Irish Broadband -ther verdict?

JB83

I am looking to get broadband but I dont want to get a phoneline in. Irish broadband seems to have the best deal 2mb up and down at 24:1 contention rate for 50 quid a month, anybody got any experience , recommendatiuons
Cheers
Jim

Cionn

Only recommendation is don't do it. The product is great when it works the only thing is it seldoms works. Mine was great for the first two months and now it is terrible. Support is miserable, customer service is non existent. Do a search on this forum and you will see I'm not alone.

Dinner

JB83 wrote:

I am looking to get broadband but I dont want to get a phoneline in. Irish broadband seems to have the best deal 2mb up and down at 24:1 contention rate for 50 quid a month, anybody got any experience , recommendatiuons
Cheers
Jim

Well, there's This thread oh and This one and then there's this one and about a million others about how bad IBB are at everything.

masteroftherealm

I have hada brilliant experience!! Full 1024k Up and down and at times even more than that!!

Random

Don't get it. At least not at the moment. It's oversubscribed, high pinging and slow downloading for the most part

Random

masteroftherealm wrote:

I have hada brilliant experience!! Full 1024k Up and down and at times even more than that!!

/me pokes and says that's about the level of the 2Mbit package

Blub2k4

Get Smart, it still needs a phoneline but it doesn't have a monthly line rental.
You dont have to plug a phone into it so all you will ever pay then is the 35 monthly flat rate.

RangeR

JB83 wrote:

I am looking to get broadband but I dont want to get a phoneline in. Irish broadband seems to have the best deal 2mb up and down at 24:1 contention rate for 50 quid a month, anybody got any experience , recommendatiuons
Cheers
Jim

Jim, not trying to be a smarty pants here, but did you not even scan ONE page of this broadband section, nevermind searching for IBB. There are loads of complaints about IBB. IBB appear to be doing nothing about their problems either, except signing up more unsuspecting customers.

lazygit

stay away..

zuma

masteroftherealm wrote:

I have hada brilliant experience!! Full 1024k Up and down and at times even more than that!!

Yeah get IBB JB83 because masteroftherealm doesnt just get 1Mb...but actualy a bit more!!!
Just forget about all the other people who are at times getting 11k download speeds....yes 11k for some poor individual on this board(saw the irishisptest pic myself).
The one word that IBB cannot claim to have as an ISP is "speed consistency".

With DSL, for example, I can 99% gurantee that you will have a workable connection with 80-85% of the quoted speed(overheads!) at any time of the day you wish to test it....."pure consistency"!

IBB on the other hand..................................?

EvilDoctorK

The words - bargepole, don't, with, touch, and 40ft spring to mind

Drapper

JB83 read the other threads mate!

Adey2002

See my Irishbroadband speed test from 10pm last night.....

Drapper

Adey2002 wrote:

See my Irishbroadband speed test from 10pm last night.....

[sarcasm] are you sure your BB lan is not connected to your old modem? [/sarcasm]

Praetorian

I was a happy IBB customer but now I'm not. Stay away from them at all costs.

logic

i was with for a while and found them fine. Its started to get bad at one stage and then stopped, they came out raised the pole and it was even better then. had trouble though cos i had to cancel the contract.

beller b

In case you still havn't decided yet let me add ...They are crap...they are liars...they have no tech support or customer care...& if by some chance you do get decents speeds that will change because even though its over subscribed (admission by IBB themselves) they still keep signing up more.......

To sum up THEY SUCK

masteroftherealm

ciaranfo wrote:

/me pokes and says that's about the level of the 2Mbit package

I dunno mayb they made a mess up. And yeah i will say its inconsistent a bit but the lowest ive ever got so far has been 395/450

gsand

They are excellent for me these days but ive certainly had my fair share of problems in the past...

todd10k

inconsistent?

you sir, are making the understatement of the century. I feel sorry for all those poor fools who think irish broadband is great. they just hav'nt gotten round to screwing you royally yet. seriously. do not ever, under any circumstances, purchase a package from them. i have 2mb 8:1 and i have never ONCE hit my max. irish broadbands network is a joke. its over subscriped at this very moment, and yet they still continue to take new customers in. The connection from ballycoolin to tallaght is constantly congested. you will never ever get what they advertise for you. sure as **** you wont even get what they guarantee you. best of all, you can kiss goodbye to online gaming. im getting away from those lieing bastards as soon as possible. ohh, and incase you dont believe me, or think im just hamming it up, below is a screenshot of a ping/latency recording tool. recorded this very night. started it before i went in to watch a film, ran it for about 2 hours. ive got tons of pictures like this, and of tracert. of my bandwidth going below the minimum guaranteed allotment. the guarantee they put in a signed and sealed contract with me. at this very moment i could ring them and have my contract terminated.

whoh, just realised i was ranting. im a hardcore online gamer, and irish broadband have butt****ed me royally. ive lost friends and had tons of arguments and untold grief because of my inability to play with my friends in games that i enjoy. cant even download anything anymore. ****ing cocksuckers aint getting another penny till they sort this once and for all.

apologies for language, but i feel passionatly about this. once again, my advice to you. please please please do not buy any package from them. your signing any notion of what the internet is away.

masteroftherealm

Jst to prove a point that it depends on where you are getting IBB.

todd10k

Yes. russian roulette with broadband. because that what new customers want to sign up to. your living in bray, or somewhere close. user level is probably alot lower than over here in blanchardstown. give it time, and you too will experience the pain of laggy internet.


"its ok! dont worry. either you'll get a good quality service, or you'll be horribly, horribly shafted every single day you use the connection, be repeatedly lied to, ignored, be talked down to and called a liar, and to boot, we wont even give you the minimum allotted bandwidth we are obligated by contract to provide you. Now, spin the barrel, and hope for the best!"

Drapper

masteroftherealm wrote:

Jst to prove a point that it depends on where you are getting IBB.

tidy up your desktop ffs !!! lol

chamlis

My god. I thought it was just me and my connection. I'm in Galway city and have had Ripwave for over 3 months. Great for the first month, died completely for a week and a half, came back, but the speeds have been a lottery ever since. Customer support (when they finally answered after 3 days of phoning) is most certainly a joke. Guy actually said "I don't know, man. Maybe you should just try switching it off and back on again..." I mean wtf!?

As a service, it's broken and completely unreliable. Online gaming is NOT an option. I have to resort to unorthodox tricks to get even a response sometimes, which is something I really can't see a granny or other computer novice just looking "for them e-mail things" doing to get a decent connection.

It's just really, really......BAD.

beller b

chamlis wrote:

My god. I thought it was just me and my connection. I'm in Galway city and have had Ripwave for over 3 months. Great for the first month, died completely for a week and a half, came back, but the speeds have been a lottery ever since. Customer support (when they finally answered after 3 days of phoning) is most certainly a joke. Guy actually said "I don't know, man. Maybe you should just try switching it off and back on again..." I mean wtf!?

As a service, it's broken and completely unreliable. Online gaming is NOT an option. I have to resort to unorthodox tricks to get even a response sometimes, which is something I really can't see a granny or other computer novice just looking "for them e-mail things" doing to get a decent connection.

It's just really, really......BAD.

What ever made you think it was just you?

Blaster99

Because when you're dealing with their support dept, they either don't have a clue about the general state of their network or let on that you're the only one suffering. That's why these companies hate Boards because there's nowhere to hide when customers can find out from each other what's really going on.

beller b

Blaster99 wrote:

Because when you're dealing with their support dept, they either don't have a clue about the general state of their network or let on that you're the only one suffering. That's why these companies hate Boards because there's nowhere to hide when customers can find out from each other what's really going on.

Ecactly! So lets keep it going.........

sharingan

chamlis wrote:

My god. I thought it was just me and my connection. I'm in Galway city and have had Ripwave for over 3 months.

As a service, it's broken and completely unreliable. Online gaming is NOT an option.

I am a galway RipWave user myself. Well to be fair I don't think RW ever pretended to be good for gaming. 500ms latency when it works properly will do that to you.

I have found that in general the service is pretty impractical. I must do a speed test at my mates house who actually has LoS, or close enough to it to get a nearly consistent green signal.

My experience with the service, is that at certain times of the day or night, typically the evening or well past midnight, RipWave comes close to a real *Assymetric* broadband service. If you happen to be surfing at that time its good, and I am enough of a nightowl to be able to use it around then. If I am asleep, my torrents might come out of torpor enough to complete or make some progress. But other than those magic moments, the service is pretty useless. THough I have to say (I have said it before) - you can cancel at any time, and generally you should if its useless for you (for me its the only option really). If you had to pay connection costs, it would be a serious rip off however.

spooky donkey

Avoid IBB

Drapper

spooky donkey wrote:

Avoid IBB

I've bee speekaing with a few work collegaue and I've kinda established that:-If your off a mast that has "fibre" liking it to the Inex your pings are sweet and your DL/UL's are perfect. If you come off a mast that is radioed to another station then your latency and UL/DL are poor. Seems to be just a few mast:-

Ballycoolin
Bray
Ballymun
any others?

People of the RTE and UCD masts are perfect and a few others over on the Southside.

Upgrading the mast woulod improve things considerably and limitiing the number of people connected to the station.

I can see 5 IBB ariels from my house now whereas before I was the only one (until I got rid of it) in the area!

Lunchy

On installation, ping times to the closeby Clondalkin node ranged from 6ms to 350ms. They installed the Alvarion kit, left the power to FULL, when i asked the installers about setting the power level, they looked puzzled. They left the link transmitting 100,000 times (50dB) the required power to get to the node. (I install professional links). They dont seem aware that my transmissions are now reaching far beyond the short distance needed, using up freq space that could be allocated to others on the opposite side of the node. (including their own customers).

This is done to discourage others from using the (free for all) 5.7Ghz range and setting up in competition with them. The downside being they cant even use it themselves.

Considering they dont worry about the head height, they should be using OFDM equipment, allowing for signal blockages due to lack of link planning.

I waited 30 minutes on their support line only to be connected to someone that knew nothing about the subject. When I asked to speak to someone that knew about the network, he refused.

It was taking 1.7 Seconds (1700ms) to ping various locations in Dublin. (with 20% packet loss). With that I requested the connection method used to get upstream from the Clondalkin Node. Firstly they told me it was Fibre. There is no Firbe at that location. They refused to tell me. I've since looked into it and it appears there is no Licensed Link at that node - meaning the link they are using to go upstream is an Unlicensed Link in the 5Ghz range - In other words the links they are installing to the customers premises
have now got the potential to interfere with the upstream links they use to get from the Nodes.

Every new customer they bring online has the potential of reducing the stability of the Upstream Node Links. That includes customers that may be up and running perfectly on a different node. i.e. my link connects perfectly to the Clondalkin Node but could be impacting on an Upstream Node behind my local node as its set to 100,000 the required power.

Since then (a week ago), they've improved the upsteam link. I get zero packet loss, and the ping times are down to between 4ms and 120ms. Wildly varying ping times suggests the use of Time Division Duplex and not Freq Division Duplex for the node upstream links, with data only going in one direction at a time. This system is used for cheapness as it only takes half the hardware in the radio kit.

So right now I have a working connection, but the problems I've had (and endless others) have been due to the upstream node and not my link to the node. They could have solved ALL node problems with the use of a Licensed Link from the outset but that costs a lot more money (€20,000 for real kit)..

Irish Broadband, (being owed by the company that we all que up twice a day for hours on end to give money too (Westlink Tollbridge)), are not too worried about doing things right, but are more interested in a profit for themselves. Not that I have anything against someone making a profit. But it could give you an insight into the efforts the company might be prepared to go to, to make that profit.

Its not the cost of the tollbridge itself (changing the subject a bit), but the millions of man hours every year that are WASTED away. Thats a serious loss.
Just what do I pay my car tax for?

Anyway hope this info helps.