Prime8
09-30-03, 10:47 AM
Dublin, Ireland
Hi all,
I just got installed last Saturday a wireless connection into my house from http://www.irishbroadband.ie. The package I went for is called BreezeHome http://www.irishbroadband.ie/residential.html
This package cost me €150 for the installation and has additional monthly subscription / rental of €30.
This should give me a 512 kBps upload and download and with a contention of 20:1 and no cap on downloads, plus a fixed IP address.
The installation went as follows:
First Week (~30 Min): LOS (Line Of Sight) test
Following Week (Installation ~2 Hrs):
- Antenna fixed onto my chimney with 2m pool
- Wired down to my PC with some very tough shielded CAT5 cable to a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter to my Ethernet card.
- Setup static IP Address on Nic and two cups of coffee for the technicians and I was up and running.
Which leads me to the following; if any one can help or has any info on this product I would be very happy to hear any feedback.
Saturday: My friend has NTL broadband with 512 kBps downloads and 128 kBps uploads. So we set about comparing speeds. Firstly we tried www.bandwidthplace.com and their speed test. He scored around the 650 mark and I got 360. We tested again and he fell off to 580 and I stayed around 360.
We then set out to apply as many relevant tcp/ip optimisations to are Nics and OS, we both run WinXP Pro. These seemed to have little effect and then we tried removing spy ware with Ad Aware, by Lavasoft, made some difference.
Sunday: I stayed up until 0300 Hrs running more speed tests and looking on forums for advice about getting the most out of your connection. My speed went down to 116 around midnight and stayed that way. Me thinking traffic should be less at night on local networks and being the weekend and all that.
Monday: I got onto Irishbroadband today and asked them what was going on and as I guessed they told me a story about contention and the technician I was onto went though a couple of things with me asked if I had run TCP/IP optimisation and a few other things. He recommended that I should upgrade my package to the next one with an 8:1 contention and for €70 I could get a 1Mb connection with 4:1 contention, so it should never fall below 250 kBps. I said I would see how I get on first with what I have.
With furthering querying I managed to find out that the hardware is by Alvarion, www.alvarion.com and incorporates the 802.11 a/b/g standards but has frequency hopping also setup with some other stuff, nearly sounds like military standards of some kind.
After the call I went back onto the net to try and find out more. One thing that I am finding annoying is that no software came with the package to monitor my bandwidth or check the hardware or perform firmware upgrades, etc... Apparently all this is done by Irishbroadband. But I would like to have some control over my hardware, especially my internet connection. I didn’t like the way they say they monitor everything themselves, hmmm, what is that supposed to mean.
The hardware, I think, that is on my roof, from the PoE box by my computer which has "BreezeNet" on it and from what the technician told me, is a BreezeAccess II box with parabolic Mesh Antenna, running in the 2.4GHz range.
So finally, has anyone else bought this package from Irishbroadband. Should I be demanding my bandwidth from Irishbroadband or my money back. Can they sell something like this if it is barely going to run any faster than my 56K modem. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Sorry about the length, but I am a firm believer of getting in all or as much of the facts first.
Cheers
Prime8
Hi all,
I just got installed last Saturday a wireless connection into my house from http://www.irishbroadband.ie. The package I went for is called BreezeHome http://www.irishbroadband.ie/residential.html
This package cost me €150 for the installation and has additional monthly subscription / rental of €30.
This should give me a 512 kBps upload and download and with a contention of 20:1 and no cap on downloads, plus a fixed IP address.
The installation went as follows:
First Week (~30 Min): LOS (Line Of Sight) test
Following Week (Installation ~2 Hrs):
- Antenna fixed onto my chimney with 2m pool
- Wired down to my PC with some very tough shielded CAT5 cable to a PoE (Power Over Ethernet) adapter to my Ethernet card.
- Setup static IP Address on Nic and two cups of coffee for the technicians and I was up and running.
Which leads me to the following; if any one can help or has any info on this product I would be very happy to hear any feedback.
Saturday: My friend has NTL broadband with 512 kBps downloads and 128 kBps uploads. So we set about comparing speeds. Firstly we tried www.bandwidthplace.com and their speed test. He scored around the 650 mark and I got 360. We tested again and he fell off to 580 and I stayed around 360.
We then set out to apply as many relevant tcp/ip optimisations to are Nics and OS, we both run WinXP Pro. These seemed to have little effect and then we tried removing spy ware with Ad Aware, by Lavasoft, made some difference.
Sunday: I stayed up until 0300 Hrs running more speed tests and looking on forums for advice about getting the most out of your connection. My speed went down to 116 around midnight and stayed that way. Me thinking traffic should be less at night on local networks and being the weekend and all that.
Monday: I got onto Irishbroadband today and asked them what was going on and as I guessed they told me a story about contention and the technician I was onto went though a couple of things with me asked if I had run TCP/IP optimisation and a few other things. He recommended that I should upgrade my package to the next one with an 8:1 contention and for €70 I could get a 1Mb connection with 4:1 contention, so it should never fall below 250 kBps. I said I would see how I get on first with what I have.
With furthering querying I managed to find out that the hardware is by Alvarion, www.alvarion.com and incorporates the 802.11 a/b/g standards but has frequency hopping also setup with some other stuff, nearly sounds like military standards of some kind.
After the call I went back onto the net to try and find out more. One thing that I am finding annoying is that no software came with the package to monitor my bandwidth or check the hardware or perform firmware upgrades, etc... Apparently all this is done by Irishbroadband. But I would like to have some control over my hardware, especially my internet connection. I didn’t like the way they say they monitor everything themselves, hmmm, what is that supposed to mean.
The hardware, I think, that is on my roof, from the PoE box by my computer which has "BreezeNet" on it and from what the technician told me, is a BreezeAccess II box with parabolic Mesh Antenna, running in the 2.4GHz range.
So finally, has anyone else bought this package from Irishbroadband. Should I be demanding my bandwidth from Irishbroadband or my money back. Can they sell something like this if it is barely going to run any faster than my 56K modem. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Sorry about the length, but I am a firm believer of getting in all or as much of the facts first.
Cheers
Prime8