Are IrelandOffline Reading all the Post about IBB and can you guys do anything ?

Drapper

Can you guys do anything for us in the Media about IBB ?

have you read any of these threads??

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=283302

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=282591

D

damien

Good timing Drapper. Yeah, was doing something today about this. Will keep you updated when I get some feedback.

Meanwhile I would suggest that anyone that has issues with IBB go and contact the ComReg consumer line - consumerline@comreg.ie and make a complaint.

spooky donkey

Yeah i havent got onto com reg yet I dident think they would do much but if you guys feel it would help i`ll get on the case!

damien

ComReg are there to serve your consumer needs. It's in their charter.

jwt

damien.m wrote:

ComReg are there to serve your consumer needs. It's in their charter.

And he even said it with a straight face

John

Drapper

Keep us all posted on your talk with IBB

Many very upset! And you have the contacts!

Many reporting dial up speeds and non existing customer service of anykind!

All agree there seems to be a backhaul issue that ibb are squeezing people onto an oversubscribed network!!

damien

Rightso, I emailed IBB, I explained the situation and referenced the dozens of threads and hundreds of posts where people are pissed off. I explained that they need to start addressing all these issues as a matter of urgency. We'll see what happens in the next few days.

I was serious about ComReg though, part of their remit is dealing with customer complaints. But like all Civil Service operations you have to follow the escalation pathway and make sure you have triplicate copies of form RB255 signed and bound together with a paper clip on the righthand upper corner.

So, talk to IBB about resolving your issue first, if they are of no help then go to ComReg. The more genuine complaints ComReg get the more they have to investigate this fully. Remember that IBB has license obligations and if they do not carry them out their licenses could be revoked.

Drapper

I think people are just looking for the answer to:-

1. Are they enforcing a QOS service?
2. Is there a backhaul issue?
3. Why are connetion so erractic (business and residential)
4. Why advertise when they cant deliver?
5. Is there technical support staff made managment aware of the incresed disatisfation with thier products? (I've counted about 100 different users on BOards complaining, if we take this as a sample o the Broadband thread forum its very high! it outstrips Eircom by a mile).
6. Will the network be capable of dealing with the volumes of IBB customers signing up?
7. Online gaming is proably the fastest growing area of the residential market, will IBB be providing good latecy or will the advise poeple that IBB is not a product suitable for gaming. Thier mareting material says it is, however latecy is very high of late!

I think the above is not to big a demand.

Drapper

BTW I was an IBB customer, not any longer, but like many other things in rip of Ireland, this has to be the Broadband big daddy!

Sponge Bob

Drapper wrote:

I think people are just looking for the answer to:-

1. Are they enforcing a QOS service?

No, they have chronic packet loss as I explained on a few occasions.

2. Is there a backhaul issue?

See my comments on packet loss in IBB threads,.

3. Why are connetion so erractic (business and residential)

2 words, second word Loss

4. Why advertise when they cant deliver?

Good point but that wont get anyone a decent service right now

5. Is there technical support staff made managment aware of the incresed disatisfation with thier products? (I've counted about 100 different users on BOards complaining, if we take this as a sample o the Broadband thread forum its very high! it outstrips Eircom by a mile).

It outstrips the entire Internet sector in Ireland on its very own.

6. Will the network be capable of dealing with the volumes of IBB customers signing up?

2 words, the first is Packet .

7. Online gaming is proably the fastest growing area of the residential market, will IBB be providing good latecy or will the advise poeple that IBB is not a product suitable for gaming. Thier marketing material says it is, however latency is very high of late!

again , one single issue causes this . IBB use thruput stats as their defence but many of these are resends of lost and incomplete data and therefore irrelevant to real thruput.

Drapper

Sponge Bob wrote:

No, they have chronic packet loss as I explained on a few occasions.

See my comments on packet loss in IBB threads,.

2 words, second word Loss

Good point but that wont get anyone a decent service right now

It outstrips the entire Internet sector in Ireland on its very own.

2 words, the first is Packet .

again , one single issue causes this . IBB use thruput stats as their defence but many of these are resends of lost and incomplete data and therefore irrelevant to real thruput.

sorry m8 my technical knowledge of radio BB is not as up as yours, they were just man on the street comments! thanks for the additions.

might seem like a petty question, explain the reasons for packet loss?

Sponge Bob

packet loss can be caused by a variety of issues including cheap components, crap routers, congestion overloading a route forcing the router to dump packets if thats the way it is set up , there is no one reason or magic bullet although I suspect congestion.

If the network dumps packets indiscriminately (based on thruput) when congested it makes matter worse , way way worse.

Packet loss is not ALWAYS a byproduct of congestion.

if everyone I know on site x had a 1mbit pipe and 10% packet loss, and if I suspected congestion, I would throttle everyone right back to a nominal 256k for starters and work up from there if the packet loss disappeared at 256k until I got them to a point where it reappeared.

The service would of course be slower than 'advertised' but 256k with 0% packet loss is BETTER than 1Mbit with 10% packet loss.

Blaster99

Even though a lot of people are complaining about packet loss, that's not the only issue. I regularly have crap performance without any packet loss at all. That's clearly just because they don't have sufficient bandwidth to deliver the advertised speeds but enough to handle most packets.

There are varying degrees of problems. On the northside they don't seem to have enough bandwidth to even provide their pityful CIR, but in many other places you'll rarely see the advertised speed.

The problem is without a doubt that they're not provisioning enough bandwidth in their network. I think it's futile to complain to them as they just blame contention. The only way to deal with it is to highlight publically how poorly their network performs in comparison to other ISP's. A sample of internet speeds from different ISP's in a nice little press release ought to do it.

Couch Potato

damien.m wrote:

Rightso, I emailed IBB, I explained the situation and referenced the dozens of threads and hundreds of posts where people are pissed off. I explained that they need to start addressing all these issues as a matter of urgency. We'll see what happens in the next few days.
.

Damien - what about your old friend Matt Cooper ??

I am an IBB user also an currently have an 'ok' service (taps wood) but waiting for speeds to go through the floor.

I am also VoIP user and the quality is starting to get worse.

I think Matt enjoys 'beating up' the ISPs !

Drapper

Couch Potato wrote:

Damien - what about your old friend Matt Cooper ??

I am an IBB user also an currently have an 'ok' service (taps wood) but waiting for speeds to go through the floor.

I am also VoIP user and the quality is starting to get worse.

I think Matt enjoys 'beating up' the ISPs !

yes that the underlying reason I put this post ! MAtt would love this storey !

come on Damien........................ a great storey

aside from this there is a COmreg IBB issue behind the scenes, the realease of licences for further bandwidth ! from mast to mast ! they have to get increased licences to cater for this!

damien

Couch Potato wrote:

Damien - what about your old friend Matt Cooper ??

As I said, we have emailed IBB and we will see what they have to say for themselves and if they are going to start to address all these issues. It would only be fair to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they are unwilling we can formally approach ComReg on behalf of all the people who have serious issues with them but only after some people put a little bit of work in and not let IrelandOffline do all the backbreaking research like we generally do. If ComReg do nothing after IBB do nothing then I'm sure the media can be made aware of this. I think it would be better to try and have this cleared up in a professional manner first before any messy media hoopla.

But, just in case IBB does tell us to go take a running jump, which I'm sure they won't, how about people gather all these complaints together? So which one of you guys will collate all the complaints?

What you need to do is get the names, addresses and contact details of those who have made the complaints(pm them for details), get their IBB account numbers, have them document when their issues started, when they made the complaint to IBB, what IBB said back to them and what they did to fix the issue and whether the customer was happy with this.

Put them all into a document (excel sheet may be the best idea) and pass them on to us. Also let those that are making the complaint know that their details and complaints will be passed on to ComReg and IBB and that IrelandOffline will not pass their contact details on to anyone else.

Couch Potato

damien.m wrote:

As I said, we have emailed IBB and we will see what they have to say for themselves and if they are going to start to address all these issues. It would only be fair to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they are unwilling we can formally approach ComReg on behalf of all the people who have serious issues with them but only after some people put a little bit of work in and not let IrelandOffline do all the backbreaking research like we generally do. If ComReg do nothing after IBB do nothing then I'm sure the media can be made aware of this. I think it would be better to try and have this cleared up in a professional manner first before any messy media hoopla.

Totally agree - Damien - I would see the media as a last resort...

I did have inital problems with them - threathened to leave them - even got them to take the kit away and within a day they had agreed to move me to another mast (new - Clonsilla) and to date its been "ok". I even had typed up a 2 page official complaint to send to their MD.

I do expect the service to deteriorate in the coming months... if they don't get their act together in the meantime.

Adey2002

Hi,

I'm one of the people havng problems withh IBB at the moment. I have been through the complaint process with no joy. I have also lodge d my complaint with comreg but have received nothing back from them yet. My problems have been ongoing for 2 months and I wouldn't mind being put on that list of complaints. I'll even volunteer to collate all other complaints as suggested by damien.m if no one else has.

Adey2002

damien.m wrote:

Rightso, I emailed IBB, I explained the situation and referenced the dozens of threads and hundreds of posts where people are pissed off. I explained that they need to start addressing all these issues as a matter of urgency. We'll see what happens in the next few days.

Lets hope they don't treat your email the same way they treat the mails people send in requesting support. Don't hold out much hope tbh. It'll probably just get filed along with all the other complaints in Deleted Items.

But thanks for IrelandOffline for getting involved. It's appreciated.

nadir

can somone answer these questions, Ive been tinkering.

I get low pings to the internet, like really low 12 ms to google sometimes.
however once I establish say 20 - 30 connections for a period of 5 mins lets say. (which i check using netstat, lsof -i etc)
my pings go to over 1 Sec, and download speeds drop to about 20 each way.

I dont get packet loss, all the time , but I seem to get more when I have alot of connections open. At them moment im testing with about 100 open connections, and I get 40% packet loss.

PING google.com (216.239.37.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=243 time=1937 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=243 time=2640 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=5 ttl=243 time=1688 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=7 ttl=243 time=174 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=10 ttl=243 time=437 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=11 ttl=243 time=1030 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=12 ttl=243 time=833 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=13 ttl=243 time=1001 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=14 ttl=243 time=2432 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=16 ttl=243 time=1195 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=17 ttl=243 time=1225 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=22 ttl=243 time=608 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=23 ttl=243 time=1295 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=25 ttl=243 time=2497 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=26 ttl=243 time=2153 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=27 ttl=243 time=2647 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
27 packets transmitted, 16 received, 40% packet loss, time 55582ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 174.779/1487.568/2647.425/788.003 ms, pipe 3

This is 0 when there are no open connections

PING google.com (216.239.37.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=243 time=96.8 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=243 time=205 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=243 time=95.5 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=4 ttl=243 time=97.6 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=5 ttl=243 time=200 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=6 ttl=243 time=92.9 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=7 ttl=243 time=109 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=8 ttl=243 time=131 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=9 ttl=243 time=100 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=10 ttl=243 time=96.2 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=11 ttl=243 time=96.9 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=12 ttl=243 time=97.1 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=13 ttl=243 time=94.9 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=14 ttl=243 time=92.4 ms

--- google.com ping statistics ---
14 packets transmitted, 14 received, 0% packet loss, time 13012ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 92.444/114.863/205.253/37.273 ms

downloading normally from heanet for example goes at about 20 KB/s, sometimes higher like 70 or 80, but this is rare. I also start to get packet loss here, at about 16 %.
The connection used to be much better, dont know what the problem is.
I notice lowering my mtu to 1000 removes the packet loss, but doesnt affect my throughput.
Is there some type of qos system in place that drops packets, depending on how many much you transfer?
I cant understand how I had 0% packetloss for the first 4 months and then suddenly over the last 3 weeks it's gone to bits.

Adey2002

damien.m wrote:

Rightso, I emailed IBB, I explained the situation and referenced the dozens of threads and hundreds of posts where people are pissed off. I explained that they need to start addressing all these issues as a matter of urgency. We'll see what happens in the next few days.

I was serious about ComReg though, part of their remit is dealing with customer complaints. But like all Civil Service operations you have to follow the escalation pathway and make sure you have triplicate copies of form RB255 signed and bound together with a paper clip on the righthand upper corner.

So, talk to IBB about resolving your issue first, if they are of no help then go to ComReg. The more genuine complaints ComReg get the more they have to investigate this fully. Remember that IBB has license obligations and if they do not carry them out their licenses could be revoked.

Hi Damien,

Did you get any response from Irishbroadband yet?

jesus_thats_gre

Blaster99 wrote:

Even though a lot of people are complaining about packet loss, that's not the only issue. I regularly have crap performance without any packet loss at all. That's clearly just because they don't have sufficient bandwidth to deliver the advertised speeds but enough to handle most packets.

I am pretty sure you are aware of this but this is for the benefit of others..

I think what Sponge Bob is trying to say that the network is basically overly congested. This congestion is causing packet loss. TCPs attempts to recover the lost packets is actually increasing traffic on the network by anything up to 20% and is therefore increasing congestion and causing even more packet loss...

Damned evil circle..

Praetorian

I don't think they will respond. We already established that IBB don't answer emails, unless of course it's sent to the sales department... hmmm

damien

9 people on the broadband forum decided to make complaints which Thaed was collecting. 9! Hundreds of posts and 9 people were willing to put an email together and send to Thaed.

Not really going to get much movement when we go to them "9 out of a customer base of 1000s are having issues."

elrond

I've been an IBB customer (Breeze Business - was 1Mb, now 2 Mb) and although I'm not thrilled with their reliability nor contention compared to the Netsource DSL I did have, I do have 4x the data rate (best case) and it's symmetric. I'm on the Kilsaran mast, so maybe I'm just lucky - but then people are blaming their backhaul, and if their backhaul is all that bad it should affect users on any mast. I just now did my own little ping google.com test (though I used the IP address 216.239.37.99 as google.com will resolve to different addresses at different times for different requestors). I did this from 6 different sources at approximately the same time, and the results are as follows, listed in order of increasing average ping time. Note that only two of them suffered any packet loss, and neither of those were IBB:

A) Hosted in a Rackspace data centre in the U.S.

69 packets transmitted, 69 received, 0% packet loss, time 68691ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 43.373/43.572/44.370/0.209 ms

Hosted in a Hosting 365 data centre in Ireland

50 packets transmitted, 50 received, 0% packet loss, time 49041ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 84.851/85.904/87.644/0.692 ms

C) Hosted in a Host Europe data centre in Germany

56 packets transmitted, 56 received, 0% packet loss, time 55077ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 92.209/92.483/92.804/0.264 ms

D) Using a 10 Mbit/s LL in Germany

84 packets transmitted, 84 received, 0% packet loss, time 83074ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 95.055/96.136/97.720/0.665 ms

E) Using my Breeze Business 2Mbit connection

77 packets transmitted, 77 received, 0% packet loss, time 79356ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 87.692/99.461/485.795/49.364 ms

F) Using an Esat Business DSL in Ireland

89 packets transmitted, 88 received, 1% packet loss, time 88897ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 138.007/153.395/484.333/49.899 ms

G) Using a 3 M/384 K bit/s DSL in Germany

71 packets transmitted, 70 received, 1% loss, time 70672ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 126.562/164.682/275.124/33.039 ms

As you'd probably expect, without the Atlantic in the way, A) was by far and away the fastest. The boxes hosted in European data centres came in next, which you'd expect, given that they SHOULD have reasonable connectivity. The leased line was next, but it was only ~3% faster than the fastest of what we might call the consumer/small business grade connections which was, surprise, surprise, my IBB connection. The two DSLs tested were positive sluggards, and were the two which lost packets.

Yes, I should have done ping -c XX to make each test identical, but the above test is anyway completely unscientific, and in the words of /.

"If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane."