North West Electronics/BlueBox

NIMAN

Time for a demo outside their offices?;)

pawddy

Out of curiosity, does anyone know why we're all experiencing high packet loss? I had previously assumed it was because of a high contention ratio but now when I think about it, 3's masts should have a much greater contention ratio because they're a mobile phone network. Please correct me if i'm wrong, my knowledge of networking and such is really bare-bones.

chris_ie

pawddy wrote: »

Out of curiosity, does anyone know why we're all experiencing high packet loss? I had previously assumed it was because of a high contention ratio but now when I think about it, 3's masts should have a much greater contention ratio because they're a mobile phone network. Please correct me if i'm wrong, my knowledge of networking and such is really bare-bones.

I dont buy the contention ratio causing packet loss excuse. In theory its correct but it shouldnt happen. Contention is the number of people sharing a connection. 48:1 is pretty high in comparison to some providers. So you would expect to see your speed drop during peak times.

Its the congestion that causes the packet loss and increased ping times. As the network becomes more congested it ping time increase. Then eventually it starts dropping packets (loss) when its getting busier. Its true that ICMP/ping packets are lower priority but higher packet loss numbers usually indicates a problem in the network or shows its inability to handle the traffic. Yeah its fine if your just browsing the web, pages will be a bit slower to load etc, this is because TCP (uses by browsers) can re-request information that has been dropped. However if you are gaming, it uses whats called UDP, this doesnt re-request packets meaning glitchy/laggy game play.

You can expect loss when going to sites on the internet, that is out of NWE's control, but high spikes of packet loss to their own internal network is poor.

As Tommy said previously, these guys were good at the start. I used to be able to game online no problems over a year ago. Had a high ping at one point but a guy I knew in there sorted it. In the past year though gaming has been really bad, after looking into it it was the packet loss that was the problem. I didnt have that much loss last year in my old tests. I dont think its a coincidence.

fooker!

chris_ie wrote: »

Speeds around 5mb here at the minute. Have to admit you guys seem to be worse off than me! I usually get around 3-5mb during peak hours although sometimes lower. Can't game on it as the loss seems to kill it most of the time. Then strangely enough I asked a one of you to do tests in the past and you were getting near 0% loss. It's strange. Other customer I know of gets very low loss but pings have invreased. Have you heard back from them since fooker?

Yep heard back from them, they now say they are having problems in my area with the older generation setup, its offline pretty much since Saturday night, they want me to upgrade to the new setup.

chris_ie

Just for a bit of comparison.

This is the packet loss of the other customer I know, from about 16:30 today until now 21:00



And this is mine for the same period :



And I only got home at around 5:45 and the most that has been done is checking facebook. The night before I had 10-12% loss at times.

This other customer is about 10-12km from the mast, I'm about 2km, and they have a higher ping and jitter than me (but average has doubled in the previous 2months). So its a strange one and why I think there is something up somewhere or else the area I'm on is just overloaded.

9726_9726

This is clearly congestion as your graph shows as flat from 04:00 to 08:00. Has anyone run pingplotter or MTR from them to say 8.8.8.8? That would show the hop that's congesting/dropping packets.

chris_ie

9726_9726 wrote: »

This is clearly congestion as your graph shows as flat from 04:00 to 08:00. Has anyone run pingplotter or MTR from them to say 8.8.8.8? That would show the hop that's congesting/dropping packets.

Yeah it is congestion. I have loads of MTR data both to their internal IP and to googles 8.8.8.8. Using both you can clearly see the hop it starts at. I've told them this many times and asked have they looked into it only to be told "there is no issue". I even compared the route on my connection to that of the customer that gets little loss and removing the hops we have in common and the hops I never experience loss on leaves 2 hops. The first of which the loss starts on. As I said, I've sent them this many times but they couldn't care less.

chris_ie

Down since 15:45 here and phone lines engaged all the time

fooker!

Mines been off since about last Monday evening, was away for 4 days between then and now but checked last night when I got home and it was still off, it came online today for about an hour but its been off since!

They haven't replied to any emails I have sent since it happened!

I see they are supplying the WiFi for the Balmoral show, I wonder how that will go! :rolleyes:

http://balmoralshow.co.uk/pdfs/2015-wifi-order-form.pdf

chris_ie

Off since last Monday?! Jees that is bad! Hope they aren't charging you for that. ComReg should definitely be able to help there.

Still down here. This is a huge outage for an ISP but they'll play it down as a minor outage no doubt. Tried calling their office and got engaged tone all the time. Got through once, said I was in a queue, listened to music for a minute or two then was cut off. No reply to mails sent either.

fooker!

yeah I had been in contact with ComReg a few days before it went offline for other problems, I emailed them the day before I left to say that it was offline for the last few days but they had no reply from them at that stage, they said they will text me to let me know when they get a reply!

I just checked there and it seems to be back online now, but if I try to go into a site it brings me to a page saying "The URL you requested has is unavailable, please contact accounts" with a link below it linking to the NWE site with a page saying ..

There appears to be an issue with your broadband account
Please contact our office on +44 (0) 2871 351999 and ask for accounts.
Accounts opening hours are from 8:30 to 5:30 Monday to Friday

That's not much help when I cant get in contact by phone or email! :rolleyes:

Tommy Lagahan

Just came here to post the same thing as fooker, I'd noticed it earlier but as usual swap straight to Three when NWE gives bother so hadnt checked the site. Their routings fecked again by the looks of it.

How does one go about sending a complaint to comreg? I'll get the neighbors, the cousins and a couple of my friends, all on NWE to all call in.

chris_ie

Yeah my favorite part of that accounts page is the part that says

"We apologize if this is in error, but a quick call will resolve any issues"

Yeah between hours of 8:30am and 5:30pm isn't much good. Couldn't even get them on the phone earlier.

chris_ie

Just mail comreg with info. They told me that they couldn't do much for me unless my connection was down completely or had really low speeds. Still tempted at times with regards to speed.

Tommy Lagahan

Surely they have to do something if about 15+ people start calling in to comreg about NWE?

chris_ie

Tommy Lagahan wrote: »

Surely they have to do something if about 15+ people start calling in to comreg about NWE?

Yeah they're bound to notice a pattern.

Tommy Lagahan

Ill not bother anyone at this hour of the evening but gonna start calling about tomorrow to get people to complain to comreg. NWE themselves couldn't care less.

chris_ie

I'm on call for work this week, so if I get a call now I'm kind of screwed!

pawddy

Been down with me since around 3pm too. I can still access facebook, Twitter, hotmail, gmail etc. but everything else takes me to the 'please contact accounts page'. If I try click the 'override' link, Chrome tells me my connection isn't private.

Sometime I just get the chrome error 'DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NO_INTERNET', or 'DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE'. I've already tried to change my DNS servers to google's just incase it was something to do with NWE's DNS. It's bizarre.

Edit: When I said I could access facebook, Twitter, hotmail, gmail, it changes its mind every 5-10 minutes or so.

fooker!

ComReg contact details..
consumerline@comreg.ie
1890 229668 or 01 8049668

darth_maul

Seems they now have a problem on port 80, https is working, hears it qaa a problem with a link outside their control, looks like that's fixes but they have a firewall issues now, provably changed something earlier while scrambling around for a fix.

BTW https://www.boards.ie/ is working

darth_maul

Fixed now

pawddy

Yep back online here too.

m99T

Indeed, I am in the 172.20.169.*/24 range and their new/old FortiNet system on https -- 10.160.254.254 is acting up. When I called into the office in Derry they said "We've had an Internet crash". Yeah sure. So port 80 is now clear but they are still blocking UDP and other ports aswell as ICMP. Hence I cant ssh out into any of my boxes. A way around this is to OpenVPN on port 443

chris_ie

So they finally reply after it comes back online. Thats the thing that bugs me. When they were having issues, you coudn't get them on the phone or by email. Then once its fixed they reply. They could have a pre-recorded message when you dial in to say that they are experiencing issues and are working to resolve them or estimate restoration time. Or have information on the site, although they seem to host their own site meaning that goes offline when their connection does.

In their reply they say that it was Project Kelvin that experienced the outage and it was out of their control. Now that may be the case but I can't remember them actually admit an issue before. In the past it always seems to be that there was either no issue, its your fault or its out of their control.

m99T

chris_ie wrote: »

So they finally reply after it comes back online. Thats the thing that bugs me. When they were having issues, you coudn't get them on the phone or by email. Then once its fixed they reply. They could have a pre-recorded message when you dial in to say that they are experiencing issues and are working to resolve them or estimate restoration time. Or have information on the site, although they seem to host their own site meaning that goes offline when their connection does.

In their reply they say that it was Project Kelvin that experienced the outage and it was out of their control. Now that may be the case but I can't remember them actually admit an issue before. In the past it always seems to be that there was either no issue, its your fault or its out of their control.

The fact is Chris, they are useless. I've been trying desperately to move away from them over the past few years and I think this is the final straw, I am ordering two UBNT Nanostation M5's of my own and I am setting up my own wireless point-to-point to Derry where I Will run it into Virgin Media standard BroadBand.

I recommend that you all do the same, and if you want to talk to the regional director of Bluebox email: kara @ nwewireless.com. I wish I could tell you more about how they **** up every single day in their security but I am not that sort of guy and they were pissed off when I told them, so imagine what they would do if i told you.

chris_ie

m99T wrote: »

The fact is Chris, they are useless. I've been trying desperately to move away from them over the past few years and I think this is the final straw, I am ordering two UBNT Nanostation M5's of my own and I am setting up my own wireless point-to-point to Derry where I Will run it into Virgin Media standard BroadBand.

I recommend that you all do the same, and if you want to talk to the regional director of Bluebox email: kara @ nwewireless.com. I wish I could tell you more about how they **** up every single day in their security but I am not that sort of guy and they were pissed off when I told them, so imagine what they would do if i told you.

Yeah I've been trying to find alternatives too. Actually thought along the same lines as what you say you are going to do. Although line of sight to where I require isn't great and of course would need somewhere to put the wireless point!

I've been trying to get them to fix my issues for a long time too, even set up a page for them to view my stats, loss, ping jitter, MTR data for each run etc. They view 1 page once and that was it. Have data from December last year onwards. They know there are issues but have no interest in fixing them.

NIMAN

Shaun Doherty Show
or
LiveLine?

m99T

chris_ie wrote: »

Yeah I've been trying to find alternatives too. Actually thought along the same lines as what you say you are going to do. Although line of sight to where I require isn't great and of course would need somewhere to put the wireless point!

I've been trying to get them to fix my issues for a long time too, even set up a page for them to view my stats, loss, ping jitter, MTR data for each run etc. They view 1 page once and that was it. Have data from December last year onwards. They know there are issues but have no interest in fixing them.

I'm about to send you a private message, make sure you read it.

chris_ie

NIMAN wrote: »

Shaun Doherty Show
or
LiveLine?

You pick, let me know when you're on and I'll listen out Niman

m99T

NIMAN wrote: »

Shaun Doherty Show
or
LiveLine?

After the Shaun Doherty Show called a personal friend of mine at school a "Bully" and a "Thug" for standing up for himself in a fight, I have no respect and would not even entertain talking to him.

NIMAN

chris_ie wrote: »

You pick, let me know when you're on and I'll listen out Niman

Don't have the service myself, so nothing to complain about.

Only an interested reader of this thread as I am a past-user and a potential future user.

m99T

15:30, NWE_NETS_201 died. Was down for about 10 mins there.

NIMAN

Must be the terrible storms and lightning we are having !!

darth_maul

m99T wrote: »

15:30, NWE_NETS_201 died. Was down for about 10 mins there.

Down for maintenance, in fairness that could happen on any system, any time a change is made the Ap would need reboot.

darth_maul

m99T wrote: »

15:30, NWE_NETS_201 died. Was down for about 10 mins there.

Down for maintenance, in fairness that could happen on any system, any time a change is made the Ap would need reboot.

m99T

darth_maul wrote: »

Down for maintenance, in fairness that could happen on any system, any time a change is made the Ap would need reboot.

The AP was up, it was the BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) server and it wasnt down it just rejected all traffic.

chris_ie

Bad this evening again. Packet loss at 15% since bout 5ish.

darth_maul

What's everyone's speed like this morning, speeds were diabolical last night, but they haven't recovered to their normal levels since.

chris_ie

My speeds are ok this morning. Connection started slowly going back to its usual level of service after 23:30 last night.

fooker!

same! awful last night and not great today either!

fooker!

:rolleyes::rolleyes:
Done a few speed tests on the phone app as the laptop takes ages to load!

darth_maul

Back to normal since about 1 today,

m99T

Damn, I joined in April 2012 but I am still a new user so I cant post images.

chris_ie

Really slow today again. Speeds around 1mb. Has anyone got any further with contacting them?

m99T

chris_ie wrote: »

Really slow today again. Speeds around 1mb. Has anyone got any further with contacting them?

Started getting slow yesterday at 9AM

fooker!

chris_ie wrote: »

Really slow today again. Speeds around 1mb. Has anyone got any further with contacting them?

Did it get any better yet?

chris_ie

fooker! wrote: »

Did it get any better yet?

Its fine in the mornings, that is, around 10am or so. Evenings still seem to be around 3 or 4mb. Packet loss still an issue.

fooker!

I was onto Comreg a lot about how crap mines been, days of being down altogether, days where the internets on but getting high packet loss, like 40-60% the whole day, sites would just not load up at all!

Comreg got in contact with them for me, first time NWE told Comreg they found no problem, Comreg got in contact and asked me was it any better but it wasn't so they got onto them again, second time they got in contact with NWE the next day everything's going smoother! this is after weeks/months of constant problems , then I get an email from NWE that evening saying Comreg was in contact with them and saying the usual "they checked and no problems were found with my connection etc"
That's some coincidence that it suddenly gets better and has been for about 5 days now! lol


now don't get me wrong its still not great, high pings at peak and sometimes off peak , slow speeds at peak, and packet loss is usually around 2-3% and it could go back to how it was again tomorrow but at least I can use it for browsing now I guess!

thebo

Their dns servers are running poorly atm, so if anyone is experiencing slow load times on web pages. try changing dns to google or whatever. good speed then.