A contented service is bad,but?

Ricky91t · 29-01-2009 8:39pm #1

Is there a minimum limit your ISP must meet up to set by comreg or something,
I'm on a "1MB" connection and my connection during peak hours drops too 250kps per second and once down to 170kbs,I think this is terrible as the ISP used to be great and 100kbps below my max speed would be rare!
Now its just gone to the dogs and wondering have comreg or anything like that set a limit to protect us consumers from receiving terrible services..Any ideas? Thanks all:)

PogMoThoin · 29-01-2009 8:44pm

Comreg, dont make me laugh.

We don't have a broadband regulator

Ricky91t · 29-01-2009 8:47pm

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Comreg, dont make me laugh.
We don't have a broadband regulator

Really?
So they can supply as $hity services as they like and no one can do a thing!?
I though i read about someone emailing/writing a letter to comreg about a bad connection

Hank Scorpio · 29-01-2009 8:52pm

post your line stats

does it only affect you in peak hours?

Area/county are you from?

Ricky91t · 29-01-2009 8:54pm

I'm on a wireless ISP,don't think i can get line stats,Yeah only peak time from 4-11 each day..In Kerry used to be fine during these hours but it's just gettin worse and worse

Download speed 193 Kbps (socket test)
Upload speed - Kbps (socket test)
Quality of service 9 %
Maximum delay 1686 ms
Round trip time 117 ms
Upstream jitter 49.0 ms
Upstream packet loss 0 %
Upstream packet order 100 %
Upstream discards 0 %

Irishisp test just now

PogMoThoin · 29-01-2009 9:08pm

Do you have line of sight to their access point? This is very important for a wireless connection.

Ricky91t · 29-01-2009 9:18pm

Yes the engineer when he came to install it commented on the great single we had,have a friend using permanet on another mast and 2-3 miles colser and his connection/jitter is much better.

I could do a speed test tomorrow morning and get 700-800 kbs and a decent ping

Kensington · 29-01-2009 10:18pm

What is the contention ratio for your broadband package? This could be a lot to do with it. If you're on a 1Mbps package, and have a contention ratio of say, 24:1 (not uncommon), then once your connection speed is always above 1Mb/24, then there's not a damn thing you can do short of switching to another ISP. And yes, 1Mb with a 24:1 contention ratio is a minimum of about 41Kbps (about 4.1KBps), or below dial up speed!

Ricky91t · 29-01-2009 10:44pm

Yeah i'm on a 48:1 contention

,Issue is i have this or three and i am trying to/using it for voip instead of a homephone

Don't seem good though

PogMoThoin · 29-01-2009 10:54pm

Did You contact them? There may be a problem with their network, ask them. Its not really the weather for fixing things outdoor at the moment.

Kensington · 30-01-2009 10:49am

Ricky91t wrote: »

Yeah i'm on a 48:1 contention ,Issue is i have this or three and i am trying to/using it for voip instead of a homephone

Don't seem good though

Ouch! That's not a nice contention ratio! As PMT says though, try getting on to them to see what they say. It may well be a problem with their base site that they may know about (but can't fix at the moment - I wouldn't be going up towers in this weather!!!). Be prepared though, to have them tell you tough, it's operating within the advertised contention ratio.

Best of luck!

watty · 30-01-2009 12:25pm

Most DSL and Cable is similar contention planning.

Comreg set the Wireless Licence conditions as a maximum of 48:1

This is NOT actual connections, but ratio of total subcribers packages and total system capacity.

So if you sell only 2Mbps packages and the Mast can do 18Mbps max, 1:1 is 9 users. The ISP is allowed to put 48 x 9 customers on the mast = 432
If everyone downloaded at once speed would be 18/432 = 41.5kbps.
At absolute peak times about 1/4 could be connected at once = 167kbps
But if web browsing, then more reading than transfer so maybe = 833kbps if some are YouTubing

VOIP needs about 100kbps in both directions. Most systems have much less speed in upward direction.

Also Firewall/Routers are hard to configure properly for SIP or Skype based VOIP.

Maximum delay 1686 ms
Round trip time 117 ms
Upstream jitter 49.0 ms

These are bad for VOIP. You want about 60ms or less with less than 10% jitter for VOIP. 49ms jitter is impossible

Your upstream wants to be at least 150kbps, ideally 256k to sustain VOIP and ANYTHING else at same time.

Your connection is too poor for VOIP.

193kbps is suspiciously low for Download, but if there are a bunch of P2Pers and YouTube watchers etc on your mast, it's believable as worst case I'd expect on fully sold mast and very BB savy people is about the 175kbps.

I argue that nowadays for Broadband the planning metric should be more like 20:1 customer capacity contention due to how people use BB now.

IPTV needs a scary 1:1 or 1:2 contention!

FastGuy · 30-01-2009 12:47pm

Make traceroute somewhere and look where problems comes ... if that start on first hoop ... that means AP or abse is underpreasure :cool:

ex.: c:\tracert google.ie

Anyway put 487 customers on one node or Ap is funny !!! I heard from one isp tech guy max 30 ... with 1mb ... really max . Usually they put 22-26.
And Clear line is like someone said really important .. so if installer wanna do install by trees note name.

Good Luck.

watty · 30-01-2009 12:59pm

My 487 is a hypothetical 18Mbps mast for illustrative purposes.

Many actual Wireless systems can't even manage 10 people at 2Mbps package 36:1 contention.

If the mast speed was 2Mbps and you have 36:1 contention on 1Mbps packages, that is 18 people.

If it's WiFi based technology then 10 people is pushing it.

Ricky91t · 30-01-2009 5:07pm

I have contacted them asking for a switch to a less contented node as blueface suggested and i got the same reply saying post some speedtest at different times etc!

also got this"*Please note that, like 99% of Irish Broadband providers, we provide a contended service (customers share their connection with each other). Contention rates for residential and business connections are 48:1 and 24:1 respectively and all speeds quoted are maximum speeds."

The cheapest business is €7 more than ours at the moment and is 1512/512
Would i be better off on that?

Thanks for the help all

watty · 30-01-2009 5:35pm

Stick to the Mobile phone or get a better ISP.
What you have isn't really Broadband.

Ricky91t · 30-01-2009 5:43pm

watty wrote: »

Stick to the Mobile phone or get a better ISP.
What you have isn't really Broadband.

barnicles · 30-01-2009 6:03pm

What ISP is it?

watty · 30-01-2009 6:46pm

His speed test IP comes back as a UK location
Level 3 Communications

Ricky91t · 30-01-2009 7:13pm

barnicles wrote: »

What ISP is it?

Permanet!:D
See the great service they offer?
Yeah their broadband line is supplied by level 3,i was told they would be switching to the irish isp soon but still no news on that

Ricky91t · 30-01-2009 7:20pm

PIng to boards:
Reply from 89.234.66.107: bytes=32 time=107ms TTL=60
Reply from 89.234.66.107: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=60
Reply from 89.234.66.107: bytes=32 time=99ms TTL=60
Reply from 89.234.66.107: bytes=32 time=1917ms TTL=60

Ping statistics for 89.234.66.107:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 68ms, Maximum = 1917ms, Average = 547ms

Tracert boards.ie

1 2 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 131 ms 124 ms 166 ms mm3078.dublin1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.65]
4 89 ms 100 ms 96 ms 213.242.106.78
5 62 ms 83 ms 110 ms ip-89-234-66-107.dedi.digiweb.ie [89.234.66.107]

And here is a tracert to my sip provider

Tracing route to sip.blueface.ie [194.213.29.100]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 75 ms 61 ms 93 ms mm3078.dublin1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.65]
4 195 ms 127 ms 69 ms ae-11-11.car1.Dublin1.Level3.net [4.69.136.93]
5 129 ms 103 ms 100 ms ae-5-5.ebr1.London1.Level3.net [4.69.136.90]
6 92 ms 64 ms 50 ms ae-12-53.car2.London1.Level3.net [4.68.116.80]
7 138 ms 100 ms 62 ms xe-2-3-0-0.lon20.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.77.129]

8 161 ms 160 ms 142 ms so-1-0-0.dub20.ip.tiscali.net [89.149.187.2]
9 162 ms 123 ms 113 ms eunetworks-gw.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.67.218]
10 133 ms 148 ms 146 ms so-0-0-0.mpr2.dub1.ie.gvnx.net [217.112.144.237]

11 122 ms 142 ms 154 ms Smart-GW-IP.gvnx.net [217.112.144.226]
12 133 ms 144 ms 142 ms ge1-3-0-100.edge1.deg.dub.stisp.net [84.203.130.
186]
13 153 ms 149 ms 149 ms vl211.nsw01.b020473-0.dub01.hades.cogentco.com [
149.6.4.54]
14 143 ms 255 ms 119 ms 194.213.29.100

Trace complete.

No wonder why i'm getting latency!

barnicles · 30-01-2009 8:43pm

I thought you were switching to Kerry Broadband!
I'd say it is the timeout on part 2 of the tracert

watty · 31-01-2009 12:22am

Poor backhaul.

Ricky91t · 31-01-2009 1:28am

barnicles wrote: »

I thought you were switching to Kerry Broadband!
I'd say it is the timeout on part 2 of the tracert

No the timeout on no.2 is just the IP of the permanet mast i think(as we are all on a shared IP,and its set not to respond to pings)
No gave KBB a miss due to P2P not allowed :P

barnicles · 31-01-2009 3:50pm

+1 on KBB. I was going to apply but no P2P is a pain in the ass!!

DSL in Q2! Yess

Also It's amazing how he tracert to dublin goes Dublin-London-Dublin!

barnicles · 31-01-2009 3:53pm

Everyone on Permanet is on the one IP so that may cause problems. (All their customer base)

Same as 3.

barnicles · 31-01-2009 3:54pm

That means part 2 should be:

2 x ms y ms z ms mm3087.dublin1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.74]

watty · 31-01-2009 4:44pm

barnicles wrote: »

+1 on KBB. I was going to apply but no P2P is a pain in the ass!!

DSL in Q2! Yess

Also It's amazing how he tracert to dublin goes Dublin-London-Dublin!

Maybe a single Proxy server in Level3 in London?

After UPC took over NTL all the traffic went via Amsterdam for a while (UPC mostly Dutch, Level3 mostly UK)

Ricky91t · 31-01-2009 4:55pm

Well pleased to report i had a good 1 hour voip call today to London,although i had some issues it was good quaility and easy to hear,I wouldn't even bother making one during contented hours though

I've emailed permanet today with my speedtests and basically said if they don't atelast try to help me out i'll be forced to move back to their cheaper package which won't bother me,as it's cheaper and i barely get the speeds i pay for

The ball is now in their court

barnicles · 31-01-2009 5:25pm

Try a tracert to 212.187.194.74.

barnicles · 31-01-2009 5:57pm

Tracert to PermaNET's IP

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

C:\Documents and Settings\barnicles>tracert 212.187.194.74

Tracing route to mm3087.london1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.74]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 219 ms 647 ms 557 ms 172.16.252.2
2 416 ms 492 ms 228 ms 172.16.252.5
3 435 ms 275 ms 501 ms 172.16.252.42
4 396 ms 479 ms 254 ms bla-rtr-01-fa0-0.net.o2.ie [62.40.36.21]
5 407 ms 695 ms 251 ms xe-0-1-0-114.dub20.ip.tiscali.net [213.200.67.13
3]
6 474 ms 231 ms 698 ms xe-0-0-0.lon20.ip.tiscali.net [89.149.186.77]
7 458 ms 926 ms 370 ms ge-7-1.core2.London1.Level3.net [213.200.77.130]

8 585 ms 495 ms 700 ms ae-31-51.ebr1.London1.Level3.net [4.68.116.30]
9 772 ms 654 ms 784 ms ae-5-5.car1.Dublin1.Level3.net [4.69.136.89]
10 927 ms 799 ms 1783 ms ae-11-11.car2.Dublin1.Level3.net [4.69.136.94]
11 634 ms 1092 ms 964 ms mm3087.london1.eu.level3.net [212.187.194.74]

Trace complete.

Ricky91t · 01-02-2009 11:43am

This service is growing more and more of a joke everyday!
http://www.irishisptest.com:443/myspeed/db/report?id=394859 <This morning
http://www.irishisptest.com:443/myspeed/db/report?id=394637 <Last Night

barnicles · 01-02-2009 12:30pm

Ricky91t wrote: »

This service is growing more and more of a joke everyday!
http://www.irishisptest.com:443/myspeed/db/report?id=394859 <This morning
http://www.irishisptest.com:443/myspeed/db/report?id=394637 <Last Night

If your getting that IP then Permanet must have changed their stance on IP addressing.

barnicles · 01-02-2009 12:40pm

Well at least you''re getting DSL in 2009!

Ricky91t · 01-02-2009 1:47pm

barnicles wrote: »

If your getting that IP then Permanet must have changed their stance on IP addressing.

Yeah they did changed it between Nov last year and December,
I know but i have little hope that our copper wire will be any good :rolleyes:

02-02-2009 10:28pm

My parents' Permanet connection has also been abysmal lately. They had to cancel their Blueface line because the phone was unusable. I'm still paying for it myself so am considering downgrading it to the basic 512/128 since they're certainly not getting the advertised speeds (1512/512). They've no other choice except maybe KBB but I doubt my sis would be happy with the no P2P policy.

Ricky91t · 05-02-2009 12:08pm

Karsini wrote: »

My parents' Permanet connection has also been abysmal lately. They had to cancel their Blueface line because the phone was unusable. I'm still paying for it myself so am considering downgrading it to the basic 512/128 since they're certainly not getting the advertised speeds (1512/512). They've no other choice except maybe KBB but I doubt my sis would be happy with the no P2P policy.

Well the way ISP's are going(i'm assuming by p2p you mean music downloads)Might not be that long till they enforce something like that on permanet

Anyway one week later after emailing my speedtest,Suposedly the Three email i sent them using outlook through their smtp account all weren't received :rolleyes:

Anywho heres the mail

I checked your modem. The radio signal levels are very good and there is no sign of packet loss.

We are investigating a possible speed issue, arising from a few reported instances, but to date we have not identified anything that would constitute a fault. We are still investigating and expect to have a conclusion within the next 3 - 4 weeks.

We have installed equipment on our core base station and this will allow us to thoroughly monitor traffic levels and determine where congestion is occurring

barnicles · 05-02-2009 1:33pm

They can't, because they can't track people because the mast has one IP.

watty · 05-02-2009 3:30pm

They can track people. The public IP or Private isn't relevant. Barnicles you are thinking of the IP that appears on the Internet. The ISP always knows who you are. Even if each mast only has one public IP.

barnicles · 05-02-2009 4:32pm

Watty, everyone on one permanet mast shares one IP.

turmace · 05-02-2009 5:59pm

Watty is correct, every residential customer on Permanet must have a unique private IP address. Otherwise the IP packets wouldn't be able to find their way back.
The customers do however share a public IP. There may be more than one public IP per mast or more than one mast per public IP depending on how they backhaul the IP traffic.
Permanet would have no problem with tracing IP traffic to/from a specific user.

Ricky91t · 06-02-2009 7:32pm

barnicles wrote: »

Watty, everyone on one permanet mast shares one IP.

They seem to do a lot of stuff by nowing your mac address to,But i'm sure we all have private IP's or something

Some_Person · 07-02-2009 3:55am

Watty is correct, each customer has their own WAN IP and all customers are behind the same public IP, it's the same with my wisp. That backhaul is terrible too the way it's bouncing back and forth between Dublin and London.

Marlow · 07-02-2009 8:08pm

watty wrote: »

If it's WiFi based technology then 10 people is pushing it.

Not quite right. It depends on the radio, on the software driving it and on the CPU in the board on the basestation. 10 people on WiFi based technology is pushing it, if the queuing is done somewhere further down in the network, but not at the base. If queuing is done at the base/sector and you've got optimized dynamic timing in the drivers you can do up to 30 connections per sector. Anything above that is evil and results in major bandwidth breakins.

As for the contention, there is no regulation of for example unlicensed wireless which a lot of wisps use. All they have to do is to register with comreg, that they are supplying a public service, so that Comreg has a contact in case of a complaint.

After that, they can sell whatever they want. The only way to fix that is to vote with your feet (ie. find another solution). If you don't have a choice, that is obviously not very helpful.

As for the public IP, some of the smaller ISPs around don't allocate unique public ip's to their customers. That's as much a legal issue for themselfes (in case of abuse, as the documentation rests with the ISP in that case) as it's stupid. Only way to get around that would maybe be to tell the ISP what kind of legal issues they can get

/Martin

07-02-2009 10:31pm

About Permanet, they use a wireless system based on DOCSIS cable known as DoxLink. The modem they provide is a standard DOCSIS 1.0 cable modem. The downstream uses 16QAM on frequencies around 250-260 MHz (downconverted by the transceiver) while the upstream is around 20-30 MHz using QPSK. Of course the real transmission frequencies are in the 3.5 GHz range. But because they're using 16QAM they'd have much less capacity than a real DOCSIS network could, my UPC cable modem is receiving a 256QAM signal.

Marlow · 08-02-2009 9:45am

Karsini wrote: »

About Permanet, they use a wireless system based on DOCSIS cable known as DoxLink. The modem they provide is a standard DOCSIS 1.0 cable modem. The downstream uses 16QAM on frequencies around 250-260 MHz (downconverted by the transceiver) while the upstream is around 20-30 MHz using QPSK. Of course the real transmission frequencies are in the 3.5 GHz range. But because they're using 16QAM they'd have much less capacity than a real DOCSIS network could, my UPC cable modem is receiving a 256QAM signal.

That's still no excuse for the lousy speeds the OP is getting. Digiweb Metro uses exactly the same technology and you don't have people complaining about their speed there. The only thing they ever complain about is their CAP

/Martin

08-02-2009 11:36am

Oh no, it certainly doesn't. They seem to be completely oversubscribed. I wonder could we see mass bootings on the scale of IOL No Limits?

watty · 08-02-2009 12:52pm

Marlow wrote: »

That's still no excuse for the lousy speeds the OP is getting. Digiweb Metro uses exactly the same technology and you don't have people complaining about their speed there. The only thing they ever complain about is their CAP

/Martin

No. Not exactly at all.

Very, very different RF gear and DOCSIS settings. Metro is more like Cable DOCSIS, though not as high as 256QAM*.
Very different link budget.
Totally different (and local) Infrastructure more like a national fibre/HFC/Cable provider than a local WISP.

right now Metro Limerick to Galway via Dublin

Real latency to Dublin INEX 25ms

C:\watty>ping www.heanet.ie

Pinging samhain.heanet.ie [193.1.219.57] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=26ms TTL=58
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=58
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=58
Reply from 193.1.219.57: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=58

Ping statistics for 193.1.219.57:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 23ms, Maximum = 26ms, Average = 24ms

*Exact QAM visible in your Modem Stat page.

Marlow · 08-02-2009 1:14pm

watty wrote: »

No. Not exactly at all.

Very, very different RF gear and DOCSIS settings. Metro is more like Cable DOCSIS, though not as high as 256QAM*.
Very different link budget.
Totally different (and local) Infrastructure more like a national fibre/HFC/Cable provider than a local WISP.

Watty, all I was pointing out, that using Docsis over wireless can't be the excuse for the speeds. It doesn't matter if a provider is national or local. There are local WISPs that deliver a superiour service and are peered at INEX and other places. There are also national providers that have no peering beyond their single transit and deliver rubbish. So being national or local has nothing to do with it.

We consider ourselfes local, even though we spread into 4 counties, I'm in Roscommon and I get these speeds on 3 meg:

So being local is still no excuse for being rubbish.

/M

watty · 08-02-2009 2:03pm

With most things, indeed it's not the exact technology is the problem but how it is applied (inadequate link budget, poor backhaul, too many subscribers etc etc)

Exceptions would maybe be any CDMA based tech as inherently suited best and invented for two users on a single secured conversation, not for Point to Multipoint phone or Data services.
(CDMA-1, EVDO, 3G/UMTS/w-CDMA/HSDPA, IPW/T-CDMA, ripwave S-CDMA).

Sensibly Scaleable Point to Multipoint uses TDMA, DVB (vsat, DOCSIS downlinks), OFDMA, FDMA + TDMA (GSM/EDGE) never CDMA as each extra code sequence in the same channel (1.25Mhz CDMA/EVDO or 5MHz 3G/W-CDMA) decreases everyones SNR and increases BER, causing speed to drop, capacity to drop to less than 50% and Mast radius to drop even to 1/4 radius, 1/16th cell area size!).

Even with 16QAM DOCSIS you simply limit number of subscribers. Comreg DOES specify 48:1 max. This is based on actual SUBSCRIBERS, not actual real time contention of simultaneous connections.

16QAM at 6Mhz channel is only about 7Mbps sector capacity. Thus if you sell 2Mbps package = 3.5 users, so max subscribers allowed by Comreg = 3.5 x 48 = 168 per sector.

If speed falls to 200kbps then 25 users SIMULTANEOUSLY downloading. Since it uses very efficent MPEG2-TS mux to DVB-c standard for downlink, people reading a web page while connected use virtually no traffic. Typically would mean over 100 people using PC simultaneously.

Of course if there is no rolling cap and no throttling of the 10 to 20 users of 168 people that would run 24x7 torrents will be eating enough to make speeds sub 300kbps all the time.

So if network is unmanaged and/or they sell to more than 160ish people per sector, the contention will be terrible.

They need at least 35Mbps 1:1 contented backhaul per mast. They could be lacking there as it all seems to go to UK.

watty · 08-02-2009 2:06pm

Marlow wrote: »

So being local is still no excuse for being rubbish.

/M

Absolutely!

There is no excuse for being rubbish unless it is that you are clueless, which can start with installing the wrong infrastructure (NBS anyone?).

A contented service is bad,but?

Comments