Imagine LTE Rural Broadband

Dero

OK, so I've done the obvious thing and e-mailed my queries to LTE support. I have seen mentions of bridge mode earlier in the thread, but also reports the access to the router is no longer possible. At least support *should* have the definitive answers...

Waffleon

Dero wrote: »

yep, the sales guy already confirmed the static IP, I was more interested in how flexible they are interfacing with an extant network.



Hmm. That implies double NATing though, and I want to avoid that at all costs.

I can do all the network stuff on my end. I have my own routing/firewall/DHCP/DNS/wireless AP and that's how I want it to stay. All I need from any provider is an Internet connection, I'll do the rest. Does anyone know if it uses PPPoE?

None of this would be a deal-breaker of course, but I think most ISP routers allow bridging these days (not sure about Virgin/UPC, don't think there's any within 20km of here so have never used it).

Ok, but is double NATing a big problem. I'm no expert but unless you need external access to some local devices it shouldn't cause any major problems. Yes it causes slight delays but that is negligible these days with dual core cpu's on routers etc... Looking at the router setup its using a static WAN ip address so I guess all the rest is done by the antenna.

ED E

Waffleon wrote: »

Ok, but is double NATing a big problem. I'm no expert but unless you need external access to some local devices it shouldn't cause any major problems. Yes it causes slight delays but that is negligible these days with dual core cpu's on routers etc... Looking at the router setup its using a static WAN ip address so I guess all the rest is done by the antenna.

Double nat = no UPnP = less responsive skype. Just one example.

gctest50

You could try suss out what kind of POE the roof yoke uses and use the correct POE injector instead of their crappy wifi-modem thingy

[ their crappy-wifi-modem-thingy powers the roof yokie


( few kinds of POE - not all to standard, you will kill the roof yoke if you use the wrong one )

then clone their crappy wifi-routers mac address onto another router and see if it gets an ip

or make a passive tap and sniff the traffic and find out what ip it's getting at the minute

gctest50

.

It can also provide wider indoor coverage via Green Packet optional accessories (PoE Injector, WN-200 or WN-600)

http://www.greenpacket.com/lite-outdoor-modem/

Dero

gctest50 wrote: »

You could try suss out what kind of POE the roof yoke uses and use the correct POE injector instead of their crappy wifi-modem thingy

[ their crappy-wifi-modem-thingy powers the roof yokie


( few kinds of POE - not all to standard, you will kill the roof yoke if you use the wrong one )

then clone their crappy wifi-routers mac address onto another router and see if it gets an ip

or make a passive tap and sniff the traffic and find out what ip it's getting at the minute

Indeed, this is exactly what I was thinking. I have a few PoE injectors knocking around, but as you say I'd have to be sure it would not fry the modem. The Greenpacket site does mention a PoE injector, but there's no actual sign of it on their site.

Still, getting a bit ahead of myself here; it'll probably be two months hence before they even do a signal test... :pac:

Waffleon

ED E wrote: »

Double nat = no UPnP = less responsive skype. Just one example.

Ok, so the best and simplest option is to request a static IP address, then contact tech support to request that they set up the green packet router for bridge mode. Then off you go..??

gctest50

Ask would they supply the POE injector option instead, say that you don't need WiFi

Waffleon

gctest50 wrote: »

Ask would they supply the POE injector option instead, say that you don't need WiFi

I know it doesn't matter to some people, but that would cause more problems for accessing the telephone option which is currently configured in the router. Obviously you can set up a VoIP line separately with alternative equipment but you can understand Imagine wanting to standardise installations and equipment. From that point of view bridging their router seems to be the simplest option.
On the double NATing scenario, again I'm a complete amature here, but by googling there are options to set DMZ on first router to second routers IP address which basically causes first router to completely ignore all traffic and hand it over to second router. In my case, a couple of emails to tech support to assess the bridging option seems the way to go.
Anyway that's all fine tuning,the main thing is we can finally get decent broadband in the sticks.... I've been speed checking most of the daytoday and have been hopping from 25-60 meg. 25 being a one off, the rest were 35-45 average. I won't complain about the possibility of having speeds drop to 20meg. It's still faster than my previous 12 meg and as others have posted it may cause other WISPs to up the ante.

df_h

@Waffleon my first attempt was to do what you done and it resulted in terrible speeds among other issues, speedtests for example freezing in middle, not getting more than a couple of mbit etc. Best not to double nat...

Pious14

Any word on when the Woodcock hill mast goes live? Been waiting 6 weeks since they took my deposit!

Waffleon

df_h wrote: »

@Waffleon my first attempt was to do what you done and it resulted in terrible speeds among other issues, speedtests for example freezing in middle, not getting more than a couple of mbit etc. Best not to double nat...

I was on to tech support today and was advised that they cannot setup bridge mode just yet. They are working on a solution so people can use their own equipment. He said no solution yet but watch this space.

Waffleon

Just a note on the issue of contention, I did read somewhere that this LTE technology had the ability to reassign bandwidth on the fly. Wether or not this is the case here, it would explain why sales and tech support are Eger to promote no contention at peak times.

9726_9726

Waffleon wrote: »

Just a note on the issue of contention, I did read somewhere that this LTE technology had the ability to reassign bandwidth on the fly. Wether or not this is the case here, it would explain why sales and tech support are Eger to promote no contention at peak times.

Contention means loaves and fishes. Competition. Oversubscription. Selling more bandwidth than you have. That's the way retail access networks work.

You take 400 subscribers, sell them "Up to 70M (was 100), guaranteed minimum 30M" when you really only have circa 1.5M each to sell them, but you let them burst into each other's bandwidth when they are idle. That's EXACTLY what contention is.

Back in the dialup days, it was having say 1/10th the modems at the exchange end as the number of customers you had.

Or a bank branch having 1/1000th as many tellers as customers.

The assumption is that they won't all dial up/turn up/download at the same time.

> ability to reassign bandwidth on the fly

That's marketing speak for....... contention.

I'm sure they might have their tier 1s high-fiving in the office about no contention, but that doesn't change it.

Again, not dissing the platform, it is what it is, but they are selling what it ain't. To their staff and customers.

Waffleon

9726_9726 wrote: »

Contention means loaves and fishes. Competition. Oversubscription. Selling more bandwidth than you have. That's the way retail access networks work.

You take 400 subscribers, sell them "Up to 70M (was 100), guaranteed minimum 30M" when you really only have circa 1.5M each to sell them, but you let them burst into each other's bandwidth when they are idle. That's EXACTLY what contention is.

Back in the dialup days, it was having say 1/10th the modems at the exchange end as the number of customers you had.

Or a bank branch having 1/1000th as many tellers as customers.

The assumption is that they won't all dial up/turn up/download at the same time.

> ability to reassign bandwidth on the fly

That's marketing speak for....... contention.

I'm sure they might have their tier 1s high-fiving in the office about no contention, but that doesn't change it.

Again, not dissing the platform, it is what it is, but they are selling what it ain't. To their staff and customers.

Point taken and I completely agree. I suppose the issue I see is that Imagine are supplying a service previously unavailable to most rural customers, a service which is providing good broadband to areas which, up to now, were getting maybe a 2-10 meg service. Yes they are overselling the hype of the product but the truth is that its the best most of us can get, for now, and probably for a long, long, long time to come. I do see speeds dropping considerably but is it affecting me, nope. Speeds drop..... YouTube HD, Netflix, downloads...etc,etc will still happily work away fine at 20meg as they would at 70 meg.

TireeTerror

Waffleon wrote: »

Point taken and I completely agree. I suppose the issue I see is that Imagine are supplying a service previously unavailable to most rural customers, a service which is providing good broadband to areas which, up to now, were getting maybe a 2-10 meg service. Yes they are overselling the hype of the product but the truth is that its the best most of us can get, for now, and probably for a long, long, long time to come. I do see speeds dropping considerably but is it affecting me, nope. Speeds drop..... YouTube HD, Netflix, downloads...etc,etc will still happily work away fine at 20meg as they would at 70 meg.

The point is they are talking ****e and telling lies to their customers. So regardless of whether its better than existing offerings is not the point, the point is they are not to be trusted at all and are a shower of crooked scumbags.

I'm still getting it though, cos that's how desperate I am. Like everyone else, the second something better comes along I will be kicking this into touch.

They could easily sell it without all the lies because we are all so desperate, but they choose to copy all the other wireless providers by treating their customers with utter contempt knowing we have no alternative.

marno21

Waffleon wrote: »

Point taken and I completely agree. I suppose the issue I see is that Imagine are supplying a service previously unavailable to most rural customers, a service which is providing good broadband to areas which, up to now, were getting maybe a 2-10 meg service. Yes they are overselling the hype of the product but the truth is that its the best most of us can get, for now, and probably for a long, long, long time to come. I do see speeds dropping considerably but is it affecting me, nope. Speeds drop..... YouTube HD, Netflix, downloads...etc,etc will still happily work away fine at 20meg as they would at 70 meg.

There is no element of sustainability with this tech to provide every user with reliable 20Mbit access.

Whilst many people who see the brochures might sign up unknowingly with their promises, the information about the technology used is here for all the users on this thread to see, which in fairness should be enough of a warning.

Imagine don't exactly have a decent track record with wireless rollouts anyway after their WiMax service, and now losing out on the NBP contract isn't going to help matters.

df_h

marno21 wrote: »

There is no element of sustainability with this tech to provide every user with reliable 20Mbit access.

Whilst many people who see the brochures might sign up unknowingly with their promises, the information about the technology used is here for all the users on this thread to see, which in fairness should be enough of a warning.

Imagine don't exactly have a decent track record with wireless rollouts anyway after their WiMax service, and now losing out on the NBP contract isn't going to help matters.

You make valid points, however speeds would have to drop 20x to approach what i was getting with previous provider (who is charging more).

If I could get TODAY fiber/cable or proper eircom connection around these parts why would i bother with any wireless provider?

Some of the posters on this thread have the luxury of living in cities where there are more options and do not comprehend how terrible internet access is outside major urban areas, and that fiber to every home been promised since forever yet always seems 5 years away

We get it Imagine are not the be all end all, but like our politicians/elections it's a matter of chosing the least worst option out of a small pool.

marno21

df_h wrote: »

You make valid points, however speeds would have to drop 20x to approach what i was getting with previous provider (who is charging more).

If I could get TODAY fiber/cable or proper eircom connection around these parts why would i bother with any wireless provider?

Some of the posters on this thread have the luxury of living in cities where there are more options and do not comprehend how terrible internet access is outside major urban areas, and that fiber to every home been promised since forever yet always seems 5 years away

We get it Imagine are not the be all end all, but like our politicians/elections it's a matter of chosing the least worst option out of a small pool.

I live in a rural part of north Co. Cork and am currently using Ripplecom's '8Mb' product, costing 54.99 a month. Whilst I am currently downloading a show from RTE @ 750kb/s, it is very poor for anything that's live, including streaming & VoIP/video calls.

I have plenty of friends/neighbours around here who are on slower FWA providers & have to put up with Three. Thankfully, my local exchange is going live for eir FTTC this week so I, and others in the village will be able to upgrade.

What I'm trying to say is it's kind of pointless to promise people the sun, moon & stars if they won't be able to deliver it for the future. There's no point in a family/rural business/farmer becoming reliant on a connection from Imagine before it goes belly up and they have to return to the stone age and wait for eir/whoever wins the NBP to come along.

As someone who's been waiting for proper broadband at home for almost 10 years, I can guarantee that it's not too far away. When a Fine Gael led government is heavily concentrating on an element of infrastructure they either a) realise it's paramount importance or b) it's going to benefit a high ranking party member (see several upgrades of the N5 since Enda got in power, and advancement of planning on the N69 Listowel BP (Deenihan) whilst there was supposedly no money). The NBP is charging ahead apace and eir are rolling out FTTH starting soon as soon as their current programme of enabling 5-7k rural/semi rural households a week is complete. It's finally happening and there's evidence all around to see it. I had no hope 2/3 years ago but the wait is finally over next week.

df_h

I do hope NBP goes ahead and takes 5 years as promised but then again we cant even get clean water that doesnt have **** in it, so once again I will believe it when I see it, so far its like fusion, always around the corner.

Until then the choice is 90/month for couple of mbit wireless (lower at peak, extended down periods) or 60/month for what so far has been 60-85 mbit, with much lower pings to just about anywhere.

Anyways in my case due to a signed contract my business has to pay old connection for while longer so if Imagine implodes in next few months can fallback to that stone age.

Only thing can do is continue to monitor speeds and keep at them about this router of theirs

Waffleon

Waffleon wrote: »

I was on to tech support today and was advised that they cannot setup bridge mode just yet. They are working on a solution so people can use their own equipment. He said no solution yet but watch this space.

I did notice that the default gateway on the greenpacket router is 192.168.1.1. From this I would assume that this is the ip address of the antenna...? If so, isn't there a sort of double nating going on already. And if that is the ip address of the antenna it may be the cause of issues if you tried to connect another router to it with the 192.168.1.1 address as well..??

irishchris

Waffleon wrote: »

I did notice that the default gateway on the greenpacket router is 192.168.1.1. From this I would assume that this is the ip address of the antenna...? If so, isn't there a sort of double nating going on already. And if that is the ip address of the antenna it may be the cause of issues if you tried to connect another router to it with the 192.168.1.1 address as well..??

Some of the anttenna use 192.168.1.1 whilst some use 192.168.15.1. There is firewall in both router and Antenna so there is double nat from both Antenna and router. Router is not locked down but most newer antenna are. Tech support will open ports on both Antenna and router though without any issues and did so for me for lads xbox. Checking ports after reboot they were fully open

Waffleon

irishchris wrote: »

Some of the anttenna use 192.168.1.1 whilst some use 192.168.15.1. There is firewall in both router and Antenna so there is double nat from both Antenna and router. Router is not locked down but most newer antenna are. Tech support will open ports on both Antenna and router though without any issues and did so for me for lads xbox. Checking ports after reboot they were fully open

Anyone else able to setup their own equipment to work beside the green packet one..? Not just in AP mode but using its router capabilities also..? I'd like to ignore the green packet network and utilize my own....? Also, any one know if the green packet ports are gigabit..??

irishchris

Well my connection has gone from inconsistent and mostly poor to diabolical. I was resisting posting link to my speeds as imagine are continuously ringing me in relation to it but has now gone beyond a joke

anyway here is the link: http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=d1d12b80f41a39810a4473fb94e2db18&ria=0

If you go back far enough you will see most of my three 4G results which were quite good and even some reasonable ones from the first day or two of imagine but it has fallen sharply since. So looking at the graph it looks good but that is mostly based on three history. Look at the most recent results and you will see how bad imagine has been for me. Imagine are sending techs around for the THIRD time tomorrow morning so will update thread as to whether this makes any difference this time as they are suggesting possible hardware issues.

_Brian

Had engineer out today for install but no joy .
No quality signal in the area so no broadband.

We're stuck with Eir for the moment, 0.8Mb down, 0.2Mb up :mad:

Engineer said we're unlikely to see anything better until the NBS is rolled out, he thinks nothing on that will happen until 2018 so we should expect something within three years of that process starting..

Wing126

irishchris wrote: »

Well my connection has gone from inconsistent and mostly poor to diabolical. I was resisting posting link to my speeds as imagine are continuously ringing me in relation to it but has now gone beyond a joke

anyway here is the link: http://www.speedtest.net/results.php?sh=d1d12b80f41a39810a4473fb94e2db18&ria=0

If you go back far enough you will see most of my three 4G results which were quite good and even some reasonable ones from the first day or two of imagine but it has fallen sharply since. So looking at the graph it looks good but that is mostly based on three history. Look at the most recent results and you will see how bad imagine has been for me. Imagine are sending techs around for the THIRD time tomorrow morning so will update thread as to whether this makes any difference this time as they are suggesting possible hardware issues.

Jesus christ. That's a massive drop. They must have added more subscribers to your mast. Would you get rid of them if the speeds don't go back up? I'd imagine you have enough evidence of less than the "guaranteed 30M" to get out without paying the cancellation charges.

gctest50

_Brian wrote: »

Had engineer out today for install but no joy .
No quality signal in the area so no broadband.

We're stuck with Eir for the moment, 0.8Mb down, 0.2Mb up :mad:

Engineer said we're unlikely to see anything better until the NBS is rolled out, he thinks nothing on that will happen until 2018 so we should expect something within three years of that process starting..

0.8Mb down, 0.2Mb up


Any farm sheds or anything on high ground nearby-ish that would get a good signal ?

long_b

_Brian wrote: »

Had engineer out today for install but no joy .
No quality signal in the area so no broadband.

We're stuck with Eir for the moment, 0.8Mb down, 0.2Mb up :mad:

Engineer said we're unlikely to see anything better until the NBS is rolled out, he thinks nothing on that will happen until 2018 so we should expect something within three years of that process starting..

Trees or hills do you know?
Did the installer have a good idea where the mast was in relation to your house?
Did they try the roof?

robert muldoon

_Brian wrote: »

Had engineer out today for install but no joy .
No quality signal in the area so no broadband.

We're stuck with Eir for the moment, 0.8Mb down, 0.2Mb up :mad:

Engineer said we're unlikely to see anything better until the NBS is rolled out, he thinks nothing on that will happen until 2018 so we should expect something within three years of that process starting..

What part of the country are you?

irishchris

Wing126 wrote: »

Jesus christ. That's a massive drop. They must have added more subscribers to your mast. Would you get rid of them if the speeds don't go back up? I'd imagine you have enough evidence of less than the "guaranteed 30M" to get out without paying the cancellation charges.

definitely way below th eminimum 30 and never even at start it did not come near the 70mb/s. If they can not improve it I will definitely be dumping them. I am lucky in that three 4G has been terrific with even peak speeds 50+ and that was consistent for the just under 2 years that i was with them. I am hoping that it is simply a router/antenna problem as in fairness I am extremely close to the mast and with a brilliant LOS. Will know tomorrow when they call out as to whether it is a local issue