Clearwire

Henry O'Henry

Um, Who and what is Clearwire, and why isn't everybody signed up? Recieved a card throught the letterbox in Ranelagh. They want to call to my house and plug in one of their modems to an a/c socket & demo their service to me!

http://www.clearwire.ie

pizzahead77

Clearwire are part of an American company also called Clearwire.

They are offering a similar service to IBB's Ripwave but apparently at almost twice the cost of Ripwave.

I say "apparently" before their website is ambiguous on pricing - "The Licensee shall make such a service available at a maximum tariff not exceeding €37.50 per month, excluding VAT but including all hidden charges, installation charge and equipment rental."

So are they actually going to be charging €45 for a 512kb/128kb connection with an 8GB allowance (doesn't specify whether this is just downloading or both it and uploading.

What a rip off, they're even more expensive than Eircom's 1MB basic package!!!

Blaster99

I don't have the prices in front of me, but it's about €40 for 1M/256k and about €50 for 2M/256k. It's a little pricey but the stuff works and you don't need a phone line.

Henry O'Henry

Hmmmmm. Anybody actually signed up to them?

ZENER

I've just had their sales guy here demonstrating the 1Mb product. I'm impressed with how it works. It's an upright box measuring 8x5x1 inches which contains everything. The name NextNet Wireless in printed on it and it works in the 3.6GHz range. The best signal is obtained wide-side to the site. He set it up in my living room at the window which is about .75 miles from their antenna and got 3 out of 5 LEDs on the strength meter.

This is the device.

He plugged it into the power and the ethernet port on my iBook set the iBook to DHCP, turned the box to obtain the best signal strength and bobs yer uncles !!!

I did a speed test and was d/l at 240KB/s (remember this is the 1Mb product), Pings weren't bad approx 27 - 35mS to boards.ie.

PING boards.ie (82.195.136.36): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=0 ttl=60 time=31.881 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=1 ttl=60 time=27.427 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=2 ttl=60 time=27.473 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=3 ttl=60 time=35.832 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=4 ttl=60 time=27.269 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=5 ttl=60 time=27.370 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.136.36: icmp_seq=6 ttl=60 time=27.349 ms

The only downside is that the u/l is 256 - 300Kb which when compared to IBB (when it works) is poor but the setup is so simple it makes it attractive.

It's like having portable BB, I can take the box with me to a mates house locally and connect and go, I intend to actually do this for a mate who is interested in getting it in!

With a car adaptor (~15VDC)I can take it on the road to get near the antenna for max speed . . if I was so inclined that is.

Anyway I have it free for 30 days so will let you know how it goes. I asked if there were any plans to improve the upload speed and he said he would find out and let me know, I made it clear to him that this was important to me and would help me decide whether or not to sign up for it so he has good reason to get back to me. I intend to get rid of my phone line so this will provide me with VoIP via Vonage and Skype.

ZEN

Blaster99

The upload speed is limited by the technology. As far as I recall, they don't limit the upload speed. I don't think they limit the download speed either for early adopters, so what you're getting is what the kit can do.

ZENER

Day 3: As expected at this early stage speeds are consistant both waysat about 235/30.

The only fly in the ointment is that the equipment is pretty well locked up plus to send email I have to use their mail server as access to my own is blocked. I haven't set up their email server yeat as I'm not sure if using the system after the 30 day trial constitutes utilising their system after the trial period leaving me liable for the contract period.

ZEN

Sponge Bob

Thats normal for sending mail . The blockage is at your 'own' outbound server and nowt to do with Clearwire but can you receive from your 'own' one though ?

ZENER

Collecting mail from any server isn't a problem only sending it.

With IOLBB I can send mail from any of the 3 mail servers I have access to, from smtp.oceanfree.net, gpo.iol.ie and smtp.<mydomain>.com but I'm unable to use any of these to send mail when connected to clearwire system.

I don't think it's to do with the configuration of the clients and I've no control at all over the modem.

ZEN

Speedway

just in case anybody is wondering I was onto them a while ago and at the moment Cork won't be serviced by clearwire.They dont have a licence for Cork yet and he said even if he was to estimate it would be around 12 months before Cork would be brought onboard.

Snaga

oceanfree.net = BT Ireland
iol.ie = BT Ireland
smtp.<yourdomain>.com - Well youll have to give us more to go on here

Only IP addresses belonging to BT Ireland subscribers (wether they are oceanfree, iol, corporate etc..) can send mail through BT Ireland mail servers.

It is standard practice for any ISP to only allow IP addresses it assigns to its customers to send email _out_ through their mail servers, as if its spam/nasty illegal stuff, they can find out who it is and put a stop to it. This is because you do not need a username and password to send mail, so authentication is based on your connecting IP address.

Now you are with Clearwire, BT Irelands mail servers will now block your attempts to send mail through their mail servers as quite simply, they have no way of tracking you down.

Again, this is standard practice from an ISP point of view, just use Clearwire's outgoing mail server and your own incoming mail server (Where you give them your username anyway, so they know who you are ).

oscarBravo

There is one workaround (from the ISP's perspective) to what Snaga has described: receive-before-send authentication. In this situation, the SMTP daemon works with the POP daemon. When you log in to the POP server to receive mail, the SMTP daemon will accept connections from your IP for a short period of time afterwards. Looks like your mail provider isn't set up that way.

ZENER

Snaga wrote:

smtp.<yourdomain>.com - Well youll have to give us more to go on here

Sorry I thought my sig might have been a clue ! It's mail.techtalkireland.com.

My domain hoster - POWWEB.com - suggested I send mail via an alternative port so it's not picked up by Clearwire's mail servers on the standard mail port. Will try that when I get the modem back.

Now you are with Clearwire, BT Irelands mail servers will now block your attempts to send mail through their mail servers as quite simply, they have no way of tracking you down.

I sort of knew this from my Eircom dial-up days but thought Eircom did things differently as I'd always been able to send via my domain mail server which is not on a BT i.p. address.

Anyway I've had an excellent response from the sales and tech guys at Clearwire who have been very helpful. 3 emails and several phonecalls in the past 3 or 4 days !! I'm impressed with their service so far. Thanks C.

I've lent the modem to a friend in Applewood/Ashton Court in Swords who want's BB but failed IBB (lucky for him some would say) and doesn't want a landline because he lets out 2 of his rooms to strangers. Anyway he's delighted with with it and will probably be signing up too.

ZEN

dathi1

I've lent the modem to a friend in Applewood/Ashton Court in Swords

and where roughly are you? Is this service city wide??

ZENER

I'm on the Rathbeale Road in Swords Co. Dublin. Their TX/RX Site is in Castlefarm which is about .75 miles line of site from me.

I think they have a few more sites around the city although their website doesn't say much about it. Clearwire

ZEN

tomk

There's another thread here about Clearwire in Bray. I'm thinking of getting that 30-day free (actually 1 yo-yo!) trial while they're still doing it, after getting the following response to a query about coverage:

We are pleased to inform you we do have coverage in the Woodbrook Glen Estate in Bray.

The prices for our current packages are as follows:

- ClearFreedom

€39.95 per month with FREE activation & install. (price is VAT inclusive)

This includes:

Download speeds of 1Mg with an Upload of 256kps
Monthly download allowance of 10mg
A superior contention ratio of 10:1

- ClearPerformer

€49.95 per month with FREE activation & install. (price is VAT inclusive)

Download speeds of 2mg with an Upload of 256kps
Monthly download allowance of 20mg
A superior contention ratio of 10:1

You can pay by either Direct Debit or by Credit Card (excluding American Express) & the contract is 12 months. Our special offer prior to official launch is the first month for €1.00. This is to ensure there are no problems with our service to you & that you are entirely happy with our product. After the initial 30 days you step into a 12 month contract providing you have not returned the modem to us. The modem you set up yourself which is very simple plug & play set up – no software or engineer needed.

If you need any further information I’ll be happy to help you, please call our sales line on 1800 882 333.

I'm actually very happy with my current DSL setup, but this one sounds interesting. And of course, it would be pretty cool to have two BB connections to play with for a month...