Eircom destroying pings

Seifer · 10-08-2008 8:24pm #1

The only reason I noticed my line had been "upgraded" by Eircom over the weekend was that I normally filter out CS:S servers above a ping of 50ms. When I did that today only five came up.
Eircom have upped my download speed and raped my ping.
There are threads about the upgrades on the broadband forum but since the problem they are causing relates almost exclusively to gamers I said I'd post a thread here.
From reading the threads in the BB forum there doesn't seem to be a certain way to fix what they've done. People are talking about downgrading their lines or asking to have their interleaving changed but nothing concrete.
So any thoughts on Eircom's active attempts to **** over Irish gamers?

BioHazRd · 10-08-2008 9:22pm

Not really suited to competitive gaming forum - more general tbh. Ill move it there but leave a redirect if anyone wants to contribute

Bio

Kiith · 10-08-2008 10:49pm

I'd say its just some technical difficulties after the upgrade. I'd give it a day or two, and then start worrying.

Seifer · 10-08-2008 11:59pm

Kiith wrote:

I'd say its just some technical difficulties after the upgrade. I'd give it a day or two, and then start worrying.

The upgrades have been rolling out over the Summer. My exchange just got done this weekend. Posters that have had theirs done in the past few weeks are still suffering terrible pings. Check out the various threads in the braoadband forum.
There is talk that Eircom are to address such issues after the upgrades are done. They're not due to be completed until September. So we have to suffer a much lower quality gaming service until then?

cian1500ww · 11-08-2008 12:20am

Seifer wrote: »

So we have to suffer a much lower quality gaming service until then?

You think thats bad ??!! I;m stuck on 3 meg till then. God what I wouldn't give to have 7 meg.

Captain Chaos · 11-08-2008 12:28am

You think thats bad, my line got ''upgraded'' yesterday, went from 2022/212 to 2520/312 and my ping went from 17ms to 42ms. Didn't even get the full 1meg upgrade and my ping doubled, not happy Eircom, not happy at all. I want my old connection back at this stage.

Seifer · 11-08-2008 1:34am

cian1500ww wrote:

You think thats bad ??!! I;m stuck on 3 meg till then. God what I wouldn't give to have 7 meg.

I don't think you understand the problem. The only thing that really matters for online gaming is latency i.e. ping. I'd happily give any download speed increase back for my old ping.

Captain Chaos wrote:

You think thats bad, my line got ''upgraded'' yesterday, went from 2022/212 to 2520/312 and my ping went from 17ms to 42ms. Didn't even get the full 1meg upgrade and my ping doubled, not happy Eircom, not happy at all. I want my old connection back at this stage.

I was pinging 30 on this speed test. And had a download rate somewhere around 2.6. My "upgrade" gives me:

A negligible download increase for triple ping. I too am in the undo it, undo it now club.

axer · 11-08-2008 1:38am

Seifer wrote: »

The only reason I noticed my line had been "upgraded" by Eircom over the weekend was that I normally filter out CS:S servers above a ping of 50ms. When I did that today only five came up.
Eircom have upped my download speed and raped my ping.
There are threads about the upgrades on the broadband forum but since the problem they are causing relates almost exclusively to gamers I said I'd post a thread here.
From reading the threads in the BB forum there doesn't seem to be a certain way to fix what they've done. People are talking about downgrading their lines or asking to have their interleaving changed but nothing concrete.
So any thoughts on Eircom's active attempts to **** over Irish gamers?

I've actually noticed that too. Just got upgraded the other day and I noticed less halo 1 servers with low pings from me. Not sure why that is happening though since you would expect pings to improve with a speed increase. Could it be contention?

Seifer · 11-08-2008 9:31am

axer wrote:

Could it be contention?

I'm not an expert but no, don't think it has anything to do with contention. Have a look at the threads on the broadband forum. They seem to be saying that the interleaving is the problem.

Funky · 11-08-2008 9:31am

I'm on Esat BT and I've got the same issue. Pinging ~100 to the UK and ~50 to Ireland. Up from like 25-30 to Ireland and 50 to the UK. Worst upgrade ever. My ISDN 8 years ago was better...

Seifer · 11-08-2008 9:38am

Funky wrote:

I'm on Esat BT

Yeah Eircom own their lines so still the same incompetants behind it.
It's horrible that they can get away with this. Changing something so important without it be asked for is ridiculous.
Will ring them after work today to see what the story is. Then will start pricing NTL and other non-eircom line services.

cian1500ww · 11-08-2008 10:57am

Seifer wrote: »

I don't think you understand the problem. The only thing that really matters for online gaming is latency i.e. ping. I'd happily give any download speed increase back for my old ping.

I was pinging 30 on this speed test. And had a download rate somewhere around 2.6. My "upgrade" gives me:

A negligible download increase for triple ping. I too am in the undo it, undo it now club.

Then downgrade to 3mb.

Ciaran500 · 11-08-2008 11:41am

They have now set interleaving to high for the speed increases but I think it affects all lines. This has been reported in a few threads around the BB forum.

Oisinjm · 11-08-2008 1:07pm

I seem to get high pings on some UK Server providers only. Like Tigit and RTL, Im fine on others. Its strange.

Cuddlesworth · 11-08-2008 1:22pm

cian1500ww wrote: »

Then downgrade to 3mb.

That won't make a difference, your line speed won't effect your ping. Eircom doubled capacity without doing anything major to their infrastructure in order to compete with other providers. Welcome to the backlash of that disaster. That's what is driving up pings.

Skittle · 11-08-2008 1:39pm

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

That won't make a difference, your line speed won't effect your ping. Eircom doubled capacity without doing anything major to their infrastructure in order to compete with other providers. Welcome to the backlash of that disaster. That's what is driving up pings.

That's not true in this case. Eircom have turned on Interleaving to high, the high pings are as a result of that and not as a result of network congestion.

Cuddlesworth · 11-08-2008 1:49pm

Skittle wrote: »

That's not true in this case. Eircom have turned on Interleaving to high, the high pings are as a result of that and not as a result of network congestion.

Did you consider that Eircom increased interleaving because they were worried that packets on their network were extremely susceptible to data corruption from the increased strain? You don't make a change to a ISP's network without a damm good reason.

Illkillya · 11-08-2008 2:17pm

This used to be the case a few years ago... the high bandwidth / business broadband had high ping due to interleaving, while the 1mb/2mb broadband had low ping. Not good for gamers, unless it is a temporary measure or if you can get it reduced on an individual basis.

Ivan · 11-08-2008 2:19pm

There is a minimum signal to noise ratio that must be maintained in order to achieve acceptable ping/packet loss levels.

By increasing the bandwidth limit, they may have inadvertently crossed the signal to noise ratio threshold on many connections with poor line quality.

I had a similar experience with my Smart telecom. Originally started on the 15Mb package but realised shortly afterwards that I could not play a game or realistically, download anything; as the connection would drop repeatedly for hours at a time. After downgrading the line to 3Mb I havent had any connection issues and the link is stable as a rock.

Anyone experiencing these types of issues should investigate their current signal to noise ratio. You can usually get that info from your router/modem but there are probably specialised sites/programs to use, also. Then get onto eircom armed with as much info as you can get, and politely ask them to either upgrade the quality of the phone line or to downgrade the connection speed.

Hope this helps.

Cuddlesworth · 11-08-2008 2:38pm

Ivan wrote: »

There is a minimum signal to noise ratio that must be maintained in order to achieve acceptable ping/packet loss levels.

By increasing the bandwidth limit, they may have inadvertently crossed the signal to noise ratio threshold on many connections with poor line quality.

I had a similar experience with my Smart telecom. Originally started on the 15Mb package but realised shortly afterwards that I could not play a game or realistically, download anything; as the connection would drop repeatedly for hours at a time. After downgrading the line to 3Mb I havent had any connection issues and the link is stable as a rock.

Anyone experiencing these types of issues should investigate their current signal to noise ratio. You can usually get that info from your router/modem but there are probably specialised sites/programs to use, also. Then get onto eircom armed with as much info as you can get, and politely ask them to either upgrade the quality of the phone line or to downgrade the connection speed.

Hope this helps.

Good Advice, for anybody who goes looking its labeled as SNR.

Sqaull20 · 11-08-2008 2:49pm

My pings are up and down all the time, I am getting disconnects every 20 minutes or so and I have changed the 2 filters in the house with new ones.

Do these signal to noise ratio stats look ok?

Downstream | Upstream

Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 7616 | 672
SN Margin (dB) 23.00 | 6.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 15.00 | 9.00
CRC Errors 0 | 5

axer · 11-08-2008 2:52pm

Sqaull20 wrote: »

My pings are up and down all the time, I am getting disconnects every 20 minutes or so and I have changed the 2 filters in the house with new ones.

Do these signal to noise ratio stats look ok?

Downstream | Upstream

Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 7616 | 672
SN Margin (dB) 23.00 | 6.00
Line Attenuation (dB) 15.00 | 9.00
CRC Errors 0 | 5

SNR Margin
In general, a higher signal to noise ratio will result in less errors.
6bB. or below = Bad and will experience no line synchronisation or intermittent synchronisation problems.
7dB-10dB. = Fair but does not leave much room for variances in conditions.
11dB-20dB. = Good with little or no synchronisation problems
20dB-28dB. = Excellent
29dB. or above = Outstanding
Attenuation Rates
In gerneral, attenuation is the loss of signal over distance. Unfortunately, dB loss is not just dependent on distance. It also depends on cable type and gauge (which can differ over the length of the cable), the number and location other connection points on the cable.
20bB. and below = Outstanding
20dB-30dB. = Excellent
30dB-40dB. = Very Good
40dB-50dB. = Good
50dB-60dB. = Poor and may experience connectivity issues
60dB. and above = Bad and will experience connectivity issues

Seifer · 11-08-2008 6:04pm

So I rang Eircom, asked what they were at. Didn't really get anywhere useful as he told me to ping their DNS server (was about 39ms) and he said they don't address issues unless its above 75ms.
So I said surely he knows the upgrades are causing problems. Told him I wanted it fixed for gaming. Mentioned interleaving. And he said he has changed it and to check in about 20 minutes.
So I wait with baited breath :eek:

Seifer · 11-08-2008 7:10pm

Incase anyone is curious:

So that's what my stats are like now. It seems to me like he's put me on the 3mb(which was the 2mb) package. While I was ranting at them at some point I did say I just want it back the way it was so that's what he seems to have done. Or would turning down interleaving lower my speeds? Do to my unique situation of my Dad's company paying for the broadband I don't care, I have my ping back

PogMoThoin · 11-08-2008 7:57pm

cian1500ww wrote: »

Then downgrade to 3mb.

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

cian1500ww · 11-08-2008 8:05pm

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

But its the lower ping he's looking for not the higher download speed.

Skittle · 11-08-2008 8:41pm

Seifer wrote: »

So I rang Eircom, asked what they were at. Didn't really get anywhere useful as he told me to ping their DNS server (was about 39ms) and he said they don't address issues unless its above 75ms.
So I said surely he knows the upgrades are causing problems. Told him I wanted it fixed for gaming. Mentioned interleaving. And he said he has changed it and to check in about 20 minutes.
So I wait with baited breath :eek:

So any word? Did your ping change?

Ciaran500 · 11-08-2008 8:57pm

Skittle wrote: »

So any word? Did your ping change?

He has posted since then...

the_syco · 11-08-2008 9:38pm

With the flooding, I've gone from a 3meg line to under a meg line.

Phone line is not working, so I'm happy the DSL is. Won't look into it until the phone line is back, tbh.

Skittle · 11-08-2008 10:53pm

Yep sorry didn't realise that mea culpa. Must read all of the posts the next time :-)

Seifer · 12-08-2008 9:55am

PogMoThoin wrote:

Then your going from a 24:1 to a 48:1 contention ratio

Contention ratios here. The 3mb eircom home plus has a ratio of 24:1.

Corben Dallas · 12-08-2008 11:22pm

Same here, with Esat BT and they upgraded the exchange last weekend AND ITS GOT SLOWER!!!!! WTF!

I'm on a lower contention as well, They say its 4mb and with the upgrade this would double to 8MB (in reality the 4mb was actually reg ISP speed testing at 2.70/ 2.80Mbps.)

After the "Upgrade" its reg testing at 1.80/1.50 Mbps, a major drop off. Twice in the last few days it was making BF Bad Company XB360 online an unplayable freeze frame/choppy lag.

They have made it worse. Will be on to them tomorrow. When will Ireland get proper 1st World (ie US quality) line speed?. Is Ireland regressing to the Stone Age> 56k Dial up.

Please fix this now ISP.(Esat BT)

anyone else (Online Gamers out there) getting teh same problem?

Kur4mA · 13-08-2008 8:55am

Yep I've been onto BT about this issue aswell. I'm now getting pings to my own clans UK servers of between 90 - 130 when I used to get 30 - 60. A lot of the time now its unplayable so rang them and asked wtf was going on. They told me they are investigating it. :rolleyes:

Iago · 13-08-2008 9:01am

Seifer wrote: »

Contention ratios here. The 3mb eircom home plus has a ratio of 24:1.

that's a mistake on their page, the contention ratio on their 3Mb & 1Mb products is set at 48:1

Jonathan · 13-08-2008 9:12am

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

That won't make a difference, your line speed won't effect your ping. Eircom doubled capacity without doing anything major to their infrastructure in order to compete with other providers. Welcome to the backlash of that disaster. That's what is driving up pings.

Wrong there.. Interleaving is error correction on the connection between your modem and the dslam.
They dont interleave their fibre networks. What would be the point?? The connection is fibre. No lost packets.

Sonderval · 13-08-2008 11:10am

Same here, with Esat BT and they upgraded the exchange last weekend AND ITS GOT SLOWER!!!!! WTF!

I'm on a lower contention as well, They say its 4mb and with the upgrade this would double to 8MB (in reality the 4mb was actually reg ISP speed testing at 2.70/ 2.80Mbps.)

After the "Upgrade" its reg testing at 1.80/1.50 Mbps, a major drop off. Twice in the last few days it was making BF Bad Company XB360 online an unplayable freeze frame/choppy lag.

They have made it worse. Will be on to them tomorrow. When will Ireland get proper 1st World (ie US quality) line speed?. Is Ireland regressing to the Stone Age> 56k Dial up.

Please fix this now ISP.(Esat BT)

anyone else (Online Gamers out there) getting teh same problem?

Yeah, same problem with games. I'm with Eircom though. I phoned them yesterday, the guy on the other end checked the line and said everything looked great. I explained to him that this wasn't the case - while my download throughput was much faster, my lag for games was atrocious now. Couldn't maintain stable xbox live connection, and trying to play Halo or BF: Bad Company was impossible (disconnects all the time). I asked him to downgrade me to the settings we had before this upgrade fiasco, which he did. While my general web browsing got much faster (back to the way it was!), my issues with game connectivity remain.

What the hell did they do to my connection?!?

Cuddlesworth · 13-08-2008 11:48am

jmccrohan wrote: »

Wrong there.. Interleaving is error correction on the connection between your modem and the dslam.
They dont interleave their fibre networks. What would be the point?? The connection is fibre. No lost packets.

The Fibre MUCs are susceptible to packet loss if left under stress. All Networking equipment is. And the links to the exchange are so old and they were bad when they were first installed. Tbh some of the best lines out there are some of the oldest as the copper was purer then. And the links to the exchanges can't handle the increased speeds without interleaving to handle them. So what I am saying is that the infrastructure(the links to the houses) which is Eircoms responsibility it incapable of handling the stress of increased speeds.

As for Eircoms backbone, thats also rubbish. But that's a problem that will get worse when everybody starts taking advantage

hottstuff · 26-08-2008 12:57pm

My speed was upgraded about 2 weeks agao.
Since then Xbox live has been crap for me , disconnects , random DSL sync losses , games very laggy etc.
Ping is around 90ms
It's driving me mad.
I'm going to contact them and request a downgrade back to 3mb.

mattman · 27-08-2008 5:44am

I also am **** over pings..call of duty 4 multilayer is a real pain..used to get 60ms ..now its 125ms if im lucky...

Anyway..this is the response they sent when i complained...
ps: on bt package 3 - i get 6meg downloads(big deal!), whats wrong with 3??

cut here

The high ping times with your connection is being caused by interleaving being switched on, on your telephone line. Eircom has done this on a lot of connections as interleaving adapts and corrects for noise on the line so they can deliver higher speeds. This is part of the upgrades Eircom has done on all of the exchanges around the country. The result of this is higher ping times.
There is no BT equipment at your local exchange so BT has no power to turn interleaving off. At present Eircom will not turn interleaving off for BT customers. This situation is being investigated by BT management but we have no more information at the moment.

cut here

anyway..after all that waiting..i requested to be back to option 2 (3 meg), and hope my pings return..as they did with some other gamers..

m.

ps: when do u really get 6meg downloads anyway? im upgraded over a month, and only got it twice on gamespot.com and steam (updating half life etc)...couse its handy when download a big game demo or something, but for the sake of another few mins...who cares? I want my pings back...!

pps: i got 70ms on half life death match..there tonight for an hour...but never on call of duty 4 ...

hottstuff · 27-08-2008 11:27am

Went through a boring painfull time last night with eircom as they went through all my setup to see why my pings were so high , even though they weren't before the upgrade , not that the tech support even listened or cared.

Anyway he blamed extensions , sky digital.

They downgraded me to 4mb , still the same
Then 3mb , still the same.

Then at the end of the conversation he tells me , "i will have to call you back tomorrow sir , my supervisor is not on and i need him to allow me to set your interleaving profile on low , as it's on high at the moment"

i was like "badda-bing !!!!! , talk to you then" :rolleyes:

hottstuff · 28-08-2008 11:05am

Well , i'm back on 3 meg with Interleaving profile on low.
Low and behold my ping is 36ms at the most.
Job done.

SeantheMan · 29-08-2008 1:40am

My ping used to be 40-50 on my clans vent and COD4 server, owned by Jolt.
Then i was getting up to an average of 170 ...making it unplayable.

So i talked to some of my clanmates about this..and one of them put me onto a program called Traceroute

It basically traced my ping through every node it went through before hitting the desired server, it would also give me details and IPs of each node.

If found it was spiking as it hit a certain Eircom server. I then rang eircom up, explained this in detail with IP of their server and all...and it seems ok now

Pings are back to normal.

Heres a few screenies, program is well worth a look

BEFORE : http://usera.imagecave.com/SeantheMan/ventrilloPing.JPG

AFTER : http://usera.imagecave.com/SeantheMan/currentvent.JPG

Program : http://visualroute.visualware.com/

SAMPLE :

Griffin87 · 29-08-2008 12:50pm

im going to try this to see if i can fix my 100ms pings thanks

mattman · 18-09-2008 5:50pm

hottstuff wrote: »

Went through a boring painfull time last night with eircom as they went through all my setup to see why my pings were so high , even though they weren't before the upgrade , not that the tech support even listened or cared.

Anyway he blamed extensions , sky digital.

They downgraded me to 4mb , still the same
Then 3mb , still the same.

Then at the end of the conversation he tells me , "i will have to call you back tomorrow sir , my supervisor is not on and i need him to allow me to set your interleaving profile on low , as it's on high at the moment"

i was like "badda-bing !!!!! , talk to you then" :rolleyes:

Im with BT..but i switched to Eircom (kicking in, in 2 weeks)...
BT cant change interleaving...but ONLY EIRCOM can?
It would seem so...Un-fair competion!

Now my 210 average 2 monthly bill ..eircom have it!

BT should talk to the phone regulator guy!

m.

my pings before upgrade 18ms...now 100ms...BT wanted to charge me 30 to download grand me to 3 meg speeds...so f them...anyway they wont solve the ping problem...

Gummy Panda · 19-09-2008 12:02am

oh!

Eircom will turn the interweaving down. I know who i'll be ringing soon

mattman · 17-11-2008 6:01am

Skittle wrote: »

So any word? Did your ping change?

i switched from bt..cause they would not take me from 6meg back to 3 for weeks...

so with eircom now..3 meg...

ping times..best ever about 35ms..average 55ms

thats on call of duty 4 multiplayer..

surfin the net is faster than i used to have, due to lower ping times...and how often do u want 6 meg download speed anyway?!!? ant 3 enough!! and its cheaper!

m.

mattman · 17-11-2008 6:02am

cian1500ww wrote: »

You think thats bad ??!! I;m stuck on 3 meg till then. God what I wouldn't give to have 7 meg.

trust me..your not missing ANYTHING..

m.

Gone Drinking · 17-11-2008 12:28pm

My god, did any of you people play on 56k?

Pyr0 · 17-11-2008 12:59pm

Have any of ye tried calling up and checking your Interleaving ? Do that before complaining about it. If its set to High, request a Low interleaving.

Seifer · 17-11-2008 1:18pm

They will not put low interleaving on the 7.6mb package i.e. the one with the problem.

Gone Drinking wrote:

My god, did any of you people play on 56k?

Yeah. Enjoyed it at the time. Would shoot myself if I had to go back now :P

Griffin87 · 17-11-2008 4:14pm

perlico wont turn down interleaving either im on the 3 meg package. when i asked them to turn down interleaving after the upgrade fiasco they wouldnt now im sitting here 3 months later with high interleaving on a 3mg package. i might ring them later and ask again but im sick of being on hold for more than 1/2 an hour.

if i change back to eircom will they lower my interleaving setting ? is there anyway to force perlico to do this for me ?

Eircom destroying pings

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