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NTR Broadband's (Northern IBB) sham service

  • 27-03-2005 3:51am
    #1
    gothakane
    Closed Accounts Posts: 9 ✭


    I want to hear from other NTR Broadband customers...

    I've been living in the Northside of Dublin the past 8 months with Irish Broadband 1 Meg Breeze Home service. Its had its rough patches... outages all over the place, many calls to tech support at the beginning to switch sectors and get on the right transmitter... but overall I love it, can't beat that 1meg upload :D You can still get a decent ping on any game even while using Bittorrent ( capped at 100/100 each way)

    Anyway so I found out that IBB had expanded to the North under a new name "NTR Broadband", with a similar price structure and identical services to the South. I was overjoyed, as I have relatives and friends in the North who would love NTR. My sister ordered NTR about 4 weeks ago, they had her up and running in a week (using a massive business antennae, as they couldn't get a decent signal with a standard residential! :eek:) She had previously been on NTL for 4 years, she was used to reliable connections and great pings, but was sick of 30k/s upload. So I set about testing the speeds and pings of my sister's service.
    The first thing I noticed was that we were using the same DNS servers as those on IBB in the south! :(

    First of all, I set up the program "Multiping" (same one used by IBB tech support) to constantly ping the NTR (IBB) DNS servers... this is over a 10 minute period, the connection is idle, 1 ping made every 5 seconds :
    IBB1.gif

    This shows pings between 80ms and 100ms...
    Lets compare that to 10 mins of my Irish Broadband connection in Dublin now, uploading at constant 100k/s over Bittorrent, 1 ping every 5 seconds.
    IBB2.gif

    Beautiful, just the quality of service I expect for my 48 Euro.
    So why should my sister not be entitled to the same quality of service as I'm getting in Dublin?? Maybe this has something to do with it... (IP masked for security btw)
    IBB3.gif

    As bad enough as it is to be using the same DNS server as IBB customers, instead of travelling 100 miles from Belfast to Dublin, each packet has to travel through NTL's network, and through level3.net's, before it can even resolve its destination!!! About 300 miles :mad: Makes me sick to think about it! Is NTR's Broadband leased from NTL?? The very company we're about to switch over from??

    Here is the traceroute from my Dublin connection to the IBB DNS server:
    IBB4.gif

    Thats more like it, minimal hops, and pure IBB all the way! THATS what I pay for! (First IP address is my router, and again, my IP is masked for my own security)

    It gets worse... I set up an FTP on my computer in Dublin, and transferred a 10 meg file from Dublin to Belfast, it couldn't even get over 55 k/s download, and the pings rocketed to 900-1200+!! Worse STILL, I set up an FTP server in Belfast and transferred to Dublin, the NTR broadband connection couldn't manage over 20k/s upload!! :mad:

    The only time I get half decent pings is when the connection is idle, download at 20k/s and pings jump to 500+ms, download at "max speed" (55k/s, SHOULD BE 120k/s!) and the pings are disgusting. How can they sell this sort of service?

    Phoned NTR tech support, some wee office manned by 2 people in Belfast, they were very apologetic and offered to give her this month's rent free while they resolve a supposed problem with the high site... Well, I've heard this story before myself in Dublin with IBB, and read it in the forum from a few people, its their classic "string you along then screw you" tactic. :mad: I'm gonna give them till next month. We need a local DNS server for a start!
    NTL is in the process of being cancelled, but its not to late to switch back. Hey, the upload sucks, but at least I can upload at 20k/s without worrying about my ping in games, and there's very rare downtime. :rolleyes:


Comments

  • #2
    OldTitan
    Closed Accounts Posts: 46 ✭OldTitan


    Hi Gothakane,

    Quite a post. Some explantions. In the Republic, it is simpler and easier to build telecommunications infrastructure than in Northern Ireland, as they fall under UK planning regulation restrictions. Whilst IBB can use ESB for intercity backhaul and build its own infrastructure in Dublin, Cork etc, it is far more difficult to do so in NI. NTR BB has 2 choices for backhaul - ntl, or BT. For various reasons NTR BB chose ntl. Following significant problems with this in the past, ntl and NTR BB recently reached agreement for improved backhaul arrangement to eliminate signicant problems over the last 4 months.

    The best option is for IBB to obtain a link between Belfast and Dublin. Only 1 link exists - ntl....

    Within the next 2 months we will link Belfast to Dublin and that should improve things for all NTR BB customers in Belfast.

    IBB is fortunate in that in the Republic we can build our own infrastructure. Even so, we have experienced 'growth pains' and so have our customers. But IBB is committed to build world class infrastructure, and will continue to do so. Sometimes we do sc*** things up, but at least we do work hard to improve things and fix it.

    Cheers


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