IBB vs Eircom

Belfry

Hi,

I currently have eircoms Buisness Enhanced package in what they claim is a low subscribed area(Whitehall). It's a 2mb down/256kB up connection @ 24:1 contention. I'm now looking to change to IBB and the 3mb Lite package - 3mb down/3mb up connection @ 12:1 contention. Seems to me like it will improve things greatly.

BUT I have been told that because I'm going from landline to wireless it mightent be that comparable. Can anyone tell me if its really worth me changing??

Cheers!

Infini

The Buisness Enhanced is poor value but IBB 3MB service is 200 a month for the lite package and 250 for the regular. Unless your running a site that requires a significant Upstream requirement it's not worth changing. As well as that the further away from one of their wireless relay stations you are the more the signal degrades.

Belfry

We are approx 1.3km from the station and money isn't a major factor. The connection is for a student residential complex of 70 beds, with about 30 actual users at the moment.

I am starting to worry that I might actually end up with a slower connection even though I'm going from 2mb -> 3mb??

Blaster99

Distance to the mast doesn't really matter within probably 15km's if not more.

I doubt you ever get anything less than 2Mbps with Eircom's ADSL regardless of the advertised contention. With IBB's service you'll see speeds vary a lot and it's not even guaranteed that you'll get 2Mbps most of the time.

The problem with ADSL is if somebody is uploading something, then the download speed is badly affected. So ADSL isn't that great for sharing among many users for that reason. But if you're not seeing that problem you have no real reason to upgrade.

If I were you I would hang on to see what Smart Telecom etc have to offer, as rumours have it they will be doing SDSL.

Mutant_Fruit

Well, if you get the 5.8ghz equip, the odds are you'll have no problem. And thats what you will definately get with that connection. I'd assume there wouldn't be a problem speedwise. And since you're a business user, you're goingto get priority and shouldn't experience much problem with contention (if bandwidth does run low in IBB offices).

Also I assume you're charging the students to access the service. So, how are you planning on sharing the bandwidth? The odds are quite high that a few of em will be interested in downloading, and you don't want 3 or 4 hogging the bandwidth with bittorrent. My advice would be a dedicated computer to be used as a hardware router with traffic shaping software installed so no one person hogs the lot.

Belfry

We don't actually charge any tenants for the service, its inclusive, so everyone can connect! I myself am prob the heaviest of the torrent users here! At the moment I have no way to monitor bandwidth usage. Zywall 2 is the router IBB are giving us. At th moment we have a Cisco 837 that leads to our first switch that feeds building one and two other switches that are feed buildings 2 and 3 respectivly. The bandwidth is distributed from a telephone socket in each room (because we had builders from the country that must not have heard of "the net"), the sockets lead to Cisco 585 LREs at 37 different points. I do have a spare PC but would it be actually possible to set up a system that could control and monitor this setup (we will have the router changed to the Zywall 2 for IBB but nothing else)?

Thanks guys for all the help!!

Blaster99

What makes you think they're prioritising businesses? They might possibly have done that in the past when they charged businesses more for the same service, but considering I'm a business user and my speeds are crap most of the time I seriously doubt I'm being prioritised and their support has never mentioned anything about that when I've complained.

Infini

Well what i can say is that with Eircom you have a physical conection that isn't affected by the elements or strong storms and at 169 a month you have an unlimited download capability and high connection speed. Also a physical connection is perfect for online gaming as the ping count is relatively low. While the Irish broadband speeds are probably the fastest being offered there are plenty of posts on this forum reporting technical problems from faulty equipment to very high ping counts and slow speeds.The price is also higher for the connection too. Also because it's a wireless service the connection is greatly affected by the elements. If your going to get the service you should have the connection tested first to make sure you actually get the speeds their offering. With eircom your at least getting a guaranteed service and don't have to worry about connection difficulties but with IBB you may be taking a chance with your connection.

Mutant_Fruit

Well, assuming IBB aren't short on bandwidth at the moment...

you have a physical conection that isn't affected by the elements or strong storms

Can't remember the last time i had weather related problems. Don't think i ever had. The only problem would be if teh antenne blew out of course in a strong breeze,but the same breeze could also take out a telephone line.

at 169 a month you have an unlimited download capability and high connection speed.

Well, with IBB you have unlimited download capability, and a higher connection speed, 50% higher actually, for only about 15% extra. You also gain 1200% more upload speed (i hope the maths is right ).

perfect for online gaming as the ping count is relatively low.

Once again, assuming there are no problems at IBB's end, you'll get lower pings than eircom off it. Plus, with wireless you can download/upload a lot before affecting your ping. I've played when downloading/uploading at about 75% capacity without affecting my ping by much.

Only thing is, eircom are more reliable. But thats a chance you'll have to take.

silent

if money would allow it - ever though about keeping the 2Mb adsl (sure no other provider such as east business etc available in your area?) and combine it with a lower IBB product (1Mb or 2Mb synch) - additional bandwith + a lot increased upload due to ibb's synch connection, and as well, failover in case either of them goes down?
would require a didicated system act as router, ideally with traffic shaping etc. smoothwall business for example can handle multiple internet links for one network, other packages such as that available as well

gline

Personnally i have heard horror stories from eircom and IBB users, but i am using IBB and i know people that have been for years and they have had NO problems, as for eircom i know a lot of people being messed around by them, i'd go for IBB, a much better deal if you aske me, and it is not affected by weather unless it is extreme conditions which would affect everything anyway, contention is probably better for the buisness user compared to eircom (not sure on that though),

anyone here using the eircom buisness package though?? how is it??

Blaster99

I'm not using it now but I have used Eircom's 2Mbps service. Rock solid. On a completely different planet than what I'm getting from IBB. I have never heard of anyone having any problems with Eircom's ADSL service, once they get it.

You can forget about comparing contention ratios because in Eircom-land it's nearly unheard of to get anything less than full whack all the time.

IBB's network seems to go south somewhere whenever it's really windy. It's not a technological limitation, it's because for whatever reason their backbone crashes. They don't seem to have any redundancy either. You can compare with a mobile phone network that uses practically the same technology. Do they crash whenever it's windy? No. Similarly Eircom has redundancy built into its network, because like all other telcos they operate with very high QoS requirements.

SirLemonhead

Infini wrote:

Well what i can say is that with Eircom you have a physical conection that isn't affected by the elements or strong storms

My Eircom ADSL was going haywire during the recent winds. Wouldn't stay connected for more than 5 minutes at a time

bminish

with 30 users on a 2Mb ADSL line you should have few problems, Unless of course everyone is running P2P apps..

The big problem with ADSL is that when the up or down pipe gets filled it starts to get really nasty for everyone.

If you can run a linux firewall you should look at
The Wonder Shaper
it works by not allowing eitehr the up or down pipe to get quite full allowing the server to do proper QoS Queueing to prioritise certan types of traffic so that web browsing etc is still nice and responsive even when the network is under heavy load.

You will also need to traffic shape (even if only to move them to a lower priority Queue) the P2P apps. IPP2P is very good for this.

If your ADSL router is doing nat, turn this off and let your linux firewall do it

I like Clarkconnect as a firewall and if the machine has some balls (say a p3 or better & plenty of ram) run a squid cache
You could also have your own outgoing mailserver as well as locally shared files.

I am involved with a community network with 35 users sharing a 2Mb ADSL line, it works very well now that we have got to grips with the P2P traffic

.Brendan