Eircom 24Mb NGB upgrade actually a downgrade!

douglasman

I was on Eircom 24Mb Home Turbo for the last year. I was one of the lucky few whose lines actually synced at the full 24Mb and always got a solid 20Mb in real speed terms allowing for dsl overheads which I was very happy with. With the 24Mb profile, you get fastpath too, so super low ping latency, they don't offer fastpath with any other profile, only 24Mb.

On the morning of 15th February, my line suddenly dropped, was out for a bit and when it came back it was on a 17Mb profile with Interleaving. This apparently was my 'upgrade' to Eircom's NGB Ultimate! I did not order this, but knew it was coming sometime as they are gradually changing people over. The ADSL 8Mb people in my exchange were already changed over to NGB in December.

What I did not expect was a slower line. I could tell from the SNR margin that things were not as good as they used to be. Line attenuation remains the same. I got them to change the profile up to 20Mb, but with the current SNR margin, that's as far as it will go now.

I think they changed my port on the DSLAM and there is simply more noise/interference (mainly from other lines) now and that's the way it is. But it's highly unacceptable, and certainly not an upgrade of any sort. Yes, my download quota has changed from 75GB to 'unlimited' aka 250GB but it isn't an upgrade of any sort and my one year contract is up in early March, so it wasn't good timing on Eircom's part to do this either. As always, didn't get told this was happening, just got cut off while this was done and then had to chase them up to get the correct speed for line myself. The fact remains though, that my line *is* capable of 24Mb sync speed, i've had it for the last year and i'm now not getting it. That's a completely different situation to a lot of other lines which are not capable of 24Mb sync speed.

Bruno2010

douglasman wrote: »

I was on Eircom 24Mb Home Turbo for the last year. I was one of the lucky few whose lines actually synced at the full 24Mb and always got a solid 20Mb in real speed terms allowing for dsl overheads which I was very happy with. With the 24Mb profile, you get fastpath too, so super low ping latency, they don't offer fastpath with any other profile, only 24Mb.

On the morning of 15th February, my line suddenly dropped, was out for a bit and when it came back it was on a 17Mb profile with Interleaving. This apparently was my 'upgrade' to Eircom's NGB Ultimate! I did not order this, but knew it was coming sometime as they are gradually changing people over. The ADSL 8Mb people in my exchange were already changed over to NGB in December.

What I did not expect was a slower line. I could tell from the SNR margin that things were not as good as they used to be. Line attenuation remains the same. I got them to change the profile up to 20Mb, but with the current SNR margin, that's as far as it will go now.

I think they changed my port on the DSLAM and there is simply more noise/interference (mainly from other lines) now and that's the way it is. But it's highly unacceptable, and certainly not an upgrade of any sort. Yes, my download quota has changed from 75GB to 'unlimited' aka 250GB but it isn't an upgrade of any sort and my one year contract is up in early March, so it wasn't good timing on Eircom's part to do this either. As always, didn't get told this was happening, just got cut off while this was done and then had to chase them up to get the correct speed for line myself. The fact remains though, that my line *is* capable of 24Mb sync speed, i've had it for the last year and i'm now not getting it. That's a completely different situation to a lot of other lines which are not capable of 24Mb sync speed.

Hi, I sent you a PM

Sponge Bob

I'd say it is the extra 'noise' from the other upgrades, mainly 1 to 8 mbits.

They will quieten down once the bills arrive next month loaded with excess charges

douglasman

Sponge Bob wrote: »

I'd say it is the extra 'noise' from the other upgrades, mainly 1 to 8 mbits.

They will quieten down once the bills arrive next month loaded with excess charges

Hi, nope it's not them. I'm in the Douglas exchange in Cork and all the ADSL v1 people were done in December, and those upgrades had no effect on my line at all. It's only now that Eircom is doing the ADSL2+ people in Douglas and that is having an unfortunate effect.

Sponge Bob

Ah, they must have changed the standard profile for 24mbit home packages. Can you post in the eircom forum and tell them what you have told us ??

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1293

Do tell us if you get anywhere with them.

douglasman

The issue has been sorted. On 15th February 2011, my line was upgraded from 24Mb Home Turbo to 24Mb NGB Ultimate. Even though there was no change of speed in this case, eircom still reprofile the line to their conservative settings, this changed my perfectly working 24Mb line, to the 17Mb profile. I then got manually changed to 20Mb profile and based on SNR margin which was hitting 6 at that point, I thought that was it and there was a problem. However, finally decided to go for the 24Mb profile today to see what would happen and synced at full 24Mb no problem at all, SNR margin remains at 6. All back to exactly how it was before, except i'm on the NGB network now. So if you have had manual profile changes made to your line prior to NGB as I had, you may need to get those changes done again after NGB upgrade. A big thanks to Bruno2010 who helped with the profile changes!

BArra

i recently upgraded to 24mb home turbo

im on the 20mb profile with eircom, but modem is syncing at around 18.5mb

noise margin is at 6dB

however my query, modem settings is telling me i am set to an interleaving path, i thought adsl2+ 24mb eircom used fastpath?

douglasman

BArra wrote: »

i recently upgraded to 24mb home turbo

im on the 20mb profile with eircom, but modem is syncing at around 18.5mb

noise margin is at 6dB

however my query, modem settings is telling me i am set to an interleaving path, i thought adsl2+ 24mb eircom used fastpath?

Fastpath is only offered on the 24Mb profile. All other profiles like the 20Mb profile you are on are interleaving, it's low interleaving though, so it's not too bad, about 10ms worse than fastpath in ping terms.

BArra

ah crap..

my ping is averaging around 28-30ms to boards.ie

if im set to the 20mb profile and my modem is only getting 18.5, pointless i suppose trying to get jumped upto 24mb

wat kinda ping times do you get on fastpath?

douglasman

BArra wrote: »

ah crap..

my ping is averaging around 28-30ms to boards.ie

if im set to the 20mb profile and my modem is only getting 18.5, pointless i suppose trying to get jumped upto 24mb

wat kinda ping times do you get on fastpath?

12-13ms ping times to boards.ie now. I was on the 20Mb interleaving profile for one week and ping times were 25ms to boards.ie. Your line needs to be able to sync at the full 20Mb on the 20Mb profile to realistically even consider the 24Mb profile. A better modem can help. With my line, I got 21Mb with the ZyXel but that modem was completely unstable, my older Netopia 2247-02 gave me 23Mb and was totally stable and my current modem the Draytek Vigor 2820Vn does the full 24Mb with ease.

BArra

that draytek is a pricey one!

The Ayatolla

I rang asking to upgrade to 24mb and what speeds would I realistically get. On 8MB at the moment, and was informed my line could only handle 10MB. Crazy. Only living a 5 minute walk from eircom's HQ in the northside.

Mac daddy

BArra wrote: »

that draytek is a pricey one!

Well look at the options it comes with
Great router got mine on adverts a while back.

BArra

care to give a quick run down on these funky features?

douglasman

BArra wrote: »

care to give a quick run down on these funky features?

Have a look at the following page, loads of details there.

http://www.draytek.co.uk/products/vigor2820.html