Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

Johnfred

WexIan wrote: »

Anyone using Imagine in Wexford off the Forth Mountain tower? If so what kind of speeds shoul I expect, I am in the Piercestown / Killinick area.

I’m on Forth Mountain. Good speeds during the day but drop in evening to 10 to 20 download. Overall pleased with the service but the slowdown in evening can be annoying if streaming video.

rayfitzharris

Hi Folks,
I've just had another go with the Imagine tech support lads about the crap evening speeds..

They rang earlier in the day yesterday, about lunch time, to say that second line support were sure it was an issue with my machine. So I ran a speed test straight away : 65meg. Then he tells me he'll need me to try form another machine wtf.
I asked to try and understand that everything is fine now so its not a hardware or software issue on this end, unless in only manifests in the dark lol.

Anyway he wouldn't let it go, so I spun up and old machine, connected it to the router and ran another speed test, surprise surprise 65meg also.
Queue confusion, and he says he'll get back to second line support, armed with the knowledge now that everything is fine hardware and software wise.. hmmm

So I get a call back around half 6pm to say they have updated the firmware on the router and radio :rolleyes: and that should help..

I run the speed test after rebooting router and radio and same crap <4 meg:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7038719271

They just will not admit that its contention, I think they're just trying to wear me down.

deadl0ck

rayfitzharris wrote: »

Hi Folks,
I've just had another go with the Imagine tech support lads about the crap evening speeds..

They rang earlier in the day yesterday, about lunch time, to say that second line support were sure it was an issue with my machine. So I ran a speed test straight away : 65meg. Then he tells me he'll need me to try form another machine wtf.
I asked to try and understand that everything is fine now so its not a hardware or software issue on this end, unless in only manifests in the dark lol.

Anyway he wouldn't let it go, so I spun up and old machine, connected it to the router and ran another speed test, surprise surprise 65meg also.
Queue confusion, and he says he'll get back to second line support, armed with the knowledge now that everything is fine hardware and software wise.. hmmm

So I get a call back around half 6pm to say they have updated the firmware on the router and radio :rolleyes: and that should help..

I run the speed test after rebooting router and radio and same crap <4 meg:

http://www.speedtest.net/result/7038719271

They just will not admit that its contention, I think they're just trying to wear me down.

Out of curiosity - have you tried it with everything else disconnected (Disable WiFi) if you can ?

I was having similar issues and it turned out CrashPlan was backing up my entire hard drive to the cloud at certain times and the upload was totally killing everything else.

I eventually tracked it down to an issue with my Mac and then it only happened when on Ethernet, not WiFi (as this was how CrashPlan was configured).

Up to that point I was 100% certain it was Imagine that had the problem.

Of course it's more likely it's contention

rayfitzharris

deadl0ck wrote: »

Out of curiosity - have you tried it with everything else disconnected (Disable WiFi) if you can ?

I was having similar issues and it turned out CrashPlan was backing up my entire hard drive to the cloud at certain times and the upload was totally killing everything else.

I eventually tracked it down to an issue with my Mac and then it only happened when on Ethernet, not WiFi (as this was how CrashPlan was configured).

Up to that point I was 100% certain it was Imagine that had the problem.

Of course it's more likely it's contention

Yes the only machine I had on, was the one running the speed test, Most times I have everything running through a dd-wrt router and I can monitor the wan usage through the Bandwith screen like:


I ran a netstat at the time of the speedtests and sent them that aswell.
I don't have crashplan, or any cloud backups, am running a nightly backup to a local OMV server at midnight.

It's contention, same crap speeds every evening and every weekend.

Ardent

Does anyone experience random drop-outs with their router during the day? I had another last night for a few minutes (no upload/download activities at the time). Had to cycle the router to get it back to life.

I'm on the Cappagh mast in North Kildare.

irishfeen

Ardent wrote: »

Does anyone experience random drop-outs with their router during the day? I had another last night for a few minutes (no upload/download activities at the time). Had to cycle the router to get it back to life.

I'm on the Cappagh mast in North Kildare.

We are experiencing the same issue - random drop outs with a massive reduction in speed in the evening.

Imagine started as a great service in our area but like all these wireless services after a few months in operation the speeds and service goes to ****e

rodge123

Ardent wrote: »

Does anyone experience random drop-outs with their router during the day? I had another last night for a few minutes (no upload/download activities at the time). Had to cycle the router to get it back to life.

I'm on the Cappagh mast in North Kildare.

Yep, on the same mast.
Get terrible pings randomly during the day, not too often though.

Bigger problem is the rubbish evening speeds averaging 7mb download...too many on the mast.
Would you mind leaving them Ardent?!

TireeTerror

We should not be surprised by Imagine and their standard over-subscription of the mast causing very very low speeds at peak times. They have done it with every single product they have ever sold.

Its rinse and repeat Im afraid and us suckers are so desperate to have internet we would try anything even when we know better.

I got rid of them thankfully, though that didnt stop them continuing to take the money from my account using my debit card details despite the contract being finished and having received explicit instructions form me to erase all banking information and not to withdraw anything from my account. They done it twice and it took 3 phone calls of arguing with the morons in the CS department and nearly 2 full weeks before I had the funds returned. Id advise anyone if they can avoid them, to stay far far away from them.

George Sunsnow

Just to let You know you could have got the money back in 48hrs with a chargeback and also cancelled the recurring debit without going near them at all

beepers

I was with Imagine WIMAX but on updating? to LTE could get a working signal from the different Base Station being used. Now on a Landline based system with another company but download speed is only 400 Kbs/ Sec. I have not named new company as the problem is NOT theirs but would apply to any ISP.

TireeTerror

George Sunsnow wrote: »

Just to let You know you could have got the money back in 48hrs with a chargeback and also cancelled the recurring debit without going near them at all

They were not taking it out by Direct Debit. I have an N26 account in Germany, and like many Irish companies, they don't seem interested in fulfilling their legal obligation to be SEPA compliant and be able to take DDs from any account in the SEPA area. Its only been about 3 years that they were supposed to be SEPA compliant, maybe we expect too much....

So they had the card details and were taking payments that way. I said "Remove my card details now, I do not want you to have them and I am instructing you now that you no longer have permission to debit anything from my account".

Well of course I was assured they would be removed and no further payments taken. I would love to say I am surprised, but they are absolute scumbags so I was not surprised. They even threatened to remove my service if I continued to post negative comments on here and on facebook about them. The negative comments were only negative because I was accurately reporting my experience with them and the constant drop-outs, lies about being able to download unlimited data from 12am until 7am, serious slowing down of service at peak times and the absolute lies from the technical department who refused to accept it was congestion because they had algorithms which had such advanced load balancing it prevented all congestion. I literally was laughing at them on the phone and pushing them on it and they were hoping I would simply accept their utter lies.

9726_9726

TireeTerror wrote: »

They were not taking it out by Direct Debit. I have an N26 account in Germany, and like many Irish companies, they don't seem interested in fulfilling their legal obligation to be SEPA compliant and be able to take DDs from any account in the SEPA area. Its only been about 3 years that they were supposed to be SEPA compliant, maybe we expect too much....

So they had the card details and were taking payments that way. I said "Remove my card details now, I do not want you to have them and I am instructing you now that you no longer have permission to debit anything from my account".

Well of course I was assured they would be removed and no further payments taken. I would love to say I am surprised, but they are absolute scumbags so I was not surprised. They even threatened to remove my service if I continued to post negative comments on here and on facebook about them. The negative comments were only negative because I was accurately reporting my experience with them and the constant drop-outs, lies about being able to download unlimited data from 12am until 7am, serious slowing down of service at peak times and the absolute lies from the technical department who refused to accept it was congestion because they had algorithms which had such advanced load balancing it prevented all congestion. I literally was laughing at them on the phone and pushing them on it and they were hoping I would simply accept their utter lies.

You can't beat the advanced algorithms!

Marlow

9726_9726 wrote: »

You can't beat the advanced algorithms!

Well .. my opinion is, that if you need advanced algorithms to control contention, then all you're doing is oversubscribing and maximizing your profit.

Not that such advanced algorithms ever have led to something good.

The most advanced that's being applied here is the daily cap. And that just pisses people off instead of helping contention.

Just my 2c.

/M

xxyyzz

The daily cap is a necessary evil, I'm not sure why people are struggling so badly with this. If they lift it then contention goes through the roof. It's a simple fact of wireless technology.

TireeTerror

xxyyzz wrote: »

The daily cap is a necessary evil, I'm not sure why people are struggling so badly with this. If they lift it then contention goes through the roof. It's a simple fact of wireless technology.

The issue was the fact it was being sold with "unlimited downloads between midnight and 7am".

SkepticQuark

TireeTerror wrote: »

The issue was the fact it was being sold with "unlimited downloads between midnight and 7am".

Pretty sure that's how it's supposed to work though, does for a lot of people anyway. The cap counter on their portal stops at midnight. We've gotten away with the cap being totally broken for months now, nothing gets counted at all toward it for us which is weird but also great at the same time.

The problem with Imagine is 12am to 7am is excluded but if it's not for you then good luck getting them to fix it...

George Sunsnow

TireeTerror wrote: »

They were not taking it out by Direct Debit. I have an N26 account in Germany, and like many Irish companies, they don't seem interested in fulfilling their legal obligation to be SEPA compliant and be able to take DDs from any account in the SEPA area. Its only been about 3 years that they were supposed to be SEPA compliant, maybe we expect too much....

So they had the card details and were taking payments that way. I said "Remove my card details now, I do not want you to have them and I am instructing you now that you no longer have permission to debit anything from my account".

Well of course I was assured they would be removed and no further payments taken. I would love to say I am surprised, but they are absolute scumbags so I was not surprised. They even threatened to remove my service if I continued to post negative comments on here and on facebook about them. The negative comments were only negative because I was accurately reporting my experience with them and the constant drop-outs, lies about being able to download unlimited data from 12am until 7am, serious slowing down of service at peak times and the absolute lies from the technical department who refused to accept it was congestion because they had algorithms which had such advanced load balancing it prevented all congestion. I literally was laughing at them on the phone and pushing them on it and they were hoping I would simply accept their utter lies.

You can do charge backs on card payments

Marlow

xxyyzz wrote: »

The daily cap is a necessary evil, I'm not sure why people are struggling so badly with this. If they lift it then contention goes through the roof. It's a simple fact of wireless technology.

Nah. The issue is oversubscribing the service. If you pile 100 users onto a sector, that was designed for 50 or less and try to sell more bandwidth than you have, then you're forced to have things like daily caps etc.

If you however only serviced the amount of users, that the sector is designed and has capacity for .. well, then you wouldn't need any of above ... this applies to other technologies as well, but especially to fixed wireless.

/M

xxyyzz

If they only had 50 per sector it wouldn't be worth their while though, I mean they are trying to run a business too. To be fair they never made a secret of 400 people per sector so they have to reach some kind of happy medium. I knew what I was getting into with them before I signed up, I never believed any of the marketing BS and on my mast I have never had an issue with 1080p streaming apart from maybe one or 2 evenings in the last year.

Marlow

xxyyzz wrote: »

If they only had 50 per sector it wouldn't be worth their while though, I mean they are trying to run a business too. To be fair they never made a secret of 400 people per sector so they have to reach some kind of happy medium. I knew what I was getting into with them before I signed up, I never believed any of the marketing BS and on my mast I have never had an issue with 1080p streaming apart from maybe one or 2 evenings in the last year.

See.. but that's what rural WISPs do, that care about the quality of what they're delivering: They're either not going completely nuts on speed and/or not oversubscribing their sectors to that extend.

Fun part is .. those rural WISPs are often cheaper

/M

kazoo106

FTTH GPON segment on openeir (location known but wont say here)

18 150Meg users
9 300 Meg users
4 1Gig users

Total Bandwidth available approx 2.4Gig

Few heavy users on the Gig connection and I wouldn't like to be on that segment !

Now I'm going to get blasted here like before, but this stuff will slow down too. watch this space.

tsue921i8wljb3

kazoo106 wrote: »

FTTH GPON segment on openeir (location known but wont say here)

18 150Meg users
9 300 Meg users
4 1Gig users

Total Bandwidth available approx 2.4Gig

Few heavy users on the Gig connection and I wouldn't like to be on that segment !

Now I'm going to get blasted here like before, but this stuff will slow down too. watch this space.

There is definitely some potential for contention issues but both SIRO and Openeir have opted for the same split ratio perhaps on the advice of Huawei. It still doesn't mean that wireless is a better option.

Mr Velo

Anyone using the Imagine LTE Portal notice that they've removed the daily usage section?

Marlow

kazoo106 wrote: »

FTTH GPON segment on openeir (location known but wont say here)

18 150Meg users
9 300 Meg users
4 1Gig users

Total Bandwidth available approx 2.4Gig

Few heavy users on the Gig connection and I wouldn't like to be on that segment !

Now I'm going to get blasted here like before, but this stuff will slow down too. watch this space.

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

There is definitely some potential for contention issues but both SIRO and Openeir have opted for the same split ratio perhaps on the advice of Huawei. It still doesn't mean that wireless is a better option.

SIRO are already testing 10G-Pon (10 Gbit/s symmetric) and it's more than likely that they'll be moving Gig and 600 Mbit/s connections to that in contended clusters. It can be deployed side-by-side on the same fiber, as it uses different wavelengths. Just a matter of replacing ONTs for the customers, that are moved to the other wavelength.

OpenEIR has the same options, should it become a problem.

But yes, GPON is not an uncontended medium. However, it's much easier to fix contention problems opposed to fixing them on a wireless solution.

/M

George Sunsnow

The data counter is gone altogether off mine and replaced with this notice

tsue921i8wljb3

Marlow wrote: »

SIRO are already testing 10G-Pon (10 Gbit/s symmetric) and it's more than likely that they'll be moving Gig and 600 Mbit/s connections to that in contended clusters. It can be deployed side-by-side on the same fiber, as it uses different wavelengths. Just a matter of replacing ONTs for the customers, that are moved to the other wavelength.

OpenEIR has the same options, should it become a problem.

But yes, GPON is not an uncontended medium. However, it's much easier to fix contention problems opposed to fixing them on a wireless solution.

/M

I thought kazoo had posted in the NBP thread. We'll probably just annoy the Imagine regulars if we start talking about 10Gb connections!

Marlow

Reyansh Little Bandage wrote: »

I thought kazoo had posted in the NBP thread. We'll probably just annoy the Imagine regulars if we start talking about 10Gb connections!

Hehehehe.

/M

xxyyzz

Marlow wrote: »

xxyyzz wrote: »

If they only had 50 per sector it wouldn't be worth their while though, I mean they are trying to run a business too. To be fair they never made a secret of 400 people per sector so they have to reach some kind of happy medium. I knew what I was getting into with them before I signed up, I never believed any of the marketing BS and on my mast I have never had an issue with 1080p streaming apart from maybe one or 2 evenings in the last year.

See.. but that's what rural WISPs do, that care about the quality of what they're delivering: They're either not going completely nuts on speed and/or not oversubscribing their sectors to that extend.

Fun part is .. those rural WISPs are often cheaper

/M

Eh, no. That's most definitely not what wisps do. Last one I was with I was lucky to get 500kbps in the evenings, their strategy for dealing with it was never answering the phone.

Grab All Association

xxyyzz wrote: »

Eh, no. That's most definitely not what wisps do. Last one I was with I was lucky to get 500kbps in the evenings, their strategy for dealing with it was never answering the phone.

Sarcasm I believe

smokingman

I'm getting rightly fed up of these *****.
Can't connect at all tonight on the Athy mast.