Irish Broadband. Why is it so slow

gafarrell

I got irish broadband installed nearly a month ago now (1MB Breeze Package). It was great for the first week or so but it all of a sudden slowed down dramitically. I am averaging about 96KB per second. I sent the following to the Irish Broadband support team

Support,

I got the broadband installed from you just over a week ago.The first
few days everything was excellent. There was fast download/upload
speed and everything was running smoothley. I have noticed since early
last week that everything seem to have slowed down quite alot. I have
done some speed tests ons sometimes it comes back as slow as 92k per
second.
I seems to be internitted as sometimes the speed do actuall speed up
for a second or two.
My IP address is XX.XX.XX.XX
My Customer ID is XXXXXX

Please see following traceroute which may helpundefined

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>tracert yahoo.com

Tracing route to yahoo.com [xx.xx.xx.xx]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 29 ms 22 ms 238 ms xx.xx.xx.xx
2 752 ms 142 ms 282 ms kilbarry-et-1-2.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.129
]
3 342 ms 217 ms 345 ms esb-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.134]
4 190 ms 872 ms 949 ms rte-et-1-8.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.165]
5 783 ms 1838 ms 1033 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]
6 2140 ms * 1455 ms 213.228.221.102
7 1616 ms 1462 ms 3025 ms ae0-p524.pat1.pao.yahoo.com [216.115.98.17]
8 * 479 ms 588 ms vl34.bas1-m.scd.yahoo.com [66.218.82.193]
9 1375 ms 1471 ms 1456 ms UNKNOWN-66-218-82-238.yahoo.com [66.218.82.238]

10 826 ms * 468 ms w2.rc.vip.scd.yahoo.com [66.94.234.13

I sent this to the support team on the 16th of Oct. Got an automated reply on the 18th with a reference number etc.

The next reply I got was on the 27th Oct asking was my connection still OK
Obviously it was not as there was nothing done about it.
Replied to irish BB support team saying that I am still averaging about 96KB per second.
Got the following reply today.

"Hi ,

I've had another look at your connection, we think that there may be an
issue with the highsite that you are attached to. We will have somebody
on the highsite this weekend to troubleshoot this connection further,

this should resolve any issues that you may be having with the
connection,

Regards,

John"

I will keep you posted

Anybody else with this issue???????

Blaster99

Your pings would indicate a signal problem. Let IBB do their thing and see if it helps.

uteotw

High pings used to be my plague with IBB...
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=124036

But since they moved me to the VL gear it's fine.

Gafarell, what are you pings to your Default Gateway and DNS ?
Make sure you have no network activity going when you do your tests.

Hal1

gafarrell wrote:

I got irish broadband installed nearly a month ago now (1MB Breeze Package). It was great for the first week or so but it all of a sudden slowed down dramitically. I am averaging about 96KB per second. I sent the following to the Irish Broadband support team

Support,

I got the broadband installed from you just over a week ago.The first
few days everything was excellent. There was fast download/upload
speed and everything was running smoothley. I have noticed since early
last week that everything seem to have slowed down quite alot. I have
done some speed tests ons sometimes it comes back as slow as 92k per
second.
I seems to be internitted as sometimes the speed do actuall speed up
for a second or two.
My IP address is XX.XX.XX.XX
My Customer ID is XXXXXX

Please see following traceroute which may helpundefined

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>tracert yahoo.com

Tracing route to yahoo.com [xx.xx.xx.xx]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 29 ms 22 ms 238 ms xx.xx.xx.xx
2 752 ms 142 ms 282 ms kilbarry-et-1-2.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.129
]
3 342 ms 217 ms 345 ms esb-et-2-7.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.134]
4 190 ms 872 ms 949 ms rte-et-1-8.irishbroadband.ie [62.231.32.165]
5 783 ms 1838 ms 1033 ms ix-et-1-1.irishbroadband.ie [195.26.12.61]
6 2140 ms * 1455 ms 213.228.221.102
7 1616 ms 1462 ms 3025 ms ae0-p524.pat1.pao.yahoo.com [216.115.98.17]
8 * 479 ms 588 ms vl34.bas1-m.scd.yahoo.com [66.218.82.193]
9 1375 ms 1471 ms 1456 ms UNKNOWN-66-218-82-238.yahoo.com [66.218.82.238]

10 826 ms * 468 ms w2.rc.vip.scd.yahoo.com [66.94.234.13

I sent this to the support team on the 16th of Oct. Got an automated reply on the 18th with a reference number etc.

The next reply I got was on the 27th Oct asking was my connection still OK
Obviously it was not as there was nothing done about it.
Replied to irish BB support team saying that I am still averaging about 96KB per second.
Got the following reply today.

"Hi ,

I've had another look at your connection, we think that there may be an
issue with the highsite that you are attached to. We will have somebody
on the highsite this weekend to troubleshoot this connection further,

this should resolve any issues that you may be having with the
connection,

Regards,

John"

I will keep you posted

Anybody else with this issue???????

Yep, that their usuall búll****3 excuse, complaining about the highsite their service is utter cráp. Its intermitent at times as far as pings go they fluctuate alot. I was promised their 'VL Gear' some time ago now but nothing as happening since Im tired of asking support for assistance when firstly there is none unless your really lucky that someone will stumble upon your query. I am still using IBB only good for one browsing and some downloads.

HighlyCooL

i have the same package and i am just wondering how fast should it be downloading at when it is working right?

Moonbeam

96KB = 768kb

I presume you meant 96Kb?

Mutant_Fruit

Moonbeam wrote:

96KB = 768kb

I presume you meant 96Kb?

I assumed he meant 96kilobits per second ( about 12 kilobytes a second), which would be quite slow on a 1meg service. But when the service works right, you cxan expect download speeds of 120 kilobytes a second, and the same with upload.

HighlyCooL

The highest i usualy get is between 110KB and 120KB but most of the time it only D/Ls at 75KB to 95KB

Faceless_Joe

Just a thought....
Irish Broadband lists it as Breeze 1MB, which implies 1 MegaBYTE
However, the Up/Download speed is listed as 1024Kb, implying KiloBITS
Oh, what's 8x the difference anyway :P

Also, data packets from the internet tend to have start and end bits, so you generally just divide by 10, not 8.
Thus, that package should be be letting you download at 102KBps, but likely well let you up to 120 or so.

Bah, I get a maximum 60KBps on my crappy Eircom line...

Ripwave

Faceless_Joe wrote:

Also, data packets from the internet tend to have start and end bits, so you generally just divide by 10, not 8.

While I'm a big fan of round numbers, and usually just divide by 10 anyway, the packets that are delivered over a digital connection usually come in groups of a few hundred bytes at a time (the MTU or "maximum transmission unit" is usually 1400 and something), with a handful of header packets, so the actual overhead is far less than on an analog connection, where there's a stop and start bit on every byte.

sluice44

Hi gafarrell,
Are you connected to the Ballymun Mast? I've had a lot of trouble for the past week or two. Two 'engineers' came out yesterday and eventually worked out that there was a problem with the mast. They said there was a problem with the 'back channel' or some nonsense like that.

They said the mast would be fixed by Thursday evening, 4th Nov. When I remarked that all of Santry etc users would be upset at this slow repair response - they just shrugged & walked away.

Sluice

Adey2002

sluice44 wrote:

They said there was a problem with the 'back channel' or some nonsense like that.

Sluice

So many jokes.... Must resist... :eek:

gafarrell

sluice44 wrote:

Hi gafarrell,
Are you connected to the Ballymun Mast? I've had a lot of trouble for the past week or two. Two 'engineers' came out yesterday and eventually worked out that there was a problem with the mast. They said there was a problem with the 'back channel' or some nonsense like that.

They said the mast would be fixed by Thursday evening, 4th Nov. When I remarked that all of Santry etc users would be upset at this slow repair response - they just shrugged & walked away.

Sluice

I am connected to the new service in cork. I think it is the killbarry mast. Aparentey they were suppose to be working on it this weekend but I found no difference .

Mutant_Fruit

sluice44 wrote:

Hi gafarrell,
They said there was a problem with the 'back channel' or some nonsense like that.

I think you meant "backhaul". But yeah, i'd say its just a fobbing off excuse. But give them the benefit of the doubt. If it doesn't work after the scheduled "repairs/upgrades" cancel it if ya think its subpar.

jesus_thats_gre

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

I think you meant "backhaul". But yeah, i'd say its just a fobbing off excuse. But give them the benefit of the doubt. If it doesn't work after the scheduled "repairs/upgrades" cancel it if ya think its subpar.

Well it could be the back channel, i.e. the end user transmitting data back to the IBB mast?

sluice44

'Backhaul' sounds right....better than 'back channel' anyway.

Repairs to the mast were due today (Thurs) & it does seem to be better. Lets hope it stays that way for a day or two!!

What does backhaul mean & why is it a 'fob-off.' I'm sure I'll have to call them out again at some point & would like to know some techie terms to throw at them.

Cheers,
Sluice

carbsy

Just a note lads,I got the 1mb lite package installed today and was told by the engineers that there was still work being carried out on the Churchfield (???) mast and that I wouldn't get proper speeds until Tues or Weds of next week.Hope this helps....

G|N|T

its actually 1 Mega BIT........Genius

Mutant_Fruit

I think the backhaul is the bandwidth available from each tower to their main internet connection. If that gets saturated, they need to stick up some more transmitters to add extra capacity to the towers. But thats the usual excuse they used on me back in the day, and it turned out i was just getting heavy interference. Therefore i assumed it was a fob off excuse.

gafarrell

Just a quick update on this issue.
Apparently IBB done some work on the mast and the speed seem to be back to normal for now.

scriv

I can theoretically get full speed on mine--as in, there's nothing physically wrong with my connection--but I find the main problem is muppet teenagers downloading billions of crap films such as "The White Chicks".

I have a brother who's thirteen years old and every time he uses this computer I come back to it with a ****eload of pretty crappy video material downloading and/or games. And all his friends got IBB so that they can do the same thing. What I'm basically saying is that IBB is for leechers (minus the people who can't get any other kind of BB), and even though I cursed the caps on the DSL services I've used in the past, I'm now starting to see their point! With all these download programs that download 24/7 if you leave your computer on, there is no time that I might not get a paltry 10k/sec. Like now, for instance!