Eircom "Radio" Exchange?

RedLedbetter

We're about 2.5km from our nearest DSL enabled exchange, however everyone on our road is on a carrier line and for whatever reason (money) Eircom have decided (after literally years of compaining/complaining) that it would be more appropriate to connect all of us (via new dedicated copper cables) to a new exchange that will have a radio connection to a transmitter miles away!

So, has anyone come across this type of setup before? If so, from a broadband perspective, what type of connection can we hope to get, as eventhough we will run via cable to the cabinet, the cabinet/exchange will have a radio connection.

Nevermind fibre-to-the-home, this sure rules out fibre-to-the-cabinet!

Cheers,
Rob

Sponge Bob

yes , it means you are ****ed

there are 2 of these in Galway , one west near Casla and one north near Belclare and both backhauled wirelessly on a primitive link to Mervue .

PM me details .

Moriarty

Technically it makes no difference whether it's fibre or a wireless connection between your exchange and further in to their network. Both can provide multi-gigabit connections. Whether your new exchange will have DSL depends on whether they want to offer DSL to you or not, the wireless backhaul out of the exchange shouldn't make a difference.

Or, spongebob appears to know more about the specifics ^

L1011

Parents holiday home is on one; its on an island. If its the same system, its a 2Mbit connection and as a result ISDN is all you can get; but they offer FWA up there thankfully... Prior to the radio system going in there was two hardlines off the island and an operator though so most people are glad even of the 32 lines there are now. 2Mbits provides 32 64k voice/data channels.

watty

Or 31 channels of voice.
Some systems use one channel for "out of band signalling".
I used to design protocol convertors.

This is also why some mobile masts are less than stellar. They use 1, 2 or 3 off 2Mbps circuits for backhaul rather than IP based 35Mbps to 100Mbps. Because Mobile is primarily for voice.

RedLedbetter

Oh lads don't do this to me - don't say ISDN!!!! The connection is going into Roundwood, Mountrath, Laois.

I'm told that a broadband cabinet will also be erected, but this will not be enabled initially as ithe exchange will need to be commissioned. The broadband node also being fed from the radio connection.

So am I to assume that the broadband being referred to here is actually ISDN "broadband"?

Moriarty, your giving me a glimmer of hope, but is there anyway to know the potential of the connection beforehand or even to ensure that DSL is offered?

My feeling on the matter is that "if" ISDN is the final solution, then we are all f**ked as our line speed/quality (dial-up) will appear to be high thereby negating any hope of an upgrade to DSL.

At least we have the NBS to fall back on Our area is included, but God knows how long it will take to rollout and as for the solution......

bigpaddy2004

robertno wrote: »

Oh lads don't do this to me - don't say ISDN!!!! The connection is going into Roundwood, Mountrath, Laois.

I'm told that a broadband cabinet will also be erected, but this will not be enabled initially as ithe exchange will need to be commissioned. The broadband node also being fed from the radio connection.

So am I to assume that the broadband being referred to here is actually ISDN "broadband"?

Moriarty, your giving me a glimmer of hope, but is there anyway to know the potential of the connection beforehand or even to ensure that DSL is offered?

My feeling on the matter is that "if" ISDN is the final solution, then we are all f**ked as our line speed/quality (dial-up) will appear to be high thereby negating any hope of an upgrade to DSL.

At least we have the NBS to fall back on Our area is included, but God knows how long it will take to rollout and as for the solution......

Oh yea I know where that is, thats just a cabinet exchange in front of all them 1950's style houses. FYI Sponge Bob that area is densely populated with trees, etc. The nearest dsl enabled exchange is Mountrath. Although I think that cabinet has direct LOS back to the mast up around the Coolrain/Camross mountains, although I think it may belon to a mobile operator.

Sponge Bob

It is feasible to decently backhaul a DSL cab wirelessly but I fear this thing will get a wireless E1 between the lot of them not an STM1 .

cregser

From what I've heard, they've gone to a competing ISP for help with the wireless part of the connection. This ISP generally has 100Mb connections on their masts (again from what I've heard).

But this doesn't answer the question of what bandwidth Eircom are actually paying for on this wireless link. My guess is it's the minimum they can get away with until you and your neighbours shout about it (with the problem obviously being that they know that you don't have many options).

RedLedbetter

[Cregser] I'm not so sure about the competing ISP for the wireless part - all our existing cables are being re-routed (cut) from where we are to the Mountrath exchange and then we will have copper cable routed from each house to the exchange in Roundwood. Basically, we will be cabled to this exchange for voice and data, so I don't see the need for a competing ISP to intervene?

[BigPaddy2004] Ye, that's the exchange alright, but there's a new broadband exchange going in there too. The existing mast may well point to Coolrain/Camross, but from what I'm told from Eircom, the new mast (or connection) will actually have a radio link to Kilduff, Roscrea direction. Now whether one mast will connect to Coolrain/Camross for voice and the other to Kilduff for data, I've no idea, but I doubt it?

There's actually quite a decent catchment of houses in the 3km (if we assume that is the range of the DSL connection) radius of the exchange, so obviously here's hoping and praying that they do offer DSL!

If they do only offer ISDN, because of the wireless backhaul installed - would we have room to complain on the grounds that we cannot switch to a voice competitor, or does the wireless backhaul have any impact?

If we did get DSL, we wouldn't switch, despite the trouble we've had, but if it ended up that after all this, we still had no reasonable data connection, I'd cut my losses and run!

cregser

Ok I'll explain further, but I don't have any details to be honest. ISPs have their own backhaul infrastructure (big fat pipes between exchanges) to connect various parts of the country to the internet. In your case, Eircom's backhaul is the problem, so they're going with a radio connection to their new exchange. But Eircom don't do radio - especially not for data. So (I'm told) they've outsourced these radio links to a third party (which happens to have a wireless IP infrastructure).

What tells me is that in your case, the wireless connection to this new exchange is likely to be a 100Mbps IP radio link (rather than a voice-only radio link). But how much of the 100Mbps are Eircom allowed to use? We don't know (e.g. it could be 10Mb).

If your copper link to this new exchange can support DSL then Eircom will most likely go with that. But that won't guarantee the actual speed/bandwidth of you broadband connection. The limiting factor is Eircom's backhaul connection over the third party's infrastructure. With 10Mb backhaul, they could sell 2Mb DSL with 48:1 contention to 240 people.

If I'm right, then it's semi-good news for you. You just have to shout louder at Eircom for them to uprade the speed at their end (pay more) so you can have faster speeds at your end.

Sponge Bob

who would that be Cregser , PM gratefully accepted