Are there any happy IBB customers??

[Rafterman]

Can I ask you guys whats with the aerial on the roof thing. I thought IBB's service was delivered via a small desk type aerial(Ripwave I believe) that connects via usb into the PC. I've seen it for sale in Harvey Normans for 75€. I did not think there was a roof aerial involved. Whatsup?

PS: I was thinking of getting the IBB service only because I do not have any other option for BB, however having read this thread I will have to reconsider.

Originally Posted by Rafterman

Can I ask you guys whats with the aerial on the roof thing. I thought IBB's service was delivered via a small desk type aerial(Ripwave I believe) that connects via usb into the PC. I've seen it for sale in Harvey Normans for 75€. I did not think there was a roof aerial involved. Whatsup?

PS: I was thinking of getting the IBB service only because I do not have any other option for BB, however having read this thread I will have to reconsider.

Its a matter of size thing Raterman, Ripwave which stand 7" high on your desktop is meant to connect you to the internet. I don't know if it does, as I have a thingy on the roof. My experience is that I have a letter guaranteeing 2 MGs up and 2 MGs down but I am lucky if I have half that speed (when pigs fly)

Ripwave costs €18.95 per mth and the Status Symbol on the roof (RipOffwave or as they like to call it Breeze 2) a hefty $48.40 (I note on their website it now says "up to 2 MG")

[anoble66]

basically there are 2 products, Ripwave which is just a wireless modem which sits on your desk or Breeze which allows for faster speeds*, this requires an aerial on the roof which connects via wireless to your local base station.

*alledgedly - although i never saw 2mb..

[turly]

I was until the end of January a customer of IBB's Breeze 2MB "service". Due to a combination of good luck and high-quality negatives, I now spend about 3 weeks out of 4 working in Barcelona and 1 back "home" in Cork (in theory, anyway.)

I've posted here before about my IBB speeds (I did a sample SpeedTest every day for a month), and the download speeds were complete pants, never rising about 500k, averaging 200k, and more than 8 days out of 30 of sub 56k levels. As detailed elsewhere, no emails were ever responded to, and I just didn't have the time to waste waiting for them to answer the phone (8 calls, varying on-hold durations from 20 minutes to 45 minutes.) Obviously, spending 600 euro a year for this rankled, so when I moved, I arranged to cancel my service at the end of January. Since I wasn't going to be there to let them remove the aerial, I removed it myself and returned it to their Cork office up by the airport (getting receipt, etc.)

The feeling of being shot of these incompetent shower-o-hoors is great, you won't regret it!! Alas one month later, they're still taking 48.40 a month direct debit, so I spent another 25 minutes on hold today sorting that out. More next month, no doubt.

As an example of how things work in countries with non-third-world telecoms infrastructure (and Spain only just qualifies), I pay E38 inc VAT for ya.com ADSL 2+ 20Mb down / 512kb up + free calls, etc. etc. It's one of the more expensive services, but had the best reviews. The most I've seen is 8 Mb down, but I've gotten over 6 Mb to IrishISPTest fairly often. The supreme irony - I was getting 10 times more speed from Barcelona to Dublin than I got from Cork to Dublin with that completely useless shower IBB (which I'm reliably informed stands for "I've Been Buggered.")

The service has been down only one day in over 4 months now (touch wood), and ya.com seem to will credit you for their downtime -- if you phone them. Then there's the weather :-)

So now I'm looking for something for the 1 week in 4 that I'm in Cork. I don't have a landline (I did have BT Broadband back in 2004, but my line went from being ADSL-compliant to voice-only overnight, and neither BT nor EirCon could figure out what was going on, each blaming the other.)

So that leaves me with DigiWeb - kind of expensive for the usage I'd be getting out of it - or (oh God no) RipWave; I could afford the 19 quid a month for the 1 week's worth of use... Is it any good? Does Cheap mean Nasty? I'm in the Sundays Well/Shaky Bridge area of Cork city if there are any RipWave users in the area with experience to share. Or indeed any wireless ISP...

Any other suggestions for wireless ISPs? Or maybe my best bet is to knock on neighbour's doors asking if they're online and would they mind if I just...

Sorry for rambling on, and ta muchly for any suggestions...

[vinnie]

I have just had a call from IBB today asking me such details as my address and e-mail address! The guy got a good b****ing from me re service (or lack of).

Anyone else get a call?

[flyingpinkelephants]

sorry posted without checking all the other threads but will start checking them as only found site tonight

I am using in Dunlaighre college of art region bakers corner evening ripwave seems to go full tilt 500k

also using in town daytime IFSC seems to be slowwer but could be the thickness of windows as works better outside on ledge but too cold to pursue that and also got access to restricted WiFi which if I get blocked or it slows tooooooooo much then use the IB rip wave and could WAR a few other open spots if I was realy stuck

18.95 per month gave them a fake name and adress and bank details paid cash so as not to be spammed and will return the equipment after 4 months and promptly go to shops and buy another one unless they come up with a way for me to pay the the 18.95 in cash at some corner shop or other solution
OK happy with IB but would prefer €10 pm or better €5 and not in nany hurry to give them my name or details

if that solution dosnt exist in 4 months will probably go with digi web or similar mayby IB 1meg but will check the neighbours service first

Rented house will cost me €85 for the eircom alarm company to make alarm suitable(no choise part of rent deal) and thirty euros typical for connection not counting monthly rates no fun at all


Also cant find a way to get the unit to run on battery power

I hooked in a 6 volt 3 amp capable battery suppply of 4 aa nicads and also 6 volt 4amp lead gel cell and zip nada
tried a 8 cell nicads and green light for one second

any electronic gurus able to help out

i dont want to use the 12volt laptop supply from usb asmy g4 laptops run time of 5 hours would go down to mayby 2 hours and worse the extra drain could heat up and grill the LiPo cells which dont like heavy amp drains

The battery for rip wave costs €180 from australia and IB wont sell it here (not that I would pay that much for a battery when suitable nicads super cheap €20 or less nimh 4700mha at €40 or less and 4800 Lipos exist for less than that crazy price

If I had battery solution could probably surf on the bus in traffic jams

Ralfe

only happy when pink elephants fly


update big service deteration 18th mars info below


patricks day and today issues


today 2 to 3pm tests vary but tend to be less than 150 or 0.15meg
but worst is the uploads often less than 20 or 0.02 meg
as compared to max 128 or 0.128 meg

[anoble66]

they were scheduled to de-install my service on Tuesday at 4pm, left work early to be there and of course they did not turn up and no call to say why...bunch of assholes

[JMK]

Well I justed checked my email and have found I have been sent yet another Invoice for March. These people couldn.t find their arse with both hands.


I am about to ring now, What are my odds of getting service.....100-1? More? Less?


JMK

[Esb16]

Actually, I think I read in one of the forums that there are reputed to be 2 in the Bray area.

IBB went one better today - their telephone system went gaga in sympathy with the lousy service and kept disconnecting the caller before the customer service boys could answer.

Maybe Mulder & Scully could investigate.

ESB 16

[gavatron]

Hi, pretty pissed off with the breeze service myself, crap speeds for all but 2 hours a day, goes as low 12kbps upload lots of the time. The only bonus is they haven't charged my account since december!!! fools! still though, want to change but don't really want to go the phone line route cos big bills happen that way, dunno what other options are available in sunny letterkenny though.

[redandblack05]

I am also from Letterkenny using IBB's Breeze 1MB. I just did a speed test and got 922kbps download and 4.96kbps upload. Bloody ridiculous!! I signed up for the VOIP SIP service blueface but on just about every call, the voice going out is terrible quality and the quality coming in is fine. The speed seems to jump about all over the place as well. Just did another test and got 108 download and 20 up.

[gavatron]

Originally Posted by redandblack05

I am also from Letterkenny using IBB's Breeze 1MB. I just did a speed test and got 922kbps download and 4.96kbps upload. Bloody ridiculous!! I signed up for the VOIP SIP service blueface but on just about every call, the voice going out is terrible quality and the quality coming in is fine. The speed seems to jump about all over the place as well. Just did another test and got 108 download and 20 up.

you should maybe try smart telecom, were elligible for it i just found out, 35 per month and free line rental, unlimited downloads and they are offering up to 6 meg lines now, has to be an improvement on those jokers anyway!

By the way, i've done several speed tests and have never gotten higher than 540kbps d/l and were supposedly on 2meg!

[bryn_ie]

2000Kbitsps / 20 = 100Kbitsps

That means the contract entitles you to an average speed of 100 with the possibility of your connection peaking at 2000 if no one in your contention area is using the service (laymans terms).

And thats without overhead, so say 85Kbitsps / 8 = 10KBytesps. Thats a 36 Megabyte file in one hour, 864 Megs in one day, 25 gigs in one month.

This is the broadband myth, note the ads, up to, thats up to, 40 times faster than dial up.

You could expect say 2 gigs as the network will not be balanced, some users won't use it fully.

There is no doubting that the service is rubbish, but this is based purely on network latency. You can get reasonable throughput when not relying on it being low latency. This is why it's rubbish for VOIP and games.

Take eircom (the best service), it's low latency, when I've used it, i get 30 -40 ms as opposed to IBB, which is 100-120 or worse. That means if you send some data it may well take 4 times longer for your pc to be told the data was received ok on IBB than on eircom.

This is the difference between shooting or being shot in a video game.

So you go with eircom, any catch, of course, you need a phone line, 20 bucks and it's going to cost 40(i think it's going from 30-40) for the BB. so 60 euro and you get a cap of 10 gigs(approx).

How do they keep the latency down, rubbish upload speed, this means they have really low latency (there networkks ability to upload data never gets swamped) so your pc can respond to websites etc telling them that you have received the data a ok, so it will send more data, increasing download speed, they offer 3meg down 256k(maybe 512) up, knowing that any customers who hog the network with 3 meg downloads will hit their monthly cap and be stopped.


So you stick with iBB, with no cap, no blocked ports, but slow day to day speed and crap latency.

Or you go with eircom, good latency, great download speed, crap upload speed, and a cap of 10gigs(this may be higher)

[bryn_ie]

when i say you could expect 2gigs, i mean per day. This would be double the worst case scenario of 854 megs a day

[redandblack05]

thanks for the advice Gavatron, I think that I will try switching to smart telecom. Their deal sounds much better than IBB, and I should be able to get it as I know someone just up the road from me who has it and is very happy. Now I just have to try and get IBB to disconnect me, which from the sound of the previous posts may be fun.

[flyingpinkelephants]

Originally Posted by gavatron

you should maybe try smart telecom, were elligible for it i just found out, 35 per month and free line rental, unlimited downloads and they are offering up to 6 meg lines now, has to be an improvement on those jokers anyway!

have these guys ever got the 100000 service up on running yet never mind this new offer


umteen threads about the elelgbilty opt out
seems nobody I saw in this forum is elegible
ahh but mayby theres something wrong with us lot in the forums in that we demand a real service

If it too good to be........

For allllllllll the telecoms out thereeeeeeeee

WE GETTING WISE TOO YOUR ALL YOUR SNEAKY TRICKS
from caps to latency to rate adaptive to you name
it
your conspirisy to deny IRELAND a proper service
and pocket the most money for the least work investment

and all IBB is another joke operator that rip me off the least with a 18.95 rip wave service that probably worth €5 per month

and comreg should be called conreg the referee in a fixxed match where contestants get licence to print money with little investment and can have a pertend competion so as to keep EU happy

Well there is letters wing their way to EU competition authority to complain about this fixxed market in IRELAND





flyingpinkelephants

[flyingpinkelephants]

Speed test everty day for last few weeks idicate close tomax 500 or 1/2 meg

basedin sallynoggin eare close to bakers corner

patricks day and today issues

Had to do a 800 meg down load patricks day and around 6 pm sevice drop to half and sometimes less ands finally stopped at 8 ish

downl;oad corrrupted

overnight download repeat done speeds midnight 1/2meg
meg
today 2 to 3pm tests vary but tend to be less than 150 or .15meg but worst is the uploads often less than 20 or 0.02 as compared to max 128
or 0.128

Rip wave for sale every second shop in dublin so figure in weeks the service all dublin will be close to nil
accept very late at night

time will tell

flyingpinkelephants

[blacknight]

Do you think their new investment will make any difference?

[JMK]

I finaly got IBB to call me. The first thing they wanted to do was send out a tech to have a look at my setup. I asked why, and was told that it could be a small thing like a bad cable etc. I told him that I had a team out in Oct and that is when I requested/demanded to be deinstaled.

He then said that he would look into it and they will remove it if they find it cant be fixed, and am I not happy with the overall service.

OK, now this is the bit where I lose it............

When I stopped laughing I told him on no uncertain terms, that I want this rubbish out of my house and off my roof, and I also want a refud for the months of no service.

I was told I will be contacted in a few days.... So, let's see whats next..........






JMK

[gavatron]

Originally Posted by redandblack05

thanks for the advice Gavatron, I think that I will try switching to smart telecom. Their deal sounds much better than IBB, and I should be able to get it as I know someone just up the road from me who has it and is very happy. Now I just have to try and get IBB to disconnect me, which from the sound of the previous posts may be fun.

I've been reading up on smart telecom, apparently they use adsl2+ which is supposed to be faster as you can see on ... http://www.aware.com/products/dsl/adsl2plus.htm

also i was browsing a government broadband site which claims smarts contention rate is 3 to 1. if thats true then all the better

Also byrne.ie, eircom is not the best service, we were with those and the service was erratic to say the least, always cutting of every five minutes