Has anyone had a GOOD experience with IBB Ripwave?

sharingan

I have seen so many negative posts about ripwave here, but has anyone had a good experience with it? Even 'plugged it in, got good signal, connection is decent' not stellar results or anything.

I picked it up in Galway, and I am finding the connection and signal to be appalling. I am 200m from their mast (eircom mast in mervue), and a single semi is enough to kill any signal.

It just seems to be a poorly conceived idea - if LoS and obstructions make such a significant impact on your signal they should at least allow you to connect in your own aerial.

kaizersoze

Theres already an "IBB love in" thread going HERE :rolleyes:

SkepticOne

I live about 7km from the Three Rock transmitter in Dublin. Transmitter is obscured by trees so I get an orange light instead of the green which I get in winter.

Service for me is fine. A lot of people have problems though. I had problems around the start of the year but these appear to have been fixed.

My advice is if it works OK stick with it. If there are persistent problems switch to a different provider.

SkepticOne

One other point. There's no such thing as true non-LOS in that frequency range. The non-LOS is obtained from bouncing off other objects such as buildings. It is not like FM radio which penetrates walls.

You have to see if it works for you no matter where you are. If it does not, then send it back and switch to something else.

Unlike DSL, they can't test it in advance of sending the equipment out. Perhaps they should be more clear about this to people. Not everyone can get DSL, but you can know in advance if your line is not appropriate.

IDUBasher

I had ethernet ripwave for about 9 months before upgrading to breeze, for the first 2 weeks it was terrible often taking 6+ hours to establish a connection. So, I called tech support and they turned off some roaming feature (If I remember correctly) and that improved it bigtime. IP would be leased and connection would become active within about 10 secs rather than 6 hours. I had the unit on a window looking towards the guinnesses and was getting a green strength light and also navini diag reported green signal quality and strength. Pings where laughable though, regularly spiking to over 500ms. But I was aware that it was not a product suitable for internet gaming before getting it. I regularly got the advertised bandwidth with the unit and as far as web and mail go I found it to be more than adequate.

sharingan

I live 200m from the Galway mast, but there's a house in the way. It just seems like the kind of service that is guaranteed to be unreliable, or unsuitable for most people.

They could make it far more practical if there was a way to connect your own aerial to it (which you could roofmount yourself).

Lets hope the weather holds, cos I will probably be spending a lot of time on the roof this weekend.

SkepticOne

Would it not be better just to send it back? Although I'm fairly happy with it, it is not worth the hassle of climbing on roofs. If I had to do that I would get something else.

If it doesn't work from (inside) one of the windows in the house, it doesn't work and should be sent back, imo.

Before going up on the roof, try some windows from the other side of the house. You may get a bounced signal better there.

Also make sure there are no problems at the transmitter before going on the roof. If there are problems then a good signal strengh won't help.

LegacyUser

Where is this mast in Mervue?

Sponge Bob

there is only one mast in Mervue, < hint its painted red >

sharingan

SkepticOne wrote:

Would it not be better just to send it back? Although I'm fairly happy with it, it is not worth the hassle of climbing on roofs. If I had to do that I would get something else.

There really is no alternative. I rent, theres no landline in the house, so anything that involves extended contracts is a no-go for me. I have had some second hand experience of BB setup from my previous house (a housemate got it in), and I really don't want to go through *that* experience again.

SkepticOne wrote:

If it doesn't work from (inside) one of the windows in the house, it doesn't work and should be sent back, imo.

Before going up on the roof, try some windows from the other side of the house. You may get a bounced signal better there.

Have tried, best signal is from the front of the house facing the mast.

SkepticOne wrote:

Also make sure there are no problems at the transmitter before going on the roof. If there are problems then a good signal strengh won't help.

Well I got sense and climbed down off the roof. No ladder or safety rope made me realise that I didn't have a power extension cable or net cable long enough to do this.

Hopefully I will be able to arrange something with one of my housemates in the upper rooms, if they are ever in the house long enough. If thats decent, I can wire it through the house to my room (its going to require a lot of cable though).