Chorus : What's going on?

RangeR

Hi all,

I signed up to Chorus a good few months ago. Service in the past 3 or 4 months has gone to Hell. Everytime I ring them I'm just told that there is a slow speed issue in the Naas, Limerick and Cork areas. They won't give me any other information and won't give me an estimated resolution time [even to the nearest month]

Anyone have some inside info on this. It's really infuriating. I'm on a 6Mb :512Kb connection.

IrishISPTest.com wrote:

Summary Last 10 Results:
Date Download Speed Upload Speed Qos RTT Maxpause
29/11/2006 20:14 516 kbps (63 KB/s) 456 kbps (56 KB/s) 36 % 39 ms 509 ms
29/11/2006 20:10 483 kbps (59 KB/s) 447 kbps (55 KB/s) 18 % 44 ms 1351 ms
29/11/2006 20:03 394 kbps (49 KB/s) 448 kbps (55 KB/s) 34 % 39 ms 1137 ms
29/11/2006 20:03 328 kbps (40 KB/s) 495 kbps (61 KB/s) 44 % 39 ms 1152 ms
28/11/2006 22:19 224 kbps (28 KB/s) 460 kbps (57 KB/s) 7 % 39 ms 1860 ms
27/11/2006 20:26 305 kbps (38 KB/s) 412 kbps (51 KB/s) 28 % 39 ms 973 ms
27/11/2006 20:25 8 kbps (1 KB/s) 349 kbps (43 KB/s) 99 % 50 ms 0 ms
23/11/2006 07:44 1836 kbps (225 KB/s) 500 kbps (61 KB/s) 67 % 38 ms 92 ms
19/11/2006 14:07 514 kbps (63 KB/s) 285 kbps (35 KB/s) 3 % 5 ms 698 ms
12/11/2006 08:20 3793 kbps (463 KB/s) 328 kbps (40 KB/s) 46 % 2 ms 66 ms

Total Averages:
840 kbps (103 KB/s) 418kbps (51KB/s) 39 % 34 ms 784 ms

CiaranC

Theres loads of threads on this UPC/NTL/Chorus debacle in this very forum.

JNive

Yup same issue in cork, people are told there is a local issue etc etc and that there are some niggling problems , and thats a quote.

so basically, they are having niggling problems in every local area, on a continous basis, or for more common terms,

They are having serious issues nationwide on their entire service with absolutely no idea or estimate for when its going to be resolved.

Nice service, i couldnt be happier that i moved to magnet now, even if its a bit dearer, its 5mbps/1mbps for €52 / month incl. line rental.

RangeR

CiaranC wrote:

Theres loads of threads on this UPC/NTL/Chorus debacle in this very forum.

This is true and I have participated in some of them. However, NTL issues don't interest me at the moment as I don't think NTL and Chorus have combined their networks yet so NTL issues are not neccessarily associated to Chorus issues. I may not be correct on this.

I'm just looking for some concrete reasons which Chorus cannot give me.

JNive

as i was posting last week, the networks were combined which started the latest surge in connection issues over the past week.

if you do a trace route, you will see that you have been allocated an ntlworld.ie ip address

RangeR

JNive wrote:

as i was posting last week, the networks were combined which started the latest surge in connection issues over the past week.

if you do a trace route, you will see that you have been allocated an ntlworld.ie ip address

I must have missed that bit of information. I have a look through the current NTL threads. Thanks for the heads up, though. Explains a lot of what's going on.

RangeR

Just for those interested in the Chorus debate rather than the NTL one. Internet dropped today for about 10 minutes. I was furious because this is the first day in a long time that I actually decided to work from home.

I rang up CS and had the obligitory hold time. Finally got through to a supervisor. They said that the problem today was that they had engineers rushed to the problem Naas exchange [forgive my terminolgy] to do some emergency work. They have to replace some faulty hardware. CS knew about this a week ago.

Still don't have a resolution time and can't guarantee that it will resovle the overall issues.

Now, my take on that.

CS were notified a week ago. 2 things wrong there
1. They knew a week ago and never told us.
2. If it's emergency work, why wait a week?

When asked, CS are still not commenting on the routing through the 'Dam. They also cannot say if the current "fixing" will make things better.

They actually told me that the engineers are purposely NOt giving any information to CS. They will only say "Yeah, speed issue, no estimated time of resolution". That's all their told.

I don't know if that is the truth, but if it is, somebody slipped up badly. You DON'T tell your customers that there is a deliberate breakdown in communication within your company.

I told them that if they continue with their brick wall attitude, they will end up loosing a good portion of their customers. Then what will happen? UPC will announce lay-offs. I, for one, am so close to breaking point. The only thing keeping me with them at the moment is I'm more stubbern dislike for getting my landline re-connected.

I considered Metro but the prices are way off.

On a good note, my speeds since my last dis-connection, about an hour ago, have jumped from about 100Kbps to about 300Kbps.

I'm on a 6Mb line in Naas.

paulm17781

I know you are a chorus customer but last night my NTL connection was the best it has been in months. Perhaps they are finally fixing things. It was still going through A'dam but I was getting average downloads of 500k, long time since I have seen this.

RangeR

Well I'm sure we can assume that NTL and Chorus are now the same as of this week [thanks to SB posting in another thread].

This is good news that you and [it appears] I are getting good speeds at the moment. I shall hold off judgement for a week or two, though.

RangeR

The result of the Chorus engineer visit :

Drops nearly every 10 minutes which last 2 or 3 minutes.

"Time to move" is coming very soon.

jpw

has anyone had problems with chorus broadband in naas since the 15/16 march?

it went down for about a week as chorus had big problems fixing it for what they call pool d in naas (craddockstown area i think) but since it's been "fixed" by chorus on 21 march the service has been totally unpredictable.

i'm getting a wide range of results when running http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php and doing some pings. last weekend of the 24-26 i was getting speeds of 0.5Mb to 1.2Mb and a ping to ntlworld.ie was at 250ms and ping to yahoo.com was at a terrible 550ms!

these speeds are extremely low even though i have 6Mb broadband and pay a hefty premium for the "fast" service. i expect to get at least 4.5Mb, not below 2.0Mb. what's the point paying an extra €25 a month for no extra service. this isn’t just my connection either other people in the area are having similar problems. i have phoned chorus about 20 times over the past two weeks but getting nowhere.

i have also noticed that torrent speeds have gone way down since the problems started in mid-march, lucky to get 5kB/s on a single torrent.

RangeR

jpw wrote:

has anyone had problems with chorus broadband in naas since the 15/16 march?

it went down for about a week as chorus had big problems fixing it for what they call pool d in naas (craddockstown area i think) but since it's been "fixed" by chorus on 21 march the service has been totally unpredictable.

i'm getting a wide range of results when running http://www.irishisptest.com/runmyspeed.php and doing some pings. last weekend of the 24-26 i was getting speeds of 0.5Mb to 1.2Mb and a ping to ntlworld.ie was at 250ms and ping to yahoo.com was at a terrible 550ms!

these speeds are extremely low even though i have 6Mb broadband and pay a hefty premium for the "fast" service. i expect to get at least 4.5Mb, not below 2.0Mb. what's the point paying an extra €25 a month for no extra service. this isn’t just my connection either other people in the area are having similar problems. i have phoned chorus about 20 times over the past two weeks but getting nowhere.

i have also noticed that torrent speeds have gone way down since the problems started in mid-march, lucky to get 5kB/s on a single torrent.

Don't know if it's just Naas but it has gone to crap [again!?!] in the past coupld of weeks. It seems ok at the moment but just ok. I'm averaging about half my normal download speed with almost full upload speed.

The fact that Chorus traffic is now being routed through Amsterdam now [even when surfing to servers hosted in Ireland] is a joke. I've given up on them and WILl be leaving them as soon as I can find a provider worth moving to. Actually considering going back to IBB at the moment. I hear they have improved a huge amount over the past coupld of years. although I don't htink they are in Naas yet. They were meant to be here about 2 years ago but I think they fooked that up too. Actually, I'll ring them now.

PS. I'd actually like to move to Digiweb but they are more expensive with very bad caps.

jpw

the caps are the biggest problem at least 20/30GB is needed, but for a house with more than one it's easily passed. i'm unsure if many of the providers check this although i know eircom do and you can even log in and check.

i don't think they could charge you for a service which you can't check your usage on. none of the suppliers apart from eircom allow you to log in and check your usage so i would be suprised if they could legally charge you.

from friends in dublin who have other services there isn't much choice.
- clearwire from what i've heard in dublin is bad and not near cable/adsl speed.
- the irish broadband ripwave product rarely gets above 0.25Mb and upspeeds are like dial-up.
- digiweb is good but like you said their cap is terrible but i'm unsure they check it. there metro 3Mb broadband with 30GB cap is ok at €35
- and eircom/bt well the cost of line rental is the problem.

RangeR

jpw wrote:

- digiweb is good but like you said their cap is terrible but i'm unsure they check it. there metro 3Mb broadband with 30GB cap is ok at €35

I don't want to go too much off topic but I looked at Digiweb but couldn't find the information. Do Digiweb include line rental in their prices or is that EXTRA? If extra, that's a huge amount consideri9ng I don't have to pay line rental at the moment [had it disconnected after Eircom fooked over Smart ].

jpw

go to digiweb.ie, select kildare, then naas. should come back with results for metro and dsl services.

metro is good a friend of mine has it in carlow and it appears to work well:
http://www.digiweb.ie/broadband_metro_index.asp?i=80&i2=81&i6=90&zzz=hm

metro is wireless and requires a square dish to be installed outside your house.

watty

There is no line rental on Metro or Wireless.
Metro includes two free "wireless" phone lines, calls but no line rental.

RangeR

watty wrote:

There is no line rental on Metro or Wireless.
Metro includes two free "wireless" phone lines, calls but no line rental.

True, but I actually meant on their DSL product as it has greater cap for the same download plan [compared to Metro].

jpw

speeds gone down the tubes again at chours in naas. although i was getting ok speeds this morning they have dropped a lot now, same has happened for the past week. i am paying for 6Mb broadband with them, can't even get 0.5Mb!

i know that due to connection ratios that my speed would drop in the evening, but it should not drop by this much and look the at the very slow ping results, crazy.

it's come back a bit now, up at about 1.0Mb but this type of service is terrible. i have been with chorus broadband for over 18months and only in the last two weeks has the service gone to the dogs.

and before someone comments, when i do the speed tests and pings i am plugged directly into the internet and running nothing else, no other downloads, no skype, no im not even e-mail open.

dpower

You add me to that list. Connection is up and down like a yoyo- Naas area- Craddockstown. taken me ages to post this! Hopefully someone can point them towards this thread.

rom

chorus ballincollig cork

18/10/2007 22:53 5860 kbps (716 KB/s) 493 kbps (61 KB/s) 99 % 62 ms 11 ms

ada4347

hi ranger i was thinking of getting upc im not in any of those ares would u reccomend it.

RangeR

ada4347 wrote: »

hi ranger i was thinking of getting upc im not in any of those ares would u reccomend it.

ada,

This is a VERY old thread. From my experience of reading about Chorus broadband, it's highly dependent on the area that you are in.

I'm in Naas. Their service used to be diabolical two years ago. Today, damn, I can't fault it. My stats are, approx :

Download : 17Mbps
Upload : 1.5Mbps
Latency [ping] : 23ms
Packet drops : <0.5% [Based on my "feeling" of their service. I haven't felt the need to test for packet drops since I went back to them about 10 months ago]

When I check my speed, I get the above stats about 98% of the time. In my area, they have improved a huge amount.

Cabaal

Die Zombie Die!!!
Lads do not drag up old threads!