Has anyone in ROI connected to Clicksilver

levinsk

Hi,
I'm wondering if anyone knows of a live Clicksilver connection in the ROI. I'm only 2 working weeks into my application. UTV helpline is friendly but unfortunately they are talking of extending the claimed 15 working days for installation out to a month. They say not one person in ROI has been connected yet so I wonder if they being shafted by Eircom, or if they weren't ready for the number of applications?

rgds
K

-on a 52kbps connection

PiE

It's eircom who can't handle the demand. They have to deal with applications from UTV, Esat, Netsource etc while looking after their own customers too.

Guess who gets preferred treatment :f

Nyum Nyum

I got an email yesterday from UTV saying "sorry for the delay" etc.

Coincidentally (?) Eircom rang last night asking was I happy with changing my phone carrier (or something) so I said "Yes, I'm with UTV and waiting to hear back about Broadband" to which she said " Your line is bb enabled.....do you know we offer Broadband?"

Hmmm.....

Creamy Goodness

it's part of eircoms plan since 98% of the lines in this country are owned by them they can tell the whole country to **** off and we could do nothing about it!

Urban Weigl

Originally posted by PiE
Guess who gets preferred treatment :f

That would be illegal, and Eircom wouldn't break the law! Or would they? ...

levinsk

I wonder if they are obliged by the regulatory body to share resources (in terms of installs) equally across their own and others installations. I would guess that the resellers have at least a penalty clause in their contracts to force some balance.

Incidentally I have a friend who works in comms and subcontracts to Eircom. His analysis of their workmanship is very negative. But he did tell me that there is a number which one can dial, type in a PIN code and it will give your line test results straightaway- he wasn't sure whether the test is instantaneous or is just reading from a database, but if the former is true it makes you wonder about why we need to wait so long for a connection.


rgds
K

Mork

I got the same email... I can't say I am too pleased but I will have to wait like everyone else as there is no way I will be signing up with The Rat.

So UTVi are saying that it will be the end of July?? I do hope its sooner.

Out of interest has anyone recieved their modem yet for those of ye who opted for it?

-Mork

MarVeL

Mork : I was told by the support team that the modems were not being sent out until a successful test is done on the line. Fair enough I suppose but a bit odd to start processing cheques/credit cards before verifying the service is a available/goods have shipped. Anyone know do eircom charge for testing the lines (it being eircom I assume they do)?

Mork

Thanks for the heads-up on the modem front MarVeL.

My line has passed the line check as I knew it would as I called the Rat a few months ago & asked them to check it for me. I figure UTVi must be holding off until the line is activated before sending out the modems as I can imagine people hooking up the modem and then ringing the support line saying it doesn't work.

As far as I know €ircon charge UTVi for testing the line & activating it (no surprise there) hence we the consumer have to cough up the €99.

-Mork

amp

Got a mail from utv saying the middle to the end of next week. (I signed up on 17th June)

Nyum Nyum

I got the same email too. I think I signed up on the day they announced it (13th June?)

No modem yet though.

PiE

I got that "middle to end of next week" email last week, so I'm hoping to have it by Friday. Hope they send the modems out before Friday too... the thought of having a DSL line going to waste for a whole weekend is stomach churning :]

amp

Got home today trying hard to be cynical and repress the hope that a package from Utv had arrived.

It hadn't. Maybe Malcom meant next week.

amp: broadband by xmas or bust!

David C

UTV Internet Clicksilver Services
===============================
Dear David,

Unfortunately the prequalification test on your phone line has indicated
that your phone line does not meet the requirements for broadband
provisioning.
Therefore we are unable to process your application for Clicksilver any
further. The signup fee which has been debited from your account will be
refunded.

We are sorry that your application for clicksilver broadband has not been
successful.You can continue to use your UTVip account which will operate
as normal.

Thank you,
UTV Internet Clicksilver Services
+
===========

This was a phone line about 1/2km away from the exhange in Dun Laoghaire after weeks and weeks of waiting. I was told that all preliminary tests had passed in that time.. Oh well, going to try Irish WISP wireless instead

jackbauer

think utv need to get serious about this.i for one have had to chase them as i recieved no notification whatsoever.just emailed admin@u.tv to find out whats goin on.

christ

so has anyone actually connected to clicksilver yet, or received the modem, or even received any further notification from utv? i certainly haven't

Nyum Nyum

I got a phone call this morning from someone saying they were doing work on my exchange "because you're getting broadband" and my line was off for half an hour or so.

No modem or any more emails from UTV at the moment though.

Páid

I phoned them earlier today on the 1890 number.

Apparently the girl I was talking to had just got new info and told me that my line was due to be provisioned on the 24th July and that the modem would be sent that day direct from the manufacturer (which I believe is in Dublin as she expected delivery to be the 25th).

I ordered ClickSilver on the 13th June and live in Rathmines.

PiE

I recieved the modem and got connected on Monday. First impressions aren't great... speeds rarely go above 30k/s for me.

And I know it's RADSL and that should be expected but I had eircoms ADSL before and hit 60k/s... so I know I have a decent line

jonski

Pie . any chance you could do me a favour and ping the clan server ?

62.212.75.121

plz
thanks in advance
John.

PiE

I would jonski, except it's not working at all right now. It keeps rejecting my username/password

I'll try ping it if/when it comes back online.

Nyum Nyum

Got my modem today (a ZyXEL P630 ADSL Modem) and am connected now.

Seems quite good - this site is a bit slow but others are flying.

christ

After interminable delays, I finally got my clicksilver connection activated and my modem delivered yesterday. For some reason, I had to manually input the nameservers for the connection to work ( I am using WindowsXP ) and was lucky enough to stumble across this solution myself, after repeatedly being told by technical report to reinstall the driver and ring them back - in fact, I am still waiting on a callback I was promised around 3pm yesterday. Once these issues were resolved, everything seemed fine. I was getting download speeds of up to 30kb/s ( how does this compare with other people's dsl experiences? ). Today's service, however, has been a disaster. Downloads are crawling, noticeably slower than they were on my 56k dialup. This page, for example, loaded at 746 B/s. Also, I am still unable to log into the accounts page for clicksilver at http://www.u.tv/internet/tools/ due to a recurring VBscript error. If i had a choice, I would terminate my contract with UTV right now. People on this board wax lyrical about how groovy it is that UTV engage with them within this forum, and that was, in fact, my main reason for signing up with them, but it really doesn't make a blind bit of difference when the "broadband" service they provide is so markedly inadequate

swoofer

Christ

Thanks for posting with your findings and llets hope things improve when everything is ironed out. I am back from UK and quite reluctant to sign up for anything new as it appears to me that it takes ages for things to work correctly.

Post back and don't u have a period when u can cancel and get your money back? I thought that was the law.

gb--

PiE

Originally posted by christ
snip

Everyone using the bistream RADSL is having the exact same problem, be it UTV, Esat, Netsource or whoever. Check the Broadband forum for proof.

It seems to go a little something like this:

Mornings: Full Speed
Afternoons: Half Speed
Evenings: Crawling Speed
After 1am: Full Speed



UTV are trying to find the problem but I'm fairly sure I know what it is and there won't be much they can do about it.

jonski

Originally posted by PiE

UTV are trying to find the problem but I'm fairly sure I know what it is and there won't be much they can do about it.

Any chance that u could let us in on what you think is causing it , I read someone else ssaying they thought they knew why but no one seems to be saying .

John.

swoofer

bandwidth, rolled out a system that was just the bare bones and poor technology. Oh well a long wait ahead.

gb---

Nyum Nyum

Originally posted by PiE


Evenings: Crawling Speed

I'm currently enjoying a 2.1kb/s download at the moment......sigh

vicadd

I was connected this morning and getting full speed downloads, this evening I am getting 2 - 10k on the UTV modem speed test (http://www.u.tv/speedtest/).
I've been blaming the engineer who called out today to disconnect my ISDN box and then decided against it because the connection was working anyway. I wasn't here when he called and found a Green and White phone wire lying beside my ISDN box.
Anybody with ISDN - can you check your box and let me know if you have 2 or 4 wires going from the Line Input to a point between the 2 analogue ports??
Thanks

jackbauer

i'dhave to agree with the speed vs time of day posted above.got connected yesterday.using etech router.this morning was getting 55k/s downloads pulsing up to 60k/s.this evening ......i'd be faster writing the data as 1's and 0's on an a4 pad running down to the exchange and inputting it with a morse key:D

but i'm happy with the service so far.its always gonna be congested in the evenings with a 48:1 contention.

my 2 cents.

christ

I can't believe people are so willing to accept this as a fact of life: if you bought a colour television and it reverted to black and white at peak audience times you wouldn't just grin and bear it. I am confident that our friends across the english channel and our friends across the atlantic do not experience broadband services that crawl along for a large chunk of the day at lower speeds than dialup connections, and we shouldn't have to either.

PiE

Christ is right (never thought I'd hear myself say that), we shouldn't have to "make do" with what we get, which at the moment is a hideously sub-par service. I'm downloading at 1.6k/s now at 1:50am, well past peak hour...

I think I remember reading in the thread about eircom's wholesale bitstream service, people were worried about eircom setting the contention at "point x" instead of "point z" which would make the service considerably slower. Now I'm too lazy to go looking for the exact quotes but I'd wager a bet those fears well well-founded.

That suggests that it ain't UTV, Esat or any of the resellers faults, but it's still their problem. Damnit bring some muscle to the table lads and force eircom to do something

Nyum Nyum

Last night (1am onwards) I got a steady speed of 25kb/s from an Iceland server (Linux ISO of course).

Tried it now and it was 40kb/s.

jonski

.Can anyone confirm/deny this ?

Below is not fact , just a question.........just in case it is taken as fact that is not my intention.



I don't know if I heard or read somewhere that the contention ratio aspect of these broadband services could be the problem.


If I remember correctly ( not very techie minded me) say , you are with UTV and on their 48 : 1 you are not just sharing that with other UTV ppl but also with esat , eircom , netsource and any other service provider .

Now a lot of ppl stayed away from netsource because of the lack of cap leading to warez monkeys d/l 24/7 and hogging the bandwith , but if the above is the case then you are sharing with them any way


Anyone with info plz comment ,

John.


i posted this on the UTV newsgroup and got no reply as yet.

swoofer

Jonksi

If this is in fact the case then we are f****d for a few years as people join up the service will get worse and worse!! This can't be right!

Where did u learn about this? I thought each provider bought their own "PIPE" and this was where the problems if the pipe was too small.

gb--

jonski

As i already said in my last post this is not a fact more of a question , only reply to it if you can either confirm or deny it for definite plz dont spread the rumour .With my lack of tech knowledge this could be complete bull****.

jonski

from newsgroups:

The contention ratio is at an exchange level ... so anyone (user, or
reseller) using Eircom's or Esat's kit will be hit with the same ratios


Q:So does that mean i could be sharing with some one from esat or netsource

A:Yup ... it depends on how many folk are on broadband using your exchange.

jonski

Q:This means so that we could be sharing with the warez monkeys on netsource ?
>defeating to whole purpose of going with a capped service for better ping ?


A:The contention is at the exchange level .... once your connection is piped
to us it uses our external bandwidth and this is were you'd see a service
being hammered by warez, etc as the more users an ISP gets onboard with BB,
the more capping and QoS (quality of service) measures they'd need to
employ.

Iwould like to tell ye all what this means , but i don't know .
i rekon it means , no we won't be affected by other service provider users ?

John.

brettmirl

I rang UTV Tech Support today and the guy there told me that there was an "issue" with the "South servers for Clicksilver".

He got me to change the following on my Internet Options:

TOOLS>Internet Options>Connection>
Click settings for the UTV Clicksilver dial up>
In the box "Proxy Server" click the button that says: 'Use a proxy server.....'
Input the following numbers to the address: 194.46.8.9 and in the port space put 8080

This apparently forces your pc to go direct to the Belfast server.

Since i did this my net connection has improved dramatically.....prior to doing this i was attaining slower speeds than i was on my 56k modem

This info may or may not be of use - but there is no harm in sharing it

Martin-UTVi

At this stage I think we have ruled out our own network. We have plenty of spare capacity and speed tests from our ROI servers are reporting back everything ok. We had suspected that perhaps our transparent cache was affecting web speeds and took it out of service. This was not the case however so it has gone back into service.

We're waiting for the results of some tests to come back and will keep you all informed. As has been hinted earlier in this thread, it is more than likely something out of our control at the exchange level Difficult to see how on earth it could possibly be congestion at such an early stage of DSL rollout.

ozmo

Originally posted by jonski
from newsgroups:

The contention ratio is at an exchange level ... so anyone (user, or reseller) using Eircom's or Esat's kit will be hit with the same ratios

Q:So does that mean i could be sharing with some one from esat or netsource
A:Yup ... it depends on how many folk are on broadband using your exchange.

I have rang Eircom 1800 512128 and 1890 260260 and
I have spoken to tech support at UTV...

And no-one knows - although they state that they would be surprised that everyone was in the same pot.
A knowledgable guy at 1890 260260 said he was almost certain that every providor leased their own 2meg line and how they provisioned it was their business.

But noone seems to know for certain.. or knows where you owuld find out.. Really increadable really.

ozmo.

christ

So Martin you're trying to tell us that it is out of your hands that i just downloaded this page at 313 B/s at 1:53AM in the morning? And i suppose "something out of your control" is the reason my l/p didn't work all day today? It's probably also "out of your control" that your members section for clicksilver on your website still isn't working. Look, we waited long enough and are paying enough to expect a level of service a damn sight higher than what we're receiving. I don't care who you blame for this, UTV is directly responsible to its customers for the service they provide, it's as simple as that.

Martin-UTVi

I don't care who you blame for this, UTV is directly responsible to its customers for the service they provide, it's as simple as that.

You will get no argument from us on this issue. We're currently pushing to discover where the problem lies and get something rectified. We've been told (although I'm waiting for a call this morning to confirm) that backhaul bandwidth is being increased on Wednesday (tomorrow), and hope that will help. There are tickets outstanding with Eircom regarding this issue and I've also had it confirmed that this issue is affecting most DSL users regardless of the ISP they are using.

your members section for clicksilver on your website still isn't working

This is currently being worked on and should be ready soon. If you need anything in particular, then please email support@u.tv or call us on 1890 926111.

Paddy20

Good on ya Martin-UTVi. I personally blame Eircom plus their dirty Rat and lets not leave Eircons American investors out of this?..

Paddy20.;)

PiE

Clicksilver's been a lot better today. Whatever you did seems to be working Martin :]

jonski

Originally posted by PiE
Clicksilver's been a lot better today. Whatever you did seems to be working Martin :]

not mine , mine is as slow as 56k ,

oh yeah , I forgot it is 56k ,cause I still havent got my clicksilver yet.

oh well , hopefully tomorrow they will have news for me ...any news ..except bad news.

John.

Páid

I'm in the same boat (waiting for Clicksilver). I was told that I'd been provisioned last Thursday but no modem so far after 7 weeks

So I decided to contact €ircom this evening to see what they say about order time and performance. This is the transcript.


=============================================
New Conference with i-stream
from e-channel
Tuesday, 29 July 2003 20:22:42 GMT+01:00
=============================================

i-stream : Welcome to eircom ie Web Chat , How can I help you?

You : Can you tell me how long it takes to have dsl installed?

i-stream : it takes about 15 working days

You : What if I order through a reseller?

i-stream : i would say it takes the same as its the same workers doing the work on the exchanges

You : I hear there are currently problems with it. Speeds lower than a dial up modem in the evenings? Is this true?

i-stream : no dail up you will get max 56k on dsl you will get min 256k and max 512k

i-stream : so they are faster than dial up

You : You can connect at minimum 256k but throughput speeds experienced by users recently is supposed to be less than that of a 56k modem in the evenings. Are you saying there are no problems with it at the moment?

i-stream : nothing has been reported to us about that

You : Thanks.

i-stream : no problem

=============================================
DEPARTED CONFERENCE
=============================================


YEA RIGHT, NO PROBLEM ME ARSE.

iano

The Clicksilver service is much much improved today.

Downloads are good, http and ftp.

Can we keep it like this please? (Martin?) Or has some capacity just been added that will be quickly gobbled up and the situation return to the way it was (for me, just about better than 56k modem)?

Keep the communication going via the newsgroup and boards. It's the not knowing that is a killer.

Is there any prospect of Irish traffic transferring locally at inex rather than through the uk or usa? Everything seems to route out through Energis (ex. Nevadatele.com). It seems everyone else is at inex (EsatBT, Eircom Net, HEAnet, COLT Internet, NETSOURCE, AT&T, MCI Ireland, Cable & Wireless and NTL Ireland according to their latest press release).

Nyum Nyum

For the last few days Clicksilver has been excellent

Da Man

If you're contacting support and your problem is "I heard that some people are having problems with x y z", you don't really expect them to do anything other than tell you to sod off, do you?

I got i-stream starter installed in 10 days, by the way.

Páid

My point is that they give preferential treatment to Eircom customers like installing I-Scream in 10 days and Clicksilver in 7 weeks.

Is it not common knowledge that there have been problems with RADSL recently?

To Quote PiE from this very thread ......

Everyone using the bistream RADSL is having the exact same problem, be it UTV, Esat, Netsource or whoever. Check the Broadband forum for proof.

It seems to go a little something like this:

Mornings: Full Speed
Afternoons: Half Speed
Evenings: Crawling Speed
After 1am: Full Speed