Congestion in Eircom (or Eircom resell products) - Are you affected?

Impetus wrote: »

Neither eircom nor UPC has a real end to end fibre network. Therein lies the problem. Fiber in their case is a misleading marketing catchphrase. Both networks use copper in the chain, and a chain is as strong as its weakest link etc.

What is needed is a Government initiated, outsourced via well drafted tender, a single FTTP (fibre to every premises - home and commercial - nationwide) which is shared by all telcos, ISPs, content delivery services etc. The fibre to be in state ownership, privately managed.

The user could then change supplier if they are dissatisfied with their current provider, the same way as one can change from one electricity co to another. The same single grid plumbs the entire country.

It is a mark of the maturity of an industry - we have only one network of motorways, roads etc. But one can chose from dozens of makes and model of car, truck etc, not to mention public transport or even walk on the single public right of way system.

The country has a big problem providing decent coverage to rural areas - fibre is the cheapest solution for laying a new network. Ditto in urban areas where there is congestion in pathways (I don't mean footpaths! - rather ducts, mobile cellsites etc).

Solutions using copper are more than 100 years old and it is high time the system was updated. Vast sums of money are wasted by eircom and UPC tinkering with their network every few years in the ever losing game of trying to provide enough bandwidth for new applications that emerge on the marketplace. Literally billions for piecemeal "upgrades". Money that would pay for a new fibre network that would have a very long, very low maintenance cost, high speed network.

There's already a full thread on this (Ill ad the link in a sec), but to summarize:

• All telcos use Fibre to descrive FTTC, eg FiOS in the US
• FTTH is too expensive, nobody can afford to roll it out right now, and if they could it would be urban only
• Coax can do 1Gbps per subscriber, thats plenty for the next 5yrs +
• Municipal Fibre IS the best solution, but our government could never run something like that effectivley. Rabbite wouldnt even know what you meant
• The current upgrades that you are complaining about actually lead the way for FTTH in the future as it puts fibre within a KM of most homes

ED E wrote: »

There's already a full thread on this (Ill ad the link in a sec), but to summarize:
All telcos use Fibre to descrive FTTC, eg FiOS in the US

No they don't. There are dozens of FTTP networks in the EU and Asia. please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country (it is not up to date - ie there are a lot more than are listed on this page)

ED E wrote: »

FTTH is too expensive, nobody can afford to roll it out right now, and if they could it would be urban only

Fibre is cheaper to provide in rural areas than in urban because there are fewer barriers to laying the fibre. It can be run from pole to pole along phone or electricity poles / pylons - in cities there is more congestion, but there it benefits from more properties passed per km of fibre.

ED E wrote: »

Coax can do 1Gbps per subscriber, thats plenty for the next 5yrs +

While coax can do 1 Gbps/sec due to the layout of cable, that has to be shared on a cable that runs from door to door - causing uneven contention depending on the amount of usage at each premises.

For example you could run a copper pair phone line between yourself and your neighbour next door and it would no doubt do for the odd conversation or sharing a phone line. It might even work OK as a "party line" for two or three houses. But if the same line was shared between 50 or 100 houses (ignoring electrical engineering issues) it would be saturated and virtually everybody would be dissatisfied.

ED E wrote: »

Municipal Fibre IS the best solution, but our government could never run something like that effectivley. Rabbite wouldnt even know what you meant

Municipal fibre is a half-way house, Utah type situation, which would leave much of the country unserved. Not unlike the millions of people who can't get broadband in the US, of if they can it is under 1 MB/sec - if you call that broadband. A single national fibre platform allows the costs and benefits to be spread all over the place in a democratic manner, giving each service provider equal access to the customer base to sell their services.

ED E wrote: »

The current upgrades that you are complaining about actually lead the way for FTTH in the future as it puts fibre within a KM of most homes

No it wont because the cabinets are based on 100 year old copper network layout, and will only service urban areas, and are not in the best physical position from which to run fibre to each premises. There is no net benefit in using cabinets as a "starting point" for FTTP from a national interest basis. I'm sure eircom would love it.

Your location/exchange: Wellingtonbridge
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s): ~5.5 Mbps
Speed after 6pm (mb/s): ~0/64 Mbps ,, 337ms is my ping!!
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?: No
Was there any fault found in your line?: Yes
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?: Escalated with Eircom numerous times, eventually told "it's congestion, there is nothing more we can do"
When did the problems with the broadband speed started?: Months ago!!

MichealKenny wrote: »

What's the correlation between these traffic stats at INEX with the congestion we are experiencing? or is there any?

I don't believe there is any congestion at INEX. INEX seems to install new switches/capacity as/when is required. It is just a "sorting office" for intra-Ireland data packets. The problem is contention between the subscriber and the ISP core, and between the ISP and RoW (rest of world).

INEX keeps data flows that can be processed within Ireland, within Ireland - thus helping reduce the bottleneck between ISPs. A chain is as strong as its weakest link etc... So the issue of super-saturated ISP back haul and ISP core infrastructure still remains in the way. And the issue of accessing sites that are served from outside of Ireland that are not connected to INEX remains too.

Your location/exchange:Lucan County Dublin
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s):6.9
Speed after 6pm (mb/s):1-3
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?:3 times
Was there any fault found in your line?:No
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?:Still being "looked into"
When did the problems with the broadband speed started?:Some months ago

What I have done is report my broadband dropping as a fault and seeing it was not sorted within ten days,I am entitled, according to Eircom's Charter, to a two month line rental rebate.I have made it patently clear to them that there will be no payment for the time that the service has not been provided not indeed will I pay for 1890 calls to Broadband Tech support.They didn't argue this point.I have screen captured all the readings from the speed test and if there is a problem we will go legal.Thanks for organising this information gathering.

vishal wrote: »

I've mentioned this before but don't think anybody noticed. I can get 1.5mbs on a speedtest with poor pings at night time but if I download a well seeded torrent with utorrent with number 80 and encryption enabled etc. then I can get 13mbs.

I think eircom is throttling everybody on NGB for some reason. They don't want to talk about it.

If they're throttling on the sly, I'm getting rid of them

Your location/exchange: Tuam, Galway
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s): 13.6 solid
Speed after 6pm (mb/s): 1.5-4 generally, occasional bursts to 7.
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?: No, although several local engineers have checked the line and one told me that there were 3-4 other similar problems in the area with no line faults and nightly congestion.
Was there any fault found in your line?: No.
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?: Yes, after a number of calls with eircom tech support they escalated the problem with their SAC team who have "identified" a problem with the exchange where it has insufficient bandwidth, they have no eta for when this will be rectified.
When did the problems with the broadband speed started?: January

Using MTR I can see massive packet loss and significant ping spikes in their network several hops in (*tenge*), apparently it's the bandwith in my local exchange though.

Edit: I just called tech support there and there's a new automated message there which I'm paraphrasing here "Looking at your line there is a problem with broadband in your local area, eircom engineers are working on the problem and will resolve it as quickly as possible, please note that technical support will have no additional information on this".

Your location/exchange: Clonakilty
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s):10.4mb/s
Speed after 6pm (mb/s):0.5-3mb/s
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?:yes
Was there any fault found in your line?:recent damage to nearby pole repaired.

Your location/exchange: Skibbereen, Co. Cork
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s): 14mb/s (supposed to be 24?)
Speed after 6pm (mb/s): 1.5mb/s
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?: No.
Was there any fault found in your line?: No.
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?: Yes, no one contacted me afterwards.
When did the problems with the broadband speed started?: Around Late December 2013. Have had issues for 2 months in September-November.

Your location/exchange: Dojnabate , Co.Dublin
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s): 8-14mb/s ( fluctuates dramatically)
Speed after 6pm (mb/s): 3-8 mb/s
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?: No
Was there any fault found in your line?: No
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?:Yes. Magnet have been extremely helpful with the situation and I've been contacted and regularly updated by the head of engineering and the head of customer support directly. The issue was coming from an Eircom owned exchange. Magnet advised me as they continued to escalate the issue with Eircom, they advised that there was no ETA for a engineering team to be assigned, due to resource constraints dealing with enabling the E-Fibre in other areas. Donabate has a 40% activation for e-Fibre and Eircom consider the area done.

Magnet were extremely helpful but as I advised I had a contract of service with them, not Eircom and was able to negotiate a new rate. I was originally paying €67 per month for a 24mb ADSL line, and I'm not down to about 35 a month. Still a ripoff for a broken service.

I was conacted last in December where the head of customer services advised me the issue was escalated to Eircom at an extremely high level, who advised that the probable time of resolution was mid-end January. Now in February and still not resolution.

When did the problems with the broadband speed started?:
Issues started in April of last year. We are now in February with the issue still not resolved. Going on one year.....

This has actually prompted me to hand notice to my landlord and I'm relocating to an area that has UPC enabled. I dealt with them happily for years ina previous residence with bare to zero downtime. But this experience using Eircom infrastructure has been a nightmare.

I was one of Eircoms first internet customers in the late 90's, and after a few years cancelled having to go via a legal process, and swore I'd never deal with them again. Good to see that ten years later **** all has changed with their lazy attitude towards fixing infrastructure.

UPC or Magnets own dedicated infrastructure is the only useful ISP in the country at present...

Your location/exchange: Co. Galway (Ballygar)
Speed daytime before 6pm (mb/s): 3.0Mbs
Speed after 6pm (mb/s): 0.4Mbs
Have Eircom engineer attended your address?: No (am with Sky see below)
Was there any fault found in your line?: No
Have you escalated the matter to your ISP, if yes, what was the result?: Yes after investigations Sky determined it was congestion and nothing could be done. I was with Eircom until mid 2013 when I had the same speed issues in the evenings. They finally admitted it was congestion so I changed to Sky, would prefer to give someone else my custom even if it is the same crap speed.
When did the problems with the broadband speed started?: End of 2012 and has gotten progressively worse to this point.