I-Stream Solo - One user, One PC?

Matt Simis

So, can any clever individual explain this:

"eircom i-stream solo
For a single user, on a single computer

The product has both a USB port or ethernet option"


So... does that really mean that you cant use SW ICS\NAT ?

If so, how? I mean the ADSL connection obviously doesnt appear to the PC as an always on LAN then?




Matt

m1ke

sounds like a money making scheme to me, most people know it's easy to share the dsl connection over the lan but eircon seem to want to supply you with over priced hardware n the likes.


if i get it i'll be switching off their software / hardware getting a decent dsl router as soon as i can afford it.

lynchie

I dont think that they can stop you using software or hardware NAT. I guess they wont provide you with support if you mention you have NAT etc.. and you are only paying for the solo package.

Meh

does that really mean that you cant use SW ICS\NAT ?

Read the Terms of Service (are they available yet?) -- they may include a prohibition on connecting the ADSL line to multiple computers. Of course, there is no way Eircom will be able to tell if you're running NAT onto an internal LAN...

From a technical point of view, NAT is possible.

longword

Originally posted by Matt Simis
So, can any clever individual explain this:

"eircom i-stream solo
For a single user, on a single computer

The product has both a USB port or ethernet option"

I'd say their main thrust with this is "One port, one PC", assuming that the average subscriber won't be able to find the "ICS" button in Windows. From what SkepticOne was saying, the "Multi" option itself uses a NATing modem+ethernet hub widget to share a single IP with four hosts.

They might ban NAT through their T&Cs. It's difficult, though not impossible, for them to detect the use of NAT so I'd say Solo users will probably safe enough. Of course your 3GB cap is going to be even more painful with multiple users.

Scruff

Of course your 3GB cap is going to be even more painful with multiple users.

But if you had 3 pc users in the house it would make the connection, subscription and equipment costs more realistic if ye already had a network up in the house.

[edit]
just did sums: 1gb extra over the cap will cost €35+, above points are negated if the 3 users are mad downloaders!!:eek: :eek: [/edit]

Matt Simis

Well thats good to hear, hopefully it is just a way for them to sell the HW 4 port ADSL box and not to stop ICS.

Im not to worried about the 3GB a month, thats about 100MB a day! I can just download big stuff in work and use the ADSL connection for gaming and such (which is not a hugh bandwidth hog).



Matt

longword

Originally posted by Scruff

just did sums: 1gb extra over the cap will cost €35+, above points are negated if the 3 users are mad downloaders!!:eek: :eek:

1.3GB/month per user is hardly mad downloading. Downloading 4GB/month on Solo costs a total of €144.86 a month inc. VAT - nearly as much as the 1Mbit/6GB cap. With three users the faster 6GB and uncapped services start to look useful, so the whole user restriction issue becomes moot. The other operators will almost certainly offer something more attractive though.

Originally posted by Matt Simis
Im not to worried about the 3GB a month, thats about 100MB a day! I can just download big stuff in work and use the ADSL connection for gaming and such (which is not a hugh bandwidth hog).

With a 3GB cap devoted exclusively to games and two users playing simultaneously I think you should get around two and a half hours a day for most games. It remains to be seen if Eircom will allow users to get the faster 'non interleaved' ADSL settings for lower pings (you're looking at about 60ms vs. 20ms from that DSLAM configuration option).

BKtje

EDIT: read soemthing to the contrary of what i said and so this post became meaningless. Apologies

Matt Simis

" With a 3GB cap devoted exclusively to games and two users playing simultaneously I think you should get around two and a half hours a day for most games. "

I was going to reply and say you would get more, but after working it out, your.. um right


Average (Single User) Online game uses up 5.5Kps
Per minute thats 330K
Per hour thats: 19.8MB

So, for two users, thats just under 40MB per hour.
80MB for the 2hrs
100MB for 2.5hrs


Personally I find this (just about) acceptable. Since both of us work during the week and play a lot of Single player games anyway, im sure we wouldnt (on average) play for more than 1hr per day during the week, and then have that extra 7hrs (approx) on the weekend, for a total of 11hrs sweet ADSL gaming each weekend... pretty big numbers!




Matt

EyesOnly

mat do u work for eircom or somin 110+€ a month for a 3gb cap pfff.look at any european country i.e UK 23.99 a month (sterlin),
how can they justify a 3gb limit for the price we have to pay

steve-hosting36

In real terms, 3Gb only costs Eircom between € 5 and € 15 depending on the carrier!

Stephen

Balfa

where did you get that figure from, stephen?

Boston

Originally posted by steve-hosting36
In real terms, 3Gb only costs Eircom between € 5 and € 15 depending on the carrier!

Stephen

haaaa in real terms its closer to 5 - 15 cent

po0k

I live in Galway, and from what I can make out Esat should have a few exchanges upgraded by the next month or so. Whch is great, for people in the Cty. I on ther other hand, am about 10km outside the city, and my local exchange is a mile away. I'm also on a DACS line, which dissallows me from it.
Is there anyway to demand that it be taken off as it's the only reason the ine won't take xDSL. The actaul voice quality is suffereing too (very quiet, hard to hear people)

Matt Simis

Eyesonly,


No, I dont work for Eircom, and what does it matter what "other European" countries have to pay???? I mean, till some sort of law is passed that forces everything, everywhere to be the same price, such comparisons are useless.

I know of Cyber Cafes paying 10K per year on crappy 64K leased lines, I think the €100+ per month service is doable. Its not great, but its not aweful either (I remember asking people how much did they think ADSL would come it at in Ireland, and they all thought around €300 per month).

Ill take whats on offer, from who ever offers the best service, and right now unfortunately, thats Eircom.



Matt

Balfa

Originally posted by Boston


haaaa in real terms its closer to 5 - 15 cent

Okay where did YOU get that figure from?

flamegrill

Originally posted by Matt Simis
Eyesonly,


Ill take whats on offer, from who ever offers the best service, and right now unfortunately, thats Eircom.


Matt

Esats packages are looking ok, except for the 1mb down one. the connection fee is a rip off, but the basic one 512/256k is deadly and will work out similar in proce to eircom.

syxpak

get a second line in, for "data only" and then get adsl on that line.

Keeks

Originally posted by flamegrill


Esats packages are looking ok, except for the 1mb down one. the connection fee is a rip off, but the basic one 512/256k is deadly and will work out similar in proce to eircom.

I thought Esat have an installation charge of €125 (ex vat) and a quaterly charge of €270 and that includes all equipmet. according to here anyway. that to me makes esat way cheaper than eicom who charge €165 connection and another €145 for an USB modem. Well thats what it says here anyway.

Or am i missing something (not being smart or anything)

flamegrill

keeks ur right, but dont forget the VAT.

Boston

Originally posted by Balfa


Okay where did YOU get that figure from?

ITs actually to cover the fixed costs of the pipe, there are few variable costs involved. especially with fibre. So basically it depends. but on things for sure, in order to cost 5 euro a gig, you would want to be pushing a tiny amount of data through a huge pipe. If it was that most isp's would be out of business and there would be caps on dial up

Keeks

Originally posted by flamegrill
keeks ur right, but dont forget the VAT.

getting the equipmet for free more than makes up for the VAT

Boston

pointed out to me to clear up what im saying.

the topic, in my opionion was the cost of supplying the bandwidth ie The people who own the network. Now its not worked out by a to give you 100gb's a day to that exchange will cost x amonth a gig. their, as i understand it given, a ball park region of say 1000gigs over a 2mb pipe and theres your fee. its not like a per gig base's that eircom are trying to charge us.

longword

Originally posted by Boston
the topic, in my opionion was the cost of supplying the bandwidth ie The people who own the network. Now its not worked out by a to give you 100gb's a day to that exchange will cost x amonth a gig. their, as i understand it given, a ball park region of say 1000gigs over a 2mb pipe and theres your fee. its not like a per gig base's that eircom are trying to charge us.

Carriers like Eircom tend to buy capacity rather than transfer. That is they will pay for say a 155Mbit line from here to the UK and use it however they please. Big lines like that are spendy. Transatlantic ones moreso. Plus you usually have to bribe the people on the far end to accept your traffic.

Now you could figure out how much you can feed down that line per month and divide it by how much that line costs per month to give you some notional number for the transfer cost of 1GByte. It's not going to be anything like 30 euro - not even within an order of magnitude I suspect. However in this island nation of ours I doubt it's in the 10 cent ballpark either.

Eircom don't have enough upstream capacity to keep everyone going at full tilt all the time. No ISP does. So ISPs sometimes use caps and the law of averages to ration the capacity. If they're reasonably assured a user will only download 3GB a month, they can reasonably assume that they can fit X number of such users into their upstream capacity and have them all reasonably happy within their limits on a fast service. If everyone tries to download at full speed, you either end up with a cheap service that performs worse than dialup, or a rediculously expensive service where everyone gets full speed, but they also have to foot the bill for provisioning that massive amount of international bandwidth.

Don't get me wrong here, I agree their prices per megabyte are outrageous. But there is a good reason behind download limits and penalties for exceeding those limits.

Stephen

Does anybody know what the difference between 512k ADSL "LS" and 512k ADSL "ULMP" on http://www.esat.com/dsl/pricing.asp is?

Both cost the same.

steve-hosting36

Just on the pricing of transfer - 1Mbits per second will transfer about 340Gbytes in a month - that is on full for 24/7.

Therefore a 100Mbps line transfers about 34000 GB per month.

Hence divide the cost of the line by the theoretical max limit and you have a cost per GB,

Stephen