Eircom NGB in Waterford

Marchandire

I was just looking at the Eircom Next Generation Broadband map at http://ngb.ie/map.htm

From the look of it, the eastern half of Waterford City is now upgraded (City Centre, Viewmount, Grantstown, Ballytruckle, John's Park, etc). I was wondering if anyone here uses Eircom in this area and saw a significant/noticeable increase in their broadband speeds?

I'm right in the middle of the enabled area, on a 2MB connection that was supposed to go up to 8MB. My download speed has gone from 270kb/s to a whopping 310kb/s, with a similar change to my upload speed. So instead of a 400 % increase in speeds, we've been granted a 14 % increase.

The change is barely noticeable, and I was led to believe that the connection speeds would be a bit more impressive.

I know that the connection is dependent on the phone lines and distance from the exchange, so ofc I wasn't expecting the full 8mb whack, but what we're getting now is basically the same as we had before. We'll be paying an extra 2 Euro for every Gig we use over the 30gb cap and this seems like a pretty bad deal.

Is anyone here using Eircom and seeing a decent increase in their broadband speeds? I'd love to know if there's any point ringing Eircom about it, or should we just go ahead and get UPC in.

Thanx.

deisedevil

Get UPC in.

Great connection speed. Eircom are a serious rip off!

C_Dawg

Williamstown road here and still on the old package I believe

Mysterious&Shy

deisedevil wrote: »

Get UPC in.

Great connection speed. Eircom are a serious rip off!

I agree! We are paying €84 a month for TV, Phone and Broadband.

Cabaal

I honestly don't understand why people stick with Eircom when they have other options available to them like UPC or Smart, especially with eircom's new NGB gimmick

KingLoser

I'm in the Infirmary.. will check when I get home. No choice of UPC in there.

I think there's a difference between enabled and migrated though, surely existing customers will have to be migrated shirley?

deisedevil

NGB will only make a difference to those who were close to an exchange and getting good speeds anyway. to the rest you might notice a slight difference.

If UPC is available to you then just go for it.

AdMMM

I'm still syncing at 3072/384 and I'm in an enabled area. If I see no noticeable speed increase, it makes the new caps and limits a complete joke.

witless1

Don't base your speed test observations on a HTTP download or a torrent as the speed you get is not dependent on your line. I have a 30Mb line from NTL and while the HTTP download is noticeably quicker it was not a massive leap from when my line was 6Mb or 10Mb, maybe an extra 200Kb/s. Downloads of that nature aren't going to show you the real potential of your line unless you are using a decent downloading program / protocol.

If you are going to complain to them use speedtest.net for your linespeed or if you really want to see the HTTP download capability download a file from an Irish server, anything sizeable on http://ftp.heanet.ie/
That way when you do complain to them you have reasonable numbers to show them. Do it early in the morning (no contention) and then at peak times to get a good view of it.

I'm right in the middle of the enabled area, on a 2MB connection that was supposed to go up to 8MB. My download speed has gone from 270kb/s to a whopping 310kb/s, with a similar change to my upload speed. So instead of a 400 % increase in speeds, we've been granted a 14 % increase.

Line metrics don't work like that. It is a problem with the way networks describe their download speeds, it's not false advertising it's simply misleading if you don't understand the networking behind it. It's been a while since I done networking but from memory (completely open to being wrong on this!). Broadband speed is in megabits per second (Mb) and downloaded files and speeds tend to be in megabytes per second (MB) or kilabytes per second (KB). 8 bits to a byte means your 8Mb line is really a max of 1MB per second. So on the speeds you quoted you are getting ~30% of your line speed. If you try what I said above with heanet you should see, at a guess, around 600kb/s or 60% of your line speed. That's pretty good for an Irish based download when you factor in contention.

munster_mafia

KingLoser wrote: »

I'm in the Infirmary.. will check when I get home. No choice of UPC in there.

I think there's a difference between enabled and migrated though, surely existing customers will have to be migrated shirley?

In the infirmary myself, what connection do you use. im on 02 dongle thingy, its awful.

KingLoser

munster_mafia wrote: »

In the infirmary myself, what connection do you use. im on 02 dongle thingy, its awful.

I'm on the eircom dude, it's half the connection for twice the price of UPC... tough work being a leper these days.