Irish broadband breeze

Anyone tried the Breeze product from Irish Broadband?
I am wondering if they supply the wireless router required and/or the ethernet card, or will I have to purchase them myself? Whats their customer service like?

They don't supply a network card or router. Basically you get an ethernet cable coming from the antenna and you plug this into your PC's ethernet card or a router if you are sharing the connection on a LAN.

From the IrishBroadband available from :

What equipment do you provide?

The customer premises equipment consists of an antenna, cabling and a radio unit. The antenna is installed on the roof and connected via cable to the radio unit. The radio unit in turn connects to your PCs Ethernet port.

...

Will I be able to use the service with a home network?

Yes, but you will need to purchase a router as the radio device cannot be plugged into a hub or switch.

Click to expand...

I've used it before in a work environment where the server had a multi-port ethernet card with one port used for the WAN (broadband) side connection and the other for the LAN side and the server acted as the router.

I have used Breeze in two separate work setups and (a) have found the throughput varies a lot (b) have experienced at least two complete temporary outages (due to their backbone and not the wireless part failing) and (c) have found their support to be patchy.

We are currently switching from IrishBroadband to a dedicated leased line in work.

These are just my personal experiences with it. Make of them what you will.

Thanks Clubman, just to clarify:if I want to use a laptop anywhere in the house and be truly wireless, I will need an ethernet card and a router. Is this correct? Sorry if the question is silly, I am new to this.......

Wirelss broadband such as from Irish Broadband is not a requirement for using a wireless Local Area Network (LAN), for example in your house, just in case that's a point of confusion. I myself am using a wireless LAN with UTV's Clicksilver ADSL broadband to send this. Whatever broadband package you use - wireless, ADSL, cable, satellite etc. - you will need a wireless router/access point to distribute the network locally. Your laptop will obviously need to be wireless enabled either with built in wireless networking or via an add-on PCMCIA/CardBus WiFi card. Howstuffworks.com has a good basic tutorial on this. Does that make sense and answer your questions?

beckster - in case clubmans description doesn't make it clearer for you, you can think of it this way too :

There are two types of wireless network worth considering - one is the type that is strong enough to get from one side of Dublin to another and the other is the type that is only strong enough to get from one side of your house to the other.

The Irish Broadband offering is the type that goes across Dublin (from 3Rock, Liberty Hall, Ballymun, wherever) to your house. Once it gets to your house it has to end up somewhere and that somewhere is an arial . . . which has a wire coming out of it which is where the wireless ends and wired starts.

Now you can take that wire and plug it into a device which sends out a wireless signal strong enough to be picked up around your house and maybe down the road, but that's about it.

So, yes you need to buy a wireless router and a wireless network card. Actually your question doesn't talk about wireless network cards, so make sure you get a *wireless* one. Ethernet is the type you will need, but unless you go somewhere extremely bizarre you won't find anything other than Ethernet in a shop.

z

Thanks everyone, am a bit clearer now about what is required.

Just out of curiosity - why are you considering IrishBroadband? No alternative? Price? No landline or want to get rid of it? Some other reason(s)? Personally I'd love to get rid of the landline and use something like cable or wireless broadband. Unfortunately my experiences of the former suggest that it's not dependable enough and the latter is still not available to me.

Its rather complicated, I am setting up a new laptop with wireless broadband for someone else (as a favour, they are not technically inclined at all) and a work colleague has got Irish Broadband so I started enquiring there.
However the person for whom I am setting this up is already using Smart Telecom (I only just found out) so I am now thinking the easiest thing would be to get broadband from them and then set the house up for wireless use. It has to be really simple to use and not liable to falling over frequently, as I will be the "technical" support (Using the term very loosely, I do not work in the IT sector).
Does that answer your question? Thanks for your help so far!!

Thanks for the info. Might be as well to inquire about Smart ADSL availability if they're already with them.