum MTU setting. You can use as others have said, www.heanet.ie for the MTU test within TCP Optimizer but sure throw in www.google.ie as another site in the test just to detmermine "real world" what you should set it at.

http://www.speedguide.net/downloads.php

^^ That's the site to download TCP Optimizer from. THere's lots of other software that's out there that let you easily change MTU or going directly into your advanced network card settings should normally allow also but at least with the optimizer programme you can run a MTU test to determine what's best for your broadband.

Apart from packet loss on IBB on some Sony based online games, otherwise I'm fine myself with them and the likes of world of warcraft gives me around 35ms latency typical and rarely ever above 130ms (if I'm downloading in the background aswell for example).

Any problems in the past have either been down to me farting about with network card settings wrongly or their high site has been playing up in my area (usually fixed quick enough).

Even if their high site is playing up, lowering your MTU can help an awful lot.

For those saying wired is better lala, some of us don't have that choice where we live so wireless is the only option.

clansman

I have IBB 3mB wireless, and its crap, the best ping I can get to the mast is about ~ 80ms, that will never improve, so gamming is out. However as someone said, ya can beat the auld bit of copper, I have changed to dsl, lets hope it will be better!!

Scotty #

Thank you to everyone who tested, although I would have really liked a Drogheda IBB user to have shown results.

I had an IBB engineer call out today. Unfortunately I wasn't here myself when he called but I did get to speak to him on the phone when he was here. He told me he had tested everything and he couldn't find anything wrong with my connection. He did speed tests, ping tests, line tests, checked for packet loss with head office, replaced the modem just in case, and could not find anything wrong. He also said that I have a very clear line from my antenna to the high site....

I did a constant ping test when I got in.
15% packet loss to heanet.ie let run for two minutes. Hmmmm

Ok so a little further investigation needed. Correct me if I'm wrong on anything here.

I did a few pathping tests....

C:> pathping www.heanet.ie

Tracing route to heanet.webhost.heanet.ie [193.1.219.79] over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  LAPTOP1 [83.141.106.[COLOR="Red"]XXX[/COLOR]] [COLOR="Red"]<<< Me[/COLOR]
  1  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1][COLOR="Red"]<<<IBB Drogheda High Site[/COLOR]
  2  DN05-ge-1-3-0-22-esb.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.192.41]
  3  DN00-ae1-198-deg.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.197.78]
  4  cr2-cwt-ten0-0-0-1.hea.net [193.242.111.16]
  5     *     193.1.236.2
  6  www.heanet.ie [193.1.219.79]

Computing statistics for 150 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           LAPTOP1 [83.141.106.XXX]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1   13ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1] [COLOR="Red"]No loss between me and the high site!!![/COLOR]
                                5/ 100 =  5%   |
  2   29ms     9/ 100 =  9%     4/ 100 =  4%  DN05-ge-1-3-0-22-esb.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.192.41]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   31ms    10/ 100 = 10%     5/ 100 =  5%  DN00-ae1-198-deg.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.197.78]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4  ---     100/ 100 =100%    95/ 100 = 95%  cr2-cwt-ten0-0-0-1.hea.net [193.242.111.16] [COLOR="Red"]<<<This was 100% everytime I tested to heanet so I presume a firewall.[/COLOR]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   30ms     5/ 100 =  5%     0/ 100 =  0%  193.1.236.2
                                4/ 100 =  4%   |
  6   29ms     9/ 100 =  9%     0/ 100 =  0%  www.heanet.ie [193.1.219.79]

Trace complete.

And to IBB themselves....

Tracing route to [url]www.irishbroadband.ie[/url] [87.192.100.163] over a maximum of 30 hops:

  0  LAPTOP1 [83.141.106.XXX]
  1  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]
  2  LH01-fe-0-0-0-15-dundalk.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.52.37]
  3  LH03-fe-0-0-1-13-dundalkpop.irishbroadband.ie [87.192.233.149]
  4  DN05-ge-1-3-0-22-esb.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.192.41]
  5  DN07-ae1-202-ibis-dc-1.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.197.37]
  6  89.127.197.98
  7  walledgarden.irishbroadband.ie [87.192.100.163]

Computing statistics for 175 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           LAPTOP1 [83.141.106.XXX]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1   12ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]
                                4/ 100 =  4%   |
  2   36ms    12/ 100 = 12%     8/ 100 =  8%  LH01-fe-0-0-0-15-dundalk.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.52.37]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   25ms    11/ 100 = 11%     7/ 100 =  7%  LH03-fe-0-0-1-13-dundalkpop.irishbroadband.ie [87.192.233.149]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   29ms     8/ 100 =  8%     4/ 100 =  4%  DN05-ge-1-3-0-22-esb.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.192.41]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   32ms    11/ 100 = 11%     7/ 100 =  7%  DN07-ae1-202-ibis-dc-1.irishbroadband.ie [89.127.197.37]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   32ms     6/ 100 =  6%     2/ 100 =  2%  89.127.197.98
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7   30ms     4/ 100 =  4%     0/ 100 =  0%  walledgarden.irishbroadband.ie [87.192.100.163]

Trace complete.

Again, no loss between me and the high site but loss on every other hop (No Firewall either). I ran a ping between me and the high site for about 10 minutes and there was ZERO packet loss.

I presume looking at this that its the same problem for everyone in the Drogheda region with IBB. Its not really an obvious problem if you just browse the net etc, it only becomes obvious when you need a constant connection like for gaming or online poker. I'll be getting back onto them tomorrow to see what they have to say but I doubt they will be rushing to sort it

In the mean time would anyone like to do a pathping to 83.141.106.1 to see if I'm right?? Just type pathping 83.141.106.1 in your command prompt. test takes about 2 minutes to complete.

EDIT: btw... this problem has only risen in the last 2-3 months. Gaming was fine before then.

Nehaxak

Hi Scotty

Have tried a pathping from work here via leased line with Eircom, no packet loss at all to your ip address - results below (my own work related ip info removed for security) - hop 4 never responds as it's not supposed too so disregard that one.

Will try the same from home later on as I'm on IBB as the pathping does not seem to pick up or report back from the high sites between you and IBB.

>pathping 83.141.106.1

Tracing route to LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  x
  1  x
  2  x
  3  x
  4  x
  5  83.71.115.67
  6  DN60-ge-0-1-0-10-deg-inex-gw.irishbroadband.ie [193.242.111.19]
  7  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]

Computing statistics for 175 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    1ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2    2ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   11ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4  ---     100/ 100 =100%   100/ 100 =100%  x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   23ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  83.71.115.67
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   14ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  DN60-ge-0-1-0-10-deg-inex-gw.irishbroadband.ie [193.242.111.19]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7   40ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]

Trace complete.

I still think it might be a problem with your network card, operating system, or advanced TCP/IP settings. What you might be worth trying, to check/troubleshoot if that is the case - is go grab a live CD version of Ubuntu or Mandriva linux, boot up from the live linux CD in your computer and run some tests through that to see if you still experience any packet loss.

At least then if it does still come back with packet loss, you can say that you have tried everything you could and ruled out your own end being the problem (albeit the last thing to do would be to change the network patch cable and rule that out also as the problem).

If the Linux Ubuntu/Mandriva live CD tests come back perfect well then it narrows things down to your own configuration or problems with the settings on your network card.

I've had very similar problems to yourself in the past and some of them were down to IBB and some were down to my own config settings network wise.

I'll post results later of the pathping from IBB at home to you there.

Scotty #

Nehaxak, thank you very much for your help!!!!

I'll try the Ubantu thing and see how I get on.

I did do a pathping from work the other day (NETSCOURCE 4MB) and got 2% loss on the final hop. I did another one just now and the results are below. 13% loss on the final hop this time. Its the only IBB to IBB hop.

Tracing route to LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  x
  1  x
  2  x
  3  85.91.2.166
  4  d-deg-core1a.magnet.ie [85.91.3.13]
  5  d-deg-edge2.magnet.ie [85.91.2.42]
  6  DN60-ge-0-1-0-10-deg-inex-gw.irishbroadband.ie [193.242.111.19]
  7  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbroadband.ie [83.141.106.1]

Computing statistics for 175 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1    0ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  x
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2   23ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  d-rte-lns1.magnet.ie [85.91.2.247]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   15ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  85.91.2.166
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   15ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  d-deg-core1a.magnet.ie [85.91.3.13]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   24ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  d-deg-edge2.magnet.ie [85.91.2.42]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   16ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  DN60-ge-0-1-0-10-deg-inex-gw.irishbroadband.ie [193.242.111.19]
                               13/ 100 = 13%   |
  7   59ms    13/ 100 = 13%     0/ 100 =  0%  LH02-fe-0-0-1-160-drogheda.irishbr
oadband.ie [83.141.106.1]

Trace complete.

Surely this means the fault is on IBB's side?

ntlbell

the problem with all this is, even if you gather info and prove there's some latency packet loss IBB do not guarantee latency as it doesn't affect browsing, in fact I don't think any Irish ISP does, so if you get on and moan about your high ping time in games etc they just tell you to **** off and as you're not paying for sla's on the latency they perfectly in their right to do so :(:(

Scotty #

Unfortunately your probably right. Although, if enough people were to complain about it they may do something about it. The problem is most people just use their connections for browsing and wouldn't even notice a bit of packet loss.

thebman

Just keep nagging the customer service people until they get sick of it and nag the engineers into fixing it.