Is my telephone line able for higher speeds?

rc28

I was wondering if anybody could help me in finding out whether my telephone line is able to get higher bb speeds. We live in the countryside and our area got broadband over a year ago, at the time we had to settle with the 1mb package because on the phone eircom said the line wasn't ready for higher yet. Now we really want to upgrade to at least 2mb but I'm unsure that if we do upgrade it will make much (if any) difference to download speeds. Here are the stats of my line at the moment:
Downstream-Upstream
Max Allowed Speed (kbps) 1024 128
SN Margin (dB) 28.00 8.50
Line Attenuation (dB) 50.50 28.50
CRC Errors 138 1

---

I thought I read somewhere else that a line attenuation of 50 is crap, is it? Here are the results of a speed test i did today, bearing in mind that we are on a 1mb eircom connection so am I right in thinking that this is slightly above what others on a similar package are getting(on the other thread many of them were getting around 800-900kbps):

I also entered in the stats into that adsl2 site and it said the highest speeds I could get with adsl2 were around 6.5/7mb but I dont know if that makes any difference in finding out whether I could upgrade to 2mb.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.

rc28

Anyone have any ideas? I did anther speed test after removing all the filters around my house and plugging the dsl directly from router into the wall and I got higher download speeds and my crc errors went from 148 to only 1! Does the sudden decrease in crc errors mean that there was something faulty with the filters?

kaizersoze

Mmm. Those stats are weird. The attenuation would indicate you're line is crap and you're a long way from the exchange but you're SN Margin figures say the opposite. Based on the attenuation figures alone I'd say it's somewhere between a 1 & 2 meg line.

Ring Eircom again and see if they accept the upgrade order and you'll know for sure then.

rc28

kaizersoze wrote:

Mmm. Those stats are weird. The attenuation would indicate you're line is crap and you're a long way from the exchange but you're SN Margin figures say the opposite. Based on the attenuation figures alone I'd say it's somewhere between a 1 & 2 meg line.

Ring Eircom again and see if they accept the upgrade order and you'll know for sure then.

Yes I thought the attenuation was crap but the snr seemed the opposite. But I'm not that far from the exchange (about 0.5miles away). Also do you know what the dramatic decrease in crc errors(after removing filter) means?

kaizersoze

rc28 wrote:

Yes I thought the attenuation was crap but the snr seemed the opposite. But I'm not that far from the exchange (about 0.5miles away). Also do you know what the dramatic decrease in crc errors9after removing filter) means?

The crc error count would hve went to zero anyway because you reset it when you disconnected the modem from the line to remove the filter. Keep an eye on it to see if it increases again.

Sponge Bob

Better plug it all back in as its not a problem in your house TBH...although you could try to disconnect the internal wiring and run that test in teh master socket again ...to be sure.

Your attenuation of around 50db is what you normally get at 3 miles from the exchange , not half a mile. This indicates a shoddy connection or two along the way outside.

Ring in a fault on 1901 saying you hear intermittent crackling on the line and get it checked out properly by an engineer . Thats what you pay line rental for.

rc28

I put back in all the filters about 2 hours ago and I also put back in the sky box (I usually dont connect because it often stops the phone it shares the filter with from working) and have just checked the crc errors and it has amazingly gone all the way up to 478!! I think this shows there is something really interfering with the line? The sky box has never allowed the phone work fully with it so could this be the problem?

rc28

I thought the line attenuation figures weren't supposed to change(because my house hasn't moved in distance from the exchange)? My figure for attenuation just went down to 49 but I've also noticed that when I connect the filter in the other room(which has the sky box in it) the snr figures go down to a woeful 8 or 9!! And as soon as I take it out again the snr goes back up to 28. We will be ringing eircom soon enough to find out if we can get 2mb but do you think I should keep the other filter disconnected while we call them so the snr figures stay respectable? This is assuming that they check your live stats while the call is in progress, do they?

lucernarian

The CRC number is simply a count of the amount of errors since the router last restarted or last reconnected, I'm not sure which.

That number could be the errors over a number of hours, days or weeks. You can't compare different numbers because of that.

Anyway, those results are very strange. Your upstream is a lot, lot noisier. But the figures you gave is for SN margin. There's a subtle difference. SN margin is usually the SNR minus 6 dB because 6 dB is the theorethical minimum SNR for it to work.

So the line would stay connected until the SN margin drops below 0.

I would have said that you would have no problem getting 2 mbits with that 28dB SN margin or even 3 mbits for that matter, but your line is currently capable of 128 kbps upstream and probably nothing more.

I'd do as Sponge Bob suggested (get an eircom engineer out somehow), and swap the skybox filter with one used for a phone to rule out that particular filter.

And use the Smart Telecom line checker to make sure you're actually connected to the exchange you think you are. Am I right in saying you're in Dunshaughlin?

rc28

What exchange I am on is a puzzle because I am very near to the small village of batterstown and last year when eircom put in broadband into batterstown was when we could get bb for the first time even though dunshaughlin had broadband for years. I think they put in a small exchange in batterstown but when I put in my number into the smart website it says dunshaughlin even though we are miles from there and besides, there is the exchange of pelletstown much nearer to me than dunshaughlin which is listed on eircoms website. This is why I dont think smarts website is accurate, I think it just takes a guess at the nearest major exchange to you. I am nearly 100% certain that I am on batterstown's exchange, it just makes sense as we are very near to it. Do you now if the poor line attenuation figure could be because the overhead lines are damaged? Last winter when a good few trees fell onto the lines eircom never bothered to fully pick up the telephone piles- many are leaning nearly horizontally in fields and I've noticed that the cables themselves were cut and in places are very thin?

rc28

Great News
We just rang eircom and our line passed for higher speeds so we ordered the 2mb package and they said we should have it tomorrow! I'll do a speed test this evening and then again tomorrow to see if anything has changed. Anyway, we were exceeding the 10gb download cap on the 1mb package quite often.
I'll update this thread tomorrow.

rc28

Just 1 question- how do these speed upgrades work? Will it just be faster tomorrow morning or should I expect to see a gradual improvement during the day? What exactly do they do to make it faster overnight?
Thanks:)

lucernarian

I have seen in other threads that it seems to take up to a week, even though customer care has the ability to remotely change your speeds.

The best place to see if there's been an (attempted) upgrade is to look in the info page for the DSL connection where it gives the speed. If the downstream is any bit above 1024 when you turn off the router and turn it back on, then the upgrade has gone through.

I think you need to do the turn-off thing, that's my experience with the Eircom upgrades in spring in some recent years. But don't be suprised if it's well into next week.

rc28

I'm delighted! I just checked my stats this morning and it has already been upgraded and I just took a speed test and the results are a huge improvement on what I was getting:
[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/143816733.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]
From looking at the other thread this is WAY above what other people on a similar eircom package were getting. Do you think it's because I'm in the countryside and not many other people have broadband? I'm very happy with eircom, they upgraded it within a matter of hours. What does the process involve though? How do they just make it faster?

Also last night I came across a thread which was about how eircom were upgrading the network last year so that 1mb went to 2mb and so on but how did this work? If they upgraded those speeds why are they still selling the 1mb package and did it mean that existing customers noticed a big speed increase.
Here is that thread btw:
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054872265

ElNino

Some time back they upgraded the people on their 512k package to 1MB which became their entry level speed.

rc28

I managed to get even higher than the above test again later- there must be zero contention on my line in the countryside??
[URL="[URL=http://www.speedtest.net][IMG]http://www.speedtest.net/result/143846071.png[/IMG][/URL]"][/url]

probe

When I first got broadband (not in Ireland) it worked at 512k. The same line is now working at 19 Mbits/sec down and 1 Mbits/sec up (ADSL2+)!

DSL speeds (particularly in urban areas) have very little to do with line quality and lots to do with absence of competition, absence of loop unbundling, poor regulation, poor legal system, monopolies, cartels, collusion, clueless government, etc.

Particularly in Ireland where most of the line plant is among the newest in Europe. Ireland had one of the lowest phone densities in Europe until the late 1980s – when virtually every street was dug up to install new copper pairs. And Ireland has zillions of new housing estates with copper installed in 200x, and residents of these developments have to put up with broadband crawling at glacial eircom speeds!!! The same (copper installation) events took place in the 1950s in much of the rest of Europe after the war. Ireland has no excuse for not having ADSL2+ working at the highest speeds in Europe.

You can get DSL broadband in most countries in Europe in 2007 at around 20 Mbits/sec (ie as fast as your line can handle it) at fairly reasonable cost – (almost) even in Portugal http://loja.ptcom.pt/loja/ProductDetails.aspx?id=1314&area=casa_sapoadsl_sointernet_novosclientesadsl where it costs a whopping €54,50 a month for 24 Mbits/sec (compared with €29.99 in France).

Meanwhile Ireland is stuck with broadband at 1, 2 or 3 Mbits/sec for most people because the B&B/eir.ComReg consortium continue to get away with strangling the market. And Irish moron consumers continue to put up with it.

High time the eircom monopoly was taken back by the state for abuse of monopoly, and broken up into regions and services and sold off into mutually competing units. The country might then get a competitive telecommunications service.

.probe

rc28

probe wrote:

When I first got broadband (not in Ireland) it worked at 512k. The same line is now working at 19 Mbits/sec down and 1 Mbits/sec up (ADSL2+)!

DSL speeds (particularly in urban areas) have very little to do with line quality and lots to do with absence of competition, absence of loop unbundling, poor regulation, poor legal system, monopolies, cartels, collusion, clueless government, etc.

Particularly in Ireland where most of the line plant is among the newest in Europe. Ireland had one of the lowest phone densities in Europe until the late 1980s – when virtually every street was dug up to install new copper pairs. And Ireland has zillions of new housing estates with copper installed in 200x, and residents of these developments have to put up with broadband crawling at glacial eircom speeds!!! The same (copper installation) events took place in the 1950s in much of the rest of Europe after the war. Ireland has no excuse for not having ADSL2+ working at the highest speeds in Europe.

You can get DSL broadband in most countries in Europe in 2007 at around 20 Mbits/sec (ie as fast as your line can handle it) at fairly reasonable cost – (almost) even in Portugal http://loja.ptcom.pt/loja/ProductDetails.aspx?id=1314&area=casa_sapoadsl_sointernet_novosclientesadsl where it costs a whopping €54,50 a month for 24 Mbits/sec (compared with €29.99 in France).

Meanwhile Ireland is stuck with broadband at 1, 2 or 3 Mbits/sec for most people because the B&B/eir.ComReg consortium continue to get away with strangling the market. And Irish moron consumers continue to put up with it.

High time the eircom monopoly was taken back by the state for abuse of monopoly, and broken up into regions and services and sold off into mutually competing units. The country might then get a competitive telecommunications service.

.probe

Thanks for that. What I'd do for 20mb/sec!! When I was in london last year I remember seeing an ad for ("be" I think was the company) broadband of 24mb/sec for the same price we pay for 2mb!- The same was the case in Paris.
Do you know when eircom will dtart rolling out adsl2? What's involved with doing that?-Do they have to put in lots of new equipment into the exchanges?

lucernarian

Age has little to do with broadband capability. I'd prefer to have an old copper line as in the past the P&T sometimes used thicker copper, as copper was cheaper then and it allows longer distances from exchanges. E.g. if the wire into the house is black and is a single pair (looks like bell wire), the wire gauge is thicker than the newer cable used in the early 90s which is thicker again than the newest cable used to connect each house.

Ireland's new housing estates only cause more problems. More often than not, they're on the outskirts of various towns and cities. In Drogheda, where there is one exchange serving an area where a town slightly smaller (Wexford) has two and Athlone has 2 or 3, this is a pretty big problem.

Until eircom bring fibre to at least the cabinet serving the new estates, and more importantly DSL-enable the fibre equipment, then the new estates will have the lowest speeds.

Competition can do what it likes, but the majority of lines (IIRC about 60%) can't take advantage of ADSL2+ as they are too long. ADSL2 would bring a nice improvement but nothing of the order of 22 Mbps.

rc28

Wow, the following links really put it into perspective just how crap Ireland's broadband is:
https://www.bethere.co.uk/
http://www.btplc.com/21CN/

probe

To_be_confirmed wrote:

Age has little to do with broadband capability. I'd prefer to have an old copper line as in the past the P&T sometimes used thicker copper, as copper was cheaper then and it allows longer distances from exchanges. E.g. if the wire into the house is black and is a single pair (looks like bell wire), the wire gauge is thicker than the newer cable used in the early 90s which is thicker again than the newest cable used to connect each house.

Ireland's new housing estates only cause more problems. More often than not, they're on the outskirts of various towns and cities. In Drogheda, where there is one exchange serving an area where a town slightly smaller (Wexford) has two and Athlone has 2 or 3, this is a pretty big problem.

Until eircom bring fibre to at least the cabinet serving the new estates, and more importantly DSL-enable the fibre equipment, then the new estates will have the lowest speeds.

Competition can do what it likes, but the majority of lines (IIRC about 60%) can't take advantage of ADSL2+ as they are too long. ADSL2 would bring a nice improvement but nothing of the order of 22 Mbps.

Your argument is irrelevant! NOBODY IN IRL can get ADSL2+ at full 10 or whatever to 28 Mbits/sec speed from eircom or from a reseller/bitstream service.

IF/WHEN EIRCOM OFFERS ADSL2+ AT FULL LINE SPEED, we can argue about how fat the copper is or how poor the planning is with new housing estates zillions of km from the RSU, or the need for FTTC etc.

While there will be problem areas due to poor maintenance etc. I have absolutely no doubt that the connection speed over these very same loops will be totally and absolutely superior to what exists today in this corrupt, fiddled, Irish BB market. All it takes is for loop unbundling to be given a competitive wholesale cost base and an efficient, seamless handover process from one service provider to another.

.probe

probe

rc28 wrote:

Thanks for that. What I'd do for 20mb/sec!! When I was in london last year I remember seeing an ad for ("be" I think was the company) broadband of 24mb/sec for the same price we pay for 2mb!- The same was the case in Paris.

Paris (and soon other cities in France [Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Lille etc] are moving to FTTH at 100 Mbits/sec from Free and France Telecom, and perhaps other providers).

Properly regulated loop unbundling forces the incumbent to upgrade its network to fibre to the home, and offer the consumer an even better multi-play service covering voice, internet, TV, video on demand, etc.

.probe

Do you know when eircom will dtart rolling out adsl2? What's involved with doing that?-Do they have to put in lots of new equipment into the exchanges?

They (eirComReg) haven't published any plans to upgrade to ADSL2+ or proposed any tariffs to my knowledge. Nothing is involved really. You just stop buying obsolete DSLAM kit (the eircom end of the DSL modem) - which they (eircom) have no doubt done already because DSLAMs that can only run at 3 Mbits/sec using the original DSL standards are no longer available on the market. Totally obsolete.

At the consumer end, you can buy a self-configuring ADSL2+ modem with firewall and router for about €50 in a FNAC.fr store in France. Same virtually everywhere.

It's a no brainer upgrade. Stupidity, ignorance, regulatory incompetence, poor tech. journalism standards, bad marketing, private equity* / excess debt, and related matters have kept ADSL2+ speeds off the Irish DSL market up to now.

.probe

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity

lucernarian

You cannot overlook the elephant in the corner. If there is to be widespread availability of even 12 Mbps throughout towns, the local elements of the network basically need to be rebuilt. Much/most of eircom's alcatel kit came equipped with ADSL2+ or are getting the firmware upgrade. I suspect ADSL2 will be ready for use in November.

Also, eircom have indeed published plans for proper ADSL2+, or mabye VDSL as they prefer. A search on boards or on google will show that eircom are going to roll out a new high-speed network in the next couple of years in Dublin, and mabye in other urban centres, which will utilise higher-speed broadband and fibre. This will be paid for by selling the exchange sites and the line rental (so bye bye to traditional LLU)

The first areas are to be Dundrum and Priory Park exchange areas in south Dublin. I remember reading this but as this doesn't count as proof, we will wait and see.

LLU as it stands now is too little, too late. They had better start finding ways of providing competition over the new networks or else they'll be left out in the cold. ComReg should have sorted the mobility and paperwork parts of LLU 3 years ago. LLU's irrelevant now when eircom wants to sell off the exchange sites.

And it's the threat of UPC and all the cable companies that is driving these phone company fibre investments, along with the possibility of no more LLU requirements.

rc28

Ireland really does suck. If it's going to be a number of years before they actually get it into dublin then how long before people like me in the countryside finally get higher than 2mb??
Is there any hope in store for wirelss technology, like wimax??
100mb would be unbelieveable, lucky french people:mad:

juice79

They may be 'lucky' but they sure ain't happy...

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/06/french_dsl

rc28

juice79 wrote:

They may be 'lucky' but they sure ain't happy...

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2007/06/french_dsl

I'd take anything written by americans about french people with a big grain of salt, they hate the french remember;) Also, read the comments underneath the aryicle from french peole, they have one of the best networks in the world.

Rozbeef

we get a french magazine here in work called Capital. big report about broadband in the last edition. french people are not happy whatsoever about the bb services.

rc28

Sorry to bump this thread up again but i was just checking broadband availability for a relative and decided to just check my phone number into some other non-eircom providers(out of interest) and to my surprise my phone number passed for all of them, this is different to a year ago when all we could get was eircom bb (after they upgraded the sub-exchange nearby). I can get broadband now with digiweb adsl, irish bb(who said my line could get the 6mb package), bt, imagine and a bunch of others. It seems our phone line has been unbundled (or whatever you call it!) which i found odd given that I'm out in the countryside when towns still haven't been through the LLU thing.

Anyway my question is whether anyone would recommend any of the other providers over eircom? Irish bb interest me the most because they have no monthly cap.

kaizersoze

rc28 wrote:

Sorry to bump this thread up again but i was just checking broadband availability for a relative and decided to just check my phone number into some other non-eircom providers(out of interest) and to my surprise my phone number passed for all of them, this is different to a year ago when all we could get was eircom bb (after they upgraded the sub-exchange nearby). I can get broadband now with digiweb adsl, irish bb(who said my line could get the 6mb package), bt, imagine and a bunch of others. It seems our phone line has been unbundled (or whatever you call it!) which i found odd given that I'm out in the countryside when towns still haven't been through the LLU thing.

Anyway my question is whether anyone would recommend any of the other providers over eircom? Irish bb interest me the most because they have no monthly cap.

Sorry to rain on your parade but your line hasn't been unbundled. All the providers you mentioned are Eircom BB resellers. These options should have been available to you when your line passed for Eircom initially. All their line checkers just access the Eircom database but for some reason they didn't aat the time.

AlmightyCushion

rc28 wrote:

Wow, the following links really put it into perspective just how crap Ireland's broadband is:
https://www.bethere.co.uk/
http://www.btplc.com/21CN/

That's heart breaking stuff. 24meg broadband, unlimited usage and 2.5 meg upload for about 60 euro a month.

rc28

kaizersoze wrote:

Sorry to rain on your parade but your line hasn't been unbundled. All the providers you mentioned are Eircom BB resellers. These options should have been available to you when your line passed for Eircom initially. All their line checkers just access the Eircom database but for some reason they didn't aat the time.

Ok but my real question is there any point in switching to one of them? I know they're just reselling the same thing but are their packages worth switching for? The irish bb 3mb package looks good.

rc28

kaizersoze wrote:

Sorry to rain on your parade but your line hasn't been unbundled.

Sorry, I misunderstood, I thought unbundled just meant it was being let out to other providers. Are you saying this is the same foe *every* phone line around the country, i.e everyone has the option to go with one of these providers? I thought eircom were only letting a certain percentage of their lines be resold by other providers?

kaizersoze

rc28 wrote:

Sorry, I misunderstood, I thought unbundled just meant it was being let out to other providers. Are you saying this is the same foe *every* phone line around the country, i.e everyone has the option to go with one of these providers? I thought eircom were only letting a certain percentage of their lines be resold by other providers?

Only a tiny percentage of exchanges have been unbundled. With unbundling they other telcos install their own equipment in the exchange then physically disconnect your line from the Eircom equipment and plug it into theirs. This way they can offer whatever packages they like to the customer. It's expensive to do so thats why it's only done in large urban exchanges where there would be bigger customer base.
What most of the telcos do is resell the Eircom wholesale products. It's cheaper to do but limited to whatever packages/prices that Eircom decide.

Sponge Bob

the overwhelming majority of exchanges ( mainly small) have no BB . only about 40% of exchanges supply any form of bb although that should go over 50% next year .

thebman

eircom should be forced to announce a timeline for upgrading the announced exchanges.

This is necessary as any areas with upgrades announced or broadband coming soon to this area type announcements are exempt from the national broadband plan AFAIK.

Before the plan is implemented they need to make sure that these are not just lies and police them into implmementing the plans (of course they won't but they should).

rc28

So would anyone recommend one of the providers I mentioned above, are their customer services and packages better value than eircoms? Also, I checked magnet's dsl services and we also passed for that but I think you have to own a business to avail of it, their website said our line passed for the packages up to 6mb.

rc28

Today i checked on their websites if my line still passes for the higher packages but it doesn't anymore, why is this? Digiweb say i need an an engineer visit for the packages up to 4mb and it just says my line doesn't pass when i click the 6mb package. Irisn bb now only offer me up to the 2mb package! What has happened to make my line so crap? My attenuation figures haven't changed.

dub45

rc28 wrote:

Today i checked on their websites if my line still passes for the higher packages but it doesn't anymore, why is this? Digiweb say i need an an engineer visit for the packages up to 4mb and it just says my line doesn't pass when i click the 6mb package. Irisn bb now only offer me up to the 2mb package! What has happened to make my line so crap? My attenuation figures haven't changed.

Line stats vary for all sorts of reasons - the recent dire weather could have affected yours - did you add anything at home lately new phone extensions or anything?

rc28

dub45 wrote:

Line stats vary for all sorts of reasons - the recent dire weather could have affected yours - did you add anything at home lately new phone extensions or anything?

No, as I said my line stats haven't changed. My attenuation has been consistent but when Is changed to the newer eircom router the sn margin went down to 12. However whe I plug back in the older router (that has less sn noise, 28) the broadband websites say the same thing so I'm baffled. Do they know something I don't? How frequently are their databases updated- do they really to a line diagnostic every time you enter your phone number on their site?

kaizersoze

rc28 wrote:

How frequently are their databases updated- do they really to a line diagnostic every time you enter your phone number on their site?

No. The test isn't a live test, all you're doing is accessing the Eircom database. Tests are run about once a month and the database is updated.