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The thread "Icecomms speed problem" has not received any replies for a month. It has been automatically closed as a result. You may start a new thread on the topic if the information in this thread is not sufficient.
Yes, ICE should be solving them, but for all sorts of reasons, they may not have the resources to do so, and that might not be their fault. Firing the support team just makes it worse, in that whoever replaces them has to start from ground zero, and get up to speed.
Me find it and fix it in a hurry? Probably not, finding exactly what's wrong could be complex, and then fixing it could take longer!
I've spent 30+ years working with all manner of computer systems ranging from simple single user PC's up to 300+ user mini's that covered branch offices across an entire country, and not necessarily Ireland.
As an example, a good while back, I had a phone call from the technical manager of the hardware supplier for one of the packages that I was supporting. They wanted my help on a site. As a result of a disc crash, they'd discovered a hole in their software that meant that the backups that had been taken had 160 Kbyte holes every 180 Megabytes. The software was in use in a very large number of sites worldwide, but this particular set of circumstances had never happened before, so the bug had remained hidden for several years.
They needed my help to repair the database. I ended up spending 10 days on site, working 18 hours a day getting it back, and for that entire 10 days, over 280 users across the entire branch network of a major insurance company in Belgium were unable to process over 50% of their transactions, as the database was not consistent.
At that stage, I was one of only 3 people worldwide that had enough in depth knowledge of how that sytem worked at the depth that was needed to be able to recover it. The other 2 were in Australia and New Zealand.
Similar things happen now with PC based systems. I spent 3 hours yesterday working out why I couldn't log in to ROS after Microsoft Update had automatically downloaded IE7 on to my computer. Turned out that an applet needed by ROS had to be reinstalled, and the account I use for Web acccess has no admin rights, so the applet would not install clean. There was an error message, but it didn't give an accurate reason for the error.
Ran ROS in an admin enabled account, and I can now get back in from the "normal" account, because the applet is back in place again. I will guarantee that there will be a good few support calls to both Microsoft and ROS over that one, but it's not "a fault" as such, but a combination of things all coming together at the same time.
Yes, there's been a lot of angst towards ICE here on this board, but how many people are actually posting? 5, 10, or less. How many ICE users are there, and how many are actually being hit by this. Depending on the numbers, this might not be that high on the board at the moment, even though it is causing huge pain to the few that are here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting ICE in that respect, and I don't work for them, but I am trying to make sure that a balanced view is taken, in that there may be other things behind the scenes that are influencing this.
Yes, ICE need to get it sorted, and ideally they need to do it fast, but if there are in fact a number of different issues, some hardware, and some network, and some radio repeater related, they may well be working damned hard behind the scenes, without it showing yet.
Then again, yes, they might not be as capable as I'd like to believe, but my experience is that once we were connected, and that did take a lot longer than it was supposed to, the service has been OK, and has provided what was advertised, and still is.
As you are only a recent costomer of ice, you might have not experienced problems as others .I have been with then 3 Years now and I can say that I have had all these problems on a regular basis Read extracts of email sent to them
24April 2006
I am really unable to work with the present speed @ 36Kbps,even slower than my dial up.I will need this attended to immediately and not put on the long finger again.I have not had a reply since 24 April .I also feel that I cannot pay for this service as its not as advertised.I also request that my account is amended to reflect the ongoing situation, which has been ongoing since before Christmas with only 4 weeks of normal service in that time.
30 jan 2006 Tomas the network is really bad for me at the moment 56K! and thats the download .I wont even try the upload.When do you think this problem will be solved Its over a week since I have heard of anything been done .
Christmas 05 I am writing again about speed decrease on my package which I
> subscribe
to . Since Mid dec the service has deteriorated greatly to @128kbs at
the moment which is Sunday15/jan .I m paying for a 2meg connection and
am not even getting a 256Kbps I was told that this would be sorted out
but noting as of yet .The only time that the service was anyway
comparable with a 2meg connection was at the 3 days around
Christmas.Could you please let me know if this problem can be resolved
and if I am due a refund on the reduced service.ps I was also told that
an antenna upgrade was the solution ,but the present antenna worked ok
up till the current problem time and at the Christmas period ,could
there be something else causing the problem.The speed tests that I done
were with Irish servers.
These are just for this year.
Unfortunatly I cannot receive Broadband by any other means and have no alternative to them .That is why I have been with them for so long.I also have found out that in recent times some of there key staff have jumped ship, and maybe its symptomatic of something more problematic than just network backbones and connections etc.
They should also let people know the truth instead of bull**** ,seen that we all seem to be so computer literate.As regards posts I dont think that everybody is aware of this Forum, and also that ICE think that the Blacknight speed test is not accurate as quoted by them .
You seem to be one of lucky users of the ICE network not having issues. You also seem to be very good at your job and possionate about what you do. I too am passionate about my job and as a result of depending on this service for my work I cannot do my work to the best of my ability which you can understand is frustrating.
However the fact remains that the service at present is not at all acceptable The tech support people may be doing their best but when people ring up (only this week) complaining about the service to be told nothing is wrong this is totally unacceptable.
07/11/2006 19:21 68 kbps (9 KB/s) 100 kbps (13 KB/s) 14 % 253 ms 2297 ms
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bercon Forklifts
Yes, ICE should be solving them, but for all sorts of reasons, they may not have the resources to do so, and that might not be their fault. Firing the support team just makes it worse, in that whoever replaces them has to start from ground zero, and get up to speed.
Me find it and fix it in a hurry? Probably not, finding exactly what's wrong could be complex, and then fixing it could take longer!
I've spent 30+ years working with all manner of computer systems ranging from simple single user PC's up to 300+ user mini's that covered branch offices across an entire country, and not necessarily Ireland.
As an example, a good while back, I had a phone call from the technical manager of the hardware supplier for one of the packages that I was supporting. They wanted my help on a site. As a result of a disc crash, they'd discovered a hole in their software that meant that the backups that had been taken had 160 Kbyte holes every 180 Megabytes. The software was in use in a very large number of sites worldwide, but this particular set of circumstances had never happened before, so the bug had remained hidden for several years.
They needed my help to repair the database. I ended up spending 10 days on site, working 18 hours a day getting it back, and for that entire 10 days, over 280 users across the entire branch network of a major insurance company in Belgium were unable to process over 50% of their transactions, as the database was not consistent.
At that stage, I was one of only 3 people worldwide that had enough in depth knowledge of how that sytem worked at the depth that was needed to be able to recover it. The other 2 were in Australia and New Zealand.
Similar things happen now with PC based systems. I spent 3 hours yesterday working out why I couldn't log in to ROS after Microsoft Update had automatically downloaded IE7 on to my computer. Turned out that an applet needed by ROS had to be reinstalled, and the account I use for Web acccess has no admin rights, so the applet would not install clean. There was an error message, but it didn't give an accurate reason for the error.
Ran ROS in an admin enabled account, and I can now get back in from the "normal" account, because the applet is back in place again. I will guarantee that there will be a good few support calls to both Microsoft and ROS over that one, but it's not "a fault" as such, but a combination of things all coming together at the same time.
Yes, there's been a lot of angst towards ICE here on this board, but how many people are actually posting? 5, 10, or less. How many ICE users are there, and how many are actually being hit by this. Depending on the numbers, this might not be that high on the board at the moment, even though it is causing huge pain to the few that are here.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting ICE in that respect, and I don't work for them, but I am trying to make sure that a balanced view is taken, in that there may be other things behind the scenes that are influencing this.
Yes, ICE need to get it sorted, and ideally they need to do it fast, but if there are in fact a number of different issues, some hardware, and some network, and some radio repeater related, they may well be working damned hard behind the scenes, without it showing yet.
Then again, yes, they might not be as capable as I'd like to believe, but my experience is that once we were connected, and that did take a lot longer than it was supposed to, the service has been OK, and has provided what was advertised, and still is.
I'm glad that your service is good at Bercon Forklifts, and I must say they are lucky to have customers like you.
I am more black and white about things, because thats the way most of my customers are with me - if I don't deliver for them, they don't want to hear about my slow ISP, or how they might get better eventually. They just go to someone else who will do the job that's expected, quietly and without drama.
And thats what I want - an ISP that does its job, quietly and without drama. I currently have to plan my usage around the times I think might be low contention, because I have to download large amounts of software installations and data. So I'm thinking a lot about ICE, and I prefer to think about other things. And to have a lie in at weekends.
My eircom line is enabled on the 14th, and I'll post here to let you folk that may have an option know how it goes.
Ray
Last edited by tomra01; 10th November 2006 at 06:56 PM.
Well, anyone who works in IT will be fully aware that if somthing is working for one person it doesnt actually mean that it is working for others.
Just because one person here has broadband from Ice that works is no reflection on the bad experiences others may have.
I know several people (after all we all live near each other) who have bb from ice and they didnt know they were not getting proper service until i went and did speedtests, from several different sites on their connections.
Most of these people are not technical. They do not even know how to register for forums - so they dont. Probably 1 in a hundred customers who ever have a problem will ever post anything about it.
I have been working in IT for 20 years have my own IT company with several staff and clients and know what i'm looking at.
I am looking at a service that is pants (technical term).
It is pants for anyone i know who uses it that i have personally checked. I am not assuming that because my service is pants that everyones is. I have actually tested other peoples service for them. 70+ days to solve a problem is not good service. Its pants too.
Businness service providers get paid to provide a service.
Ice have not been providing the service their customer paid money for.
Ice should fix problems that occur promptly. (i would say 1 week is slow - never mind 10 or 11 weeks.)
Customers dont need to know about Ices problems with their service providers - Ice should not tolerate bad service that Ice pay for any more than Ices customers should tolerate bad service from Ice.
If Ice want to be up front to their customers then they should post a note on their website saying they are having problems and they will be fixed - not lie on the phone to their PAYING customers.
Jesus, things have heated up around here in the last few days. I am just back from Prague, ( was over there for 4 days with a few of the lads, CANNOT Reccomend it highly enough ) anyways...... my speed is now download 1.8MB something seems to have been done and i hope it lasts. ... tech support dropped me a line to see if there was an improvment also. I have to give credit if it is due. I just hope it stays this good. Was at my wits end. maybe what the manager in tech support was telling me is true and the prob in swords is sorted. hope so. will keep you software wizzards posted
I am still getting crap service, I was told that this weekend (very specific I know) they would be upgrading the network.
I was told this last week too so I am not holding my breath.
I am on the maynooth mast. Where are you guys located?
Perhaps they have fixed up some areas of the network.
11/11/2006 103 332 kbps (41 KB/s) 416 kbps (51 KB/s) 2 % 89 ms 2006 ms
yes that reads 2006ms
I have now purchased a vodfone 3G data card for my net access the latency is high on it about 170ms but a lot better than ICE. In 1997 I had a better connection via Dial up than I do now and it is nearly 2007.
I see a flyer for Ice broadband too offering 24hour tech support!! Is this new? I have had trouble getting in contact with them during office hours. Don't bother leaving voice mails as they never replied to them for me.
If this network upgrade doesn't happen this weekend bye bye ICE.
I am on the Ashbourne mast and its still bad especially on weekends and every evening.I am ringing there MD next week if its still the same as all the boys cannot resolve this problem.
You won't get anywhere with the MD. I tried that too. She said she was looking into it. Sent out an engineer, who made up some excuse and now she wont return my calls.
There are other issues in the Ashbourne area at the moment, one of the sites I look after in Ratoath is on Eircom broadband, supposedly a business package, and at the back end of the week, the speeds there were slower than dial up, but the speed test was fine, so that suggests that Eircom have a back end issue.
I know that's cabled rather than wireless, so there are major differences. I've not done a tracert on a known slow link with ICE as I don't have any issues here, so it would be a waste of time, but that might provide a clue as to where the delays are, it's altogether posssible that the problems are outside of hardware that's under the control of ICE, depending on where some of their services are being hosted. Yes, they should be able to get it sorted, but we've all seen what trying to get some supplier (Like Eircom) to do ANYTHING can be like, I'm still waiting for Eircom to respond to E-mails that should have been replied to in 10 Days, and that's 2 months ago!!!
There are other issues in the Ashbourne area at the moment, one of the sites I look after in Ratoath is on Eircom broadband, supposedly a business package, and at the back end of the week, the speeds there were slower than dial up, but the speed test was fine, so that suggests that Eircom have a back end issue.
I know that's cabled rather than wireless, so there are major differences. I've not done a tracert on a known slow link with ICE as I don't have any issues here, so it would be a waste of time, but that might provide a clue as to where the delays are, it's altogether posssible that the problems are outside of hardware that's under the control of ICE, depending on where some of their services are being hosted. Yes, they should be able to get it sorted, but we've all seen what trying to get some supplier (Like Eircom) to do ANYTHING can be like, I'm still waiting for Eircom to respond to E-mails that should have been replied to in 10 Days, and that's 2 months ago!!!
How come you know so much about these issues and Ice engineers do not, and by the way what are these other issues?Can you please email them to Ice for me so they can solve them.These problems are going on for 8 weeks now for me and not just the back end of last week.
13/11/2006 23:29 22 kbps (3 KB/s) 193 kbps (24 KB/s) 15 % 283 ms 4006 ms
As for the flyers advertising 24 hour tech support, the plain cheek of ICE in this matter really gets to me. I tried ringing yesterday to get a answer machine for ourt of office tech support! I really have to say they have gone from great service when I started with them to the lowest I have dealt with in terms of service for quite a while.
It is false advertising, I will post one up when I get the chance.
For your tracert/traceroute to make sense you need to run it from your pc, it looks like you ran this from a remote computer.
The problem we are having is the connection to the ICE network.
below is the output from my traceroute from a while ago.
Notice the delay to hop 2 , this should be at max 10ms not in the 500s! hop1 is my router the next hop sucks ass time wise as a result of ICE no one else.
The joke is I can ping my default router from an eircom DSL connection in 20ms!! I have of course told them all this before.
Paul
ofaolain:/home/paul # traceroute irishisptest.com
traceroute to irishisptest.com (81.17.240.197), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.10.1 6.614 ms 1.695 ms 0.520 ms
2 89.16.81.129 577.731 ms 577.506 ms 571.414 ms
3 89.16.64.6 562.581 ms 555.724 ms 547.856 ms
4 217.112.144.146.gvnx.com (217.112.144.146) 540.027 ms * *
5 * so-0-0-0.mpr2.dub1.ie.gvnx.net (217.112.144.237) 526.688 ms *
6 217.112.144.230.gvnx.com (217.112.144.230) 573.321 ms 565.670
ms 555.049 ms
7 ge0-3-0-100.edge1.hba.dub.stisp.net (84.203.130.26) 549.924 ms
542.003 ms 534.082 ms
8 84.203.208.158 211.542 ms 206.744 ms 197.817 ms
9 ge-0-dr1-dub01.blacknight.ie (81.17.240.66) 191.070 ms 183.151
ms 175.272 ms
10 fe-0-ar2-dub01.blacknight.ie (81.17.240.164) 330.672 ms 319.185
ms 198.513 ms
11 palermo.mneylon.com (81.17.240.197) 198.813 ms 191.712 ms 183.717 ms
Quote:
Originally Posted by mick_irl
I've done a trace route (on the advice of a techie friend) but can't make head nor tail of it...
I've attached screen captures of routes to a website. Any advice appreciated.
Last edited by paul.whelan@gmail.com; 14th November 2006 at 12:44 PM.
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 4 ms 5 ms 5 ms 213.168.230.1
2 6 ms 4 ms 7 ms 213.168.225.241
3 7 ms 6 ms 5 ms 213.168.224.18
4 6 ms 7 ms 6 ms 213.242.106.13
5 5 ms 8 ms 5 ms so-6-0.hsa1.Dublin1.Level3.net [4.68.115.25]
6 7 ms 4 ms 10 ms mm3090.london1.eu.level3.net [12.187.194.77]
7 19 ms 19 ms 19 ms ge-1-dr1-dub01.blacknight.ie [81.17.240.74]
8 19 ms 17 ms 17 ms fe-0-ar2-dub01.blacknight.ie [81.17.240.164]
9 18 ms 18 ms 19 ms palermo.mneylon.com [81.17.240.197]
Trace complete.
What's not making sense is that the other trace above is using an address that doens't tie in with the ICE information about the address of their system, in that as I understood it, all the ICE addresses are 213.168.xxx.xxx, but the trace above is to a completely different IP address. That needs to be clarified with someone at ICE, and maybe the result of that posted here.
My tracert is showing the sort of route that I would expect, but the early stage is completely different to the one above, both in timings and in the routing taken. I don't have the time to try and get a decode of who and where the addresses belong to , but there's something strange going on here.
For what it's worth. I suspect that the problems are that there is a specfic routing device somewhere in the configuration that's under excessive strain. In theory, things like this are 'off shelf', but in practice, that's not the case, when they are ordered, there's suddenly a massive delay, as has happened to me on more than a few occasions in recent months, even with major suppliers like Epson, a printer tray for current production device took close on 6 weeks to arrive at the customer's, yet it was supposedly 'in stock', right up until it was ordered! I know when we first went on to Ice, there was a huge delay because they had no receivers in stock, and they were supposedly en route from a supplier in Germany, it ended up as over 6 weeks before we were live.
All we can do is keep pressure on , and trust that the relvevant people in ICE will get it sorted, and at the end of the day, it's in their interest to do it, so we can only assume that there are good reasons for the massive problems that seem to be happening.
Last edited by Bercon Forklifts; 14th November 2006 at 02:17 PM.
Ice mentioned changing "ip ranges" to me about 2 weeks ago when I rang up. Would that make sense?
I just did another speed test and got a max pause of 1307 ms
What website or software are you using to do your traceroute and i'll try that for consistency-sake.
I've been using the traceroute on Trace Route and 90% of the time, the problem seems to be on Hop Number 2.
Ice mentioned changing "ip ranges" to me about 2 weeks ago when I rang up. Would that make sense?
What website or software are you using to do your traceroute and i'll try that for consistency-sake.
Change IP ranges, very possibly it is a good idea, but I don't know all of the ICE ranges, all I am going by is the information they gave me for this site, the data on their web site, and painful experience with a number of different providers over the last 12 - 18 months. I do support type work in North Co Dublin and Meath area, and have dealt with broadband problems of one sort or another on UTV, Eircom, Perlico, ICE, BT & Imagine. OK, most of these are wired rather than wireless, and are flavours of Eircom, but the combinations and permutations get pretty complex at times.
Tracert. Depends on what operating system you're on. Here, I'm on XP Pro, and all I did was open a DOS window ( start, run CMD), which opens up a DOS command window, then type tracert irishisptest.com>tracert.log at the command prompt. Make a note of the directory that's being shown in the DOS window, as that's where the log file will end up (that's what the >tracert.log part does)
When it finishes, type EXIT at the command prompt in the DOS box, that closes, then find the tracert.log file, and it has the report in it, which can then be opened with notepad or whatever, and then cut and paste into the forum message.
The thread "Icecomms speed problem" has not received any replies for a month. It has been automatically closed as a result. You may start a new thread on the topic if the information in this thread is not sufficient.
Bull 
I am just back from Prague, ( was over there for 4 days with a few of the lads, CANNOT Reccomend it highly enough
) anyways...... my speed is now download 1.8MB something seems to have been done and i hope it lasts. ... tech support dropped me a line to see if there was an improvment also. I have to give credit if it is due. I just hope it stays this good. Was at my wits end. maybe what the manager in tech support was telling me is true and the prob in swords is sorted. hope so. will keep you software wizzards posted 
3 332 kbps (41 KB/s) 416 kbps (51 KB/s) 2 % 89 ms 2006 ms
Linear Mode
