so it's iol and not me?

DrChoda

According to other posts here it shows that I am not crazy.
For the last while the I've been having some major prolems with iol broadband here in dublin. Horrible god awful speeds, worse than dial up at times.
I have been playing with Dr.Tcp/ip and thought I screwed up my settings. (by the way, anyone using dr tcp/ip , what do u have your settings at?)
I tried dslreports without much luck.
I managed to tweak out my web browsing but my pings for gaming wouldn't decrease. Then all of a sudden they would drop?? Great!! 5 minutes later they would go right back up to 200+ pings!!!! (were 50)

So, after tweaking and testing, no luck. Then I began thinking that it wouldn't surprise me if they added too many customers and couldn't handle the flow. I called their tech support and they said that it was due to the contention ratio. I told him that it should never ever drop to dial up speeds. He said to check my speeds over the next 4 days and call them back. I told him that according to the first test I just ran I wasn't even up to par with a 56k modem!

That was friday.

Nothing has changed really. I decided to do a tracert to a game server i used to ping low on, and it would time out constantly at its 13th hop.
The routing tables are causing the problem I think. Really strange behaviour jumping back and forth to the same routers.
Who knows? I do believe that we should be gauranteed at least 80% or higher of the advertised speed. Any laws here in ROI with regard to consumer rights and agreeing via contract to pay for a service but you don't receive the quality that was promised?

I'm getting pretty tired of the way the consumer in ireland is treated, this kind of crap service seems to be pretty commonplace. If they don't want to provide the service, why should we pay anything?

Anyone else have any success in complaining to esatbt or iol? Are there any government departments that handle this sort of thing?

Hope this gets resolved quickly!

C@non

i`m in the same situation, i saw on one of the posts that with utv it should be solved this morning, but i`m with IOL, and i`m having the same problem, Saturday night at 11.30 it went back to normal, low ping, but the next day was up again.

Have you tried it today at all?

Netsource is fine and they are in ireland too, seems to be iol utv and eircom that have this problem.

DrChoda

Well, that is around the time my ping went up. I spent a lot of time over the weekend playing around with my rwin settings and mtu settings to no avail. I thought I had tweaked it properly on at sat night because my ping dropped.
Played a bit of Cs and then BOOM, right back up!

I'm considering cancelling the service, I understand contention ratio's when you are using an appropriate amount of users vs hardware, but increasing the users purely for profit without the hardware to provide a true qos benchmark is BS!!

I am suspecting it might be routing problem, routers with some really messed up routing tables.
I would like to think that the routing tables they use are dynamic and not static, but when I tracert a specific ip (close counterstrike server with a previously low ping) it maxes out on hops. When I change the max hops, and it eventually finds it I retry the tracert. In theory, because it has located the server previously, it should have in its list the quickest route, bypassing as many useless routers as possible. Unfortuantely, it did the exact same thing.

I really am at a loss as to why the people here in the republic get bent over by the companies that are supposed to provide customer service? You would think by now they would have set up something like the 'better business bureau' with the amount of total CRAP service people have to put up with here.

So, I'm going to try calling them again and see if they will recognize a problem exists. If they don't then I'm going to begin looking for another provider.

My god, its only 512kbps service!!! It's the bottom end of broadband. 3mbps is the standard back home right now.
How on earth can they screw that up?

There was an announcment on this issue on boards.iol.ie

http://boards.iol.ie/viewtopic.php?t=354

!

Nothing has changed really. I decided to do a tracert to a game server i used to ping low on, and it would time out constantly at its 13th hop.

Traceroutes are sometimes blocked so you can't really say anything for certain if one node times out. It is unlikely the routing tables are to blame since you get there in the first place.

Who knows? I do believe that we should be gauranteed at least 80% or higher of the advertised speed.

You bought into a contended service, it said so in your T+Cs. You won't get a contended service that will guarantee you any minimum speed. Apart from the worst case minimum. They don't guarantee anything.

I'm getting pretty tired of the way the consumer in ireland is treated, this kind of crap service seems to be pretty commonplace. If they don't want to provide the service, why should we pay anything?

Because they will just take the money off you anyway. If you cancel before the 12 months is up they charge a "quitting fee". They have you from all angles..

Anyone else have any success in complaining to esatbt or iol? Are ther
e any government departments that handle this sort of thing?

Good luck complaining. Very hard to get any sort of response from esat without expending serious effort.

DrChoda

I don't understand how that contract can be legally binding, if challenged?
I mean if you contract for a particular service, with an advertised speed of 512kbps yet, at no point is that level provided. Even with contention ratios, the speeds shouldn't drop that slow.
So essentially, they can add as many customers as the like without having to upgrade the hardware that would be needed to support that amount of customers?Essentially, and inevitabley charging customers 40€ for dial up?

Last resort, just report the cc as stolen so the number is cancelled. Then disconnect iol, and dispute the 'cancellation charge', they won't be able to put a charge through. If needs be file a small calims case, and take them to court for it. If they don't show, you win, and if they do show the worst you are out is the canellation fee. I'm sure it would cost them a lot more to send someone to court. Win, win.

I saw that post on the other board, but I really don't have very much patience to begin with. I also don't understand how every other isp company in a lot of other countries are legally bound to provide above a certain percentage of the advertised service, but here there is nothing? Balls!

As for the routing tables, what you said makes sense, but if I hit the server before, shouldn't I be able to hit again? A little quicker too seeing as almost every router uses ospf?

oh well, maybe'll I'll start a new thread asking for people to post their iol horror stories? Should be a good read, and helpful as well.

dub45

The fact is that when you buy broadband as far as I can see anyways your buying a pig in a poke. If you read the terms and condtions you will find in t here somewhere that the isp only has to do their best to provide the service.

I think bb is way oversold in many of the ads particularly Eircoms and people are coming to it with unrealistic expectations - most people only hear the term contention for the first time when they complain about speeds and get a standard reply from support blaming contention on everything!

I tried to raise the pig in a poke issue before but no one was interested maybe that will change now in the light of lots of poor service and poor support.

Paulw

You can complain to Comreg.

But, legally they are not bound to provide much. It's a connection of 512/128 with speeds UP TO 512. So, depending on conditions ... means you can have a fast or slow connection.

Don't forget though, most ISPs are just reselling the Eircom broadband package, so it's more an Eircom problem.

I mean if you contract for a particular service, with an advertised speed of 512kbps yet, at no point is that level provided. Even with contention ratios, the speeds shouldn't drop that slow.

Wrong, they advertise that as the maximum. Its clearly stated on the T+Cs the nature of the connection. If you can get around 52KB/sec(as in kilobytes) downloading large files u have reached the maximum. So around 420kbps(kilobits) is the practical maximum for a 512kbps connection. This is the nature of DSL technology.

As for contention worst case on 48:1 contention is 10.6 kbps
and 24:1 is 21.3

I think you are getting confused between your kbps and kBs.

Originally posted by dub45
*SNIP*
I think bb is way oversold in many of the ads particularly Eircoms and people are coming to it with unrealistic expectations - most people only hear the term contention for the first time when they complain about speeds and get a standard reply from support blaming contention on everything!

I tried to raise the pig in a poke issue before but no one was interested maybe that will change now in the light of lots of poor service and poor support. [/B]

Well you have to take it in context. The majority of us have had few problems apart from the probs over the last week. Those that have problems are often very vocal on the board, because they want it sorted.

Ive said it before, contention is not the issue here. If it was the problem only clusters of people would be affected. And it would be eircom, iol and utv not just one provider.
However I do beleve that the customer service droids are talking out of their arses.

BKtje

I was under the impression that RADSL's (being rate adaptive and all) maximum (when contention isnt an issue) speed is a minimum of 256. Thats what they advertised it as when it first came out. Speeds of between 256-512 depending on your distance to the exchange (remember this is before contention kicks in) so unless you have never reached 256kbit (ie 32kB/s) you dont have a leg to stand on.
Also no ISP guarantees ping times (afaik).

DrChoda

I wasn't talking about getting speeds anywhere near 50kb/s, the most I have ever seen for downloading was 30kb/sec.

I'm talking about paying for a contracted service, and not receiving anywhere near what was advertised, or what you contracted. Are there no 'legal rights' here that consumers in most other countries are entitled to?
Basically what this indicates is that any 'company' can lease lines from eircom, adverstise broadband, charge up the a** for the service. Don't provide anywhere near the service, but because they indicated on the contract: 'they will try the best they can with what they got' , that the other unfortunate party is legally obligated to continue with the length of the contract?

Writing to Comreg would do nothing considering they are the ones that approved eircom's 3rd price hike in a year, and did it on the same day it was requested.

Well, I suppose there isn't much to be done at that point except just accept the fact that they can do whatever they want with the customer. *sarcasm

Basically what this indicates is that any 'company' can lease lines from eircom, adverstise broadband, charge up the a** for the service. Don't provide anywhere near the service, but because they indicated on the contract: 'they will try the best they can with what they got' , that the other unfortunate party is legally obligated to continue with the length of the contract?

Yes thats basicly it! IOL have given you no QOS garuntees. You have entered into their contract. They go to great lengths in the fine print to explain this.

I find it hard to beleve you rarely get 30kBs.

Try http://ftp.heanet.ie and download a big file.