Ireland has a pathetic last mile infrastructure

ei.sdraob

Yes most of you know that already

but now there are figures to back it up

smart economy in a slow lane....

Speedtest.net was launched in 2007 by Ookla, a company that now also operates Pingtest.net, a site for measuring connection quality. Users conduct more than 1 million tests per day using Ookla's tools, which are also offered as rebranded services by ISPs (Internet service providers).

Up until now, Ookla has been compiling the results of those individual tests -- about 1.5 billion so far -- but only making them available to outsiders through individual agreements. That is set to change on Tuesday, when consumers will be able to view average speed numbers for the whole world, cities and geographic regions on a new Net Index Web site. At the same time, the full information from the tests -- minus details such as who exactly was testing their home broadband -- will be freely available to academic institutions.

http://www.itworld.com/networking/108922/internet-speedtest-results-going-public


* download index: #63 @ 5.98 mbit / EU average 10.02mbit / OECD average 9.04 mbit

* upload index: #41 @ 0.93 mbit / EU average 2.45mbit / OECD average 1.83 mbit

* quality index: #68


next time you hear Eamon Ryan blow hot air, remember this thread

Floppybits

Am sick of listening to Ryan bang on about this, I just wish he would do something about it. it is a disgrace to think that other countries are improving their broadband all the time and yet here we are stuck at the start of the century.

It is a disgrace.

thirtythirty

Personally I think we're not doing *too* bad; our fibre optic rings and outcrops are growing nicely, contention is being reduced, and alternatives like WiMax and LTE are also getting significant investment.

Yes, our last mile generally is pathetic BUT backend infrastructure is more important to get right first. Eventually I can see a progressive rip-and-replace of the 60 year old copper wires, largely due to degradation than anything else, but at least then the backend is there to benefit the shiny new wiring!

ei.sdraob

spottyelephant wrote: »

Personally I think we're not doing *too* bad; our fibre optic rings and outcrops are growing nicely, contention is being reduced, and alternatives like WiMax and LTE are also getting significant investment.

Yes, our last mile generally is pathetic BUT backend infrastructure is more important to get right first. Eventually I can see a progressive rip-and-replace of the 60 year old copper wires, largely due to degradation than anything else, but at least then the backend is there to benefit the shiny new wiring!

While yes they are required alot of these back-end circuits (the ones they dug up the main roads for) are unused

And its not only residential customers that suffer, but businesses too

the following is from the control panel for one of the cluster of servers I have in the US at the time of this post



If I located these in Dublin in datacenter here it would cost in the region of 10-30 euro per mbit, it costs 10 times less in the states and continent and you get better quality and better service (and thats not counting the electric costs)

We contacted Eircom for a gigabit circuit before with plans to setup a small datacenter in Ireland, lets just say the price we got back threw a spanner in the works... And ESB who are sitting on a pile of fibre are a useless bunch of feckers (i know first hand how they work )

Nijmegen

I recall hearing a story from an international company that set up here in our smart economy... They moved into a corporate park freshly built, with new roads, freshly built, and fibre put down in the roads, freshly built.

Did the fibre stretch to the buildings? Nope. Of course not. That's the kind of joined up thinking you get in foreign, not here!

They were quoted €2,000 per metre to dig the fibre into their exchange, about 20 meters. A capital investment of €40,000 so as they could get an upload speed above 8meg to connect to their global infrastructure.

A joke.

jimmycrackcorm

Our work office was bilt with fibre connected to the MAN. Hoewever when enquiring how much to get 8mb broadband over the fibre link we were told that it would cost €1500 per month.

Instead we have a normal 24/1.5mb BB ADSL connection at €160 per month. The fibre connection would have great given the asymetirc speed but the pricing is way out of whack. I don't even think the MAN around the town is being used by anyone.

omahaid

Don't ye all know that we are an open smart green knowledge economy :pac:

I despair at a national broadband strategy where the solution to lack for broadband is to give everyone midband

Dr_Teeth

Issues with 60 year old copper I could understand.. but check this out.

The housing estate where I live is in Ongar, Dublin 15. It was built in 2008 - they're still trying to sell some of the houses. There is no cable TV / internet, and no fiber - just a telephone line. I've been told the maximum speed I can get out of this line is 4Mb. The exchange the line is connected to (Clonee I believe) has no 3rd party gear in it, just Eircom's bitstream service.

I cannot understand how it was legal, or even possible for a developer to install such crap communications links into a new estate in this country's capital city, in 2008.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything anymore! :mad:

Nijmegen

Dr_Teeth wrote: »

Issues with 60 year old copper I could understand.. but check this out.

The housing estate where I live is in Ongar, Dublin 15. It was built in 2008 - they're still trying to sell some of the houses. There is no cable TV / internet, and no fiber - just a telephone line. I've been told the maximum speed I can get out of this line is 4Mb. The exchange the line is connected to (Clonee I believe) has no 3rd party gear in it, just Eircom's bitstream service.

I cannot understand how it was legal, or even possible for a developer to install such crap communications links into a new estate in this country's capital city, in 2008.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised at anything anymore! :mad:

The other point of note here being that when they built the feeder road there from power city up to Ongar, I have a feeling they put fibre down into that.

I know a chap who moved from nearer the village to a house along that road, went from 24meg to the classic "up to" 3meg.

oppenheimer1

omahaid wrote: »

Don't ye all know that we are an open smart green knowledge economy :pac:

I despair at a national broadband strategy where the solution to lack for broadband is to give everyone midband

Do you think its feasible to have wired broadband in the foothills of the Kerry mountains? You shouldn't expect services if you live in the back arse of nowhere. I include telephone and ESB in that too.

Planning was/is a joke.

ei.sdraob

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Do you think its feasible to have wired broadband in the foothills of the Kerry mountains? You shouldn't expect services if you live in the back arse of nowhere. I include telephone and ESB in that too.

Planning was/is a joke.

Considering that Mongolia ranks higher than Ireland on that list :eek: ...

oppenheimer1

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Do you think its feasible to have wired broadband in the foothills of the Kerry mountains? You shouldn't expect services if you live in the back arse of nowhere. I include telephone and ESB in that too.

Planning was/is a joke.

are you saying Ongar Dublin 15 is "middle of nowhere"? Are you saying that anywhere in Dublin is comparable to the "foothills of the Kerry mountains" ?

ardmacha

Broadband is the greatest disgrace of all. Building motorways and metros was always going to take time, but a bit of planning and some modest investment in the last decade could have ensured that Ireland was in reasonable shape for broadband.

Are you saying that anywhere in Dublin is comparable to the "foothills of the Kerry mountains" ?

Obviously not, or Dublin would win the All Ireland.

dunsandin

Your dead right, the last mile of road up to my gaff is full of potholes. I'd fill em, but some git would probably sue me.

lmimmfn

we'll only get decent broadband if the politicians get brown envelopes for it like they did for land rezoning.

dunsandin

Broadband???, I thought we were talkin roads here:D:D Sure we all know Irelands broadband is crap. Youtube is like watching a speech by Pronsias in our house.

MysticalRain

oppenheimer1 wrote: »

Do you think its feasible to have wired broadband in the foothills of the Kerry mountains? You shouldn't expect services if you live in the back arse of nowhere. I include telephone and ESB in that too.

Planning was/is a joke.

Well seeing as there happens to be some major towns and villages in the foothills of those mountains, the answer would obviously be yes in all cases. Even the Black Valley eventually got electricity back in 1975.

I can recall getting quite excited at the prospect of DSL coming to my local spot in Kerry back in 2000. Little did I know that it would be 2007 by the time we got it, and even then, it was a crappy 2meg Eircom line (1.7 Mb on a good day). That was 3 miles outside of Killarney town. Furthermore up the road there is still no broadband to this day. People there have to rely on ****e mobile "midband" connections.

I had a similar story living in East Wall back in 2006. No broadband in our street, despite being less than a mile from the main city center and Parliament buildings.

"Knowledge economy" my arse. I'm just amazed at the lack of embarrassment from our politicians when they utter that phrase knowing full well how dreadfully inadequate our broadband infrastructure is.

dunsandin

But you are not taking into account the huge landmass of Ireland in comparison to everywhere else, next you will be suggesting that they can build a tunnel under the channel, or a railway across the continent of America. Get real will youse. How could anybody cover such a vast area as Ireland with proper services???? Absurd.

Battleneter

Speedtest.net is not accurate as its only "single" source. Any one of the hops can be slow, IE a server in the UK is the slow hop when testing New York.

Add to this, different ISP can have different hops to servers, so its very possible to be showing a slower speed on a number of speedtest servers than someone else on another ISP, BUT be able to real life download a lot faster.

Speedtest looks pretty and people believe the results, but the only "True" way to test your connection performance is real downloading from a known fast source (preferable multi-source).

Speedtest.net is nearly worthless, I should add i am a IT network engineer :P

Head The Wall

Battleneter wrote: »

Speedtest.net is not accurate as its only "single" source. Any one of the hops can be slow, IE a server in the UK is the slow hop when testing New York.

Add to this, different ISP can have different hops to servers, so its very possible to be showing a slower speed on a number of speedtest servers than someone else on another ISP, BUT be able to real life download a lot faster.

Speedtest looks pretty and people believe the results, but the only "True" way to test your connection performance is real downloading from a known fast source (preferable multi-source).

Speedtest.net is nearly worthless, I should add i am a IT network engineer :P

You sound like you are an IT engineer for Eircom.

Don't blame the infrastructure, blame speedtest.net

A crap line is a crap line regardless of what any line testing company tells you.

syklops

dunsandin wrote: »

But you are not taking into account the huge landmass of Ireland in comparison to everywhere else, next you will be suggesting that they can build a tunnel under the channel, or a railway across the continent of America. Get real will youse. How could anybody cover such a vast area as Ireland with proper services???? Absurd.

What planet are you living on? The huge landmass of Ireland??? Go and look at a map for Feck sake.

Here is some numbers for you:

Ireland - Area 84,421 km2 - Download Ranking 42
S.Korea - Area 100,140 km2 - Download Ranking 1
Romania - Area 238,391 km2 - Download Ranking 6
Japan - Area 377,944 km2 - Download Ranking 4

Huge landmass. Can we blame our sh!te transport on the huge landmass aswell?

dogbert27

syklops wrote: »

What planet are you living on? The huge landmass of Ireland??? Go and look at a map for Feck sake.

Here is some numbers for you:

Ireland - Area 84,421 km2 - Download Ranking 42
S.Korea - Area 100,140 km2 - Download Ranking 1
Romania - Area 238,391 km2 - Download Ranking 6
Japan - Area 377,944 km2 - Download Ranking 4

Huge landmass. Can we blame our sh!te transport on the huge landmass aswell?

I believe there was an element of sarcasm in that post!

syklops

dogbert27 wrote: »

I believe there was an element of sarcasm in that post!

Oh. Apologies to the poster if there was.

I thought Eamon Ryan had gotten a boards account.

Nijmegen

dunsandin wrote: »

But you are not taking into account the huge landmass of Ireland in comparison to everywhere else, next you will be suggesting that they can build a tunnel under the channel, or a railway across the continent of America. Get real will youse. How could anybody cover such a vast area as Ireland with proper services???? Absurd.

A bit like how all those Scandinavians living above the arctic circle complain about their lack of electricity, broadband, underground heating... Oh, er.

"We can't..." is a great Irish expression.

ongarite

syklops wrote: »

What planet are you living on? The huge landmass of Ireland??? Go and look at a map for Feck sake.

Here is some numbers for you:

Ireland - Area 84,421 km2 - Download Ranking 42
S.Korea - Area 100,140 km2 - Download Ranking 1
Romania - Area 238,391 km2 - Download Ranking 6
Japan - Area 377,944 km2 - Download Ranking 4

Huge landmass. Can we blame our sh!te transport on the huge landmass aswell?

I believe he may be talking about our population/sq km. Its one of the lowest in Europe. This means the cost per user of installing fibre in the last mile to the door is very high and the ROI is low by international standards.

2 of the countries you have lised above have the higest population/sq km, making it far more profitable to offer these faster services.

ei.sdraob

People calm down


this study and dataset (millions of data points available for free)

is for people that have internet connections AND used the speedtest site for testing

of course people who dont have internet wont even show up in this


anyone wants to help me look over the list and find countries with similar population density (info on wikipedia or cia) and then compare to Ireland

there are places like Moldova which are similar size to us and extremely poor and the people there who do have internet get it for far cheaper and better service

dogbert27

ei.sdraob wrote: »

People calm down


this study and dataset (millions of data points available for free)

is for people that have internet connections AND used the speedtest site for testing

of course people who dont have internet wont even show up in this


anyone wants to help me look over the list and find countries with similar population density (info on wikipedia or cia) and then compare to Ireland

there are places like Moldova which are similar size to us and extremely poor and the people there who do have internet get it for far cheaper and better service

I believe Finland have a population similar to our own but with a landmass about 5 times the size of ours. How do they compare?

murphaph

Battleneter wrote: »

Speedtest.net is not accurate as its only "single" source. Any one of the hops can be slow, IE a server in the UK is the slow hop when testing New York.

Add to this, different ISP can have different hops to servers, so its very possible to be showing a slower speed on a number of speedtest servers than someone else on another ISP, BUT be able to real life download a lot faster.

Speedtest looks pretty and people believe the results, but the only "True" way to test your connection performance is real downloading from a known fast source (preferable multi-source).

Speedtest.net is nearly worthless, I should add i am a IT network engineer :P

I'm not a network engineer so I'll bow to your knowledge on that but can you explain to me how I can get consistent 5.8Mb on my German notional 6Mb connection using speedtest, but in Ireland my mother gets 1.2Mb on her notional 3Mb line?

The infrastructure is a load of rubbish in Ireland, and Germany is not a world leader in it either, but still miles better than Ireland (btw, the 6Mb product I have is the cheapest offering, I could get 100Mb cable broadband or 50Mb VDSL from Telekom but I don't need it).

I use videocalling to friends here, but can't bare to try to call home with it, it's so jittery and basically infuriating! There is no defence for a place like my mothers (Newcastle, Co. Dublin) having such crap "broadband". They promised improvements years ago and we're still waiting.

SeanW

Speedtest measures your data rates and ping to a local server. i.e. here in Longford, I Speedtest to a server in Dublin or Galway. I consider this very relevant as a best-case scenario, i.e. if I'm connecting to a game server in Germany the figures will be slightly worse. Our "I.T. Engineer" suggested that tests were taking place between the U.K. and New York, I'm 99% sure both New York City and most of the UK have a local server.

Incidentally I have Broadband, although some might call it midband (3MB down, 386k up, fixed BB from an Eircon reseller).

As an aside - Irish Eircom and Eircom reseller broadband uses a technique called interleaving, which depending on the degree of use, increases ping time.

If anyone on here is a gamer and is stuck with Eircom (or reseller) BB, I suggest taking the 3MB option in preference to the 7MB option as the 3MB option uses reduced interleaving and consequently gives you a better ping.

I 'upgraded' my package from a 7Mbit line to a 3Mbit line for precisely this reason, that and the cost.

dunsandin

ongarite wrote: »

I believe he may be talking about our population/sq km. Its one of the lowest in Europe. This means the cost per user of installing fibre in the last mile to the door is very high and the ROI is low by international standards.

2 of the countries you have lised above have the higest population/sq km, making it far more profitable to offer these faster services.

I believe he may well have been totally sarcastic, and also somwhat lacking in faith when it comes to our infrastructure and its development.:)

Sponge Bob

Battleneter wrote: »

Speedtest.net is nearly worthless, I should add i am a IT network engineer :P

But speedtest always defaults to an Irish server for an Irish IP address and you should know that.

Can you maybe explain why the quality metric is behind the entire first world and nearly all the second world then????

Ash.J.Williams

I was once quoted for well over than €24,000 to bring fibre into our building from outside. Most of that was the cost of having DCC close the quays at night and the overtime of the City Council workers to dig the trench!!

murphaph

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

I was once quoted for well over than €24,000 to bring fibre into our building from outside. Most of that was the cost of having DCC close the quays at night and the overtime of the City Council workers to dig the trench!!

Those trench diggers have to get their slice of the "knowledge economy" too though :pac:

Where did it become so expensive to do anything in Ireland?

Battleneter

SeanW wrote: »

Speedtest measures your data rates and ping to a local server. i.e. here in Longford, I Speedtest to a server in Dublin or Galway. I consider this very relevant as a best-case scenario, i.e. if I'm connecting to a game server in Germany the figures will be slightly worse. Our "I.T. Engineer" suggested that tests were taking place between the U.K. and New York, I'm 99% sure both New York City and most of the UK have a local server.

You may well be testing to a local server but you need to consider the following

1. Who is Hosting the local Speedtest Server, your ISP or another one?
2. If its not your ISP, how many routes (Hops) to that Speedtest server are there?.
3. Are ANY of those hops running slow or are load bandwidth restricted that swill screw up you final result at home, giving you you the impression your connection is slower than it is.
4. Someone testing to that LOCAL speedtest server on the same ISP MAY show a much faster result, that does NOT mean they can generally download faster in the real world than you.
5. More hops mean increased pings generally, you may be faster pinging other servers than someone with a faster ping on Speedtest.
6. Has the ISP that is hosting that speedtest server having a slow route especially to there competing ISP's?, yes this happens deliberately or not.
7. Times of day and back-haul in the respective areas play a large roll in the result.

To give you just my example

We have a local Speedtest Server in my City thats hosted by another ISP (not my ISP).

On my modest home 10Mbps cable connection(hybrid Fibre), I can multi-source download torrents at 10Mbps solid and EVERY time. This also applies to other multi-source downloads from a know fast source.

Testing to my local Speedtest server I rarely ever get more that 6Mbs, so if I was a end user not knowing any better and didn't do any multi-source downloading I would believe my connection is only capable of 6mbs.

This is a complicated issue, even journalists writing articles on Broadband use Speedtest and are largely clueless.

I feel Speedtest can usually measure slow connection of around 5mbs or less "ok" and I cringe to even say that. On faster connections when hops cant provide the bandwith on single source you may as well use a random number generator over speedtest, hell ill give you a number

Aidan1

Where did it become so expensive to do anything in Ireland?

About 1999 - seriously. Has anyone done even an outline CBA of the costs/benefits of replacing all last mile infrastructre?

For commercial premises (generally centrally located or clustered) I would imagine there's an argument. For residential users, I really doubt it.

SeanW

I've had a variety of rated speeds with my Eircom reseller package, 1MB, 2MB, 7MB and then 3MB, and in each case the Speedtest ratings have been broadly in agreement with my real world usage, particularly Upload Speed and Ping, the two most imporatant stats for me.

Sponge Bob

http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0528/broadband.html

reland's broadband speeds continue to compare badly with international standards. A new global survey from test company Ookla show that the average download speed in Ireland is 6mbits. Most EU countries are averaging well over 10mbits.
Ireland comes 41st on the download index, which is headed by South Korea and Latvia. The country only manages 60% of the EU average download speed performance with Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus now the only EU 27 states that fare worse than Ireland.
The upload speed figure is even worse with Ireland scraping in at 61st on this ranking as it only manages 40% of the EU average (1 mbit upload compared to 2.5mbits across the European Union). Only Greece, Spain, Italy the UK and Cyprus saw a worse performance.
Ireland comes in 65th position on the quality list, with countries with better quality broadband including every other EU country and the three poorest countries in Europe - Serbia, Albania and Moldova. Russia tops the list, followed by Romania and Portugal

Battleneter

SeanW wrote: »

I've had a variety of rated speeds with my Eircom reseller package, 1MB, 2MB, 7MB and then 3MB, and in each case the Speedtest ratings have been broadly in agreement with my real world usage, particularly Upload Speed and Ping, the two most imporatant stats for me.

yea fair call Speedtest "can" be accurate no question, at work we have a 100mbs pipe straight into the back bone of the ISP that hosts the local Speedtest server, and its right on the money!

From my tests with Speedtest on residential connections Speedtest is more often way off than right.

Imagine a spedo on a car that is sometimes correct, but is more wrong than right and up to 50%+ out, to me thats useless.

I am not commenting on Ireland Internet speeds, I just cringe when I see articles referring to Speedtest.net.

lmimmfn

Sponge Bob wrote: »

http://www.rte.ie/business/2010/0528/broadband.html

reland's broadband speeds continue to compare badly with international standards. A new global survey from test company Ookla show that the average download speed in Ireland is 6mbits. Most EU countries are averaging well over 10mbits.
Ireland comes 41st on the download index, which is headed by South Korea and Latvia. The country only manages 60% of the EU average download speed performance with Spain, Italy, Malta and Cyprus now the only EU 27 states that fare worse than Ireland.
The upload speed figure is even worse with Ireland scraping in at 61st on this ranking as it only manages 40% of the EU average (1 mbit upload compared to 2.5mbits across the European Union). Only Greece, Spain, Italy the UK and Cyprus saw a worse performance.
Ireland comes in 65th position on the quality list, with countries with better quality broadband including every other EU country and the three poorest countries in Europe - Serbia, Albania and Moldova. Russia tops the list, followed by Romania and Portugal

combine that with DSL price comparison and its an absolute joke here

Mister men

lmimmfn wrote: »

we'll only get decent broadband if the politicians get brown envelopes for it like they did for land rezoning.

Bingo

gurramok

I qualify for 24mb DSL(that new ADSL2 techonology). I'm too far from the exchange and can max at 14MB.

I hear you say he must be down the country or in some isolated housing estate. Nope I live right near the East Link bridge in Dublin!!

Amhran Nua

Just in response to criticisms of speedtest, here are some more official figures supplied by those nice people in Ireland Offline:

Speeds

There is only one word that can be used to describe speeds in Ireland: pathetic.
Ireland currently ranks 33rd out of 35 OECD countries for average broadband speed

Source :EU Commission, July 2008 The current situation as outlined by the OECD:

OECD Broadband Data 2008

• 

This really underlines the complete lack of understanding in government circles about what a "knowledge" economy really means, as far as it goes. If the information infrastructure in your country is poor, you can't have a knowledge economy, end of.


At this stage I've just about lost the capacity to be surprised at the incompetence of the publicans and scions of wannabe-dynasties in power.

lmimmfn

i get less than 4Mbit download and 386kbit upload and it only costs me 56euro a month in total for DSL.

NO WAY AM I BEING RIPPED OFF AND BEHIND THE TIMES, ITS DA BEST!!!!!!

lol, all joking aside, im in a town( as the crow flies im 1km from the exchange, POS line says 4km on the attenuation ), and that is an absolute disgrace lol, i wouldnt mind if it was 30euro a month then id be fine with it, but feckin hell

johnmcdnl

Well I'm paying for 7mb broadband but having a look at eircom site again it seems that my line is only cable of supporting 3mb... I'll be onto them in the morning don't worry... I remember them telling me over the phone that 7mb was the way to go :mad::mad:

but on top of this.. speed test says I only am downloading at 0.7mb and that's when I have the laptop plugged in... I don't care what any minister or any eircom rep or anyone says... --- that's nothing short of disgraceful.. and we're paying over 50 euro a month for this "service"

syklops

Slightly OT, but I just moved into a new flat. 15Mb down 2 up. 8 euros a month. I am well chuffed.

dogbert27

johnmcdnl wrote: »

Well I'm paying for 7mb broadband but having a look at eircom site again it seems that my line is only cable of supporting 3mb... I'll be onto them in the morning don't worry... I remember them telling me over the phone that 7mb was the way to go :mad::mad:
QUOTE]

Yeah but when you read the print it will say you can get up to 7mb broadband. That could mean that between 3:45 am and 3:50 am there is a possibility that you will download at a full 7mb but at other times it will be below the 7mb or at most times well below 7mb! :mad: