Collating complaints against IBB.

Blaster99

Here's a thing I can't really understand. With irishisptest I nearly always get diabolical upload speeds (right now 24.6kbps) but with adslguide.co.uk they're usually ok (right now 1871kbps). So it's not a backhaul issue or a problem between myself and the mast. You're getting good upload speeds to irishisptest.com so it's not a problem with that site in general. I'm either sharing a specific path to whatever piece of transit gets me to irishisptest.com with a bunch of people who're hammering it and you're not, or something is misconfigured somewhere.

I'm dumping them in the near future so I don't really care anymore.

dub45

arcane99 wrote:

Hi all,

I have just been having a discussion with Jeremy Nel - Chief Operating Officer of Irish Broadband about the past months problems. Thanks Mac

From what he was saying, I dont think he sees the scale of the problem on his network over the past month. I hope to talk to him again tomorrow. So ........

And hopefully, he will be able to post a response here.

Many Thanks

If Mr Nel is really unaware of the problems facing IBB then surely both he and his company are in deep trouble? (I am not a customer of IBB but just reading the copious threads here about IBB would make anyone aware that IBB have many serious problems)


1.Surely the volume of complaints that IBB are getting over the phone are reported on internally? If they are not then what does that say about the state of the Company?

2. Surely the apparent significant number of customers who are leaving are being broughth to managment's attention? Not to mention the people who claim to be cancelling their direct debits?

3. Haven't there been various admissions from IBB staff reported on boards that the service is not up to scratch? Surely this has to be getting made known to senior management?

4. Haven't IBB given promises every so often that things will improve in a month or two when such and such a repair is carried out? Are senior management not aware of such promises?

5. Does IBB not plan and monitor capacity?

6. It would seem to me that IBB are open to complaints to both the ASA and the Director of Consumer Affairs as they are not apparently providing anywhere near the service they claim to provide and continue to take on new customers and of course take current customers monthly subscriptions.

7. Apparently people who complain are being told 'lies' about spyware being the cause of the problems this of course is ludicrous and speaks volumes about IBB's concern for their customers.

8. Have IBB any quality control mechanisms in place to monitor performance and if they are not showing up problems what does it say about their usefulness - on the other hand if they are showing up problems they are either not getting to Mr Nel or he is being misinformed. And if they have not got quality control mechanisms in place why havent they?

9. Their accounts department appears to be in some trouble too to judge by reports on here.

This type of non performance by a company brings broadband into disrepute and we should all be concerned about that no matter which isp we are customers of. It is in all our interests to demand high standards in every respect: the speed we are paying for, Good customer support and a reliable accounts department that will bill regularly and accurately - surely that is not too much to ask for?

It is bad enough that we are so low in the varous league tables in Europe but to have to put up with the likes of the so called speeds that IBB customers are getting and to read that ESATbb is incapable of running an accounts department only adds to an already dire situation

joolsveer

Please see attached jpeg. This is typical of the speeds I have been getting during October. I am in Clonsilla, Dublin 15.

Moonbeam

arcane99 - voice conversation or via boards?
Out of interest

arcane99

Moonbeam wrote:

arcane99 - voice conversation or via boards?
Out of interest

Email

arcane99

Blaster99 wrote:

Here's a thing I can't really understand. With irishisptest I nearly always get diabolical upload speeds (right now 24.6kbps) but with adslguide.co.uk they're usually ok (right now 1871kbps).......

I'm dumping them in the near future so I don't really care anymore.

I use irishisptest.ie and testmy.net to verify my results and they both check out. But the downloading speeds of webpages and files confirm a problem.
What I have noticed is that all http, ftp, voip etc are dying on their feet @3kb. But if I use a torrent client I can achieve 40+kb. Maybe this is down to the way torrent makes a lot more connections to different hosts instead of just one.

I still think that packetloss is the problem.
Packetloss 28 Oct 9:30am
Google
Ping statistics for 66.102.9.99:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 11, Lost = 9 (45% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 32ms, Maximum = 73ms, Average = 45ms
Heanet
Ping statistics for 193.1.219.79:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 14, Lost = 6 (30% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 12ms, Maximum = 60ms, Average = 29ms
IBB Dns Server
Ping statistics for 62.231.32.10:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 12, Lost = 8 (40% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 20ms, Maximum = 109ms, Average = 60ms
My Gateway
Ping statistics for 83.141.118.129:
Packets: Sent = 20, Received = 20, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 4ms, Maximum = 100ms, Average = 16ms

ricey

you can tell him he lost me, and can stick his
crappy dial up connection .

nadir

For the first 2 months of the service we had no problems, upload and download rates of 124 KB/S
We then got upgraded to a 2 Megline , soon afterwards speeds dropped to 20 - 40 KB/S
After a few weeks like this the service went to its full rate 250 KB/S Full Duplex for about two weeks, and then died back down to 20 / 40 KB/S , and has remained like this for the last 3 / 4 Months.
At first we were getting massive packet loss, 40% + but that seems to be down to about 5 % now. However I notice alot of arp requests coming in that shouldnt be. The routing table should already know where people are, here is a random minute of arp tcpdump.

22:01:52.689182 arp who-has 62.231.60.204 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.689731 arp who-has 62.231.60.209 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.689731 arp who-has 62.231.60.207 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.690891 arp who-has 62.231.60.211 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.691257 arp who-has 62.231.60.233 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.691624 arp who-has 62.231.60.247 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.695725 arp who-has 62.231.60.195 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.696019 arp who-has 62.231.60.194 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.696366 arp who-has 62.231.60.224 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.696873 arp who-has 62.231.60.225 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.697209 arp who-has 62.231.60.246 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:52.699162 arp who-has 62.231.60.231 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.235809 arp who-has 62.231.60.208 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.335320 arp who-has 62.231.60.204 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.335820 arp who-has 62.231.60.209 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.336663 arp who-has 62.231.60.225 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.336968 arp who-has 62.231.60.246 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.435059 arp who-has 62.231.60.253 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.436981 arp who-has 62.231.60.196 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.437317 arp who-has 62.231.60.194 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.438049 arp who-has 62.231.60.224 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.535728 arp who-has 62.231.60.247 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.536293 arp who-has 62.231.60.195 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.634934 arp who-has 62.231.60.211 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.635697 arp who-has 62.231.60.233 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:53.636033 arp who-has 62.231.60.231 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:54.039022 arp who-has 62.231.60.225 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:54.039945 arp who-has 62.231.60.246 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:01:54.134764 arp who-has 62.231.60.204 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:02:11.086018 arp who-has 62.231.60.223 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie
22:02:12.036018 arp who-has 62.231.60.223 tell DN04-fe-1-3-1-160-guinness.irishbroadband.ie

Pings and traceroutes dont mean much in this scenario, the routing table can change, means nothing unless its completely all over the place, which it's not, when you arn't downloading a file or doing anything else the speed is 30k or so, and you can browse the web, but any other access to the internet will kill everything including web browsing. This should not happen.

I get pings of about 90 ms to google, but if i download a file this goes straight to 3000 m/s , my basic problem is that I want what the service is supposed to be (128kb/s - 256 kb/s) I'd be happy if I was just getting the service I pay for, but I'm not, and havnt been for months.
We rang the helpdesk a few times, they guy on the phone asked me to do some pings and traceroutes and stuff and did some tweaking on his side. He then asked me to download a freebsd iso from heanet. I got 35 / 40 K/s (which is about as good as our conenction gets) , he then tried to explain to me that there were 8 bits in a byte and that that was 300 Kbits/ which was what our conenction should be...
However I insisted that this was incorrect and that we should be getting 256 KB/s, after a while he came to the conclusion that it is normal for this to happen because of contention, to which I replied that contention is always an issue on any network but that the mean rate should be what is advertised. For example when I lived in holland I had a 1 Meg Cable connection, but I got 1 Meg constantly.

He seemed like a nice guy so I didnt want to go ott, but it really ticks me off when people try to come up with moot technical explanaions, assuming I dont know much.
Obviously if you have a 10 meg line for example and you try to route 10 machines through it it's going to go slow. But you couldnt possibly advertise it as a 10 meg line or even as a 1 meg line, that would be incorrect on a technical level and as such would be wrong to sell.




So I dont know, we are stuck in this contract, I'm not sure what to do. Can you guys just give us the bandwidth we are paying for, like I mean, at least answer this post if you are reading.
I'm pretty sure you guys read this board from time to time.

spooky donkey

dub45 wrote:

If Mr Nel is really unaware of the problems facing IBB then surely both he and his company are in deep trouble? (I am not a customer of IBB but just reading the copious threads here about IBB would make anyone aware that IBB have many serious problems)


1.Surely the volume of complaints that IBB are getting over the phone are reported on internally? If they are not then what does that say about the state of the Company?

2. Surely the apparent significant number of customers who are leaving are being broughth to managment's attention? Not to mention the people who claim to be cancelling their direct debits?

3. Haven't there been various admissions from IBB staff reported on boards that the service is not up to scratch? Surely this has to be getting made known to senior management?

4. Haven't IBB given promises every so often that things will improve in a month or two when such and such a repair is carried out? Are senior management not aware of such promises?

5. Does IBB not plan and monitor capacity?

6. It would seem to me that IBB are open to complaints to both the ASA and the Director of Consumer Affairs as they are not apparently providing anywhere near the service they claim to provide and continue to take on new customers and of course take current customers monthly subscriptions.

7. Apparently people who complain are being told 'lies' about spyware being the cause of the problems this of course is ludicrous and speaks volumes about IBB's concern for their customers.

8. Have IBB any quality control mechanisms in place to monitor performance and if they are not showing up problems what does it say about their usefulness - on the other hand if they are showing up problems they are either not getting to Mr Nel or he is being misinformed. And if they have not got quality control mechanisms in place why havent they?

9. Their accounts department appears to be in some trouble too to judge by reports on here.

This type of non performance by a company brings broadband into disrepute and we should all be concerned about that no matter which isp we are customers of. It is in all our interests to demand high standards in every respect: the speed we are paying for, Good customer support and a reliable accounts department that will bill regularly and accurately - surely that is not too much to ask for?

It is bad enough that we are so low in the varous league tables in Europe but to have to put up with the likes of the so called speeds that IBB customers are getting and to read that ESATbb is incapable of running an accounts department only adds to an already dire situation

Could not have put it better my self man. Nice post.

Sumary of my issues:
Bad dowlonad speeds, worse up load speeds. 25kb/10kb/ for over 3 weeks now 60/20kb.
Losing packets cant not game on line at all for a month now
Cant use VOIP
Could not use motor tax.ie to tax my car or use any web sites. ( all my boards.ie posting is done in work )
Could not download 6meg`s of email with outlook.
BB has been usless for a month now.
I know i will still get billed the full 48 yoyo for this terriable service.

spooky donkey

dub45 wrote:

If Mr Nel is really unaware of the problems facing IBB then surely both he and his company are in deep trouble? (I am not a customer of IBB but just reading the copious threads here about IBB would make anyone aware that IBB have many serious problems)


1.Surely the volume of complaints that IBB are getting over the phone are reported on internally? If they are not then what does that say about the state of the Company?

2. Surely the apparent significant number of customers who are leaving are being broughth to managment's attention? Not to mention the people who claim to be cancelling their direct debits?

3. Haven't there been various admissions from IBB staff reported on boards that the service is not up to scratch? Surely this has to be getting made known to senior management?

4. Haven't IBB given promises every so often that things will improve in a month or two when such and such a repair is carried out? Are senior management not aware of such promises?

5. Does IBB not plan and monitor capacity?

6. It would seem to me that IBB are open to complaints to both the ASA and the Director of Consumer Affairs as they are not apparently providing anywhere near the service they claim to provide and continue to take on new customers and of course take current customers monthly subscriptions.

7. Apparently people who complain are being told 'lies' about spyware being the cause of the problems this of course is ludicrous and speaks volumes about IBB's concern for their customers.

8. Have IBB any quality control mechanisms in place to monitor performance and if they are not showing up problems what does it say about their usefulness - on the other hand if they are showing up problems they are either not getting to Mr Nel or he is being misinformed. And if they have not got quality control mechanisms in place why havent they?

9. Their accounts department appears to be in some trouble too to judge by reports on here.

This type of non performance by a company brings broadband into disrepute and we should all be concerned about that no matter which isp we are customers of. It is in all our interests to demand high standards in every respect: the speed we are paying for, Good customer support and a reliable accounts department that will bill regularly and accurately - surely that is not too much to ask for?

It is bad enough that we are so low in the varous league tables in Europe but to have to put up with the likes of the so called speeds that IBB customers are getting and to read that ESATbb is incapable of running an accounts department only adds to an already dire situation

Could not have put it better my self man. Nice post.

Sumary of my issues:
Bad dowlonad speeds, worse up load speeds. 25kb/10kb/ for over 3 weeks now 60/20kb.
Losing packets cant not game on line at all for a month now
Cant use VOIP
Could not use motor tax.ie to tax my car or use any web sites. ( all my boards.ie posting is done in work )
Could not download 6meg`s of email with outlook.
BB has been usless for a month now.
I know i will still get billed the full 48 yoyo for this terriable service.

sisyphus

I replied that contention is always an issue on any network but that the mean rate should be what is advertised. For example when I lived in holland I had a 1 Meg Cable connection, but I got 1 Meg constantly.

@Nadir. Can you please explain what your understanding of contention is?
For instance, if I have a 2 Mb line with a 10:1 contention ratio, then should I always be getting 2 Mbps, without any exceptions, or should I be getting at least 2 Mbps/10 = 200 kbps?
I'm not very clear on this issue...

aubhall

Graphs
a) for today
b) week
c) month
d) download speed today

arcane99

Heres a brief overview of the past month.

http://testmy.net/personal_stats_30d.php?user_name=dhaughton99&m=10&d=28&Y=2005

Anyone got more of these to post?

banquo

I'm on 3mbps Business Connection: sub 2k speeds for over a week; no reply to my 5 emails, and the tech help informs me that my problem has been 'passed on' to the 'higher' form of technical help. When will it be fixed?

'Hopefully soon'.

maples180

I posted against IBB a few weeks ago. I re-empahsize that I'm fed up. IBB Breeze Speeds are nowhere like advertised. Randomly the connection drops down to a 56k like dial-up connection and stays like that for days. I mailed multiple times the support. No answers at all. The support is non-existent. Sometimes I feel I have been scamed someting like the Nigerian scam mail. I noticed lately that four IBB aerials have srpung up in the roofs on a few houses in the estate where I live. Last week I was so pissed off about receiving no support from IBB and dialup style connection that I went to knock the doors of the houses with the aerial on the roof to ask if they were seeing the same problems. One guy told me he was not a heavy internet user but noticed latetly that the speed was very slow almost unusable. Same as his old dialup speed. There was nobody in two houses (I'll go back sometimes). The people living in the fourth house were students and they were like dragons to IBB. They had the same experience that I had and could use the connection to the college properly. Slow speed, sometimes no speed at at all, just connection down. They had only one month to go before the year was over......and certainly they will not dream of staying with IBB they said.....but I have 5 more months.....

I'm very busy during the day and have no time to chase IBB .
I'm a lucky guy though. My next door neighboor has a Eircom connection....
and my wireless card can access his wireless router with a strong signal (the walls are thin, paper like in the new housing estates in Dublin). I can even hear when he farts. I explained my problems and he gave me access without charge to his Eircom connection until my IBB contract expires. It has been great after I have been using Eircom for the last week or so. No problems at all, it's like a dream. Obviously Eircom are not a nice bunch, but at least there are no technical problems. IBB are useless.

So for the moment I'm paying IBB until the contract ends and use Eircom for free. In 5 months I will have my own Eircom line or Smart or Esat. No more IBB or Wireless again.
Thanks to my neighbor

Blaster99

What mast are you on?

dan99989

I'm on the Bray Mast, with the Breeze 1MB connection . I know the contention ratio is mega high (48:1), but that cant be used to cover the fact that i'm getting dial up speeds most of the time...

There's some nice screens and pings HERE

And the latest tonight is:


So yes, you can add me to one of the "very dis-satisfied customers" of IBB. I've sent 3 emails over the past 3 weeks, heard nothing back. I was even lucky enough to talk to an actual human being on their service line about 2 weeks ago - we did some crap tests, pings, modem cycles, ie: nothing i hadnt done before - all to be told that he would pass it on and that i would recieve a call back. I heard NOTHING. The whole reason i went with them (like many i suppose) was the fact that you can cut out Eircom and their rip line rental. I even signed up for Blueface (the IBB connection was fine for the first few weeks, so VOIP was working great), but now thats mostly unusable.

I am at a loss as to why they never reply to mails, barely ever answer their phones and never try and keep customers by showing some interest in their problems. I can honestly see myself crawling back to Eircom (or BT), tail between my legs, and take their DSL offerings. At least then i may be able to load Google!

Ugh, think i'll start saving these pings daily in the vague hope of getting an answer/resolution to the connection issues

Gaz25

I've just being reading through the threads. I would be interested in joining the mail list, but im not really sure what the fight is all about?

spooky donkey

They cant reply to youre emails cause they delete them. Any one that has ever put tracking on their emails has said that.

Ardent

Macker1 wrote:

I left IBB as a customer back in Sept after 2 months of ****e service. I'm still owed a refund but I'm not holding my breath. You can tell Mr Nel that he's in denial and despite sticking his head in the sand like an ostrich the issues unless recitfied will not disappear. Furthermore as a former customer I have no hesitation in warning off other potential victims away from IBB. Its the very least that can be done so that other people will not suffer.

Echo that. I left in September as well. I have the same advice for anyone thinking about IBB.

spooky donkey

I dont think IBB will care as long as their new sign ups are coming in faster than loosing customers. Its easier to sign up than sign off.

gavjd

I'm on ripwave in dublin city centre. Service was fine until about two months ago. Last month it was basically unusable - unable to maintain a connection during the day. Now, the connection is more stable, but packet loss is high and speeds are literally dialup speeds (3kb/s). Looking forward to returning the heap of junk soon as I can manage a replacement. I continually advise everyone I know looking for broadband to steer clear of these cowboys.

jesus_thats_gre

Surely they realise the cost of keeping an existing customer is considerably less than that of getting a new customer?

Anyway, I am in Leopardstown and working off 3Rock.. Am actually a happy customer:

C:\Documents and Settings\Luke>ping www.boards.ie

Pinging www.boards.ie [82.195.136.250] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=22ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=57
Reply from 82.195.136.250: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 82.195.136.250:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 17ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 21ms


For along time I had very severe packet loss but I complained and literally threatended to take the arial down myself and **** it through their front window unless they fixed it. They did fix it and since then my pings and download speeds have been perfect. I honestly think they have prioritised my traffic or something to be honest. Everytime I call now I get put straight through to a team leader of somesort..



On the other hand, I actually got a few mates in Dundalk to get the service. To say the service is a disaster really would not be doing it justice. We have called about 17 times now and were primised call back everytime. We are yet to receive a callback. I can see why Dublin would be a problem as there is likely alot of users of each high site. But Dundalk?

aubhall

spooky donkey wrote:

They cant reply to youre emails cause they delete them. Any one that has ever put tracking on their emails has said that.

Well all i know, the only direct reply to an e-mail i have got was the 1st one i sent. Although any i sent since were reaf back to me over the phone.

Was onto them again today.... no update

They thanked me for my patiance.... i almost exploded.....:mad:

nadir

sisyphus wrote:

@Nadir. Can you please explain what your understanding of contention is?
For instance, if I have a 2 Mb line with a 10:1 contention ratio, then should I always be getting 2 Mbps, without any exceptions, or should I be getting at least 2 Mbps/10 = 200 kbps?
I'm not very clear on this issue...

10.1 contention means afaik on a basic level, you are being routed through with the same priority as if there were 10 people using the line.
It does NOT mean there are 10 people using your 2 Meg line, I find IBB would have you think this.
For example they should provide a 10 Meg line (probably more) between 10 people, if everyone is using it, you will get one meg, you will be capped at 2 most likely (in this country anyway).
So on average you should be getting 2 Meg considering it's unlikely more than half the people will be using your cell at the same time.
Now in Europe and such, like when I was in Holland, they would have a 10 Meg line between 10, they say you have a 1 Meg or two meg connection, however you are not capped at one or two, you get whats available, so if no one is using it you get all 10 Megs, this is fair queuing.
One thing about contention afaik, statistically related; the larger the contention scale the better the performance , eg 10.100 is better than 1.10 , although you are unlikely to get stats like that from a company.

edit: even IBB agree http://boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=319482

Turner

Threads merged as both were along the same lines, also re-sticky'd

Chief.

scsa

I'm living in Clontarf and I've got ripwave and it's gone to utter ****e in the last month.

I haven't been able to connect for more that a couple of minutes at a time for the last few days, and the irishisptest.com usually rates it at around dial-up speeds. I've emailed IBB twice; yesterday and last saturday and I've got no response. Also tried to phone them yesterday and I gave up after being on hold for over half an hour.

I left a ping to google.com open for a few hours last night and the stats said 94% packet loss!! Online now with an o2 GPRS card, at 48k it's slower than a 56k modem but at least it's working...

What's worse is since I'm renting I can't get a phone line in, so I don't have any options but IBB! I can only pray NTL or clearwire expand their networks...

ilovehoovering

i've been on IBB Ripwave for 2 whole days from the city centre and i'm sick of it already. it's barely faster than dial-up.

Tazz T

Can someone enlighten me as to how to test your ping so I can display my results?

Cheers

RangeR

Tazz T wrote:

Can someone enlighten me as to how to test your ping so I can display my results?

Cheers

There are a couple of things you can do. I wouldn't use the straight ping

ping www.boards.ie

As this only give 4 pings and isn't a true reflection

Make it do more pings by typing

ping www.boards.ie -n 1000

This will force it to do 1000 pings, giving you a more acurate average. Substitute 1000 for a higher or lower number. The higher the number, the longer it will take. If you are gaming, surfing, downloading, the pings will be affected.

You can also download pingplotter. When you set this up, it will piong a site at regular intervals until you stop it. Give nice results and easily read.

The normal pings above, are run from the command line [DOS prompt].

Ping Irish sites, that have their wserver hosted in Ireland to give a good representation of good Irish pings.

Anyone else?

Nevyn

well i got an email today, and I think i will share it.

---

Original Message

---

Subject: IBB
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 12:19:09 +0100
From: *****************@irishbroadband.net>
Reply-To: <***********@irishbroadband.net>
Organization: Private
To: <theadydal@eircom.net>


Dear Theadylal,



I suggest that that people monitor a) signal strength b) signal quality c) antenna hopping within the modem and d)

Download speeds at. Do all at the same time as this will give some indication as to whether it is a signal problem due to location / buildings /weather etc. or IBB cannot handle what they are supposed to. IBB are licenced from ComReg to use their spectrum in an efficient manner – they cannot get a licence to use that bandwith and just hoard it, not provide the service and expect to keep that licence – when they are using bandwith at a particular frequency in a given location and this

this excludes anybody else from attempting to provide a service within this spectrum. That’s one of the reasons you need a licence in the first place – THEY MUST USE THE SPACE they are licenced for efficiently and not just buy it and exclude a capable ISP from providing a proper service.



I suggest the compilation you have kindly offered to do should be well edited and a complaint outlining the situation

to:



a) IBB board of directors



and at the same time copied to



Minister Noel Dempsey (comms minister – he seemed eager in his TIF ANNUAL CONFERENCE – TELECOMMUNICATIONS FOR EDUCATION speech a couple of days ago)



and also to the consumer protection ombudsman in Brussels, Belguim


****

Turner

Fair play to him for responding in such a way.

sisyphus

*************@irishbroadband.net>

Who is this guy? Does he work for IBB? Thought all the internal email addy's had .ie extensions?

damien

That guy is so fired!

Tomohawk

That guy is so illiterate!

RangeR

Thaedydal wrote:

well i got an email today, and I think i will share it.

You could have at least taken his email address out of it.

askit

I as an IT professional regularly get asked about matters relating to computing, broadband, etc by friends, family, neighbours, teammates and others as i'm sure alot of people on this forum do also. My word is my bond and always will be.
I can safely say that when anyone asks me about broadband offerings in Ireland i will reply "Do not touch Irish Broadband with a barge pole" as the carry on reported on this thread is unacceptable. Support is the biggest issue from my experience and i sure as hell would not wish anyone to have to call IBB support if they carry on the way they do.
Funny thing is I have been warned off IBB by some of my IT friends so word is spreading about their incompetence!!!

Turner

IrishTLR wrote:

You could have at least taken his email address out of it.

Done

Tazz T

OK.

I've just done an ISP Test. Don't know how to post the graph but it looks pretty pathetic with my download nestled below a 28.8 modem and my up load in the very corner of the chart.

Download 24.0 kbps
upload of 11.0 kbps.
Quality of service 7%
Round trip time 4834ms
Max Pause 3375ms

Dr Bolouswki

I was thankful to ahve Irish BB as I had no alternative... however, reliability was awful - I had really poor service until I complained and even then it was still patchy. I kept ping records etc for 3 months to have a strong case against them, but eventually I jsut let the year run out (I moved house anyway) and then sent them an email discontinuing the service and informed my bank to refuse all direct debits from them.

They replied to my email 14 weeks after I unsubscribed, and they have still nto contacted me about collecting their modem (I assume the mast is still sittingon the roof of my old rented accomodation).

If you're in a hideous jam and have no other way of getting broadband, my experience was that it was intermittantly good - but if you face any problems, you might as well sing rather than expect a response from them....

nialler

well let me tell yiz folks. I got a biz line from IBB, initially 2mb but upgraded to 3 after many phonecalls. 4-5 months it ran with perfectly (I'm about 200m from odlums). Then the problems started to happen, I VPN into the office a lot and screen refreshes in both remote access and apple's remote desktop were lousy, my usual websites and forums were crawling, started keeping logs, did the tests they recommended, even rewrote them for a mac user and sent it back, kept logs, somehow managed to get a 5.6kbit upload one evening, how slow is that and have been sending in about 3 emails per day. Phoned them constantly, support, what f*cking support, they're useless but they've now made an excuse that odlums is over capacity and they're upgrading I should see a huge difference by next wednesday at the earliest and friday at the latest.

I've asked repeatedly for their equipement to be taken off my property, friday week gentlement and ladies I'm going up with a vice grips and a spanner.


btw if you want a ticket number it's 64375. My business relies on this connection and it's now not a viable solution

dub45

arcane99 wrote:

Hi all,

I have just been having a discussion with Jeremy Nel - Chief Operating Officer of Irish Broadband about the past months problems. Thanks Mac

From what he was saying, I dont think he sees the scale of the problem on his network over the past month. I hope to talk to him again tomorrow. So what I would like to see is users posting their problems from the past month on this thread.

If possible, please include logs, ping results, download screenshots, etc to verify your problem Also include your county and district, so he can see where the main points of failure are and see the scale of the problem. And not just from Today, if you have some stored over the weeks, please post.

And hopefully, he will be able to post a response here.

Many Thanks

When can we expect the IBB response?:rolleyes:

banquo

It always seems to be the same story: grand for 2-4 months and then *crash*.

spitfier

save us obiwan eddie hobbs - you're our only hope.

unhappy_galway_

I have IBB 2Mbit/s 24:1 service since the end of August last. Usual story, great at first, now crap. Since begining of November packet loss varies between 2% at 7am to 25% in the late evening.

2Mbit/s at 24:1 contention implies a CIR (committed information rate) of 83.3kbit/s.
If I try to place a VoIP call, which uses 81kbit/s, and no other traffic on my connection I should have no packet loss. If I just do a ping, which is close to zero bandwidth, I should have no packet loss.
Since I do see packet loss while keeping within the CIR it is clear that IBB
fail to protect the CIR which they are contracted to provide. I.E. they are in breach of contract and I can cancel whenever I want to.

IBB tech support do actually answer the phone (after 30 to 40 minutes) and they have actually replied (not just auto acknowledged) to e-mail. The current story is that they are reworking the backhaul network, this has been the story all month, and I should see an impovment real soon now. If I don't see this improvement next week I am going to let my laywer explain the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services act, and the fairness in consumer contracts EU directive to them.

IBB need to be encouraged to provide at least the minimum contracted service in a proper manner. They may have made a strategic error in setting their prices so low. The nearest competition is Leap who charge EUR 129/month for a 1Mbit/s 8:1 service. The only Digiweb product with an upload CIR sufficient to support VoIP is Metro Xpress at EUR 249/month. And those are before VAT! EUR 40/month before VAT would be absurdly cheap if the service was actually supplied.

spitfier

Okay, I'm just off the phone with IBB's tech support. I tried to be as civil as I could be because I'm sure that it's not the people in tech support who are causing my sub-dialup speeds. I pay for a 2 Megabit line. They sent me an email asking me to download a file from heanet recording the download speed and ping and tracert www.google.com recording the results. I've sent all this on to them and have been told I should receive a response within 24 hours. The recorded results are as follows:

spitfier

unhappy_galway_ wrote:

2Mbit/s at 24:1 contention implies a CIR (committed information rate) of 83.3kbit/s

Can you explain to me once and for all how it is you work out the CIR? I originally thought it would have been 256/24 - though I now know this to be incorrect.

Adey2002

I know this is a double post, but I thought it would be suitable for this thread also.....

Any one who is having a problem with IBB should email and complain to the advertising standards authority... comreg may be toothless but ASAI have an obligation to investigate complaints....

Advertising as a broadband provider and not providing it is against advertising law. IBB are doing so several times a day now with their television adverts.

The person to direct your complaints to is: nodlaigh@asai.ie. In your email explain that IBB are advertising a product which they are not delivering. Where you can, quote speeds etc, but remember the recipient at ASAI may not be IT literate and understand, so try to explain in simple terms as you can. Make comparisons with other broadband suppliers etc. Explain your reasons why you think Irishbroadband should not be allowed to advertise themselves as broadband suppliers.

unhappy_galway_

spitfier wrote:

Can you explain to me once and for all how it is you work out the CIR? I originally thought it would have been 256/24 - though I now know this to be incorrect.

In the real world the CIR is specified in the contract or service level agreement. It is the data rate the customer is entitled to send or receive without incurring loss or abnormal delay. There may also be a specified MIR (maximum information rate or burst rate) which is the maximum the service supplier will allow a customer to use if and when the capacity is free. The MIR may not always be the same as the physical signaling rate of the channel. E.G. BreezeVL systems signal somewhere between 2Mbit/s and 6Mbit/s depending on signal to noise ratio but the MIR is configured to 1, 2, 3, or 4Mbit/s depending on what you have paid for.
IBB don't mention a CIR anywhere but the only fair interpretation for a contended service is that the CIR is the MIR divided by the contention ratio.
In fact the BreezeVL gear only allows the CIR to be set in increments of 128kbit/s so it is probably set to 0 by IBB. In my case at least the configuration of the BreezeVL is not relevent, the problem is in the backhaul.

The important thing about CIR is that the ISP MUST provision adequate bandwidth to satisfy the sum of all customers contracted CIRs AND must protect that bandwidth from the being consumed by high burst rates.

spitfier

IBB don't mention a CIR anywhere but the only fair interpretation for a contended service is that the CIR is the MIR divided by the contention ratio.

2Mbit/s at 24:1 contention implies a CIR (committed information rate) of 83.3kbit/s

.

If the CIR is the MIR divided by the contention ratio how is it you come up with a figure of 83.3kbits? Because when I divide 256kbits by 24 I get 10.6kbits. Also if what you're saying here is correct:

In fact the BreezeVL gear only allows the CIR to be set in increments of 128kbit/s

both of our figures would be incorrect?

I just want to have a leg to stand on if an IBB representative trys to sell me over the phone that "at times when 23 other people sharing your line are online you will get 10kbits per second because 256/24 = 10.6"