enhanced broadband disappointment

foggy_lad

i have been upgraded to enhanced broadband by vodafone here in carlow after some issue with whether the exchange was enabled or not. vodafone said it was but eircom had not enabled the exchange yet.

before the upgrade i had the 3mb with off-peak calls bundle and i was getting almost the full 3mbps as i am only 1.5km from the exchange, and the voodafone modem was telling me i had an attainable figure of 8032Kbps so i assumed if i wanted to upgrade to 7mb that would be possible.

now after the upgrade i see my line is set to 5120Kbps down and 512 up but the attainable figures are 9376Kbps down and 1300Kbps up.

have vodafone stifled or restricted the upgrade for customers? i was told by a vodafone rep that i should get almost the full 8mb speed so should end up with around 7.1-7.2megabits in a speedtest but i am only getting 4-5megabits also my pings have almost doubled!

here are the line stats 1.5km from Carlow exchange

jor el

Your down stream attenuation is quite high, 45dB, and will limit your max speed to between 5 and 6Mbps. It will not get any better than that. They have you at about 5.1Mbps, which is probably a little lower than what's possible, but they often do this to prevent possible problems (gives them some headroom).

45dB attenuation is also very high for a line that's only 1.5km from the exchange. If you could find out what's causing that and get rid of it, you should be able to get the full 8Mbps.

Start by plugging out all phone equipment, and connect only the modem to the main phone socket. Then check the stats again. If you have any cordless phones then plug them out, from the phone line and the mains.

lucernarian

Those stats are for a line about 2 miles long. 5 mbps is okay and what you'd reasonably expect for 45dB downstream attenuation.

foggy_lad

Jesus that is desperate in a town the size of Carlow! How were eircom guaranteeing me 7mbps speed if the line is not capable?

Assuming the exchange in Carlow is still in the post office building and that phone lines don't have to follow roads all the time I should be no more than 1.5km from the exchange as the crow flies as Google maps says it is 2.1km driving.

lucernarian

Btw you should nag eircom to bump up the line to 6 mbps as the line stats suggest it can handle it. They probably put you on the prequal result for the line, but it's handling 5 mbps very well and can manage 6 mbps I believe.

foggy_lad

Well I am with Vodafone so can't ring eircom but if I was still an eircom customer I wonder would I have a better service?

lucernarian

foggy_lad wrote: »

Well I am with Vodafone so can't ring eircom but if I was still an eircom customer I wonder would I have a better service?

I get the impression that eircom wholesale do not allow Vodafone to exceed the prequal limit for lines, but that eircom themselves can put through "manual orders" to raise the speed of the line. It's only a suspicion I have but my family have the same problem and are stuck with 1 mbit when the line's stats suggest it can handle twice that with comfort. They're with perlico and can't get an increase either.

foggy_lad

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

I get the impression that eircom wholesale do not allow Vodafone to exceed the prequal limit for lines, but that eircom themselves can put through "manual orders" to raise the speed of the line. It's only a suspicion I have but my family have the same problem and are stuck with 1 mbit when the line's stats suggest it can handle twice that with comfort. They're with perlico and can't get an increase either.

my problem is that previous to the "so-called" upgrade to enhanced broadband my line was showing the same attainable speed as it is now yet the actual speed is just over half that and my pings have almost doubled.

maybe the exchange has not been enabled yet but to compensate for the mis-information vodafone have bumped those affected up to higher speed on the old equipment?

lucernarian

The attainable speed being suggested is with ADSL2. You're only going to be given whatever ADSL1 will support, and the connection will work at a signal margin of 6dB which will lower the max potential speed further. You won't manage the full 8 mbps that ADSL1 offers.

foggy_lad

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

The attainable speed being suggested is with ADSL2. You're only going to be given whatever ADSL1 will support, and the connection will work at a signal margin of 6dB which will lower the max potential speed further. You won't manage the full 8 mbps that ADSL1 offers.

please excuse my ignorance of some of this but does that mean the Carlow exchange has not been upgraded to enhanced broadband yet? is adsl2 not enhanced broadband?

i was told by VF that i should be able to get almost the full 8mbps like previously i was on 3mbps but was getting just below that which takes into account the distance and noise etc so i thought i might be looking at 7mbps and so did the VF rep.

swoofer

can you double check cabling as 45db is way too high, a new router may not go amiss either, VF will tell you the line length as it is on the record. If cabling is ok then it must be distance.

I am 4.5km and get over 6mb with a netgear, s/n is about 7.7 but does degrade in the evenings, router syncs automatically. I have line set at max by vf.

gb--

lucernarian

45dB is only "way too high" if you actually live near the exchange, and cables can travel awkward routes in towns. On a working line, the downstream attenuation should be roughly about twice the attenuation of upstream, which it is in this case.

Also, the attenuation is only measured at one particular frequency for downstream and upstream. ADSL works over a range of frequencies so the line could be ok even if it happens to be weak on that exact frequency.

Basically, I wouldn't pay too much heed to attenuation as only the "prequal speed" is based on it, and it's not a very accurate assessment of top line speed. Signal margin is much more important.

As for the "max attainable speed" reported by your modem, I'd ignore that. Vodafone are offering an ADSL1 connection and you'd have to pay much more for an ADSL2+ connection and they may not offer it to you if they felt your line was too long. The enhanced broadband service is where your line is set to the max speed it can take (with ADSL1), along with supposed improvements in evening speeds and whatnot (no contention). Enhanced broadband is like how BT offer ordinary broadband in the UK. The enhanced broadband packages will be exclusively priced according to usage.


Now, for setting your line to a higher speed, that's Vodafone's job to arrange. You could try calling them or else PM a rep here. I don't know why but some threads they don't seem to bother posting in...

foggy_lad

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

45dB is only "way too high" if you actually live near the exchange, and cables can travel awkward routes in towns. On a working line, the downstream attenuation should be roughly about twice the attenuation of upstream, which it is in this case.

Also, the attenuation is only measured at one particular frequency for downstream and upstream. ADSL works over a range of frequencies so the line could be ok even if it happens to be weak on that exact frequency.

Basically, I wouldn't pay too much heed to attenuation as only the "prequal speed" is based on it, and it's not a very accurate assessment of top line speed. Signal margin is much more important.

As for the "max attainable speed" reported by your modem, I'd ignore that. Vodafone are offering an ADSL1 connection and you'd have to pay much more for an ADSL2+ connection and they may not offer it to you if they felt your line was too long. The enhanced broadband service is where your line is set to the max speed it can take (with ADSL1), along with supposed improvements in evening speeds and whatnot (no contention). Enhanced broadband is like how BT offer ordinary broadband in the UK. The enhanced broadband packages will be exclusively priced according to usage.


Now, for setting your line to a higher speed, that's Vodafone's job to arrange. You could try calling them or else PM a rep here. I don't know why but some threads they don't seem to bother posting in...

so this whole enhanced broadband thing is just a massive con job as we are not getting put onto the new adsl2 equipment!

the vodafone reps seem to have gone silent over enhanced broadband on all threads!