Metro Users: Are you Happy with your Service? Post Here Please...

pjproby

in fairness here in clondalkin the speed is fairly constant at 2.5 to 2.8 on a 3mb connection. even if the phone worked the call costs cancel out any free rental benefit.like everyone else i was hit with the bill recently-an annual bill in my case-no warning given or invoice received.
recently had experience of an eircom 2mb connection and metro is far superior.

daveharlowe

Hi all,

The current status for me is:

1) Phone line is working - got an email with the 061- phone number and seems to work fine
2) Haven't checked yet if I've been charged on CC
3) I'm getting poor upload and download speeds:
d/l=54.8kbits/sec; u/l=62.9kbit/sec
I'm getting this from both ftp.esat.net and
http://www.irishisptest.com/myspeed/

The strange thing is, I'm getting good pings! :

                             My traceroute  [v0.67]
char20 (0.0.0.0)(tos=0x0 psize=64 bitpattern=0x00)     Fri Feb 17 21:43:34 2006
Keys:  Help   Display mode   Restart statistics   Order of fields   quit
                                       Packets               Pings
 Host                                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
 1. 83.147.171.1                      0.0%   661   10.9  25.2   7.9 987.0  94.2
 2. gi-0-1-60.lmk-ar1.net.digiweb.ie  0.0%   661   10.8  27.4   8.5 1137.  99.0
 3. gi-0-2-45.dub-deg-br1.net.digiwe  0.0%   661   18.5  54.1  14.2 1110. 123.4
 4. panama-inex.hosting365.ie         0.0%   660   18.8  34.5  13.4 1078. 104.6
 5. corerouter1.hosting365.ie         0.5%   660   19.6  37.2  16.7 1052.  97.4
 6. boards.ie                         0.2%   660   19.8  35.1  16.2 1091.  94.1

It looks to me like the links are being throttled somewhere, but I'm not sure, IE some packets are getting "slowed down", so it looks like that some QOS settings are being used.

I did get a call during the week, but things were fine then...I'll email customer support again.

regards,
Dave

kaimera

Crap, not going to like a big bill out of the blue. Still haven't been charged for Metro and the install was the end of Nov2005.

BB service is grand [only issue is the ****ing linksys router constantly dropping all internet connectivity and all wireless connections]

Phone service is crap as already posted here. Sent an email during the week and nothing back yet.

Anytime I've talked to tech support they've been very helpful aside from the long ass wait on the line.

Gigiwagga

I've had it installed since November and my experience has been mixed, some latency issues, very poor phone, contacted Digiweb last week explained my situation; that my signal crapped out, dial-up speeds etc had 2 installers with me 24 hours later changed my modem and power unit adjusted various things, tried their best, seriously. they were not happy, my SNR was 20dB which would result in the poor phone signal I was told, they spent a couple of hours here, did their best, got a call from Digiweb later they were sending out some engineers, they were here TWICE today and moved my modem again onto my chimney, better SNR, better power 0 ( I may be getting interference from Eircon mast across the road from my house) these guys are extremely committed to giving the best service they can, and are genuinely doing the best they can for me, and for that I thank them, the technology itself? I dunno I'll see how things measure up over the next couple of months. I have the feeling now that variables play a much greater part in a wireless service than copper/fibre, but again I dunno. We'll see.:o hemm I have gotten a bill yet either.

dub45

Sico wrote:

I'd be curious about the billing and invoicing too if there are any answers...

My actual connection is still motoring along beautifully though (although still haven't tried the phone)

gurramok wrote:

I think mine is 42.35*11 + the install €110.94 = 577approx, its the only way it adds up, maybe i got a free month for paying all up front for year.

Guess we'll never know till they send out the invoices!

Just a reminder once again Digiweb or indeed anyone else has no right to debit your account without issuing advance notice - see the guidelines in the brochure here: http://www.ipso.ie/frames/documents/PayersGuide.pdf

http://www.ipso.ie/frames/documents/OriginatorsDay-to-Dayfinal_001.pdf

If you check further on the site www.ipso.ie in the guidelines for direct debit originators in this case Digiweb

Originators must put in place reliable systems which will ensure the issuance of correct advance notification as appropriate of amounts to be debited.............

Note these references refer to the direct debit scheme - if you pay by credit card you could check with your issuer to see if they have similar requirements about advance notice. If you are angry about this behaviour on digiweb's part you should contact ipso - it is only through customers complaining that we have any chance of making companies behave properly.

It is outrageous for any company to debit amounts like those quoted here without any warning and it seems to me that it is indicative of total disregard for customers to behave in this way apart altogether from being in breach of guidelines.

Chaz

info@williamrua wrote:

I've had it installed since November and my experience has been mixed, some latency issues, very poor phone, contacted Digiweb last week explained my situation; that my signal crapped out, dial-up speeds etc had 2 installers with me 24 hours later changed my modem and power unit adjusted various things, tried their best, seriously. they were not happy, my SNR was 20dB which would result in the poor phone signal I was told, they spent a couple of hours here, did their best, got a call from Digiweb later they were sending out some engineers, they were here TWICE today and moved my modem again onto my chimney, better SNR, better power 0 ( I may be getting interference from Eircon mast across the road from my house) these guys are extremely committed to giving the best service they can, and are genuinely doing the best they can for me, and for that I thank them, the technology itself? I dunno I'll see how things measure up over the next couple of months. I have the feeling now that variables play a much greater part in a wireless service than copper/fibre, but again I dunno. We'll see.:o hemm I have gotten a bill yet either.

For what its worth - your connection is the first we have seen nationally that has perfect LOS but has a huge fluctuation of signal across different locations on your roof. We want to get this fixed, and as you have acknowledged, we have sent our best engineers to try and get to the bottom of the story. It has our full attention - we need to get to the bottom of this issue.

Stokolan

yeah i was the same got hit with the bill. I signed up in december and got it installed just after christmas. I got charged for what i signed up for with payment for the 12 months with 2 months free and free install.

The service has been working perfect no problems with the broadband end getting the proper speeds all the time. not sure about the phone as it was only activated this week and i havnt used it yet.

watty

Reasons fro mysterious behavour if equipment is 100% OK:
* Chimney of hi power heating system or refrigeration system creating diffraction layer in air
* Reflected satellite signal desensing receiver (Unlikely but not impossible)?
* Thermal radiation from a buildinb in path nearby. If I swing my satellite dish on its polar mount fully east or fully west the meter gives a stronger signal than Sky. Thermal noise from my house and neighbour.
* Somebody else's 10GHz band transmitter:
--> IBB
--> Point to point link
--> ATV or other Wireless Experimenter: 10.000 .. 10.270 and 10.300 ..10.500 at up to 160W (drive! not ERP!!!).
The RX is on 10.200GHz, inside the Amateur band. Wireless Experimenters are secondary licenced users of this band.

A 90cm dish might have over 38dB gain (10.5GHz @75%), which would allow 2mW from a converted LNB as transmitter to be a bit fierce pointed at a Digiweb metro receiver, about 44dBmV. I have such a system. (but not pointed at anyone).

* A Satellite TV L.O. in an LNB is 9.75GHZ or 10.6GHz. IF this has leakage it might desense the Digiweb receiver, In this case the 65cm to 1.1m dish will have an elevation of about 22 degrees and in the south west direction. Any dishes visable to North East at about 22 deg. declination?


(Primary users for 24GHz and 47GHz, @ up to 50W, but equipment much more expensive).

If the signal picked up by Digiweb is good (suggested by lower TX dBmV, 0dBmV is very good.) but receive S/N is poor (20dB is very poor), this is 100% either faulty equipment or a local interference desensing or overloading the receiver at the customer.

I'm 12.5km and settings are:
Downstream RX Power -4 dBmV
Signal to Noise Ratio 28 dB
Upstream TX Power 40 dBmV

I'm viewing base site UNDER trees and cutting the lower branches back gained over 6dB on RX power, 6dB on RX S/N and over 12dB on TX power.

Copper is worse. what ever it is you are stuck with it. Wireless you can put a taller pole, bigger mast, higher gain aerials, cut back a tree, even sometimes point at a different base station.

Gigiwagga

Chaz wrote:

For what its worth - your connection is the first we have seen nationally that has perfect LOS but has a huge fluctuation of signal across different locations on your roof. We want to get this fixed, and as you have acknowledged, we have sent our best engineers to try and get to the bottom of the story. It has our full attention - we need to get to the bottom of this issue.

Chaz, Thanks for your attention and commitment on this issue your lads were truly exasperated with the peculiarities of the signal as one of your engineers pointed out I may be in the path of a signal from eircon mast to the front of my house passing directly across my house towards Churchfield mast, at the far side of the city. Maybe Watty, you could throw some light on this, your input is very informing. Thanks again Chaz.

watty

If you drag mouse across the text and do Ctrl C the highlight is copied

Ctrl V pastes it:

Downstream
Frequency		Power	0 dBmV
Signal to Noise Ratio	29 dB	Modulation	QAM64
Upstream
Frequency		Power	41 dBmV
Upstream Data Rate	5120 Ksym/sec	Modulation	QPSK

Downstream = RX
Upstream = TX

Those signals look OK for about 6km to 10km distance. What is your distance?

Mutant_Fruit

Frequency		Power	1 dBmV
Signal to Noise Ratio	31 dB	Modulation	QAM64
Upstream
Frequency		Power	35 dBmV
Upstream Data Rate	5120 Ksym/sec	Modulation	QPSK

I had an engineer over yesterday to look at my connection, since he left i now have 31dB SNR instead of 36 (on downstream) and power level has dropped from 10 dBmV to 1dBmV and my upstream power has dropped from 40dBmV to 35dBmV. Is this a good thing?

Anyway, after he left, the connection seemed unchanged, but i was left a name to talk to within digiweb. So i rang up, got put through to this guy who really knew what he was talking about. He didn't try and fob me off saying there was nothing wrong, he told me he had seen the packetloss himself and didn't need me to email in screenshots and whatnot (quite unlike IBB who seemed incapable to notice 20% packetloss, and when they did, they blamed it on my setup repeatedly). He then moved me to a different sector and the connection is packetloss free. (well, about 40 of 12,000 packets were lost... nothing much).

I initially spoke to him about 2pm i think and he promised to ring me back by 5pm after talking to the engineers. At 5:03 he rang back. I was really surprised about that. Hats off to ye. If i had been treated like IBB were treating me, the connection would've been gone by now. Keep up that level of tech support and you'll keep a lot of people happy.

(on a side note, the engineer who came out seemed pretty clueless about what "packetloss" meant, and barely seemed to know what a ping was. I wasn't too impressed about that at all. He also seemed to have quite a few problems with his own laptop :rolleyes: )

watty

There are bassically two kinds of people that go out:
1) Installers. These guys are experts on which end of the drill is pointy and will not damge your property installing, adjusting or moving equipment. They may only recently have got a laptop. Chorus / Sky etc didn't give them laptops.

2)Technicians. These guys know their Pings from their ipconfigs and their subnets from their gateways. You only get one of these if all activity with phone and installer gives no result. They cost more and don't directly generate any revenue. Some operators can't see the point of having them. They are less good at drilling holes.

There are also Engineers. These need have spent 4 to 8 years in college and about 5 years doing mysterious things in offices and labs before they are useful in the field. Many operators won't let them talk to customers at all, as they might really try to explain what is really wrong. Generally one of these will never visit you.

BT when it was British Post Office Communications had quite a few. The BBC also had many before being forced to sell the Transmitter network and much broadcast equipment became simple enough and reliable enough to be operated by DJs, or even Presenters. Many of the RTE Engineers are from the BBC or trained in BBC Evesham Training Centre (Which as part of the UK master plan to make everyone equllay dumb, I think has been sold off)

BT still has some. I met one at IEE lecture recently. He is in the Irish part of BT that does Wireless links etc and can't get Broadband

At one time Siemens in Germany trained more Engineers than the Entire British Isles Graduate system.

Gigiwagga

Watty I'm about 2km from Collins Barracks transmitter I have a full clear view of the entire mast, if you imagine Cork city being a bowl shape, Collins Barracks is on the northern lip I am pretty much on the southern lip with all the ground between us being at a considerably lower level. I live on Quaker Road which I share with a rather large Eircon mast which also beams across the city, are Eircon impairing my signal, from one of my back windows the signal is -7 23dB from the next window the signal is -3 26dB and from the next it's -1 29dB pretty major differences in 4m distance. Any ideas ?

watty

-1dBmV & 29dB S/N should be fairly good.

Here is an experiment to tell if a nearby source is desensing or interfering.

Cut a thick piece of corragated cardboad (from supermarket box / tray etc), about 8" to 18" deep (20cm to 45cm, deeper is better.). You can tape bits together. Make it so it will fit snugly around the aerial panel but open at the front and back. It is like a big lens hood, Glue or tape a single piece of aluminium foil (turkey or cooking foil) around the outside. Slip it on the aerial and see what the connection is like.

To make it work better so that signals coming in at an angle do not pass through the cardboard inside and reflect off the aluminium, you can soak the card board a little in slightly salty water (cheap stealth fighter paint while it is wet!) and compare.

If it has an effect you can compare a 10cm dry version with the deepest wet version.

If a short dry version (maybe 20cm) actually makes the system reliable, you can make it permenent ish by putting a plastic bag over the whole affair (radome!).

I wonder how directional the sectors are on the collins mast? perhaps you are close to the overlap of two sectors (if they use sectors) at the -7dBmV and 23dBS/N.

I'd expect your RX signal to be be +6dBmV maybe (without running a simulation) and S/N to be 35dB or better.

Unfortuanately it would cost me about 50,000 Euro to get accurate terrain data from Irish Ordinance Survey for just that area. I use the free SRTM data for my RF modelling and simulation, so it is starting to lose accuracy above VHF, though still slightly useful for WiFi (2GHz). It isn't anything like accurate enough terrain data for 10GHz, which is only 3cm wavelengh.

It would be useful to know the sensitivity and power of the Digiweb base, though I can rougly figure out what it must be from my own distance, reception and TX power.

watty

I measure it 1.1 miles in Google earth
with possible local diffraction.

I looked at this in my Radio planning SW but there really isn't enough detail. Anyone want to give me 1m accuracy terrain data for Cork City?

Gigiwagga

Thats some detail you've got there, thank you for going to so much trouble, check out my very crude illustration indicating my position with regards to Eircons system, I am about 40 m from their mast on Quaker Road. I would find it a bit difficult to access my dish now as digiweb lads have moved it up to my chimney, 3 storey house, I don't want to die. Cork City Boundry indicates the high ground lip I mentioned earlier. I too have Google earth but the detail is a bit lacking at a certain point, great app though.Both at Churchfield and Quaker Road Eircon have big f*** off masts blasting out radio waves, could this explain the interference, Digiweb suspect so to some degree. It might also explain the nightmares, headaches, sudden dribbling, dissappearing underwear etc. Thanks again watty.

Gigiwagga

Heres my Google earth approximation of things, black and white due to file size.

watty

You can save a .kmz and send it to someone and then when they open it they get the same Google earth view.

Boards doesn't allow .kmz so I put it in a .zip

(XP often wont create a zip, so copy an existing one, rename it and delete contents )

It looks like my "wireless lens hood" about 18" deep might cure it it it is the Eircom signal.

How well is it working now?

Note: click to open attachment and select OPEN not "SAVE to disk". Double click on the enclosed KMZ file and Google Earth will take you there.

It seems to be a compressed version of the xml below you get when you "copy" and "paste"

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://earth.google.com/kml/2.0">
<Placemark>
  <name>Quaker Road, Cork</name>
  <LookAt>
    <longitude>-8.469875888445261</longitude>
    <latitude>51.89256048966055</latitude>
    <range>480.0938940260402</range>
    <tilt>-1.510019362579039</tilt>
    <heading>0.0363977636794514</heading>
  </LookAt>
  <styleUrl>root://styleMaps#default+nicon=0x307+hicon=0x317</styleUrl>
  <Point>
    <coordinates>-8.469523405301345,51.8918906104878,0</coordinates>
  </Point>
</Placemark>
</kml>

Gigiwagga

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: I think your hood might be the solution for me , Chaz said in a previous post they were actively trying to rectify this problem. I wish I knew about the screen/hood before they moved my dish on Friday, at least it would confirm what was causing the problem. On the Friday the Digiweb engineer did a test from his van ten yards down the road with the dish sitting on the dash with the windows closed and got a +3/ 35dB signal from the ground considerably better than mine which is 40' higher and much better LoS. I might have to make the hood out of Foamex to make it weather proof. I'll wait to hear from Chaz maybe Thomson have custom hood for this exact situation, time will tell. Thanks for the input watty, mind expanding:)

watty

My antenna is only about 6ft of ground. On the roof I doubt I would get a signal at all.

I would guess they don't have any kind of thing like I have suggested.

Thompson don't make the RF 10Ghz to cable convertor. It is Ogier Electronics
http://www.ogierelectronics.com/
( Also a creature in Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" Series)

They say:
over a radius of 10 km at 10 GHz. I'm 12.5km, so I can't complain.

(it is a different product for 25km on 3.5GHz)

daveharlowe

daveharlowe wrote:

Hi all,
3) I'm getting poor upload and download speeds:
d/l=54.8kbits/sec; u/l=62.9kbit/sec
I'm getting this from both ftp.esat.net and
http://www.irishisptest.com/myspeed/

I did get a call during the week, but things were fine then...I'll email customer support again.

A complaint was sent to customer service on saturday night. Since yesterday afternoon, the upload and download speeds are back to normal.

It does looks like a QOS "traffic shape" was applied to my IP....but I'll probably never know.

regards,
Dave

watty

I find irishisptest can vary by 10:1 on speed, while download from heanet.ie stays in the 240k BYTEs/s to 285 k Bps ballpark, so I think it can underestimate your speed.

philoreilly

Hughesy wrote:

Just noticed i got €237.99 debited from my cc...
Don't have a clue why its this price as there was no bill!!!:mad:

Had it since december so install + 3 months bb???

3 months bb = 42.35 * 3 = €127.05

installation must = €110.94

Yeah i got the same bill.... no idea of what the feck they are billing me for.... €250... but i got mine installed during the 'free installation' promotion last nov. and my phone line still does not work...... total tossers.... i am awaiting a response from the company to see what they paln to do regarding my phone connection which they now say will never work, welll thanks for that, 5hitheads.... if i dont hear from them i will remove the crap on my roof myself and feck in in the bin...... cant wait for magnet to be available in my area.......

watty

Magnet??? Well maybe the BB is OK, but the TV service is a joke.

stimpson

OK, the lads were out to my house on Friday to do the install - 16 days after ordering. They were at it for a couple of hours and they said they had a signal but couldn't get an internet conneciton and I'd have to ring support. After 20 mins on hold I got to talk to someone who said to reboot the modem. I'd tried this a number of times with no luck. He put me on hold and then said they were working on allocating IP numbers. I rang back a couple of hours later and they swiched on my phone line - but still no net. Another hour and all was well. Speeds look good on irishisptest.com.

A couple of things though - support costs a fortune on a mobile
Still only works on USB - ethernet wouldn't work at all
My DECT phone doesn't ring correctly.

Overall I'm a happy camper. 7/10 - 9/10 if I can sort the ethernet & phone problems

watty

stimpson wrote:

A couple of things though - support costs a fortune on a mobile
Still only works on USB - ethernet wouldn't work at all
My DECT phone doesn't ring correctly.

There are a few different numbers to ring, inc geographic. If you have a CORPORATE account with Ericom they charge 1 Euro a minute or more from landline!

Your Ethernet on PC must be configured wrong. Without knowing which OS and PCI or ISA slot and what you might have done with Ethernet before I can't comment further.

Many Dect phones don't work too well even on land line unfortunately. If it works with any ordinary phone try a different brand of Dect phone.

The Digiweb box has no firewall:
Disable Netbios/MS Bindings on the network connnection in use and if IIS, Personal Web server or Telnet Server or anything similar is running in Services, disable it. Then you are as well off as many firewall products.

The Digiweb box should never be connected direct to a LAN, either through a PC set as a dedicated Firewall with two network ports or using a Firewall/Router box (about 200 Euro).

stimpson

The only support number I saw advertised is an 1890 number. I just hope I won't be needing support too often!

The Ethernet is on the motherboard and I'm using XP Pro (sp2 and all the security updates etc). And I've used it before with a crossover cable to my Mac so I don't think thats the problem.

It seems to connect initially (I think it's just conected to the modem though) but then says it's trying to get an address, and after a few minutes it says "this machine has limited or no conectivity...." It's exactly what was happening with the USB connection before it started working on Friday. I'm going to grab an ethernet cable in work today to see if thats the problem.

I would like to get it sorted as I want to invest in a wireless router and sort out the rest of the house.

And I do have the machiine firewalled but thanks for the tip!

Mutant_Fruit

stimpson wrote:

Firewall/Router box (about 200 Euro).

Nah, you shouldn't be paying more than €100 inc delivery for a good wireless firewall/router box, an ethernet only one would be cheaper still.

watty

Some examples would be useful. Depends ones definition of "good" and "about" though. I know there are cheaper places than PC World, but that was my impression there, so I built one out of an old P90, a couple of Network cards and Software lying around. The stuff would only be going to dump or attic otherwise. I'm curious as to what you get for €100 inclusive.

watty

Oddly it works wiithout a cross over cable, or the cable I used at random from my box of patch cables was a cross over cable. I did wonder.. But then the IBB "wifi" style box works with a regular ethernet cable. The "bindings" disable (Advanced Advanced Settings Bindings in XP Network panel) is a little known tip. Doing that on a Production Nt4.0 box connected to internet ment zero issues with patches in 4 years. Many worms etc exploit SMB/ Netbios etc services. It blocks some things XP firewall doesn't