Intro- Newbie

[chorn]

Just to say hi. From Howth, Dublin. Finally got broadband after 5 years of paying €40 a month to rent an ISDN box from Eircom (2x64K Channels but only used 1 to keep costs down) and c€25 per month to use UTV as ISP.

Considered Wireless but an engineer visit indicated no LOS to either Baldoyle or even to a station across Dublin bay somewhere in the Wicklow mountains so I'd have had to erect a 100+ foot aerial on top of a bungalow for any joy on this front. Balked at Satellite for cost/installation plus didn't seem to have good reviews. Finally got a relative to row in via corporate connections with Eircom and ISDN out/BB in.

UTV very good service in my experience for data and voice and packages IMO and for my uses good value ex-VOIP. I'd have a lot to say about Eircom but much unprintable and I'll restrict myself to one paragraph.

First why would Eircom ever have any financial or other incentive switching ISDN users to broadband when they get €40 a month for the box and €25+ to be your ISP (not to mention I recall they couldn't- or didn't want to- tell you when you reached your monthly cap)? Second the line rental fee just seems information highway robbery at €25 a month compared to other Euro countries. Third Comreg IMO are a bunch of complete asses who couldn't organize a phone call in a telephone exchange. They just seem a bunch of jokers waiting for Eircom/industry sinecure positions once they move on or head off. In a somewhat lacklustre defence of Comreg I can only point to the fact that they never seem to have been given teeth to begin with (or if they had rarely/never used them) but then we might be back talking about certain wealthy individuals, a nameless early mobile phone license deal and a couple of staggeringly expensive (time and cost- calculate how much per citizen and it's a fair whack) and apparently useless- on telecoms at least- tribunals. Last Eircom's sell-off IMO one of the biggest disasters in the history of the State- just pimped around to highest bidders for years by initially government then management and pension fund/ESOT riding high on the backs of the citizenry. All this has squandered a significant initial lead in Europe on Telecoms and BB coverage/penetration (from near top to near bottom) and been a huge disservice to this country.

There now, I feel a little better. If you need to edit out any insults- real or perceived- contained in this, no problem and apologies in advance.

Now why- you might reasonably ask- am I using Eircom for BB given above opinions? Because the only way I could get it was on the back of a corporate deal through them and I'm not paying- they agreed to see if it would work on a trial basis for the company at my location after over 4 years telling me I was too far from an exchange. I still use UTV for regular phone service.

Any comments on my BB stats with a (1024/128 (Down/Up kbps) link) using the test here? It seems to work fine with both desktop ethernet and wireless laptop router connections.

D/L: 878 kbps (108 KB/s)
U/L: 84 kbps (11 KB/s)
QOS: 99 %
RTT: 22 ms
Max Pause: 78 ms

I also ran the Eircom test for comparison. It shows 101.46 KBps and suggests I should expect between 25KB and 100KB on this home starter package. I'm not sure what the stats mean precisely, but they seem fairly good judging by what Eircom says and I'm wondering whether I might dare even consider going to a higher bandwidth connection (maybe 2Mbps/256kbps Home Plus)? Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks in advance and best to all for 2007.

[blacknight]

Welcome

What are you using your broadband for?

[chorn]

Originally Posted by blacknight

Welcome

What are you using your broadband for?

Thanks for the welcome.

I build the occasional website so some FTP uploads can get largish if you want to keep png image originals on the web server for example.

Downloads are sometimes large software (say latest versions of PHP or MySQL and other open source) though I guess I can now do this overnight with an always-on connection.

Occasionally music/video and I may get more into this whereas before with a 64K ISDN link it just wasn't really a possibility unless you felt an urgent hankering for a game of Russian Roulette with your ISP's monthly hours-online cap limits- not to mention of course the vicarious thrill of guessing what your ISP bill was going to be for the month.

And thanks also for posting the test as a public service- I found it very useful.