i-Stream experiences

captainpat · 07-10-2002 8:40pm #1

I have had i-Stream Solo since June, and I am very confused about what is going on with the connection. I know that there is supposed to be a cap of 3 Gb/month, but they have never done anything about it, either by email or on the bi-monthly bill. I have had two bills since the initial one, and both just had the two months advance rental.

However, the performance of the service bears no relationship to the ads which promised 10 times the speed of modem access. Most of the time it is actually inferior to modem, and many normal sites (Ireland Online, Shockwave.com etc.) need two or three refreshes to even connect, and may fail connection completely. I often have to restart to get even a semblance of a service.

I admit that I make full use of the permanent/fast connection by having a perpetual queue of large downloads running in the background, and I usually spend two to three hours in front of the screen surfing each day. That is what I am paying for, but not getting properly.

I have heard a rumour that the poxy performance is due to Eircom putting a throttle on the service after they "estimate" that the 3Gb limit has passed. This is reputed to be because they have no technical capability of accountably recording actual usage for the Cap.

Are there other Solo users out there, and are they getting the same treatment? Does anyone have any real information?

Dustaz · 07-10-2002 8:50pm

Originally posted by captainpat

Most of the time it is actually inferior to modem, and many normal sites (Ireland Online, Shockwave.com etc.) need two or three refreshes to even connect, and may fail connection completely. I often have to restart to get even a semblance of a service.

Not for me its not,

I admit that I make full use of the permanent/fast connection by having a perpetual queue of large downloads running in the background, and I usually spend two to three hours in front of the screen surfing each day. That is what I am paying for, but not getting properly.

maybe you should consider not downloading hundreds of hours of teensluts.mpg while you browse the internet.

I have heard a rumour that the poxy performance is due to Eircom putting a throttle on the service after they "estimate" that the 3Gb limit has passed. This is reputed to be because they have no technical capability of accountably recording actual usage for the Cap.

Actually they do have the ability to measure it. Never heard about the choke thing before, its more than likely rubbish.

Eircom read this forum and bragging about how your not being charged for your thousands of gigs of downloads probably isnt the wisest thing to do.

This is more of a nets/comms thing anyway.

Frank Grimes · 07-10-2002 9:06pm

I admit that I make full use of the permanent/fast connection by having a perpetual queue of large downloads running in the background, and I usually spend two to three hours in front of the screen surfing each day. That is what I am paying for, but not getting properly.

Try cancelling the downloads and see if the browsing speeds up.
If you think you're getting a slow connection, try downloading something from a decent local FTP site and see what speed you get.
ftp.esat.net is usually pretty fast.

PiE · 07-10-2002 9:17pm

Originally posted by Dustaz
maybe you should consider not downloading hundreds of hours of teensluts.mpg

But then whats the point in having broadband?!

If it's still slow when youre not downloading, somethings seriously wrong. Check yer proxy and all the stuff. Then ring them up and kick up a stink over it.

Don't blame me if they notice your 15GB downloads as they fix it though ;]

Btw, have they implemented the cap Dustaz?

Dustaz · 07-10-2002 11:43pm

I havent been billed, but i havent gone mentally over the limit.

Maybe they reserve the right unless your a complete warez goon (~20/30 per month id say)

captainpat · 08-10-2002 12:59am

I didn't realise I came across as bragging about anything. I am genuinely seeking info. If I am being manipulated or limited in some way, I would like to know what I am doing wrong.

There is no question of thousands of Gigs of smut, more like 3.5 Gig of Divx, which is no shame today. After I tot up my downloads at the start of a month, after everything goes slow, I come to the suspicion that I have been "browned out". My Network guru at work assures me the technology exists to monitor and pipeline my connections for P2P traffic.

I would consider opening up my channel, or closing down my demand, if I knew what was happening. I may phone eircom about it, but only after the real people offer some informed opinions. OK, guys?

Frank Grimes · 08-10-2002 1:12am

Have you actually tried downloading anything via FTP or are you basing your download speeds on what you get via Kaaza or whatever?

My Network guru at work assures me the technology exists to monitor and pipeline my connections for P2P traffic.

I would seriously doubt that's the problem.

Dustaz · 08-10-2002 1:21am

Sorry for snapping earlier captainpat, its been a long day

As frank mentioned, if your only basing your download speeds from Kazaa or any other p2p program your not going to get proper reflection of your speed. Most downloads from those network end up being 1 or 2 kp/s due to bad connections.

try pinging some servers and posting them here. Say bbc, yahoo, boards and google.

captainpat · 08-10-2002 1:36am

Thanks for calming down guys. I'm ready for the bed myself.

On Sunday afternoon, I was really cruisin'! I had 8 segments from KaZaA running with a total of 52 kbps! This was what I had expected!

Then, .... suddenly, all the download boxes shut, and opened up in sporadic fashion to a total of 0.6 kbps. I checked my i-Stream connection icon, (undisturbed from 02/Oct/02, and found a total of 3.045Gb downloaded.

So, I decided that they were already wise to me, and that perhaps some of the things might be real.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I have tried most of them, and am most concerned about not getting connected. Will examine pings for the next couple of days.

Is this where I should keep ckecking for Wireless in Dublin 12? I can see 3 Rock fom my window, or should I suss out the satellites as an alternative?

sceptre · 08-10-2002 2:12am

Satellite is certainly an option if you're mostly downloading Divx movies - it's perfect for grabbing a series of big files.

If the problem is a regular Kazaa network congestion one obviously satellite won't give you a solution though

I'd presume that eventually Eircom will throttle connections after they go over the limit during the month, as many of the US ISPs have started doing (one Aussie company gives you your allocation and then throttles you to 28.8 for the remainder of the month). Either that or just start implementing the charges per meg over the limit.

The Clown Man · 08-10-2002 2:51am

Ah Kazaa is like a bingo game. Sometimes your lucky and sometimes you're not, Don't judge anything by kazaa because you will always be dissapointed. So try dowloading off a decent ftp site. Half the fun of downloading off the intraweb is finding the right place to download. So basically do what the rest of us peons on isdn do - find the better sites. Also if you pause and then "find more downloads" you should make out better then a normal download. But this is all down to experience with the interweb. Browse around and you will learn an awful lot more than you bargained for. It'll be well worth it if you have an interest in what you are looking to find. The interweb has everything. You just have to know where to look.

jd · 08-10-2002 4:14am

Just thinking, with all those file downloads going on in the background, are you sure you don't have a bucket of temorary files being created.
First thing is to try and download a large compressed file (operhaps a linux iso) from a local ftp site. See how that goes.
I know this sounds silly, but make sure your hard drives are ok, eg scan and defrag..

glimmerman · 11-10-2002 7:24pm

hmmm, I've been running i-scream since june, pretty much hassle free (unless you count the fact that my first bill has pretty much laid me on my ear and out of beer money, and seems to be incorrect to boot).

I have noticed that if I do large uploads, it seems to disconnect and reconnect if I attempt downloading stuff simultaneously: point in case, I was uploading about 32 megs to a photobox the other day and attempted downloading some linux stuff, ad noticed the connection kept failing and disconnecting. this may have something to do with congestion on the upload channel (only 128k), maybe a timeout occurs during a ppp tp check, and the thing disconnects automatically, anyone else notice this? Needless to say this seriously messes with your downloads.

I'm running RH 7.3 2.4.18-5, problem only occurs regularly during large uploads, major downloads and gaming seems to be fine.

Slaanesh · 12-10-2002 12:37am

glimmerman, I think you will find this happens because,

when you hit your maximum upload speed of about 25k/sec, you don't have any upstream to send packets which are used in requesting your download packets, so therefore your download either slows or looks like it stops altogether ! So when you are sending stuff, limit the upload to 20k/sec and the other 5k should be plenty for downloading

This was my experience anyway.

Slaan.

longword · 12-10-2002 8:32pm

What do you mean by disconnect/reconnect? If it's a PPP thing you might try increasing the lcp-echo-interval and lcp-echo-timeout options.

If the problem is your upstream channel is getting overloaded, check out the ADSL Bandwidth Management HOWTO on http://www.tldp.org/

KdjaCL · 12-10-2002 9:14pm

The thing with Kazaa is you only getting someone else upload speed so if teensluts.mpg is 100mb and on a 56k user machine .
Well do the maths.

I find its very at the start it was a bit freaky but over time its got better.

I get up to 213kb (my record from Cnet and down to .000000000000000000000000000001kb from kazaa.

Kdja

glimmerman · 13-10-2002 9:16am

Slaan, yep thanks, I know that tcp backs off if congestion occurs upstream, its not an individual stream thats disconnecting, its the ppp connection.

Longword, thanks I'll have a dig around for those lcp options, it sounds a likely suspect.

cheers

bricks · 13-10-2002 1:01pm

I used SecureFTP, It works fine for a while and it was'nt using all the upstream bandwidth. But then it just drops the ADSL connection. It reconnects before the SecureFTP has a chance to timeout and the upload continues but it did this about 10 times.
I'm using smoothwall, but I'm going to try it using windows with their software and if it still does it I'm going to complain.

bluey · 14-10-2002 2:17pm

try measuring your bandwidth at various times...i've seen a couple of i-stream users getting up to 278kbps out of a 512k connection... DSL seems to be slower than cable modems ok, some cable guys reporting speeds up to 494 kbps

go to http://www.bandwidthplace.com - run the test at various times and report back on the results...

longword · 14-10-2002 5:22pm

Any time I've downloaded something from a site I expect to run at full speed, I get a solid 105kBytes/sec. YMMV.

captainpat · 15-10-2002 1:33am

I'm glad that you guys are getting good service from the start from i-Stream. I'm finding out about its behaviour little by little. Yes, Kazaa is a major culprit. I shut it down and get decent speed for every function except other P2P progs. OK, I can live with that.

Anybody using modem on the "voice" line as well as ADSL? I want to try this atr next weekend, so appreciate any warnings or aid.

Yurmasyurda · 15-10-2002 2:09am

Originally posted by kdja
The thing with Kazaa is you only getting someone else upload speed so if teensluts.mpg is 100mb and on a 56k user machine .
Well do the maths.

That's true but the fact that kazaa can connect multiple 56k/adsl/isdn etc users simultaneously to obviously increase upload speed or your download speed, of course the same file has to be on all of those machines but in most cases it is.

santalives · 15-10-2002 8:37am

If you are planning to connect to the net with the 56k modem as well just beware that this changes the gateway your computer uses to connect to the net and all traffic will try and go through the 56k modem rather then the adsl connection, there are ways around this though if you search through google

Frank Grimes · 15-10-2002 8:54am

Originally posted by captainpat
Anybody using modem on the "voice" line as well as ADSL? I want to try this atr next weekend, so appreciate any warnings or aid.

What type of modem are you planning on using?

captainpat · 18-10-2002 1:45am

I am a little more experienced with the i-Stream connection now, even if not much wiser!
Have found that P2P (Kazaa) being running is causing major speed delays on other services. If I shut down Kazaa (Lite) I get all other Internet services to speed up to expected levels. This includes Usenet and FTP. Web browsing benefits, too. So, I channel my downloads on P2P to overnight.

Still not sure about Eircom and the cap of 3Gb/Mth. Like the Skibereen Eagle, I'm keeping a close watch :-)

captainpat · 18-10-2002 1:50am

I have not had much success yet in achieving modem and i-Stream operation together in any way. Modem is giving "629" error message, and reporting a hardware fault. It's a MRi V.90 External, and they can be quirky, so I'm not fussed yet.

KdjaCL · 18-10-2002 8:54am

Still not sure about Eircom and the cap of 3Gb/Mth. Like the Skibereen Eagle, I'm keeping a close watch :-)

Is this really a good way to find out >

This includes Usenet and FTP.

Bad internet user bad bad

1st month i had it i struggled to keep within the cap and i didnt dload anything i rationed 100mb a day (between 2 users )
2nd month i said screw it 29gb by the 15th or somfin.
3rd month bill was coming got scared only 15gb that month.

Now its settled in i havent gone over the cap.
The novelty of

downloading the internet

wears off after a while and it becomes normal.

But the worst part is would you ever go back to 56k??

kdja

cat5cowboy · 21-10-2002 4:41pm

I have heard a rumour that the poxy performance is due to Eircom putting a throttle on the service after they "estimate" that the 3Gb limit has passed. This is reputed to be because they have no technical capability of accountably recording actual usage for the Cap.

Are you sure? I don't know much about redbacks etc...but if they were doing subinterfaces on the first cisco onto their core network they could use the IOS IP accounting features to check and see how much bandwidth is being used by each subinterface.

Run an expect script to grab and reset this nightly, add them to a database and there you go.

kamobe · 21-10-2002 4:55pm

was uploading about 32 megs to a photobox the other day and attempted downloading some linux stuff, ad noticed the connection kept failing and disconnecting.

For the record I was on the trial (D15) and I encountered this problem a lot. I called them to tell them about it, thinking this is my duty as a “trialist”. They didn’t care and problem continued, and the only thing I could do was cap my upload at 10/11k, which is a bit crappy really. I didn't take up i-stream in the end, not worth €100+ p/m.

Isn't the upload on Esat's service 256kb/ps?

lynchie · 21-10-2002 5:42pm

Originally posted by kamobe
For the record i was on the trial (D15) and this problem a lot. I called them to tell them about it, thinking this is my duty as a “trialist”. They didn’t care and problem continued, and the only thing I could do was cap my upload at 10/11k, which is a bit crappy really. I didn't take up i-stream in the end, not worth €100+ p/m.

Isn't the upload on Esat's service 256kb/ps?

I have the enhanced version (1mb/256kbps Upload) and I havent experienced this problem. I have on loads of occasions been uploading at 28-30KB while downloading in excess of 90KB without experiencing any disconnects. In fact, I havent experienced any disconnects since Ive had the service except for scheduled downtimes for maintenance by Eircom

I guess it is only a problem in your exchange. Maybe they had different technicians who set up the DSLAMs differently or something else, but my exchange (Nangor Rd, Clondalkin, D22) is running fine at the moment.

i-Stream experiences

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