Callidus Wireless Broadband

[jonathanlowe]

Originally Posted by daveypjd

Patience has finally run out with Callidus and I am considering demanding a refund. Problem is do I continue to pay for a crap service or have nothing.

I'm connected since mid February of this year, the service has been so good that I often regret that I bought into the service at all. No service for most of paddie's weekend then last week end no service from mid Sat until, the problems have gone on and on. Now the service is really slow, been on to them again. Mind you when I do phone up somebody answers, is that just beginners luck

When Callidus's engineer installed at my home he used no allignment equiptmentjust good old eyesight.

That would appear to be normal, did he not have his laptop with him, he uses that and the setup software for the bridge unit to get the best signal quality.

A cable was then run to a POE unit with another to my PC(No other hardware). He than changed the IP address on my PC to the 10.x.x.x range with a 255.255.255.192 mask. My concern is that I can quite happly change the IP address and the connection still works(when it happens to be online).

Well that's what happened to me, you perhaps used my IP address on your own PC thus blocking me for a while, until you changed it back. While your not supposed to be able to see any machines on the other side of a bridge, they don't always work as they should. When you changed your PC's IP address you used someone elses address and blocked them when they wanted to use the system, turned on their PC.

Also I have noticed of late that the connection of seems usable in the morning but during the evening peak time totally worthless. Average of 20% ping loss with return times often peaking to 1500ms.

Have you tried pinging internally or doing a tracert <address> to see where the slow times are. I found that the slow times were in the public ares not within the Callidus WAN. tracert will give you the ping times for each hop of the route, I found that it's the external hops that took the longest time.

Please advise if any of this seems strange.

By the way connection was offline this weekend 24th & 25th Mar. I am convinced that they disconnect over the weekend to conserve bandwidth or am I just cinical.
Thanks

I think you right to be cinical. The public address that I seem to be routed through has been blacklisted, I wonder why. What annoys me is there appears to be redundantsey built into the system, if I fail to make a connection one way they don't alocate another route which would be normal practice. I suppose Callidus are only renting very little bandwith, if they are too successfull they quickly run out of bandwith, however they next option is to expensive with their small client base.

I'm sure someone will call me all sorts of egit for the above rubbish but there may be some sense,
Jonathan

[daveypjd]

Contacted Callidus today and demanded to spead to the boss and spoke to a guy called Jeremy or Gerard I think. I was told that the local AP in Clonroche failed today because of a battery failure. (Should have used Duracell). If i wasn't so fustrated I would laugh. My tracert from the weekend revealed that the failure last weekend was on the third hop 10.0.1.21 which is the last hop before the public address 82.195 137.4

Today I am actually online during peak times with good ping times so maybe thay are listening to my constant complaining. Still not getting the promised 1mb but any connection is good..... Yahoo.

[horizonuser]

Originally Posted by paulclane

It seems you guys are all connected on a wireless LAN network, which is a major security risk. Very unprofessional of Callidus!. Make sure you have a fantastic firewall, preferably a decent hardeware firewall, otherwise other peers on the Calidus network can hack into your computer with ease. I could do it from here in seconds.

The good news for many of us is that Eircom will be launching their WiMax service later on this year, with better coverage and reliablity than a lot of the wireless providers.

For users in Clane: Commsys has done a deal with the Community Council for sectors to be errected on the Abbey tower, despite a lot of protest.

For users in Allenwood: the planning application for the new tower beside the old power plant, with sectors for mobile phone and broadand equipment may hit severe problems. There is a large creche directly opposite the site and initial radiation readings are coming up with a "critical" reading, well up in the red from the existing mast at the front door of the creche. So the chances of expanding the sectors and output powers are small. Existing services on the mast may have to suffer a reduction in power, or may even have to cease totally.

Are you serious? I can't figure out if you are taking the piss or not!! Anyway, I got rid of Callidus last month and got in Permanet. The quality of the service is unbeleivable compared to Callidus. I was with them for the last 2 years, well before they were Callidus. I actually got used to the dodgy latency and constant outages. But Permanet is just on a different level. (BTW, I don't have any connection with Permanet)

PS. In case you were serious, you know that any host on a network (Internet via cable, wireless, ehternet etc) are all equally as vunerable as each other? The fact that Callidus were using RFC 1918 address on the inside doesn't make it any different from, say Irish Broadband, using public address on their hosts. As longs as traffic can be routed or NAT'd to each other, then the same security concerns apply. That is, two hosts on a wire with addresses of 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 are just as vunverable as two hosts with public addresses. The bottom line is that any host should have some sort of security. Also, to say you could hack into an unprotected system in seconds in a little over exaggerated to be honest!

[jonathanlowe]

I'm glad that you have a better service, I would not mind if the breakdowns happened during the day, early morning. However, two weekends in a row, Just what some people did with the son or daughter who were wanting to use the net when home for the weekend, bring them to an internet caffe.



Jonathan.

[rickashe]

Hello everybody, a few points to make and a few questions to answer!!

Firstly I am the Network Operations Manager for Callidus Telecom and we also provide the Backhaul Network for IFA Telecom.

We never hide behind smoke screens and will always be honest and direct with our customers. We value our customers more than anything.

In the latter half of last year we purchased the network in the south east of the country that is being spoken about in a good portion of this thread. This network was originally started up as an amateur network by a gentleman who is very competent and capable when it comes to WiFi and networking. The demand for access to the internet grew exponentially through this network and it grew into a small business quite quickly. Due to the initial nature of the network and the way it grew, it quickly became more then he could cope with. It was taking up all of his time (Day and Night) and eventually became a little too much. This is no disrespect to the gentleman involved he did an excellent job but the nature of the network dictated that he was constantly being torn from Billy to Jack trying to solve problems (Network related, Customer related as well as handling billing etc)

This is where Callidus stepped in. When we purchased the network we were under the impression that some minor and a few major upgrades were required to get it up to commercial grade. This is what we voiced to the customer base when we took over and was the truth at the time.

As it turned out what is required on the network to bring it to full commercial grade is a complete overhaul and rebuild of the network. Replacing most of the links with higher capacity links. Replacing the access points with more capable ones as well as adding additional points to cope with the demand and growth. We are also in the process of rewriting the routing tables and adding bandwidth management devices where necessary as well as incorporating automatic redundancy and direct links to fibre.

This is an awful lot more work then we had ever envisaged and as you would expect will take longer than expected. Any queries or questions anyone has regarding this can be voiced at our office number 01-8263546 / 7 or via e-mail info@callidustelecom.ie our phone lines tend to be quite busy and I know people get frustrated with the answering machine. We are implementing a new multi line phone system to cope with the demand and hope to have this up and running in the very near future.

In regard to the customers experiencing issues in the east Kildare region. We are having serious issues in this region with another provider in the area who shall remain nameless. This provider for reasons unknown seems to think it fun to spend their time doing everything in their power to interfere with our signal rather than co-operating with us and providing service much needed by the local townspeople. We have numerous processes and procedures in the pipeline all of which will be implemented soon and this will do away with any existing problems being experienced. I would ask that anyone experiencing problems in this area to make contact with the office via the above means for more information. This problem will not exist for too much longer.

Many thanks for your time and patience reading this long post and I hope it goes some way to explaining the situation.

[paulclane]

Well done Rick,

it's good to see an ISP posting on a forum to answer customers queries and dispel any un-truths. If only others would follow your brave move.

Unfortunately, it also opens you up to every crackpot with an axe to grind. (I'm sharpening up mine now).

I'm strongly considering switching to Calidus, there is a sector not far from me. If only you had a higher download/upload speed than your meagre 1Mbps I would order your 10:1 business plan tomorrow. You guys promised me you would increase your speeds to 2 Mbps, but it hasn't happened yet. (any dates yet???). I'm sure that you would like to reassure me that 1Mps up/down is more than enough for a small business like mine, but I would have to disagree.

Jonathan: A quick probe of the network takes about two minutes, while a complete probe takes about four hours. Make sure you use a good firewall. I use two, one is a Zywall 5 hardware firewall and the other is a software based one. I have to use my XBox 360 on the DMZ, to bypass the firewall, but my ISP still blocks some ports, (accidently they say, but I think their backhaul provider are doing the blocking).

If my own Wireless ISP provider had a 10:1 package I'd jump on that.

[daveypjd]

In reply to Rick,

If I got a straight answer or time frame for these magical promised upgrades I would be happy instead of the regular "we will look into it and get back to you spiel" which I can say I have never recieved a return call from callidus and I have called at least 15 times since install.

I live in a rural area and the nature of my job allows me to do a substantial amout of work remotly via VPN to RD. this doesn't require blistering speed but reliability and low latency is important. The constant REQUEST TIMED OUT and 20% ping loss I get when pinging 10.0.21.1 is furstrating to say the least. I will say that when I work outside peak times ie. early morning I get a reasonable connection screams one thing MASSIVE CONTENTION.

All I would like to know is a timeframe for the upgrades.

P.S. I have seen the local AP and it looks like something from the dark ages. A little more height would help too.

[jonathanlowe]

Originally Posted by paulclane

Well done Rick,

Jonathan: A quick probe of the network takes about two minutes, while a complete probe takes about four hours. Make sure you use a good firewall. I use two, one is a Zywall 5 hardware firewall and the other is a software based one. I have to use my XBox 360 on the DMZ, to bypass the firewall, but my ISP still blocks some ports, (accidently they say, but I think their backhaul provider are doing the blocking).

Hi Paul, I do use a hardware firewall, the one built into my router. I also run a software router, however neither are as good as the firewall built into the proxy server I used to use when connected by ISDN. I never had any problems though using a public IP with Eircom.

Now I wonder if I'm protected at all, so perhaps you could advise me on how to test my forewall to see if one can get through. I have run Leaktest and that can't get out.

Jonathan.

[paulclane]

Hi Jonathan,

Most firewalls will show many attempts to hack into your PC in their logs, but in reality, most are robots scanning for obvious vunerabilites and are not targeting you directly. The danger comes from being in a wireless LAN situation, where other users are tempted to run more vigorous scans because they are in the same range as you and can see your firewall much more easily. You can try security.symantec.com/ which is resonably thorough, especially the advanced scans that take a lot longer. Trend Micro also have a similar facility. Just remember that these websites are trying to sell you their systems, so they are a little biased. I perform the same service for my clients, using specialised software which can take overnight to run and may crash some systems, but in the end I get a full listing of all the vunerabilites across their network. There are two separate tests, (penetration testing), one that scans from outside the network and the other inside.

If you run the scans above and it comes up green then you're fine. I ran a simple scan during the week on my own WISP's network and found well more than one hundred AP's and routers, (across about fifteen sectors), and around ten PC's that were ripe for the plucking, (Computer names and version info were easily accessible). I may or may not have been able to RDP into some of these machines using default user names and passwords, (I'm not stating on a forum that I actually did this, just theoretically, if you get my drift). Nor am I saying that I was able to remotely reboot PC's and run other system commands on these machines and that's without doing any hacking at all!!, (again theoretically), so run the tests!!

[mullins]

Paulclane,

Where did you find this information regarding WiMax in Allenwood?
I contacted Eircom directly about this in January and was told it was not going to happen in rural areas in the near future...

[paulclane]

I'm currently on a trial with Callidus Telecom in Allenwood, North Kildare. I have had Leinster Broadband for the last 10 months or so, and if you go to the "leinster Broadband" thread, (LBB AKA Kildare Broadband), you'll see the huge amount of trouble I am having with their service. I'm almost bald at this stage after pulling my hair our for the last ten months.

So what do I think of the Callidus service? Perfect!! I've only had it one week, but the speeds are consistanly fast, (approx 1.5Mb up and down), quality of service ranges from 75-95% and round rip times are less than 25ms. Quality of service with Leinster Broadand is frequently less than 50%, often much worse and never better than 75%. Leinster broadband speeds can be as high as 3.5Mb in the mornings when nobody else is on, (very occasionally), but in the evenings it grinds to a messy halt, almost every evening. Weekend evenings are a disaster.

Callidus is approx 1.5Mb in the morning, evening, nighttime, weekday, weekend.

So I'm totally chuffed with the Callidus service!!

I played XBox360 online on Saturday night and last night with no problems whatsoever, something I have rarely been able to do with the wireless broadband service from Leinster Broadband and never with such a lag-free connection

I've only had it one week, so I'll keep you posted

I try and support local businesses and Leinster Broadband are based in Allenwood, but it bodes very badly for their future when they can't even provide a reliable service in their own home town!!

[paulclane]

Mullins,

I had spoken to one of the engineers conducting the tests and was informed that the roll out would happen later this year, (from Dunmurry Hill, not too sure if that name is right). But subsequent conversations with equipment providers have told me that the first release of the Wimax standard was very disappointing, with ranges much shorter than expected. Wimax was supposed to be a medium to long range service, but it seems to have its problems, so the roll out was put back.

Eircom are the only company given a Wimax licence, which is illiegal under European Anti-competition legislation which states:

(b) limit or control production, markets, technical development, or investment;

Seeing that Eircom have wasted the opportunity it's up to other WISPs to put the boot in to ComReg and maybe things will finally get moving on it.

Well done to Rick and Callidus for sorting out East Kildare!

[wexman]

I am afraid I cannot agree with Rick. Callidus has been spinning this story since they took over the technical side of IFA telecom. Problem was mainly due to the fact that the original guy they had setting up the node sites and installations basically screwed up and had them over a barrel for a long time, maybe still has! If like Paul says that Kildare is sorted then Callidus must be still using the sites they started with in the S/E. As for the gentleman who is very competent who set up the original wireless I would agree with, except that BK ‘s network worked. Like I said before most of the callidus guys are competent but slow to move away from their mistakes and invest in new sites. Unfortunately the continued association with this original mistake has damaged Callidus in the S/E.

All in the business know who I am talking about.

[cooper]

Well same oh same oh i live in clonroche and when the broadband is working it is good but when it is down it is f****N **** well i had a person call to my house a lad called ??????? he said that he could not do anything for me as it was a network problem i was charged 150 for that little piece of info well i am finally going to pack this broadband in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! when brendan keohe owneed the network i could not complain at least they would answer the phone as we speak the mast in adamstown blew last night and it only running on battiers

[Inchmurrin]

Guys - I used callidus in Adamstown (wexford) for just over a year. It took them until about Nov last year to sort the local AP out in adamstown - pings went down, reliability went up.

However, in the new year it went awry again - latency spikes and absolutely appauling downtime - over a week at one stage and at least one 12 hour outage per week for a couple of months. I gave PermaNet a call on the off chance I could get LOS to their Campile mast or the forth mountain one.

As it turns out, PermaNet installed a new AP in White Mountain (right beside Callidus's AP) in Jan this year. They hooked me up quickly and I've had zero problems since....oh yeah, and they are cheaper than callidus.

I still get the text message to my mobile from the IFA about outages - I get one at least once a week. I've not unsubscribed from them as yet - I find it interesting to see that they still have such huge problems.

I use PermaNet now for VPN, gaming and normal web - its all runs very well. In fact they gave me a free public static IP address so my VPN would be more stable. Customer service is great (leave a message and they get back to you) and the guys in their tech desk are nice and helpful (as were Callidus, but they just could not stop the outages).

So if you are having probs with IFA/Callidus and don't have Fourth Mountain/Campile LOS, give them a call.

P.S. No, I don't work for PermaNet, this is just my opinion of having used both (i.e. all) the providers in the area and is not intended as a definitive statement on the service of Callidus - just my experience.

[irishbear]

Originally Posted by Inchmurrin

Guys - I used callidus in Adamstown (wexford) for just over a year.

P.S. No, I don't work for PermaNet, this is just my opinion of having used both (i.e. all) the providers in the area and is not intended as a definitive statement on the service of Callidus - just my experience.

Not all my friend, we now have one of the best providers in the Wexford area, National Wireless Broadband HTTP:\\nationalwirelessbroadband.com.
When they started they had 2mb Down and 512kb Down, they have done some upgrading in the last week and that speed has gone up to "at times nearly 3mb down and 712up. I believe they have also started up in the Clonroche area, and will soon have a full county coverage. They use Avanti, and will only hook up 25 people to any one mast. They have also increased their bandwidth to over 12mb so there is ample room for expansion.

[irishbear]

Originally Posted by jonathanlowe

Hi Paul, I do use a hardware firewall, the one built into my router. I also run a software router, however neither are as good as the firewall built into the proxy server I used to use when connected by ISDN. I never had any problems though using a public IP with Eircom.

Now I wonder if I'm protected at all, so perhaps you could advise me on how to test my forewall to see if one can get through. I have run Leaktest and that can't get out.

Jonathan.

I was using Panda Internet Security Suite 2007 until last Saturday, and have been using it for the past few years, I have never had any problems with viruses worms or any such like.
But while using the computer last Saturday, the usual pop up window appeared telling me that Panda was now up to date. It usually does that about every 2 days. But as soon as the pop up window went so was my Internet connection. My first thought was the ISP, TXT them and asked was it down, got a reply that it wasn't. So I thought a Virus? I use a boot CD Called Hirens Boot CD, it has loads of progs that you can use by booting from it, Find and change the Admin password, McAfee, and Fprot anti virus to name but a few. I scanned the computer from this for viruses twice using both Virus progs, and there was none on the computer. I rebooted and uninstalled Panda and I had my connection straight away. So I felt that something had become corrupt with Panda. I cleaned out my Registry of all ref's to Panda and reinstalled it. Still had my connection, then I clicked on update after putting in my client details and it downloaded the 30mb of files in about 2 to 3 mins. Again I lost my Internet connection, I am waiting on a reply from Panda as to what may be gone wrong, afraid I am going to get something into my machine. I would put in a new one except that Panda has nearly a year to run and I have 3 licenses with it. Anyone come across this before??

jonathanlowe: It seems strange to me that Calidas are not using WEP keys, The one on National Wireless Broadband is 64bit, they can use 128bit but it can cause a bit of latency. But with the WEP Key no one else except a customer can connect to the system so anyone else with the same IP should not matter.

[vlf126]

Originally Posted by blacknight

Who owned the network previously?

The company that owned Callidus before were called Torque internet and the service then was ???t,since the take over of Torque there has been a big improvment in the level of service.. I started off with Torque and was supprised one day when i rang Torque to complain about the service only to be answered by Callidus , althought the tecknical staff as far as i know still work up in the blessington office that im told is still there..As a whole the service has improved and does slow down time to time on the weekend and the speed is not what its supposed to be because of the contention ratio and this goes for all service providers in this INTERNET BACKWARDS COUNTRY WHEN IT COMES TO CONNECTION SPEEDS but at least its still there and usually a phone call will sort it out.. im on the Brittas mast that was at one time PRAP but has now been sorted compared to when Torque was running the show.. well thats my story bye for now...Regards

[vlf126]

Originally Posted by azzeretti

BKC communication

Torque Internet owned this company before Callidus took them over,,they were based in Blessington Village

[tommyg]

Originally Posted by vlf126

Torque Internet owned this company before Callidus took them over,,they were based in Blessington Village

Have been folloing this thread for a while, and just decided to reply...

BKC was owned by a local chap in New Ross.

Callidus were a Dublin/Kildare ISP who expanded with IFA to Wexford, and then bought out BKC last summer. They've since bought out Torque early this year, and seem to be up to something in Clare as well.

I had the misfortune of being an early Callidus/IFA customer, and got ripped off by their rogue installer D O'Brien. They blamed him for all their network problems, and in the end I'd had enough and moved to BKC, got set up by a friendly guy and it just worked properly, reliably and quickly, usually 2MBit+. The few times I had problems I could just call up and get an answer or a reason for the problem, and it was always fixed within a few hours. When I got the letter saying Callidus had bought BKC, I had a feeling things would get bad, and they did. It was really bad for the first 3 months of this year - several weekends with no broadband - try explaining why to 3 kids desperate to use bebo! And try to get them on the phone - hah.

For the last 6 weeks it's been stable at least, but a bit slow.

irishbear, anyone would think you're involved with that ISP. Seems as if they use satellite backhaul from their website - try playing a multiplayer game with that!