IBB Bandwidth

Flashman

Hi,
I have been looking at this forum for a while and it was this that prompted me to sign up for IBB. Thanks for all the info guys!
But, after the initial exhileration of having 24/7 access, I have found that I'm getting no where near the 512kb of bandwidth I'm paying for.
Is this normal, due to contention? Or should I be calling IBB support and get them to fix the problem?
My pings are good, if a little spikey eg.

Pinging Eircom.net
16ms
14ms
14ms
50ms

But when downloading, on Emule for instance I will rarely exceed Any ideas?
Thanks

melachi

What download speeds are you getting?
And try to download from a IE/UK server when you check.

Coyote

first thing you need to do is work out is wrong
first try dling some files
try and dl some thing from IBB site first and see
what speed your getting.
then dl some thing from www.microsoft.com
that should give you a idea how fast you can dl at
if your getting good speed from the IBB site and not from
microsoft then it mgiht be IBB bandwith to other isp's
but if you can not dl fast from any where you might want to have
your wireless setup checked to make sure you can get the
throught speed that they say you are ment to get.

I have heard from a few people who don't get the full 55-60K a sec dl befor.
remember it could be the server your downloading from thats slow.

Coyote

Flashman

Well I was getting about 34kb/s from microsoft.com, but how do I see how fast I'm downloading from somewhere like boards.ie?

Sloth

Try downloading a file off the members' pages I guess. I don't have any big files on my one though.

Flashman

Has anyone seen this site http://www.thebandwidthplace.com/speedtest/
I used this test and the results were very low for my connection: about 90-100kbs.
I think I'll just get IBB tech support to do what their paid for...

SkepticOne

IBB Wireless is shared bandwidth, just like residential DSL and cable modems. This means that you will only get the advertised maximum if no one else is downloading at the same time.

Kevok

I know how you feel Flashman.

Here's the 'procedure' as i have come to know it.

IBB do not gaurantee speeds outside their own network. So you have to show that on thier network your speeds are impaired.

To do this do the following:

1. Go to http://www.irishbroadband.ie/speedtest/speedtest.html
run it a few times, take screens and note the speeds.

2. Download http://www.irishbroadband.ie/bigfile5 and note the speeds.

Contact them, explain the above speeds and ask for assistance. (they will reset your connection/tweak etc. If that doesn't work they will schedule in a visit.

One question for you though. Are you on a USB bridge?

quozl

if you want to try an external site, then one of the heanet mirrors is a good bet. IBB should have a better connection to inex sites than anywhere apart from their internal network.

I never got anything remotely close to my 1mbit, generally more like <256k according to their wireless network speedtest

Greg

Kevok

Greg you on the RTÉ tower?

I'm on 3-rock now (was on sandyford). They swapped out my USB bridge for the frequency hopping one (more latency, greater reliability i'm told).

I noticed my speeds were fairly ****e, rang em up and they're sending someone over tomorrow morning to check my set up. Aparently i've accociated to the wrong tower.

What have they told you about your probs?

Pepe LeFrits

The best download rate i generally get on IBB is around 28kb/s, quite often its a lot lower than that.

The pings are absolute toss too, useless for gaming. I kept ringing them about the issues but eventually i gave up, waste of time. Nothing was done.

Unfortunately im stuck with them until next february because of the 1 year contract, as soon as thats finished ill be going with ADSL methinks.

quozl

i'm on the rte tower kevok, so i've been on the WISP stuff since day one. They've tried to fix it a fair few times over the months, but no success. Tbh they really do seem to have tried their best, and there's no way they made any money off me. But I'm off to leap. Much more expensive, but hopefully with that will come more reliability.
Greg

Kappar

I thinking of getting IBB i passed the line of sight with flying colours and was thinking of signing up but reading what i read here i am having second taughts. The speeds seem very low compard to what is advertised. I was thinking now of geeting DSL but i really dont want a cap.

If i got IBB i'd be on the 3 rock transmitter. Pings dont bother me that much but speed is a concern. What are irish wisp like?

Sloth

Look I don't want to be just saying this over and over but if you want capless dsl go for Via and stop bitching about Eircom's cap, I mean you have the choice now.

Flashman

I don't want to discourage anyone from signing up for the IBB service, your pings seem to depend largely on your line of sight from the transmitters (I'm on RTE). I get about 25-35ms on Irish CS servers, about 70-120 on UK.
And there's no cap.
But I did the IBB speed test and got just above 128k ISDN connection, which is a long way from 512 wireless...
I'm pretty sure I don't have a USB bridge, Kevok, though I'm not sure what that is.

Sangre

I never get the full d/l speed off websites.
But from file sharing programs where you d/l from multiple users I regularly get 60k/s.

Ive had my radio replaced with an ethernet one, for more stable ping while gaming.

Tbh they were very helpful with me Kaids.
Email them your ping times to a server.

Lemming

Is it just me or has IBB's QoS dropped DIRELY this evening (off the 3-rock transmitter) ??

I'm downloading the matrix trailer,. and I'm currently on 36mbs after 3 HOURS at a whooping total of 3.-F*CKING-5 Kb /s :mad:

I may as well be using my 56k modem.

Incidentally, whilst I'm not a file-sharing person, the largest speed I've ever managed to download at (either from file-sharing apps - or from websites) has been no more than 18kb/s , and even then I only hit that once. On average I'm reaching somewhere between 6 - 12kb /s

An irrate phone-call is in order me thinks ....

Sloth

Jees, seems like a whole new angle on IBB has been opened up. Up until now I thought their service was pretty much flawless but I mean if your just getting those crappy speeds and other people are having different problems then I'm not sure what to think. Hopefully it's just a temporary fault.

Lemming

Ok in fairness they admitted, when they were installing my antenna, that the 3-rock transmitter was having issues and that they were working on it, so I'm not complaining about that (much).

But after last night's appalling performance, I'm just wondering just _HOW_ hamstrung the 3-rock service currently is?

They said (today on the phone) that there were people physically at the transmitter doing equipment work on it today, so we'll see.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and give them the chance to prove themselves. I'm just trying to be mindful of what years of cynicism caused by eircom has left and not transferring this to a new operator without letting them have a shot at the whip.

50Cent

3 -5 kbps ...i get about 7-9kbps on my 56k connectedc at 38kbps...thats a ****en disgrace

Kevok

I had the installers out again today.

Apparently the equipment they have up on 3 rock isn't able to cut through the interference. They are getting new equipment to better handle it this week.

But yeah the last week has been a joke. Downloading on imesh at a max of 24kb a sec on a 1meg connection is not giving me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

csaddict

I've been having problems with my connection for the past 2 weeks - if I'm lucky I'll get 64K speeds (according to the speedtest site) - the service has been up and down like the proverbial lady of the nights undergarments and currently I'm using an eircom dialup to connect which I'm really not thrilled about.

That said, I'm on the extremities of the 3 rock service (stillorgan shopping centre), afaik I'm the furthest person from the high site, and ever since they've moved to the new hardware my connection hasn't been the same. Given I'm the furthest away (according to them) I probably experienced these "spectrum problems" earlier than you guys but it's only vaguely comforting to know it's not just me.

Is it just 3 rock or are all the sites suffering at the moment. I've requested to be moved to the Belmont High Site (only 1k away and direct line of site according to Michael when they originally did the install) so hopefully that'll sort it out, but they've yet to tell me when that'll be.

Kevok

Woo! Answers

I think

The frequency they use on 3-rock has been flooded by another wireless source in the area. It started 2 weeks ago.

Coincidently, Leap got their 3-rock service up and running at the same time so it may be a bit of interference from them.

Can anyone with Leap confirm that they have been having problems on 3-rock?

I've been assured (again) that the interference will be cleared when they get their equipment from Israel (wtf?)

crazyasafox

Kevok just curious but when your D/l speed went to ground did your ping times go to

Kevok

Yes and no.

As i told you when you were out on Saturday, for the most part I was getting good performance.

That is until recently. Right now my bandwidth seems about a fifth of what it should be. With pings being a bit erratic. Regular spikes rather than consistently bad.

But it can be unplayable at times.

Serbian

I signed up for IBB on the RTÉ mast about 3 months ago. From the very first day the service has been a piece of shιt. Pings flailing wildly when you attempt to play any online game on any server. I'm sick of opening All Seeing Eye, only to be greeted by server pings beginning at 200+. Bandwidth and Download speeds have been a joke. Never have I gotten higher than 40kbps, but it would average a lot lower (Probably in the region of 18 - 24kbp/s). I am waiting for someone to feedback about the via networks ADSL service, then hopefully sign up to them.

Seems like the problem exists on every mast too which isn't very reassuring. The only reason I lasted so long with IBB is that I lived in the false hope that they might actually care that the service is crap and then try and fix it. 3 months with no results is a little bit too long for me when I'm paying for a service that I'm not receiving.

glimmerman

kappar

irishwisp is giving me pretty good service bw-wise: I'd say most of the time I get more than my allowance, when filesharing I sometime get 768kbps (I'm only supposed to have 512).

On the downside, there are occasionally jitter issues (not too often now), and the latency isn't particularly low either... I get about 75 ms to Irish sites. But overall irishwisp are doing quite well as far as I'm concerned. I had eircom solo before, it was good service wise, but had an annoying glitch when uploading a lot of data, ocassionally disconnecting (very annoying during gaming)

Kappar

Originally posted by glimmerman
kappar

irishwisp is giving me pretty good service bw-wise: I'd say most of the time I get more than my allowance, when filesharing I sometime get 768kbps (I'm only supposed to have 512).

On the downside, there are occasionally jitter issues (not too often now), and the latency isn't particularly low either... I get about 75 ms to Irish sites. But overall irishwisp are doing quite well as far as I'm concerned. I had eircom solo before, it was good service wise, but had an annoying glitch when uploading a lot of data, ocassionally disconnecting (very annoying during gaming)

Yeah i've decided to get them, they seem good. I hope they get rid of the cap soon though.

What i'm not sure of though is in real terms what does it mean for it to work through a VPN? Can others see what i'm downloading/Uploading?

Flashman

Well it seems a lot of IBB customers are facing the same problems. This is going to have to be addressed at some stage.
But I have to say, from the sound of things my experience of their service is one of the better ones.

Irish wisp and Leap and any other provider you care to mention may have good bandwidth per user now, but as their popularity grows the contention will bottleneck your dl speeds.

glimmerman

Originally posted by Kappar
Yeah i've decided to get them, they seem good. I hope they get rid of the cap soon though.

What i'm not sure of though is in real terms what does it mean for it to work through a VPN? Can others see what i'm downloading/Uploading?

nope, I don't think so: I think all your traffic is encrypted from your machine to the mast.

Sangre

Im currently d/ling a music video at 45-50k/s from the Sandyford Transmitter.

I really do think it must be the 3 rock one, because my rates are very good.